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Overflight posted:OK, so can someone please provide or point out to me a proper list of the kind of stuff that WOULD be necessary? I know answers might vary but I think it would put the minds of people like me at ease. For major stuff, things like: - Switching our cars and trucks over to electric power generation - Switching our electric power generation over to renewable and/or carbon neutral sources - Switching our housing away from low density suburbs into more dense urban environments - Building out public transportation, primarily for city level transport but also for longer distance travel Even a single one of these will vastly reduce the amount of carbon emissions that are currently expelled. Beyond that, it's more "getting things up to code with the technology that already exists". These are things like proper insulation, LED lightbulbs, etc. Also I just want to emphasize: those bulleted points might sound minor, but they're actually a very large proportion of the energy we currently use:  Look at the amount of wasted energy that Transportation has. That's what I mean when I say that just switching everything over to electric vehicles will save enormous amounts of energy (and by extension, carbon emissions).
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Mar 20, 2016 20:10
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Overflight posted:OK, so can someone please provide or point out to me a proper list of the kind of stuff that WOULD be necessary? I know answers might vary but I think it would put the minds of people like me at ease. My nightmare scenario, like I said, is one akin to Interstellar where everyone is pressured into becoming farmers and even technology and progress is a dirty word. One where everyone is forced to work 12 hours a day growing their own food until their backs give out and the rest of the community puts you down for being useless. One of the biggest issues is that capitalism, at its fundamental level, demands exponential growth, increased consumption across the board, and more more more MORE MORE MORE loving MORE nonstop. In capitalism "enough" does not exist. That right there is the fundamental problem. When climate people are talking about "cutting back" we're talking about ending that attitude. We all do not need to aspire to live in a huge house. How much living space does a single human need? Not all that much, all told. A place to sleep, a place to keep some possessions, a place to store and prepare food, a place to poo poo. You can do pretty well with a couple of rooms. Apartments are fine and you can share them. A typical two-bedroom apartment can easily, comfortably house two or three people but capitalism is demanding that you aspire to live in as big of a place as possible whether you need it or not. You get crap like people owning three houses but only living in one of them while not renting the other two. You get people living alone in 50 room mansions. That is wasteful but our capitalistic society says you should endeavor to acquire that. If you can afford to waste that much you have won so it's time to show it off. But you haven't won because there is somebody else that can afford to waste more. So you must get more just so you can waste it. People do not need to eat meat every meal but Americans typically do. Sausage for breakfast, a cheeseburger for lunch, a chicken for dinner. Meat is expensive, inefficient, and wasteful. It is, however, more profitable so capitalism tells us to eat as much meat as possible. Same with cars; buy a huge, impressive car. Buy a Big Metallic Wang, inefficiency be damned. Show it off, you've earned it. If you haven't earned it you are subhuman filth. Get back to work, pleb. Meanwhile much of the world does not have access to these things. Part of the problem is that a lot of the world looks at how Americans live and says "I want that, too." Americans overall are unwilling to cut back but it's basically impossible for the rest of the world to live the same way. The American Dream was always a pipe dream anyway; everybody gets a big house and a huge lawn? Impossible, now. Never was possible. Not enough living space, the roads all clog up with cars, the suburbs sprawl into the land used to produce food. Inefficient. Wasteful. Unsustainable. It is, however, profitable. Convincing everybody to aspire for that life makes people money. Developers get to build houses. The automobile industry gets to poo poo money into its owners' bank accounts. Real estate speculators and banks get to make money on the transactions. Fossil fuel companies get to post record profits every year. More houses, more cars, more gas, more profit, more more more more more, now now now now now now. The CEO wants a boat to keep his boats on. He wants a bigger, fancier private jet so he can rub its phallic shape in the face of lesser CEOs with smaller jets. He wants another supermodel to gently caress but she just can't live without a $17 million house and fifteen assistants. The senator he just bought wants to go hunt a rhino to hang a new trophy on his wall before they go extinct. The president of the college he sends his children to heard that the other schools are getting big statues and he wants one too. It isn't a list of specific things that are necessary it's ending this cycle of greed. It's convincing people that living with a roommate or two isn't shameful. It's convincing people that you don't need to have a big house in the suburbs to be happy. It's convincing people that mass transit isn't so bad. More importantly, it's important to convince people that sometimes you don't need more. There is a such thing as "enough" and when you have that it's time to stop consuming for its own sake. Unfortunately there are strong social pressures telling you that you must have more. Advertising is partly to blame. If you didn't buy your wife a new car on Valentine's Day then you're a lovely husband. The diamond ring you bought to ask her to marry you wasn't big enough. Better get another one for the wedding. Vacations are awesome, you should take more of them so you can impress your coworkers with all the cool places you've been. If you don't buy enough toothpaste your breath will stink and nobody will gently caress you. I don't care how comfortable those shoes are they're a year old and that makes them disgraceful. How can you possibly feel safe in that tiny hybrid? Lucky for you we made our SUVs even bigger this year. Your yard is dark at night so bad guys can hide in it. Buy this overpriced security system and a poo poo load of lights so you can keep it lit up like day time all the time and feel safe. If you don't buy a more expensive suit every year people will think you're broke so come buy a dozen new suits to show off how awesome and wealthy you are. But often these are little more than status symbols. Stupid, petty bullshit we buy to impress the neighbors. Then we buy it on credit. We max out credit cards so we have to work more hours to pay it all off and all so other people won't judge us for being poor.
