We need both. Fucking hate binary thinking. It’s a curse.
Maybe, but one seems to get all the attention and little results.
That’s because no one pays attention to the huge developments in infrastructure or the amazing new technologies coming to market - e fuels like sequestered carbon jet fuel made from excess renewable power, and no it’s not a science fiction dream it’s happening now. Of course we should have more funding for these things but they are happening.
A huge part of that problem is that people resist even the slightest positive change, paper straws are fine but I bet there are people who like this post who also liked posts complaining about them - if we stopped organized sports and spent that half a trillion on transitioning local infrastructure or establishing carbon sequestration systems with productive use of captured carbon (e.g. building materials that get landfilled at eol) we could move much faster, but no one will give up a single football game to save the planet they’d rather bomb something and feel like a hero
Bread and circuses, working as intended. We wouldn’t want people coming home after a day’s work and putting anger and frustration into something productive, would we?
Not saying I disagree but methinks many of you don’t realize everything we use fossil fuels for from plastic to fertilizer it’s not just gas. You think costs are spiralling out of control now… oooh boy just wait.
Society would change, a lot. I’d be very interested in what a plastic-phobic society would look like. Remember milkmen, who would take one empty glass bottle and give you a full one?
As in, billions will die? That is a big change indeed…
Yeah it’s scary that people don’t seem to understand that this would lead to billions dead which would cause chaos and resources wars that totally doom the planet.
We need infrastructure to transition, we need technological innovations and cultural stability
There is actually another myth: the planet will do just fine - it is the humanity that will die as the result. Not that we would care about this nuance at that point…
Not if we nuke it all into an irradiated wasteland in desperation.
That will take a few hundred million years to recover then. Not to the same biome, there will certainly be some crazy species popping up. From what i recall, Earth still has a few billion years before it is consumed by the Sun, should be ok.
It’s possible to ruin the planet enough that the things supporting life, the ozone layer and the atmosphere for example, are wrecked beyond repair and that the planet becomes permanently lifeless. Sure, technically the planet will still exist, but so will every other dead rock in space.
We still have those!
I would love a return to milkmen tbh
That’s true, we need fossil fuels for so many things besides transportation. At the same time, we are simply running out of fossil fuels. Even if we ignore the impact on the environment completely, there will be a point in the not too distant future when there will simply be nothing left to pump.
So what I am wondering is, even if one thinks man made climate change is a hoax or something similar, shouldn’t the first and foremost thing everyone agrees on be to still spare those scarce resources? For things we really (“really”) need to make from oil?
The first thing that comes to mind (maybe since I work in the lab) is medical equipment. You don’t really want to have to wash and reuse things like catheters, do you? I am not sure if bioplastics (i.e., still plastics, but made from plants) would be an alternative here once we run out but I sincerely hope so.
Prices will go up, in any case, and it will be a painful transistion. But now we are at a somewhat luxurious point where we can still make this transistion somewhat controlled and “smoothly”. If we continue to treat oil as a never ending resource and then do a surprised pikachu face once there is nothing left this will be much much worse, won’t they?
We already know how to create plastics from CO2 extracted from the air and hydrogen from water. There is no shortage of raw material for plastics. The main question for the industry is cheap plastics and the answer to that has always been cheap oil and gas.
Using proven reserves and current consumption you get to 47 years and things run out. That’s a “within my lifetime” number for many.
Nail on the head! It’s not that we can’t make products from something other than curde oil, it’s just by far the cheapest. To a lot of people the economy is more important than the environment.
We can make plastic out of fucking algae if we wanted. Doctors aren’t going to run out of gloves because a bunch of internet autists decided to blow up a coal plant.
I’d be more worried about the people on O2 and life support who need access to electricity. It’s why I support forcing power companies to switch to renewables so we can transition humanely. Note that holding shotguns to oil execs’ heads to make them sign the paperwork is in no way inhumane :P
So my understanding out of this is that we need a government that takes responsibility and raises taxes on the cheap oil and gas to move the industry in the right direction. And we need a system where politicians aren’t being paid by companies so they make decisions in their favor.
