Fear doesn’t work, we’ve known this for decades. If we know what positive steps are being taken, then we can support those or perhaps build on them if you’re able.
What about this?: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210310-the-trillion-dollar-plan-to-capture-co2 We know corporations are a big part of the issue. Are there ways they’re being regulated?
That fear based, helpless feeling needs to be shot down when ever we see people spreading that. We need to take action, but no one is talking about what we, as a single household, can do. I’m not saying we alone can fix everything. What steps can we do and/or how can we support people who are doing the right thing?
I’m going to politely disagree. We should be afraid, but not the helpless feeling you describe, but an actionable, productive fear. The kind of fear that you feel when you see a kid too close to the edge of the stairs, or when you meet someone obviously dangerous. It needs to be a focusing fear, because we need to act now, and it’s going to be an unpleasant process. We’re not going to be able to vote or buy or donate our way out of this. We’re going to need to be angry and loud. People aren’t going to like it, and that’s when we’ll need our fear.
Most of us are afraid of conflict, or looking stupid, or making people angry, or getting made fun of, or even being arrested. We need to be more afraid of climate change so that we don’t care, like a parent who sees their kid in trouble and just dives, without worrying about how stupid they’re going to look after. We need to be afraid enough that the normal routines of our daily lives become intolerable, because those routines will be disrupted, whether we like it or not. The question is how we do it: We can do it now, which will suck, or when climate change comes for us, which will suck a lot more.
As for carbon capture, it’s what I call a technological antisolution. It’s a technical solution to a political problem that is incapable of actually solving said problem, but instead monetizes it, and further entrenches existing power structures.
Here’s what I mean – look at the big new carbon capture thing that was making the news just recently:
It’s a deal with none other than Exxon Mobile. Carbon capture only exists because it allows companies to profit off creating the problem and its “solution.” Antisolutions maximize GDP in the climate emergency. They even admit it without realizing it. From the article:
Carbon capture is a big boys’ game," said Peter McNally […] "These are billion-dollar projects. It’s big companies capturing large amounts of carbon. And big oil and gas companies are where the expertise is.
What a bizarre coincidence that our most well-funded “solution” to climate change relies on big oil companies!
edit: (accidentally hit save before finishing) as for concrete steps, we need to organize. That always has been and always will be the solution to politics. We need to get together, and we need to demand that things change. It’s going to take marches, strikes, protests, walk-ins, sit-ins, boycotts, …
If you want to see an example of how to actually challenge power, take a look at what organizers in Atlanta are doing to stop the city from cutting down their forest and replacing it with “cop city,” a training ground for the increasingly militarized police. They’ve been fighting it off for a long time now, and they’re showing us what works and what doesn’t, and, importantly, how loud and obnoxious you have to make yourself for power to listen.
I’m going to politely disagree. We should be afraid, but not the helpless feeling you describe, but an actionable, productive fear.
I totally agree that we should move forward and have that fight response. The thing I’m bringing up is, that a lot of us have a freeze response instead of the fight response you’re talking about. I think that’s what a lot of people in my area have too, I live in Seattle. I’m not speaking for all freeze responders but I need concrete action steps to follow to get me out of it. I was testing out AI a month or so ago, and every question I asked had action steps as a response. I asked the AI why they did that, if they were programmed to do that. AI said that it was mostly what their training material did.
You’re saying get angry and loud, but at who? My state already is doing a pretty great job at the governor level. I guess what I’m asking for isn’t how bad we’re doing things, it’s obviously pretty bad. But what are we doing that’s working and how can everyone build on that? If it works, I don’t care if big oil makes money off of it but you’re making a good case that it doesn’t and it’s a facade for them to get more money. Who can we support then, and how? Who’s doing it right?
On your edit: Wow, I haven’t heard anything about the Atlanta thing, thanks for mentioning it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Cop_City
If you’re in the US, even if you personally literally stop eating, breathing, and even moving, the US military is emitting such an enormous amount of carbon on your behalf that you still have among the worst “carbon footprint” (a dubious concept generally but useful for this discussion) on earth.
Personally, I’m a member of several socialist groups, because I believe only large, structural changes can fix this, even before we talk about fixing them equitably. The DSA is active in your area, so that’s a really good place to start. There’s also an Extinction Rebellion chapter in your area. Another good place to start. If you have specific interests, say economics, I can suggest other organizations too.
Important question, by the way. Appreciate you posting it.