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Mar 20, 2016 20:17
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The premise that we can't mitigate and adapt to climate change within the current global economic system is both wrong and would lead one to advocate for plans with worse climate outcomes.
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Mar 20, 2016 20:23
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Overflight posted:OK, so can someone please provide or point out to me a proper list of the kind of stuff that WOULD be necessary? I know answers might vary but I think it would put the minds of people like me at ease. My nightmare scenario, like I said, is one akin to Interstellar where everyone is pressured into becoming farmers and even technology and progress is a dirty word. One where everyone is forced to work 12 hours a day growing their own food until their backs give out and the rest of the community puts you down for being useless. As Trabisnikof says, there are many options. I run through a lot of those options in the OP. We could switch entirely to nuclear power and electric cars, and that would pretty much do the trick. We could revamp the world's grids and power the world with different renewables, move from cars to mostly electric trains and trams, and that would also work. We could broadly implement efficiency gains (doing things like what computer part's suggests above) and implement some nuclear power and some renewables. Cutting back on consumerism (as ToxicSlurpee talks about) would help all of those. Those are simplified answers, and if you want I can work on a megapost about a bunch of different attack paths on solving climate change, but the point is that there's plenty we can do. What I mean by "cutting back" is things like waste less resources on fancy packaging, stop buying plastic toys or toasters that break in a year then get landfilled, stop wasting huge amounts of food, or throwing out our cellphones every year to get a new one. There's no reason not to keep high quality healthcare, housing, transportation, time saving appliances, and entertainment. There's also no reason for people to work even longer hours:  Those productivity gains should be going to higher wages or shorter working days. They don't, because a few rich people running corporations want to hoard absurd amounts of money. That brings me to this: If there's all these things that we could be doing, why aren't we doing any of them, or why are they being done at such a slow rate that it will be too late to stop massive global temperature increases? Trabisnikof posted:The premise that we can't mitigate and adapt to climate change within the current global economic system is both wrong and would lead one to advocate for plans with worse climate outcomes. Capitalism concentrates wealth in the hands of a few elite, and those elite have such disproportional power that they can--and have--prevented meaningful climate action. Shifting to an economic system where workers and everyday people have more power will allow a more rapid, meaningful response to climate change. Therefore, empowering labor, taxing the rich, and building democratic movements are going to aid in the fight against climate change. It is probably possible to stop climate change under capitalism, but given that alarm bells have been ringing for many decades now and the problem is only worsening, there's no reason to think it will.
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Mar 20, 2016 21:14
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Uranium Phoenix posted:
None of these really mean much in an environment with heavy recycling (which the current US society has). To use phones as an example, carriers will pay for you to trade in your latest iPhone to them so they can sell it as a refurbished unit to poorer people and make almost double the money as last year. When it finally breaks they'll extract pretty much any valuable materials they can so it can be reused in other phones/electronics/etc. That's also why wood burning is considered carbon neutral - on a geologic scale, it hasn't been out of the atmosphere all that long, versus coal which was locked away for tens of millions of years.
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Mar 20, 2016 21:17
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Trabisnikof posted:The premise that we can't mitigate and adapt to climate change within the current global economic system is both wrong and would lead one to advocate for plans with worse climate outcomes. This rather optimistically assumes that climate change will even allow the current global economic system to survive.
