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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 28, 2018 - 10:21pm PT
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no, that is the solution, don't be silly
there are a number of ideas on how to implement it, and certainly you can take your pot shots at each and every one.
your analogy is unusually sloppy logic for you, it is not at all akin to the solution to mass murder. We understand the how the climate is changing from a scientific standpoint, I don't think you'd say the same about mass murder.
given that understanding, the solution can be stated rather simply. How that solution is implemented is not at all simple.
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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Jul 28, 2018 - 10:45pm PT
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Since nothing packs more easily accessible energy into a small and inexpensive package, I tend to deviate from my free-market ideals when it comes to coal & oil. The market won't shirk these sources on its own. As I've said before, I think reasonable, staged mandates--agreed to globally with no "catch-up" allowances for lesser-developed nations--spread out over the next three or four decades might be required.
What will also be required is a grand bargain with regard to the energy sources that replace carbon. A bargain where greens stand-down opposition to nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, tidal, or new exotics that may become available. Every one of these has an environmental price that will have to be paid. There's no free lunch.
And there's still the aviation problem.
Edit: Absolutely true that many of the people who post here could do more. Somewhere along the line it became a rite of passage to travel the world--despite the environmental cost. Ironically, these are often the very same people who soapbox the most.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jul 29, 2018 - 06:06am PT
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your analogy is unusually sloppy logic for you, it is not at all akin to the solution to mass murder. We understand the how the climate is changing from a scientific standpoint, I don't think you'd say the same about mass murder.
given that understanding, the solution can be stated rather simply. How that solution is implemented is not at all simple.
Unusually dim-witted of you to not see the plain analogy. In fact, the problem of mass-shootings literally JUST IS some guy firing bullets into a crowd! That is totally well-understood. Stop the problem of bullets flying into crowds, and you've stopped the problem of mass-shootings, in EXACTLY the same way that stopping the pumping of GHG into the atmosphere stops the problem of man-made climate change. BOTH problems emerge from pumping something where it doesn't belong. The proximate causes of both are well-understood. And in BOTH cases, understanding the motivations and deeper causes IS the real problem that needs solving.
The "how" you are balking at in my analogy is literally the same sort of "how" problem as the "how to stop pumping GHG into the atmosphere." That's precisely where the devil's in the details.
We can keep dickering in this semantic way forever. Bottom line is that whether you call it a "solution" or a "goal" or something else, your "solution" does nothing more than imply my overarching point, which is that the HOW is where the rubber meets the road.
And the HOW is where liberals have doubled-down on zero-sum thinking.
I suggest hydro power, and I get howls of anguish: "NO MORE dams!"
I suggest nuclear power, and I get howls of rage: "You CAN'T be serious! Poison our environment even more?"
I suggest vegetarianism, which actually would have a significant effect. I get silent disbelief and straw-man responses.
In short, the only "solutions" I have seen from liberals are radically punitive and will likely have economic effects that will further gut the paying class that liberals need to keep paying for all the free crap they keep proposing. And the Republican "response" is: "Whatever you do, DO NOT touch our precious corporations in ANY way."
As I've said, neither party is serious about this, despite hand-wringing on one side and convenient denials on the other. But it's a net gain for the USA to get its energy as far removed from fossil fuels as possible as quickly as possible.
Even if the Republicans were correct, and there IS no man-made climate change, it would still be in the best interest of the USA to get off of fossil fuels as quickly as possible.
But if liberals won't embrace and individually LIVE the change they advocate, I really can't take their proposed punitive measures (that will, of course, conveniently affect "other entities" besides themselves) seriously. So, yeah, become vegetarians, and then I'll start to take your hand-wringing seriously.
At present, I honestly don't believe that most liberals are arguing in earnest. They just want there to "be" SOME "solution," and if that "solution" hurts corporations while having little measurable other effects, that would be just fine with them. Meanwhile, they can blame "deniers" for the fact that nothing substantive is being done, although they don't seem serious about non-punitive solutions. And anybody that suggests that hammering corporations for "carbon footprint" is missing the point, well, such a suggestion is met with more howls of rage: "Just Republican talking points; save the precious corporations BS."
See, the issue is NOT how much FF-powered electricity this or that corporation is using; that "carbon footprint" is just a symptom of the actual problem. And that underlying problem is NOT solved by just getting companies to "reduce" their electricity usage, which, by extension it is presumed will reduce their carbon footprint.
The issue is where that electricity is coming from, which at present is about 78% from fossil fuels. To really reduce EVERYBODY'S carbon footprint, including that of companies, you've got to radically change where our electricity is coming from.