As a last point I’d like to mention that by that time there will be bio fuels and bio plastics. I am hoping that we will move to those within those 47 years.
We’re working on all sorts of alternatives for fuels and for the plastics as you mention. I think we’ll be fine as far as that’s concerned. I agree that prices will go up and it will be hard. And it’s up to governments to deal with these things responsibly.
The main issue is politics in a broken system and politicians being paid by companies that don’t have our best interests in mind. How do we fight back?
Oh and trains. We need lots of trans because cleaning power supply is easier and cleaner than making batteries for trucks.
Even if we ignore the impact on the environment completely, there will be a point in the not too distant future when there will simply be nothing left to pump.
unfortunately the last two decades of discovery have provided ample petroleum and natural gas sources that won’t be exploited unless we commit to fully and intentionally cooking the atmosphere.
we’re not going to run out of petroleum, which will make it even harder to get people to leave it behind.
Say what now
We have plenty of rope with which to hang ourselves.
I wouldn’t say we should get rid of all plastics. Some of it is required for medical purposes and food safety.
I would love for governments to grow some balls and start fighting against climate change. But in the case that that doesn’t happen (and it probably won’t because money). I would rather take price increase and inconvenience in exchange for a planet that’s still livable in 100 years.
we could also use some responsible disposal rules for plastics to prevent them from ending up in our circulatory systems and oceans.
Plant based plastics are a thing.
Really, the only way we are going to ween ourselves off fossil fuels successfully is if they are more expensive than the alternatives. I hear shit like that all the time (big example is meat alternatives). Simply removing the subsidies that fossil fuels do enjoy would go a long way toward making them less attractive.
You’re right, I think. But isn’t that the entire problem ? government collusion with private interests ?
Long life oil based plastic products aren’t so bad.
Meat alternatives are bullshit. We need meat*, and grass fed beef and lamb are probably carbon neutral, almost definitely carbon neutral if anything comes of the seaweed fix for their methane emissions
And yes, kill government support for the oil industry and uses for the oil. Animals are going to be important for providing fertiliser for fields that abandon industrial stuff
*We can survive without it, we can do well with bacterial sourced creatine supplements, but we thrive on real meat
Meat alternatives are perfectly fine. And tons of people do perfectly fine with zero meat at all and thrive just as much as people who eat meat daily. I have no qualms with eating meat since I do but let’s not kids ourselves and say it is a necessity.
The big problem with beef is the amount of land and resources it takes. It takes a fuck ton of water and feed to get a pound of beef. The added carbon from beef is largely due to transportation of the feed, electricity, and also transportation of it on its way to the store. If that were all green sources, cattle would basically be carbon neutral. We are a long way from that though. And even if the energy sources for those were green, the other resources they eat up leads to massive destruction of environments.
Animals can certainly play a part in sustainable farming but the amount we currently have is absurd and is nowhere near sustainable. Just killing the subsidies alone would bring it significantly closer to sustainable. If the US stopped providing subsidies for the cattle industry, beef would be $35/lb.
The land used for beef isn’t useful for anything else. In Australia it’s arid grasslands. We can’t eat grass, sheep and cows can turn grass into wool and milk and meat
Transportation of feed is not a factor in grass fed, grass finished animals
Who said anything about veganism? You do know that being a vegetarian is not the same as being vegan, right?
If the beef industry was largely composed of grass fed cattle that requires no grass to be watered, there would be much less of an issue. But that only makes up a small percentage of the industry. And saying that grassland is not useful for anything ignores the ecosystem that is already there. It may be arid but it is not devoid of life.
But forcing a sustainable model and removing subsidies would absolutely go a long way toward mitigating the environmental impact of the beef industry since beef would likely be USD $70/lb.
A statement like “veganism is unhealthy” is so objectively wrong that it really harms your credibility in general. I wonder how much you actually read from the article, or did you just grab the title and run with it?
There are a small number of specific nutrients that are readily available in meat that are harder to come by in a vegan diet. Harder but entirely possible, especially with supplements.