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Mar 20, 2016 22:04
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ToxicSlurpee posted:One of the biggest issues is that capitalism, at its fundamental level, demands exponential growth, increased consumption across the board, and more more more MORE MORE MORE loving MORE nonstop. In capitalism "enough" does not exist. That right there is the fundamental problem. Economic growth and energy consumption are different things.  
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Mar 20, 2016 22:05
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smoke sumthin bitch posted:The problem with such a system is that on top of creating even more wealth inequality it would have to imposed by force by an authoritarian goverment. Climate justice warriors rarely take into account the actual will and desires of the people. Who the hell wants to live the life of a poor subsistence farmer who cant even get out of the ten mile radius he was born in because transportation is only for the very rich. Its like that UN guy who said humans will have to get used to eating insects!?? Hellll no im not going Not sure if you just made a general argument here, but the point of my post was that we should not have to revert to pre-modern times regarding most aspects of our standard of living. It's just some stuff, like flying long distances that afaik is completely unfeasible to provide for every individual on the planet, would need to be cut. Ideally, our economy would be democratically controlled (alternatively Full Communism) so who gets to fly, for instance, would be decided by the agreed upon utility rather than financial means. Uranium Phoenix posted:Yeah, the narrative "we all need to cut back" ignores that an absurd amount of resources consumption is entirely because of the whims of the ultra-rich. It also confuses excessive consumerism that our economic system requires to function for necessities. Neither inequality nor consumerism are required for a high standard of living; quite the opposite, really. However, the people in power don't want to admit that capitalism and their lifestyle is the problem, so of course no one talks about that. Yeah, I think it was a "disciple" of Piketty, who's name I can't remember, who wrote a book on climate impact and class. There is a huge gap between rich and poor countries but also within both rich and poor countries, that's important to remember. Anosmoman posted:Economic growth and energy consumption are different things. True, but we kinda need to decrease energy consumption a lot, along with building sustainable energy. And it's a lot more effective to, for example, have people using public transit and bikes rather than private cars, instead of waiting for the rather slow technological advances that create more effective combustion engines. Even though public transit and bikes cost a lot less per capita and thus create less economic growth. Like I wrote earlier, 2015 may have been a year where there was global economic growth without growing CO2-emissions, but that'd be the first time ever. I think it's at least sound to put our actual needs first and economic growth last instead of the other way around, even though "our needs" may end up causing economic growth. And that's ignoring the myriad of other environmental issues caused by consumption. Maybe we will reach this total service economy, but I'm having a hard time picturing that. So far, when people have made the switch from consuming goods to consuming services, a thing that is happening, those services have often ended up being tourism, traveling all over the world. Which has a lot of positive effects but the way we do it today isn't good for the climate at all. And not allowing or taxing the flight industry would make those services prohibitively expensive instead.
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Mar 21, 2016 00:06
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With respect to economic growth and sustainable lifestyles, is there space in the discussion for universal population control? We may burn fuel more efficiently, build more apartement buildings in cities, slowly put more busses and trains down, but what is the point if all that can do is barely keep up with demand? Cap the population and every advancement in efficiency, every public works / geoengineering projected , every breakthrough policy actually goes to a larger resource bank for us all as opposed to simply keeping up with a +1+1+1+1 game.
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Mar 21, 2016 12:06
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Potato Salad posted:With respect to economic growth and sustainable lifestyles, is there space in the discussion for universal population control? It's actually kind of difficult to do that without violating any civil rights. It's something that gets discussed every now and again and you have nations like China implementing various types of population controls but it gets into questionable territory. Some people have a religious belief that you must have as many children as possible and we kind of like religious freedom. The other side is that it turns out that might not even be necessary. Better access to education and a high standard of living actually leads to people having less children. Some developed nations are actually below the replacement rate; Japan in particular is aging something fierce and people are actually starting to wonder if they should be encouraging more loving and babies instead of discouraging it.
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Mar 21, 2016 13:15
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Japan actively encourages higher conception rates through a variety of programs. Reproduction as a civil right? My understanding is that civil rights do not provide for any right you can think of, but rather very specifically equality in the law. Apply a two-child law across the board, and what do you violate? This is beyond the practical implementation or even support of such a policy, ie "get the government out of my (Religion asserting reproductive rights here) household."
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Mar 21, 2016 14:27
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Potato Salad posted:Reproduction as a civil right? My understanding is that civil rights do not provide for any right you can think of, but rather very specifically equality in the law. Apply a two-child law across the board, and what do you violate? http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html Article 16
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Mar 21, 2016 16:37
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Potato Salad posted:With respect to economic growth and sustainable lifestyles, is there space in the discussion for universal population control? This was a thing back in the 70s but basically research shows if a country is industrialized enough then birth rates will collapse naturally. You can also argue "well that's too slow we need results now!" but if you believe population is too high now there's not really a way around it other than genocide.