Clean, modern nuclear power could provide massive amounts of electricity, part of which could be used to produce more and cheaper solar panels and wind turbines (that are at present a net carbon producer due to the FF-powered electricity used in their production), etc. Meanwhile, other approaches could also produce results, such as tidal energy.
We need to rethink HOW we are generating electricity in this nation. Solve the problem of mostly FF-based electricity in the USA, and you no longer need Cap and Trade or other punitive measures, because then electricity-usage becomes properly decoupled from carbon footprint.
Couple that with a significant reduction in the consumption of factory-farmed meat, and you have the "solution" you're looking for, at least insofar as the USA can control it's own aspect of the global problem.
And if you can't find a way to do the above paragraphs, you can impose all the punitive measures you wish, and you'll just "reduce" GHG production somewhat, probably not even a significant amount, while continuing to be enmeshed in the actually fundamental problem.
So, your "solution" really means almost entirely: "Get USA electricity production off of fossil fuels asap." But that "solution" really means: A combination of nuclear and hydro power, leading to rapid and cheap production of wind turbines and solar panels (and perhaps alternatives such as tidal energy).
Once that's accomplished, electric cars, with charging stations everywhere there are now gas stations, will quickly follow. And sweeping vegetarianism will reduce the motivation to mow down rain forest to produce cattle ranches.
Or, we can just keep taking partisan pot-shots and blaming "the problems" on "the other side of the aisle," while we dicker over semantics.
The irony to me about much of liberal thinking is that most liberals apparently don't want anybody "on their side" on an issue like climate change who is not a dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying liberal, drinking ALL the Kool-Aid. Here I want to find agreement and find actual solutions, but I get bagged on as vehemently as if I were a Republican denier. Like I said: zero-sum thinking.
So, how about stop the pot-shots, and let's get serious about this? Or do you prefer "being right" to developing consensus?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 29, 2018 - 09:08am PT
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given that the solution is to reduce CO2 emission, how would YOU do it, you the individual.
An interesting recent paper:
The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions studies the impact of individual activities and ranks them by their "emission savings"
The highest impact you can have? Decide to have one or fewer children.
The next are nearly two orders of magnitude less effective in emissions savings, ranked in descending order:
live car free
avoid one transatlantic flight
buy green energy
buy more efficient car
switch electric car to car free
plant-based diet
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 29, 2018 - 09:18am PT
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mb1's political rant is misplaced, you can read this article:
Why we still need nuclear power
published 2 years before the author became the Secretary of Energy, in the Obama administration.
The "libs v. cons" is a red-herring, it serves to create overheated prose and attract attention.
mb1 cannot claim that he is making a contribution to the discussion of implementing a solution by such posts.
as an exercise that even mb1 could probably accomplish: what is the number of nuclear power plants that would be required to fully replace fossil fuel use today?
and how long would it take to build those nuclear power plants?
and what carbon emission would result from that building?
finally, what could YOU do, if YOU so desired, to make building those nuclear power plants possible?
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jul 29, 2018 - 03:30pm PT
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Clearly you are on the side of stupid.
I've come to conclude that intelligent thought is wasted on liberals.
Good luck getting ANY of your punitive policies in place. You are determined to alienate everybody "else" (by your narrow definition). And we have yet another politard thread that has devolved into liberal hand-wringing rants in an echo chamber, where anybody "else" is heaped with epithets.
Sad.
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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Jul 29, 2018 - 03:34pm PT
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And there's still the aviation problem.
Edit: Absolutely true that many of the people who post here could do more. Somewhere along the line it became a rite of passage to travel the world--despite the environmental cost. Ironically, these are often the very same people who soapbox the most.
Sure, it is easy to taunt someone who points out a problem while also being a part of the problem.
I think climate change is an existential threat
I no longer put 20,000 miles a year on a low mileage vehicle, but if I was still healthy enough to climb, I probably would. I fly two or three times a year to visit family and, gasp, I eat beef once or twice a month and chicken about once a day.
So does that mean I shouldn't be able to weigh in on climate change. Would it somehow be better if instead I just said screw the climate? I don't get it. We don't live in a sustainable society. It would be extremely hard to live your life in a sustainable manner and even if one or two die-hard eco-warriors manage, we aren't going to be able to support 8 billion people in a sustainable manner overnight.