And many of the meat alternatives that you were disparaging earlier are specifically engineered to provide those nutrients (in particular Impossible and Beyond brands).
“Veganism is unhealthy” in the same way that any eating pattern is unhealthy if you aren’t mindful of what you’re eating. Conventional meat-based diets have much higher risk of heart disease due to high cholesterol, so let’s go ahead and label that unhealthy too.
If you think prices will be high without the use of fossil fuels, oooh boy just wait for the coming climate collapse that will obliterate all modern agriculture, create billions of climate refugees, decimate human civilization as we know it, and end all global supply chains.
Almost all of the things have fossil fuel free alternatives and the out of control costs are mostly from corporate greed. Strict but fair price controls would enable a society that can afford not to use fossil fuels for all but a few things.
Am I the only one who thinks this is funny? It’s a joke people.
You mean c/memes isn’t the place for serious political discussion?
Private Minecraft servers are the best place to plan and practice terrorist attacks.
Except when the top half of the World Trade Center just stays hanging in the air.
Google “How to Blow up a Pipeline” by Andreas Malm
I’m PRETTY sure that’s a “incognito mode and several kinds of privacy guarding software” kind of search better suited for a search engine that isn’t also a US government contractor 😄
Honestly, it’s a very known and discussed book within the climate justice movement and won’t put you on any list. Btw: there is also a movie on archive.org I think.
And I mean to google in a general sense, not necessarily on the page with the same way.
Yeah, I actually knew all that (except for the last one, which I halfway expected), but I can seldom resist feigning ignorance for a joke 😉
Is it? Is it really? Should it be?
Am I the only person who remembers how we already decided that some jokes are very dangerous? You get some impressionable twenty something thinking everyone is serious…
checks community name
If they think memes are factual, they need better life skills/Education
Removed by mod
That would only make you feel good. It would not make real change.
I’m frustrated that I want to get a full off the grid solar setup but then it’ll cost 25K and won’t really offset itself until 10 years or more. I’ll feel good about being net zero in home energy usage but that is not a cost that the average person can afford.
It’ll be more than $25k. A battery alone is $10k, and a 10kw system is more than $25k.
Take a look at a year’s worth of electricity bills to see what size you actually need to hit zero. Consider where a future EV fits in.
I was thinking I want just 4 or 5 kw of storage. Also wanting an electric car to plug in but that’s another coat I’m not ready to dive into. Ugh.
Size refers to how many solar panels you have and their efficiency. Try https://sunroof.withgoogle.com but I think that site undersizes and expects you to pull some from the grid.
To think we really let the company who made YouTube’s Compression handle the next image format.
We didn’t, they decided to force it onto us. JPEG-XL is technically superior, but they refused to implement it into Chromium to push their own garbage because they know most people use Chromium anyway.
Just switch to Firefox nightly
I have no idea why it doesn’t work in Firefox standard, the option to turn support on is there but it does nothing
I noticed that, nice to know it’s in nightly.
Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone’s gonna actually use the format because the vast majority of people can’t use it.
Sites should nag people for using an “Unsupported Browser” and tell them to switch to a modern & secure one like Firefox or Librewolf.
Molotovs are the preferred beverage of the revolution
Taste like victory
Honestly this would speed up the process of transitioning away from FF.
A bunch of people would die early.
Not gonna lie, it’s way past too late to really be able to spare human life from the effects of climate change. A revolution likely won’t even be enough at this point.
Yep. I was learning about the actions we need(ed) to take like 25+ years ago in elementary school. But we didn’t take any of those actions and instead added 2.5 billion to the population.
Great job guys!
Compared to the bunch of people that die early currently because of pollution?
More than a billion?
a small price to pay for salvation
Your family and you first, then I believe you believed your idiotic comment.
huh, never heard of sarcasm? or quoting a movie?
Versus the millions who will be killed by climate change?
The problem is millions die, government’s are no longer able to govern and popularist war lords gain power in the chaos which results in huge conflicts that cause far more ecological damage without any measures or efforts to remedy them - we still get clomate change but probably sooner and worse.
