It doesn't really matter whether climate change is real or not when the solutions being presented seems so suspect.
It's shocking how every single solution for climate change just happens to make the rich richer, the poor poorer, and also hollows out the middle class.
All the richest and most powerful people on Earth go to a city characterized by extreme wealth and extreme poverty built by Middle Eastern oil barons to discuss how they are going to screw over the little guy next year, and yet it's either idiot yokels or right wing megamagnates to blame when people who have been watching their quality of life evaporate for the last 20 years are skeptical.
It's shocking how every single solution for climate change just happens to make the rich richer, the poor poorer, and also hollows out the middle class.
All the richest and most powerful people on Earth go to a city characterized by extreme wealth and extreme poverty built by Middle Eastern oil barons to discuss how they are going to screw over the little guy next year, and yet it's either idiot yokels or right wing megamagnates to blame when people who have been watching their quality of life evaporate for the last 20 years are skeptical.
(Me playing around with ideas ahead, not angrily wall of texting you! Tl;Dr: I think there are a lot of ways we can do things that would make people's lives better and use less carbon)
I don't remember who, but one person that I was listening to ask the question challenging our empirical/materialist view of reality. The question was "is God real?", and essentially, although that is a question you can ask it's the wrong question to ask. The real question should be, whether or not God is real, should we be behaving as if God is real?
It's completely different view of the world. In that case, instead of asking about the minutiae of whether you can prove using physics that something metaphysical exists, it becomes a question about the utility of the teachings being backed up by the existence of that thing. If you stop looking at religion as purely a commandment passed down from the heavens and look at it as a successful ideology that guided Western Civilization for well over a thousand years, it starts to look like a different thing, and the original question almost isn't terribly relevant.
So in the same way, if the question is "is climate change real, and is it being created by humans?" I almost think that it almost doesn't matter in the same way. The real questions should be, should we be behaving as if climate change is real and created by humans, and if we are going to, what exactly should that look like?
There are reasons that we should be looking to limit the use of fossil fuels completely separated from climate change. There is a limited amount of fossil fuels on earth. Most of the coal created was only created in a short period of time called the carboniferous period which was after trees were evolved, but before microorganisms learned how to digest cellulose. At that time in history, massive forests grew up and individual plants lived and died and just kind of sat there because there was nothing that could do anything with all of that biomass. Eventually, over geological time frames, those massive forests ended up turning into the coal that we can find today. Make no mistake, there's a lot there, but eventually there won't be any that left and if we haven't weaned ourselves off of that then it's going to be massively painful. So if we don't need to stop for one reason, we will eventually need to be stopping for another reason.
The second question, is what exactly should that look like? The powers that be have put out a vision of less. They put out a vision where we need to suffer when we want to heat our homes, where we won't be able to use personal transportation, where our food prices are going to be through the roof. It's a world where most people are suffering except for the super rich. Myself, I have a bunch of different worldview. I think that the way that you succeed at illuminating carbon is by making alternatives that work.
I've spoken at length about my massive support for hydroelectric. In jurisdictions where hydroelectric is heavily used, energy is inexpensive for everyone. When electricity is inexpensive for everyone, that means people use electricity. When people use electricity, they aren't using other forms of energy including fossil fuels. In Quebec and Norway, both places with extremely cold winters, 70% of home heating is done using electric because it is the least expensive way to heat your home. Companies that would use fossil fuels for industrial processes also begin to replace their fossil fuel use with electric. They don't do this because somebody is sitting there with a cudgel trying to force them to do it, they do it because it makes the most sense. People have also talked about nuclear, which is also a proven method to produce electricity at scale.
There are a lot of articles talking about how completely useless battery electric buses are in a lot of places. There are jurisdictions that have bought into this technology, and essentially they have to shut down their bus lines for good chunks of the year because it isn't practical. On the other hand, there have been forms of electric transport within cities for over 100 years. Electric trolleys, trackless trolleys, technologies like this use overhead lines and have operated in many cities that are cold a good chunk of the year.
