Time is running out on the Climate Clock

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/22/23803197/climate-change-clock-deadline-new-york

by Brajeshwar • 3 years ago

40 65 3 years ago

theverge.com

haizhung• 3 years ago

And yet, we still fail to reach consensus on the most basic premise, phasing out co2.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/22/g20-countries-...

RandomLensman• 3 years ago

Adaptation will come first pretty soon, then decarbonization and geoengineering - solving the now will beat solving the future in political priorities. Doesn't mean things are not done simultaneously but emphasis will likely shift.

systemvoltage5• 3 years ago

I feel like they’ve lost my trust in the climate movement. I sincerely believe that it’s a small kernel of truth surrounded by lies and degrowth ideology. I want to live in a clean, beautiful planet; and share many things with climate activists. However, I can’t get behind the insane push for green washing, ESG, climate alarmicism, JustStopOil loonies, etc. This is not science, it’s ideological activism of the worst kind: to regress as a human species. The same group of people that keep drumming climate change have other opinions that are predictable: depopulation, degrowth, reducing quality of life, social justice fundamentalism (Tim Urban’e term), etc all stemming from one political axis point located at the top-left corner. I wouldn’t be so against it if it didn’t have an authoritarian aspect to it. Soon you’ll have California mandated carbon budget. Fuck that.

DangitBobby• 3 years ago

Yeah, this attitude is pretty much exactly why it's already over.

anon84873628• 3 years ago

Well if there were any contrasting ideological factions that accepted the reality of climate change, we might have a diversity of viewpoints and solutions. As it stands only the "extremes" have been truly taking it seriously.

I'm sorry they haven't been able to wrap the kernel in something more palatable to you. If you want the "movement" to be different then be a part of it.

systemvoltage5• 3 years ago

If lies are not palatable to me, sorry, not my problem.

kmeisthax2• 3 years ago

all stemming from one political axis point located at the top-left corner

I'll say the quiet part out loud: you're worried about the authoritarian left - or, as the libertarian left calls them, tankies.

Green washing and ESG aren't an authleft project. They were invented by corporate interests looking to avoid brand damage, so at best we could say it's a right-libertarian project.

Insamuch as people apply social justice frameworks to environmental causes, it is to say that global warming is going to kill underprivileged people first and faster than wealthy people. Depopulation (aka "overpopulation") was the authright framing of environmentalism: we have too many mouths to feed and we need to stop making more, and conveniently for us it just so happens to be some other people's fault. These viewpoints are irreconcilable; in fact, I would argue the social justice environmental view is specifically a response to the authright trying to rehabituate themselves as environmental crusaders rather than industrial murderers.

I object to calling JustStopOil loonies for the same reason why I don't call BuzzFeed loonies for pioneering clickbait. Smearing black paint on art is their tactic, not their goal.

As far as I can tell there isn't really a libertarian (left or right) answer to global warming. Greenwashing and ESG won't actually fix the problem, because the problem is a public choice problem. Western standards of living are built on infrastructure that only loves oil and rejects all else. Everyone else wants western standards of living and is copying the same infrastructure to get it.

systemvoltage5• 3 years ago

Green washing and ESG aren't an authleft project. They were invented by corporate interests looking to avoid brand damage, so at best we could say it's a right-libertarian project.

This is naive I think. The same crowd goes to Davos every year. It’s far deeper and insidious than “we don’t want to pay for lawyer/lawsuits”.

The real quiet part is this: they want their genetic lineage to have better resources than others. Usually, group dynamics (tribe) provides a better overall outcome for their kids. The fracturing of unity has led to a bunch of elite clans to seize Gov power through proxy of social justice, climate change, etc.

dTal7• 3 years ago

Everyone else wants western standards of living and is copying the same infrastructure to get it.

This is an excellent reason why we should focus on putting our own house in order, in spite of all those people who say "there's no point doing anything while China is burning coal".

reducesuffering2• 3 years ago

The libertarian answer to global warming is law such that free markets are free of externalities. Carbon tax is a start to align incentives so that people don't get a freebie by ruining other peoples' air.

ZeroGravitas• 3 years ago

The main reason people apply social justice concepts to climate change is that a) the right defected from their initial agreement to fix the problem with carbon taxes and other market mechanisms, then b) spread a lot of propaganda about how addressing the problem was going to hurt the poor.

So anyone who wanted a democratic coalition to deal with climate change had to look to the left of the political spectrum for support and dispel the notion that it would make the poor poorer.

sixQuarks• 3 years ago

You’re getting downvoted but you’re right

Thoeu388• 3 years ago

The world has less than six years left to hit crucial global climate goals, according to the clock.
Last year was even a record-high year for energy-related CO2 emissions.
Energy infrastructure and structural change is not something that you do in a couple of months. It’s something that needs years,”

So we only have six years. CO2 production is rising. Key players are not on board. And even if everyone would be aligned politically, we will never manage to make technical changes on time!