Also let me ask the people here with children who among you would let your child freeze to death and who would chop down a tree to burn? The ecological damage done by a civilization collapse would be intense, we’re too close to the edge to risk that - maybe if it’d fallen at the start of the Industrial revolution but how long would it have been until that technology comes back and we’re right where we are?
We need to change society and evolve new technology, the later is actually doing really well with many giant leaps for climate friendly technologies and infrastructure but society is proving to be very resistant, people aren’t going to create a new greener world if they get angry at the very idea of being told to reduce, reuse, recycle.
Why would government fall over? They have police and military to keep/restore order
Anyway out of the violent methods I prefer a slower method where selective vandalism pushes away investment and insurance, so the fleets of diesel ships can be slowly replaced; so city energy can slowly adapt
Capital is already doing all the things you seem to want done, only without the terrorism.
GOD I LOVE TERRORISM
It’s not terrorism, it’s 🌟🌍ecoterrorism🌎🌟
I’d like just a little terrorism and murder, just enough to scare off investors and insurers from fossil fuel producers, refiners, distributors and mass users, to speed things up and maybe prevent the uncountable future deaths from failed monsoons, heat waves, overpowered storms, and eventually sea level rises
problem is the terrorists aren’t liberals, they’re accelerationists who want a civil war.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/10/power-grid-attacks-00114563
You’re probably gonna make it worse for everyone. It’s probably more profitable to have more security around the infrastructure than to just abandon it, so that’s more expensive. You’re gonna make it more difficult to convince people to actually believe in climate change and legislation that helps the cause, since the climate movement is associated with terrorism.
Just vote for the candidates that actually care about the climate and invest in preserving it. You can also help a little bit by using things that have a very low carbon footprint over its lifetime, like an electric car or using public transportation. These things are just off the top of my head but terrorism ain’t it.
Just vote for the candidates that actually care about the climate
I vote green. Americans can’t unless they’re willing to throw their vote away
You can also help a little bit by using things that have a very low carbon footprint over its lifetime
Cars are a tiny fraction of a country’s carbon footprint
- Energy (electricity, heat and transport): 73.2%
- Direct Industrial Processes: 5.2%
- Waste: 3.2%
- Agriculture, Forestry and Land Use: 18.4%
Energy includes road transport which is 11.9%, of which cars+motorbikes+buses is 60% so 7.4% overall
Animal agriculture is about the same as passenger transport
My EV is a drop in the bucket. Only fossil fuel investors and governments can move the needle
Carbon numbers are from https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
I vote green. Americans can’t unless they’re willing to throw their vote away
Not necessarily, you can vote for someone who invests in nuclear over someone who invests back into coal
Cars are a tiny fraction of a country’s carbon footprint
Maybe, but there are other steps that you can take to minimize your print. Something like a solar array. Sure these are very small steps but they aren’t a money sink like they used to be and if enough people adopt them, they could do something.
At least y’all are being honest now. I was getting tired of being gaslit.
That “gaslighting” was us asking nicely
What did you think all of the talk about revolution involved? Radical change isn’t normally achieved through peaceful measures
MLK wouldn’t have been as successful if there wasn’t Malcolm X.
This is actually a popular misconception. MLK was just as radical as Malcolm X, it’s just that his more radical writings and speeches are not as popular or quoted. Libs and conservatives both want you to believe that MLK was a reasonable progressive liberal, when in fact he despised them. I say this as a huge fan of both MLK and Malcolm X, and I had this explained to me initially by a professor of African American history at university.
Radical, yes. But as big as an advocate for violence as Malcolm? I admit I haven’t read much on MLK.
Another way to say it is that every movement needs a carrot, a stick, and an ultimatum. The carrot is evangelizing the injustice (MLK), the stick is direct action (Malcolm X), and the ultimatum is an implicit show of force and dedication that demonstrates how many people will resort to the stick if the carrot is not accepted (the mach on Washington).
While I am nearly always in the peaceful outreach camp, I strongly suspect that my efforts will not see fruition until breathless WSJ editorials start describing environmentalists as “dangerous” and “unamerican.”