I was just speaking about electric vehicles today, and between regulators and car companies, they want to replace your $20,000 car with a $60,000 car. It's a great deal for them, but the reality is that first of all, a lot of people can't afford to replace their car so they will go from having transportation to no transportation. Second of all, there are still many big questions about the viability of large scale EV deployments. I haven't really seen a whole lot of people talking about the experience of using an EV under circumstances that people routinely use their cars such as places that hit 40 below. The solution that I propose is the opposite, instead of trying to reproduce a big bulky internal combustion engine car, I think we could deregulate the Auto industry for evs, and create a new style of small light vehicle that is better suited to the nature of battery electric vehicles. Unfortunately, it seems like the only option that's allowed is the one that keeps the stranglehold on people, and makes people's lives harder.
Another thing is that recycling is a scam, and it doesn't have to be. A few years back I was trying to get a hold of some recycled materials, and I followed the entire chain of companies and couldn't find anyone willing to sell me anything. Later on I discovered a massive scandal where entire boatloads of garbage were being sent overseas to basically get dumped in someone else's country. In my view, if the people are paying for a recycling program, they should get a recycling program. And anyone who needs recycled materials should be able to get them from the local recycling plant. It isn't actually that hard to for example grind up plastic and melt it back down into pellets, but even if it is, they should do it anyway, and make it available first to local manufacturers or hobbyists, reducing the footprint of materials that get used or reused. Bonus points the more renewable electricity such as hydroelectricity can be used in the process of converting the materials back into something that can be used.
Finally, (and it's not the final idea that it exists, it's just a final idea in my head because I'm just a dumb pleb) it's time to set the picture of Dorian Gray on fire. First world individuals end up suffering under a regime that demands we use renewables and follow many regulations, and then companies just shut down the plants and move them to China or India or Bangladesh where they burn as much cool as they want and it doesn't matter because it's not on our ledger. If companies operating in those jurisdictions can't follow the same rules as everyone else in the world, then they shouldn't be doing business with the rest of the world. What's happening right now is exactly what I said -- we are still engaging in the sin, but instead of it showing on our bodies, it's showing up on the painting. If we are going to engage in all this stuff, we need to make sure that other places have to follow the same rules or they don't participate in our markets. A lot of people have come back and said that these countries should be allowed to use fossil fuels in their development the same way that the West used fossil fuels in their development, and I can agree with that without moving on this: go ahead and use fossil fuels all you want for your development, but the moment that you're doing business with us we don't want anything to do with them. I think you'll find a lot of the companies that are calling for Net Zero magically have a different opinion somehow.
I don't remember who, but one person that I was listening to ask the question challenging our empirical/materialist view of reality. The question was "is God real?", and essentially, although that is a question you can ask it's the wrong question to ask. The real question should be, whether or not God is real, should we be behaving as if God is real?
It's completely different view of the world. In that case, instead of asking about the minutiae of whether you can prove using physics that something metaphysical exists, it becomes a question about the utility of the teachings being backed up by the existence of that thing. If you stop looking at religion as purely a commandment passed down from the heavens and look at it as a successful ideology that guided Western Civilization for well over a thousand years, it starts to look like a different thing, and the original question almost isn't terribly relevant.
So in the same way, if the question is "is climate change real, and is it being created by humans?" I almost think that it almost doesn't matter in the same way. The real questions should be, should we be behaving as if climate change is real and created by humans, and if we are going to, what exactly should that look like?
There are reasons that we should be looking to limit the use of fossil fuels completely separated from climate change. There is a limited amount of fossil fuels on earth. Most of the coal created was only created in a short period of time called the carboniferous period which was after trees were evolved, but before microorganisms learned how to digest cellulose. At that time in history, massive forests grew up and individual plants lived and died and just kind of sat there because there was nothing that could do anything with all of that biomass. Eventually, over geological time frames, those massive forests ended up turning into the coal that we can find today. Make no mistake, there's a lot there, but eventually there won't be any that left and if we haven't weaned ourselves off of that then it's going to be massively painful. So if we don't need to stop for one reason, we will eventually need to be stopping for another reason.