Individual actions can add up and help change cultural norms. But I don't see any solution that doesn't involve dramatic changes in laws and regulations. I still have a lot of hope, but I can't say I have much optimism. If we taxed things like aviation to more accurately reflect the externalities of CO2 and other pollution, we would either fly a lot less or the market would come up with solutions. Same with eating meat. Meat from a lab certainly has a way to go, but I would say it looks promising. If we had a $100 tax per ton of CO2 equivalent, we would get there a lot faster. With enough financial incentive the aviation industry could probably be able to switch to bio fuels. It needs to be taxed based not mandate based. Mandates results in things like using corn as an automotive fuel even though there is little or no CO2 benefit when you add it all up. With a CO2 tax based system, no one would be converting corn, at least as it is currently grown, into a fuel for autos.
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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Jul 29, 2018 - 03:43pm PT
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But if liberals won't embrace and individually LIVE the change they advocate, I really can't take their proposed punitive measures (that will, of course, conveniently affect "other entities" besides themselves) seriously. So, yeah, become vegetarians, and then I'll start to take your hand-wringing seriously.
So if one were to think that Asian sweat-shops were a bad thing, they shouldn't say anything about it until they are 100% sure that none of their clothing comes from any such shops?
And one shouldn't criticize the size of the national debt unless one voluntarily gives extra money to the government to help solve that problem.
And one shouldn't criticize telecommunication providers unless one goes without a mobile phone/landline?
And why the focus just on vegetarianism?
I won't accept anything you say about climate change if you run an air conditioner or eat in restaurants that use one, or work in an office that uses one, or ride in a vehicle that uses one, or...
A CO2 tax hits everyone not just 'conveniently affect "other entities"'.
Sure, there is the problem with wealth inequality. Another issue that is moving in the wrong direction.
And if we are restricted to suggesting "complete solutions" that are politically feasible in the current environment, we might as just join the climate change deniers.
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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Jul 29, 2018 - 03:56pm PT
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MB1,
Regarding sources of electricity, I am not ideologically opposed to nuclear, but it doesn't appear that it can currently be built in a cost effective manner.
As for hydro, there just aren't many large sites left in this country that haven't already been developed. In CA, Auburn would make sense as a hydro project and that is about it. Well, Yosemite valley would also work. Small scale hydro could be economic in places but I don't think it will ever provide electricity on the scale that is needed.
As for tidal, it hasn't been cost effective. Neither has wave power. I'm happy to see people continue to research it but I don't see it taking off. There are some places with large tides where you might be able to build a dam across a bay/lagoon and make a go of it, but the other environmental costs are high.
Solar and wind, plus increased battery storage certainly looks the most promising. Even without subsidies (or carbon taxes) they are now competitive with fossil fuels in some places. And they would not have made it this far this quick without the government action that you seem pretty hostile/dismissive of.
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monolith
climber
state of being
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Jul 29, 2018 - 08:11pm PT
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ATG is the crazy nut case. He thinks Trump will go 'bigly' on universal income in his second term.
You just can't make that craziness up.
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EdwardT
Trad climber
Retired
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If it were a country, Texas would be the world’s No. 3 oil producer, behind only Russia and Saudi Arabia
We've got that going for us. 👍
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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You are right DMT it doesn't. That is why I think strong legislative action is needed.
When the surgeon general first said smoking causes cancer it didn't have much immediate impact on smoking rates.
But it helped to change the culture and that lead to reduced smoking.
My mom has always hated the smell of cigarette smoke. But when I was a kid, it would never have crossed her mind to ask her bridge card group not to smoke in her house. A hostess just wouldn't do that.
We need a similar change in culture with regard to climate change.
There have been baby steps but I fear it will mostly be too little too late.
Time will tell.
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Sooooo ,....... the second industrial revolution was the fault of us boomers?
Well, while you're busy pointing fingers I've gone solar in a big way, and so far this summer I've had the AC on less than 8 hours total.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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DMT...figures you would support cross-overs...
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Splater
climber
Grey Matter
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By 1979 global warming was clearly predicted by numerous scientists,
and the issue was raised at top levels of government and science.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html
Believe it or not, this summary is the short version.
Even by 1979 it was inevitable that the continuing increase in CO2 would lead to a large increase in the greenhouse effect.
Of course the actual warming would take decades to gradually happen. It could not be clearly measured for several decades, allowing plenty of time for lies, deceit, and denial.
The increase in greenhouse warming due to consumption of fossil fuels was first predicted in 1896 by Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish chemist and future Nobel laureate. Consumption increased beyond anything the Swedish chemist could have imagined.