Are you in the US? Do you know if we have citizen watch groups for the military regarding their output or do they give out the information openly? An environmental arm of the military would be interesting.
I am! The US military’s fossil fuel usage is very well-documented and a matter of public record. Here’s a forbes article about it, titled The U.S. Military Emits More CO2 Than Many Industrialized Nations . Forbes isn’t exactly a left-wing rag!
Stop government subsidizing of:
- all agriculture
- oil and gas industry
- slash US military expenditure by 80%+
- maintain the current interest rates for another decade (aka no more cheap US dollars)
These are the fundamental changes required, that will cause everything else to play out and the market to stop sabotaging itself. Actual incentives will emerge, and those incentives would align with saving the Earth from our destruction of it.
Short of these steps, you won’t stop: most pollution, most overconsumption, most agri-pollution, and most malinvestment.
On the stopping of subsidizing all agriculture, wouldn’t that just be for the huge corporations that have all of the land? I think helping out the small, personal or semi and fully organic farms would be okay. It sounds like from another poster that the farms are a major issue so we need to encourage good behavior and stop the bad.
Which small farms get this privilege?
Your thesis relies on the premise that it’s possible to elect an incorruptible politician or series of politicians to occupy the power seat required to do a particular thing. But buying politicians will always and forever be the game; so rather than put the scale there for someone to play favorites, it has to be preferable to remove the scale so the temptation cannot be revisited.
If the government gets to pick a winner of an industry, whether it’s on paper a “little guy” or a corporation, then even if for the first few years this is working, you cannot ensure that the next guy won’t use the same tool to pick a different winner.
Stop contributing to animal agriculture. If not for the animals (victims), for the environment/the home of all species
Theres a lot of research going into carbon sequestration through soil and plant technologies - basically accelerating what would happen naturally by a few orders of magnitude.
Rapidly filling artifical peat bogs (through things like algae/weeds that are genetically modified to absorb more CO2) would allow for semi-permanent carbon capture as long as no one digs it up again. Similar projects with seaweed are under research as well.
Personally I think anything to do with carbon capture is a bandaid at best, and failing massive global cooperation and societal change, we’re going to end up needing to geoengineer our way out of the problem. Things that block or impede solar heat absorption to cool the planet - atmospheric aerosols, artificial cloud generation, solar shades out in a lagrange point, basically manipulating conditions to influence how much energy is going into the system. There’s a nonzero chance we fuck it all up but as we hurtle through temperature records and tipping points, the idea of net zero emissions actually having an impact in our lifetimes seems more and more unlikely. There’s too much inertia in the system.
Sequestration of co2 in soil. It’s low tech and is a win win for the environment as well.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016706104000266
https://news.mit.edu/2023/3-questions-can-disused-croplands-help-mitigate-climate-change-0519
I haven’t heard of any of this, thank you. Do you know if they are or have tried this recently?
We know of these huge instances of land abandonment and post-agricultural succession throughout history, like following the collapse of major cities from ancient Mesopotamia to the Mayans. And when the Europeans arrived in the Americas in the 15th century, so many people died and so much forest grew back on abandoned farmland that it helped cool the entire planet and was potentially a driver of the coldest part of the so-called “Little Ice Age” period.
More than 115 billion tons of carbon have been lost from soils due to agricultural practices that disturb soil integrity — such as tilling, monoculture farming, removing crop residue, excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides, and over-grazing. To put this into perspective, the amount of carbon lost is equivalent to the total CO2 emissions ever produced in the United States.
The challenge, of course, lies in balancing cropland restoration for climate mitigation with food security for a growing global population. Abandoned croplands represent an opportunity for carbon sequestration without impacting active agricultural lands. However, the available area of abandoned croplands is insufficient to make a substantial impact on climate mitigation on its own.
France launched the 4 per 1,000 idea a while ago
https://regenerationinternational.org/4p1000/
There’s currently a lot of interest in rock dust as a way to increase the amount sequestered
I like this dude from your second link. Can the crushed rock be from locally recycled basalt or maybe there is no such thing?
“Greenhouse gas removal may well become necessary as we approach 2050, but we should not forget that it also raises profound ethical questions regarding our relationship with the natural environment. Its development should therefore be accompanied by the widest possible public debate as to potential risks and benefits.”
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Go vegan. It’s the single biggest thing you can do. Also if possible get a bike and ditch your car (yes, I know cars are mandatory for a whole lot of people).