The second question, is what exactly should that look like? The powers that be have put out a vision of less. They put out a vision where we need to suffer when we want to heat our homes, where we won't be able to use personal transportation, where our food prices are going to be through the roof. It's a world where most people are suffering except for the super rich. Myself, I have a bunch of different worldview. I think that the way that you succeed at illuminating carbon is by making alternatives that work.
I've spoken at length about my massive support for hydroelectric. In jurisdictions where hydroelectric is heavily used, energy is inexpensive for everyone. When electricity is inexpensive for everyone, that means people use electricity. When people use electricity, they aren't using other forms of energy including fossil fuels. In Quebec and Norway, both places with extremely cold winters, 70% of home heating is done using electric because it is the least expensive way to heat your home. Companies that would use fossil fuels for industrial processes also begin to replace their fossil fuel use with electric. They don't do this because somebody is sitting there with a cudgel trying to force them to do it, they do it because it makes the most sense. People have also talked about nuclear, which is also a proven method to produce electricity at scale.
There are a lot of articles talking about how completely useless battery electric buses are in a lot of places. There are jurisdictions that have bought into this technology, and essentially they have to shut down their bus lines for good chunks of the year because it isn't practical. On the other hand, there have been forms of electric transport within cities for over 100 years. Electric trolleys, trackless trolleys, technologies like this use overhead lines and have operated in many cities that are cold a good chunk of the year.
I was just speaking about electric vehicles today, and between regulators and car companies, they want to replace your $20,000 car with a $60,000 car. It's a great deal for them, but the reality is that first of all, a lot of people can't afford to replace their car so they will go from having transportation to no transportation. Second of all, there are still many big questions about the viability of large scale EV deployments. I haven't really seen a whole lot of people talking about the experience of using an EV under circumstances that people routinely use their cars such as places that hit 40 below. The solution that I propose is the opposite, instead of trying to reproduce a big bulky internal combustion engine car, I think we could deregulate the Auto industry for evs, and create a new style of small light vehicle that is better suited to the nature of battery electric vehicles. Unfortunately, it seems like the only option that's allowed is the one that keeps the stranglehold on people, and makes people's lives harder.
Another thing is that recycling is a scam, and it doesn't have to be. A few years back I was trying to get a hold of some recycled materials, and I followed the entire chain of companies and couldn't find anyone willing to sell me anything. Later on I discovered a massive scandal where entire boatloads of garbage were being sent overseas to basically get dumped in someone else's country. In my view, if the people are paying for a recycling program, they should get a recycling program. And anyone who needs recycled materials should be able to get them from the local recycling plant. It isn't actually that hard to for example grind up plastic and melt it back down into pellets, but even if it is, they should do it anyway, and make it available first to local manufacturers or hobbyists, reducing the footprint of materials that get used or reused. Bonus points the more renewable electricity such as hydroelectricity can be used in the process of converting the materials back into something that can be used.
Finally, (and it's not the final idea that it exists, it's just a final idea in my head because I'm just a dumb pleb) it's time to set the picture of Dorian Gray on fire. First world individuals end up suffering under a regime that demands we use renewables and follow many regulations, and then companies just shut down the plants and move them to China or India or Bangladesh where they burn as much cool as they want and it doesn't matter because it's not on our ledger. If companies operating in those jurisdictions can't follow the same rules as everyone else in the world, then they shouldn't be doing business with the rest of the world. What's happening right now is exactly what I said -- we are still engaging in the sin, but instead of it showing on our bodies, it's showing up on the painting. If we are going to engage in all this stuff, we need to make sure that other places have to follow the same rules or they don't participate in our markets. A lot of people have come back and said that these countries should be allowed to use fossil fuels in their development the same way that the West used fossil fuels in their development, and I can agree with that without moving on this: go ahead and use fossil fuels all you want for your development, but the moment that you're doing business with us we don't want anything to do with them. I think you'll find a lot of the companies that are calling for Net Zero magically have a different opinion somehow.
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