That’s my point. I knew y’all were wannabe terrorists for a while, but everyone kept denying/downplaying it. I now have several highly up voted posts to point at. I’m sure the denial will continue, but this a start.
Funny how the people who want to harm the oil companies are “terrorists,” but the people literally destroying the earth are not
Radical? Sure. Terrorist? Nah. Liberals (and especially right wing libs) are violent towards marginalized groups and literally the planet itself, among others. Marxists, anarchists, etc. are violent towards capitalism and those who seek to uphold it. Revolution takes shape in many ways and some of those are violent, particularly towards the end. Don’t act like the system we’re living in isn’t abhorrent and violent. Politics in all of its forms boil down to violence. What are you seeking to build, what needs to be destroyed, who stands in your way, and what means are you able to use? That’s politics in a nutshell. Answer those questions for the majority of governments the world over and then answer them for your left wing Boogeyman of choice. Which sounds like it’s worth fighting for?
I did it, and so can you, Jack!
“…this planet’s still a kid. A little kid sick and trembling in the middle of this huge universe. Someone’s gotta protect it.” - Cid Highwind
Spicy takes are the best takes though, op
Which is why extremism continues to rise
And that’s a good thing. We need a revolution like yesterday, ten years ago really.
More of a peaceful revolution kinda guy if possible but hard to do these days with how dire some things are getting.
I have a good feeling such revolutionaries would only fuel the oppositions fire
It doesn’t actually matter what they or others think and that’s a lesson I as well as other revolutionaries have had to learn the hard way over the years.
Public support has been made impossible to secure with the collapse of the education system and propaganda designed to convince Americans to reject education and learning.
So it’ll be up to the few people who managed to resist it to either revolt, or try to escape.
What of the police state though? How can revolutionaries stay out of the gulags in order to fight these revolutions you speak of.
I don’t believe in the extreme, tired ways of the retirees of the world. There’s plenty of smart routes to change that don’t require being thrown in jail.
We live in the technical age, one hacking group took out most of Las Vegas slots. Anything is possible through though and intelligent action. Stupid violence leads to unnecessary death.
Bail fund. Physically bust open the jails. Attack police and liberate people from arrest. You know, the usual.
I agree with you that white-collar tactics should be a part of the revolutionary’s repertoire of government -overthrowing tactics, but honestly, I don’t see how it’s possible to completely avoid getting physical with those cretins at some point.
Most violence is actually intelligent. They’re never mutually exclusive.
While these idiots are advocating for a revolution they’ll neither participate in not be effective if they did, the rest of the world will just keep innovating it’s way out of problems.
People like the dude you’re replying to are the worst kind of useless. They’re the kind of person buying Powerball tickets to try to get out of debt.
Yet they seem effective enough that you are regarding them as a threat, hence you’re investing all that time and energy you’re supposedly putting toward innovation into arguing with people like me on the Internet.
Public support has been made impossible to secure
Definitely a sign you’re going to win a war.
Definitely something you genuinely care about and totally not you looking to push pro status quo bullshit.
i’ll never need to care because this is just a fantasy you console yourself with while not actually doing anything helpful
If the revolution comes, I can pretty much guarantee you’re not gonna see the end of it.
Always blows my mind that you people think you’ll somehow survive the war you encourage happening lol
Who said I would? I never did. I did not ever even think it. I support it because I care about my family and future generations. Fighting a revolution is a sacrifice you make for other people and is therefore the highest of moral acts.
The fact that you’d even say that shows how selfish and cowardly you are.
You can’t have the old world anymore. Your world requires exploiting the rest of us and you don’t have the right to do that. Make your own goddamn Big Macs.
You first coward.
So we’re acknowledging that it’s mostly a coordination problem.
The US already started by blowing up Nord Stream.
Lol, Joe Biden, climate hero.
Sure, buddy.
Beside the UK obviously and Ukraine, is there anyone else who would have? Putin is nuts but why would he blow up a pipeline he owns?
Also fun fact that’s pertinent to this thread, the attack resulted in the largest release of methane in human history.
I wouldn’t call it a hot take
i guess explosive take fits better