In a 1957 paper written with Hans Suess, Roger Revelle concluded that “human beings are now carrying out a large-scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future.” Revelle helped the Weather Bureau establish a continuous measurement of atmospheric carbon dioxide at a site perched near the summit of Mauna Loa on the Big Island of Hawaii, 11,500 feet above the sea — a rare pristine natural laboratory on a planet blanketed by fossil-fuel emissions. A young geochemist named Charles David Keeling charted the data, which came to be known as the Keeling curve. Revelle died in 1991 and Keeling died in 2005, both of old age, living long enough to see their prediction realized, and still ignored and denied by policy makers.
In 1958, on prime-time television, “The Bell Science Hour” — one of the most popular educational film series in American history — aired “The Unchained Goddess,” a film by Frank Capra about meteorological wonders, warning that “man may be unwittingly changing the world’s climate” through the release of carbon dioxide. “A few degrees’ rise in the Earth’s temperature would melt the polar ice caps,” “An inland sea would fill a good portion of the Mississippi Valley. Tourists in glass-bottomed boats would be viewing the drowned towers of Miami through 150 feet of tropical water.”
In the 60s, President Johnson explained that his generation had “altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale” through the burning of fossil fuels, and his administration commissioned a study of the subject by his Science Advisory Committee. Revelle was its chairman, and its 1965 executive report on carbon dioxide warned of the rapid melting of Antarctica, rising seas, increased acidity of fresh waters — changes that would require no less than a coordinated global effort to forestall.
In 1974, the C.I.A. issued a classified report on the carbon-dioxide problem. It concluded that climate change had begun around 1960 and had “already caused major economic problems throughout the world.” The future economic and political impacts would be “almost beyond comprehension.”
Yet emissions continued to rise, and at this rate, MacDonald warned in 1979, they could see a snowless New England, the swamping of major coastal cities, as much as a 40 percent decline in national wheat production, the forced migration of about one-quarter of the world’s population. Not within centuries — within their own lifetimes.
In 1978 directors of the Friends of the Earth noticed EPA-600/7-78-019, a coal report that noted that the continued use of fossil fuels might, within two or three decades, bring about “significant and damaging” changes to the global atmosphere.
They publicized the issue, which had been studied since the 60s by a prominent geophysicist named Gordon MacDonald. In 1977-78 he was conducting a study on climate change with the Jasons, the mysterious coterie of elite scientists that helped inform government. 1978, the Jasons met to determine what would happen once the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubled from pre-Industrial Revolution levels. It was an arbitrary milestone, the doubling, but a useful one, as its inevitability was not in question; the threshold would most likely be breached by 2035. The Jasons’ report to the Department of Energy, “The Long-Term Impact of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide on Climate,” was written in an understated tone that only enhanced its nightmarish findings: Global temperatures would increase by an average of two to three degrees Celsius; Dust Bowl conditions would “threaten large areas of North America, Asia and Africa”; access to drinking water and agricultural production would fall, triggering mass migration on an unprecedented scale. “Perhaps the most ominous feature,” however, was the effect of a changing climate on the poles. Even a minimal warming “could lead to rapid melting” of the West Antarctic ice sheet. The ice sheet contained enough water to raise the level of the oceans 16 feet.
The Jasons sent the report to dozens of scientists in the United States and abroad; to industry groups like the National Coal Association and the Electric Power Research Institute; and within the government, to the National Academy of Sciences, the Commerce Department, the E.P.A., NASA, the Pentagon, the N.S.A., every branch of the military, the National Security Council and the White House.
Beginning in the spring of 1979, Pomerance arranged informal briefings with the E.P.A., the National Security Council, The New York Times, the Council on Environmental Quality and the Energy Department, which, Pomerance learned, had established an Office of Carbon Dioxide Effects two years earlier at MacDonald’s urging. The men settled into a routine, with MacDonald explaining the science and Pomerance adding the exclamation points. They were surprised to learn how few senior officials were familiar with the Jasons’ findings, let alone understood the ramifications of global warming. At last, having worked their way up the federal hierarchy, the two went to see the president’s top scientist, Frank Press.
...weeks later, MacDonald called to tell him that Press had taken up the issue. On May 22, Press wrote a letter to the president of the National Academy of Sciences requesting a full assessment of the carbon-dioxide issue. Jule Charney, the father of modern meteorology, would gather the nation’s top oceanographers, atmospheric scientists and climate modelers to judge whether MacDonald’s alarm was justified — whether the world was, in fact, headed to cataclysm.