It is like cars emission car regulation in EU. New cars are very energy efficient and have low emission. But too expensive so nobody buys them. Average vehicle age is 15 years (in Czechia) and it really stinks!

Perhaps we need better and more realistic plan, that would actually work!

bloopernova3• 3 years ago

I remember reading a horror book about rats in London after a nuclear war. One scene has stuck with me for 3 decades:

A woman sits in her house pretending to have a cup of tea. She's dying of radiation poisoning but goes through the motions of her pre apocalypse life rather than face what is happening. Bugs swarm through the dirty water in the tea mug, but she's denied reality so deeply that she doesn't see them.

It feels like industrial societies, especially governments and corporate leadership, are doing the same thing. Denying reality because the alternative is too big, too mind numbingly terrifying to accept.

I was walking my dog this morning, and had a flash of an imagined future. The grass was replaced by soil that was brown and cracked. Lush trees and foliage gone, only withered stumps remain. Houses were gone, just a few burnt beams left. No wildlife at all.

Maybe we should use all that AI power to generate a satellite and street view showing the potential future. Though I can't delude myself into thinking it would change anyone's mind.

To save you all the trouble: OK Doomer.

bloopernova3• 3 years ago

In reply to myself I wanted to share a thought. This one is less bleak but probably less palatable too:

Governments should give their militaries a standing order: when society collapses, hunt down the billionaires hiding in their bunkers, ships, castles, wherever they may be hiding. Make it known that the richest 0.01% of the world has no chance to escape the doom of humanity.

Maybe that would make them try to prevent it happening. The 0.01% are the ones with power, and all they do with it is hoard it and seek more.

netsharc2• 3 years ago

The higher your percentage at the top, the more connected you are with political leaders... Difficult to see this happening.

musha68k3• 3 years ago

Terrifying thought, same as with aerosols as the predominant spread vector for SARS-CoV-2 being “invisible” I tended to think the “comprehension problem” probably is the invisibility of CO2.

But yeah maybe it wouldn’t even be enough to make it “visible” with AR glasses etc. to make the necessary global shifts…

Let’s quit the doomerism none the less though, this planet should still have just enough smart apes to make this work without taking everyone and everything else down with us..

How could we hack our ape minds to make this work? Maybe social dynamics could work? High status / high success in life = low carbon emissions? How to get there?

New game rule set? Taxes etc? Chicken / egg issue though.

courseofaction2• 3 years ago

Maybe I'm also just a doomer, but I have found it very difficult to participate in normal society my entire life because of this kind of double-minded insanity I have to take on in order for it to make any sense.

Most 'production' is not productive, it is a waste of our precious limited resources in a time when we know we are rapidly running out.

gmuslera• 3 years ago

"Because the clock say so". Like in Pratchett's Small Gods, we shouldn't believe in the clock instead of the worrying trends that are unleashing in front of us. There was a lot of political and economic players putting that limit, but right now it looks pretty evident than we already might had crossed the safe limits, and by a long shot.

dTal7• 3 years ago

There is only one solution to the climate apocalypse, and it's not popular:

Fossil carbon extraction needs to be halted. Worldwide. Close the coal mines, shut down the oil rigs.

Everything else is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It's very, very simple: at the beginning of the Paleozoic era, atmospheric carbon was 20x higher than today, a level that the current biosphere cannot survive in. Gradually, over the next few hundred million years, that carbon was sequestered into the ground. We are now digging it back up and burning it, thus returning it to the atmosphere, within a span of decades. You can talk about LED lightbulbs and carbon credits till the cows come home, but the only thing that can halt this is preventing people from burning carbon that came from the ground - and the only way to stop that is to ban its extraction.

"But what will we do for energy?" Lots of things. We have options. Personally I'm a fan of the magic green rocks that give energy forever.

"But how will we power things that need high energy density / make plastics / lubricate my e-bike chain etc" - Oil. We can make it from anything carbon based. It's not even hard. We just have to stop digging it up and burning it.

systemvoltage5• 3 years ago

This sounds like North Korean authoritarianism. Even the CCP would back away from this.

Edit: responding to comment below about CFCs - Equating CFCs with all fossil fuels is an error of few orders of magnitude in scale.

Edit: Those complaining I can't use reply button, it's because of throttling.

dTal7• 3 years ago

Which part don't you agree with? Please be specific. I was careful to spell out every link in the chain.

If you agree with the premise and logic, but simply dislike the conclusion, I really don't know what to tell you.

musha68k3• 3 years ago

Quite the opposite, by now this seems to be the only way not to fall into chaos -> authoritarianism.

kbos87• 3 years ago

If that’s what is required, the focus should be on how we do this with minimal disruption. The fact that you don’t like the medicine doesn’t really matter.

arp2422• 3 years ago

We fixed ozone depletion by the "North Korean authoritarian" ban on CFCs and some other things. It's not that outlandish.