… Among Charney’s group was Akio Arakawa, a pioneer of computer modeling. On the final night at Woods Hole, Arakawa stayed up in his motel room with printouts from the models by Hansen and Manabe blanketing his double bed. The discrepancy between the models, Arakawa concluded, came down to ice and snow. The whiteness of the world’s snowfields reflected light; if snow melted in a warmer climate, less radiation would escape the atmosphere, leading to even greater warming. Shortly before dawn, Arakawa concluded that Manabe had given too little weight to the influence of melting sea ice, while Hansen had overemphasized it. The best estimate lay in between. Which meant that the Jasons’ calculation was too optimistic. When carbon dioxide doubled in 2035 or thereabouts, global temperatures would increase between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius, with the most likely outcome a warming of three degrees.
The publication of Jule Charney’s report, “Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment,” several months later was not accompanied by a banquet, a parade or even a news conference. Yet within the highest levels of the federal government, the scientific community and the oil-and-gas industry — within the commonwealth of people who had begun to concern themselves with the future habitability of the planet — the Charney report would come to have the authority of settled fact. It was the summation of all the predictions that had come before, and it would withstand the scrutiny of the decades that followed it. Charney’s group had considered everything known about ocean, sun, sea, air and fossil fuels and had distilled it to a single number: three. When the doubling threshold was broached, as appeared inevitable, the world would warm three degrees Celsius. Even then, unless net carbon emissions stopped, three degrees would only be the beginning.
Upon reading the report, Exxon decided to act. Exxon didn’t concern itself primarily with how much the world would warm. It wanted to know how much of the warming Exxon could be blamed for.
A senior researcher named Henry Shaw had argued that the company needed a deeper understanding of the issue in order to influence future legislation that might restrict carbon-dioxide emissions. “It behooves us to start a very aggressive defensive program,” Shaw wrote in a memo to a manager, “because there is a good probability that legislation affecting our business will be passed.”
Shaw turned to Wallace Broecker, a Columbia University oceanographer who was the second author of Roger Revelle’s 1965 carbon-dioxide report for Lyndon Johnson. In 1977, in a presentation at the American Geophysical Union, Broecker predicted that fossil fuels would have to be restricted, whether by taxation or fiat. More recently, he had testified before Congress, calling carbon dioxide “the No.1 long-term environmental problem.” If presidents and senators trusted Broecker to tell them the bad news, he was good enough for Exxon.
The company had been studying the carbon-dioxide problem for decades, since before it changed its name to Exxon. In 1957, scientists from Humble Oil published a study tracking “the enormous quantity of carbon dioxide” contributed to the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution “from the combustion of fossil fuels.” Even then, the observation that burning fossil fuels had increased the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere was well understood and accepted by Humble’s scientists.
The American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s largest trade association, asked the same question in 1958 through its air-pollution study group and replicated the findings made by Humble Oil. So did another A.P.I. study conducted by the Stanford Research Institute a decade later, in 1968, which concluded that the burning of fossil fuels would bring “significant temperature changes” by the year 2000 and ultimately “serious worldwide environmental changes,” including the melting of the Antarctic ice cap and rising seas. It was “ironic,” the study’s authors noted, that politicians, regulators and environmentalists fixated on local incidents of air pollution that were immediately observable, while the climate crisis, whose damage would be of far greater severity and scale, went entirely unheeded.
Shaw was running out of time. In 1978, an Exxon colleague circulated an internal memo warning that humankind had only five to 10 years before policy action would be necessary. But Congress seemed ready to act a lot sooner than that. On April 3, 1980, Senator Paul Tsongas, a Massachusetts Democrat, held the first congressional hearing on carbon-dioxide buildup in the atmosphere. Gordon MacDonald testified that the United States should “take the initiative” and develop, through the United Nations, a way to coordinate every nation’s energy policies to address the problem. That June, Jimmy Carter signed the Energy Security Act of 1980, which directed the National Academy of Sciences to start a multiyear, comprehensive study, to be called “Changing Climate,” that would analyze social and economic effects of climate change. More urgent, the National Commission on Air Quality, at the request of Congress, invited two dozen experts, including Henry Shaw himself, to a meeting in Florida to propose climate policy.
It seemed that some kind of legislation to restrict carbon combustion was inevitable. The Charney report had confirmed the diagnosis of the problem — a problem that Exxon helped create. Now Exxon would help shape the solution.
At that time the USA was responsible for a majority of carbon emissions.
But they could not agree on what policy changes to recommend.
4 days later, Reagan was elected and fossil fuel lobbyists took over the country.
For the next 9 years the government did not deny climate change; it just put off the need for any solution. There was no short term political upside to taking action.
Some pledges were made, only to be later broken. The top denier in government in the late 80s was John Sununu, Bush Sr.'s chief of staff. By the mid 90's, thanks to massive disinformation efforts by fossil fuel lobbyists, most republicans actively denied climate change.
The article goes on. Climate science continued to advance for the next 40 years, basically confirming the overall conclusions of the 1979 Charney report.
But the leaders of USA government hid their heads in the sand for 40 years.
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Splater
climber
Grey Matter
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RE salesmanship failure.
As the article I quote above makes clear,
in the 80s we were at least on a supposed stated path to doing something to control GHG emissions. The government seemed to be planning actual new policy.
The public was not aware that we even needed a salesmanship campaign to compete with the nonsense spewed by the fossil fuel disinformation.
By the mid 90s, the disinformation campaign had won. It was too late to convince the lemmings, who now religiously associate profligate carbon consumption as the most treasured type of American pie.
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Bad Climber
Trad climber
The Lawless Border Regions
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Aug 11, 2018 - 01:57pm PT
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Great cartoon, Malmute. This one speaks to every poster here--i.e. climbers:
To follow the Jesus-Bucky, we've got to dump the cars and the international, airline-based climbing trips, among other thigs. Who here is willing to do that? Conrad Anchor recently talked about climbers speaking up about climate change. Fair enough, but he's really advocating for people NOT doing what he has done--and continues to do. He's got a carbon footprint this size of Australia! It's one thing to speak up about climate change--producing more CO2, of course, in the process--but if you're going to walk-the-walk, well, that means taking personal responsibility, the only actions we can definitely count on. Conrad continues to take international flights, and he's gotta have a couple of 4X4's back in Montana, overall a really high carbon lifestyle.
So here are the options that I guess he's (you and others?) arguing for: 1) Voluntarily drop the carbon-heavy activities. Ride bikes! (which I'm in favor of, btw). 2) Get politicians supported by enough people to enact policies that will FORCE us to do without these carbon-heavy activities, i.e. the threat of fines/imprisonment/punishing taxes to keep us all carbon-light. The wealthy and powerful--including all these smug politicians, btw--will be able to continue in style. The rest of pleebs? Good luck, suckers!
I have no idea what the end game is here, but I think we should at least be honest about what we're arguing for. Except for a few True Believers, I don't see anyone willing to do what it takes to truly cut back on our carbon addiction. Of course, at SOME point, we'll have no choice because these fossil fuels will be too scarce. Humans are mostly reactionary. Until that time, #VANLIFE
http://www.supertopo.com/climbers-forum/3095319/Van-life
And such experiences are "why...more people [aren't] concerned about [climate change]."
BAd
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 12, 2018 - 09:59am PT
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I think that we do truly have to think about the points that BAd makes.
It is not a blame thing, the US was the major source of CO₂ emissions in the 20th century, the citizens of the US, though unwitting until the late part of 20th century, benefitted from "cheap" fossil fuel energy.
The choices we make as individuals matters. And knowing that we are making a choice is the first step. Climbers make choices, I make choices, and we can do this while waiting for the political response to unfold.
As a note, to burn all the fossil fuels to the point of scarcity will render the climate uninhabitable in terms of the current economy. However, the economic "value" of the "reserves" is a major political force, and not just because of human foibles, but as a general rule of life, to exploit available resources.
Welcome to the petri dish.
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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Aug 12, 2018 - 11:02am PT
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To follow the Jesus-Bucky, we've got to dump the cars and the international, airline-based climbing trips, among other thigs. Who here is willing to do that?
Again, if some individuals make personal sacrifices for the common good, great. If their example helps create a cultural change, that can certainly have an effect, but I really don't see a few individuals cutting out a few activities having all that much effect.
Most people generally spend all the money they make in their life (sure, some get or give bigger inheritances, but in the long run, it holds true).
So you take a couple fewer long airplane trips. Do you make up for that by living in a bigger house? Eating out more? Replacing your smart phone more often? Replacing your $300 shell more often?
And as far as climate change guilting, having kids dwarfs any other choice an individual makes.
We don't need to mandate or guilt against cars and planes as much as we need to agitate for CO2 taxes.
I would willingly pay for my share of CO2 taxes if everyone else is also.
I think the market could respond much more quickly and efficiently than most people give credit for, if society could make the incentives good enough.
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