If $thing you do affects only you: do whatever you want! Go nuts! If $thing you do affects a substantial number of other people: maybe we need to ensure this doesn't result in you imposing your $thing on the rest of us? These sort of things aren't simple: your freedom to play music at 4am interrupts my freedom to sleep at night.

pipes3• 3 years ago

How will we make, cement, steel, plastic and fertilizer?

If we do what you are suggesting, half the world population will starve to death.

dTal7• 3 years ago

I literally address making plastic / oil derivatives in the last line of my comment.

Given enough energy, and raw feedstock matter, we can make anything we need. Nuclear power gets us all the energy we need. Matter can simply be recycled in closed loops. The nitrogen for fertilizer we currently get from fossil fuels currently ends up in our sewage, and from there to places it shouldn't be like the ocean, causing huge problems like algae blooms. Recycle that, and you've solved another problem!

It's all about closing the loops.

netsharc2• 3 years ago

Yeah, even Habeck, the Green Party guy who became Germany's Economic Minister, realised when Putin started the war, that the "simple, just go without Russian the gas" would've been catastrophic, their industry and economy depended so much on that gas, that mass unemployment would've destabilised the country, and maybe continent. Luckily he wasn't a dumb extremist, and despite his party affiliation he was working on solutions to keep the gas flowing.

bloopernova3• 3 years ago

And if we do nothing there's a significant and rising chance that more than 99% of the world population will starve to death.

I'm not saying that you're advocating doing nothing, nor am I supporting totalitarian/fascism. Just that at some point there will be decisions forced upon people; to choose who will live.

Maybe that's part of the general apathy? Do people subconsciously think that they'll be saved and those "others" will be sacrificed?

Paul-Craft2• 3 years ago

Where's your alternative, then?

xracy4• 3 years ago

As opposed to right now, when the increased heat from climate change isn't killing anyone. Nope, we're all totally fine.

Projectiboga2• 3 years ago

Another problem is the sun is significantly brighter now than it was during the Paleozoic era.

xracy4• 3 years ago

If this isn't straight BS (I don't know if it is because I don't see a source for it). It's dangerous "what-about-ism" Where it looks like you're trying to say that the problem isn't climate change, but that our sun has changed. As if we didn't live for thousands of years with the current sun setup.

(I feel confident in saying that nothing major has changed about the sun in the last 2000 years because that's not the time scale these things happen on).

sirmike_• 3 years ago

Well that is one imaginary perspective. In six years the world will still be turning and your side will yell the end will come in another 5 years.

Please do not hide your tactics and by all means keep up the batshitcrazy loudness of your plans. The more you yell and scream and introduce more radical planning -- the more the average person will grow tired of them and end up shutting you all out.

Ideologies aside we agree on nuclear energy.

knewter• 3 years ago

I'm worried people might die. The only solution is to kill lots of people.

You know that, when productivity goes down, people that can barely survive already will die. Right?

locustous• 3 years ago

We had experienced serious reductions in carbon utilization in the 2008 recession and COVID restrictions and there wasn't any kind of pull back signal from the temperature record that I can make out. Real global "experiments" that do not back up these extreme positions.

If you really want to make changes it seems to me that the best place to put effort would be pro nuclear rather than cutting industry to the ground. Serious investment in thorium seems a good place to start.

throwaway5959• 3 years ago

We’re not having kids precisely because humans aren’t going to stop until they’ve ruined this planet. It’s immoral (in our opinion) to bring children into a world that 100 years from now will be significantly spoiled.

Ekaros2• 3 years ago

I doubt that outside some island nations any population is ready to pay the price what it would truly mean to effectively lower emissions. Certainly for developing countries it is unacceptable. And the developed ones, will not go far enough. Or if they try it will be political and potentially economical suicide in short term.

musha68k3• 3 years ago

PRC holds 50% of world’s EV share by now. 22% of new registered vehicles are EV vs 5% in US.

Clearly we are not even trying to compete. We keep on falling behind with our behind mindsets.

And yes, I’m an 80s fan as well but those times are nothing but the age old past by now. Nothing will bring them back, continued denial will just rob us of our future.

flooow• 3 years ago

It's an interesting philosophical question.

Let us take it as read that if you have children, you are morally obliged to work to ensure that the planet is habitable for them and future generations. But if you choose not to have children, do you have any moral obligation to ensure the planet can continue to support life after you have died?

I could foresee a future when more-or-less everyone agrees that something drastic would have to be done to save the planet, but an electorally-significant block simply say "don't care, dead soon, so long and thanks for all the fish".

Ekaros2• 3 years ago

Even if majority (60-80%) agree that something drastic has to be done, I have little faith that they will agree that same thing has to be done. People are always ready to trade others' things away, but never their own...

aSithLord• 3 years ago

I read this same article in 1995...

Time is running out on the Climate Clock

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