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Mar 21, 2016 16:39
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Captain Scandinaiva posted:
Decreasing energy consumption means lots of poor people around the world stay poor and die very young, energy consumption has a both an extremely strong correlative and causative relationship on increasing lifespans and general quality of life. But besides that decreasing energy consumption is simply not a realistic thing to think about, might as well hope unicorns save the earth with their anti-co2 farts. Potato Salad posted:With respect to economic growth and sustainable lifestyles, is there space in the discussion for universal population control? You are correct in the sense that there is a malthusian element to climate change- we simply require a lot more energy now than the 20s in part because there's just a lot more people and it's an open question if/how long the earth can sustain 8-10 billion people. I imagine much how we solved the problem of feeding everyone with advancements in technology, at this point it is quite clear the solutions to the problems of climate change are going to come from science rather than avoiding the problem in the first place. This is nothing new, using science and innovation to solve the problems we created have always been the reason humans are on top-preemption really isn't in our nature. We also consume more energy on a per-person basis, which a huge reason why quality of life and life expectancy are higher today for the average person in the poorest countries when compared with the average person in the richest countries in the 1800s. As others have said, however, whatcha going to do about it, population control doesn't work. TROIKA CURES GREEK fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Mar 21, 2016 |
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Mar 21, 2016 16:54
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Population controls won't do anything meaningful for climate change. It doesn't help if you limit population growth without actually engaging in adaptation or mitigation. And a massive population control program would use resources better spent on adaptation or mitigation.
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Mar 21, 2016 17:43
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Envirogoons better suck it up because anti-nuclear opinion in the US just hit an outright majority for the first time.
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Mar 21, 2016 18:16
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ComradeCosmobot posted:Envirogoons better suck it up because anti-nuclear opinion in the US just hit an outright majority for the first time. gently caress. And there's no good reason for it.
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Mar 21, 2016 19:14
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CommieGIR posted:gently caress. And there's no good reason for it. Probably something to do with this and this (and Fukushima of course).
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Mar 21, 2016 19:20
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Oracle posted:Probably something to do with this and this (and Fukushima of course). PrivatizedEnergy.txt
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Mar 21, 2016 19:33
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I hold a MS in Environmental Science, and I challenged students on why they didn't like nuclear energy (since I'm pro nuke) and it all comes down to lack of any information/anti bomb. It was pretty annoying and I got into some heated exchanges. I was able to convert a few people/have them do additional research and look into it themselves. loving hippies.
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Mar 21, 2016 19:56
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Pro nuke here: I don't see how we can continue to expand our nuclear program without an operational long-term repository a la Yucca Mountain. Unless one slipped past my radar?
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Mar 21, 2016 21:26
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Potato Salad posted:Pro nuke here: I don't see how we can continue to expand our nuclear program without an operational long-term repository a la Yucca Mountain. Well, and we need to start looking into newer Gen III reactors that can burn waste as fuel. Sure, still have waste, but much less longer lived. That and exploring on site reprocessing. Like that will ever happen.
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Mar 21, 2016 22:11
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Potato Salad posted:Pro nuke here: I don't see how we can continue to expand our nuclear program without an operational long-term repository a la Yucca Mountain. Comedy option: pay Sweden for waste storage. Massasoit posted:I hold a MS in Environmental Science, and I challenged students on why they didn't like nuclear energy (since I'm pro nuke) and it all comes down to lack of any information/anti bomb. I'm surprised you didn't get any anti-centralisation answers.
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Mar 21, 2016 22:24
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Potato Salad posted:Pro nuke here: I don't see how we can continue to expand our nuclear program without an operational long-term repository a la Yucca Mountain. The big problem there is the rampant NIMBYism loving up pretty much everything. The current power infrastructure skates by because it's already there but, well, not only are people resistant to change but none of the power sources proposed to replace fossil fuels are perfect. Really a lot of the issues with that sort of thing is people just sticking their heads in the sand and deciding that if they can't see the problem it doesn't exist. In the case of nuclear, well, it's like planes. Plane crashes are rare enough to make the news. The fact that they don't happen every day means they get attention but do you hear about the gently caress tons of car crashes that happen every day? Nah, that isn't news. When a coal plant belches tons of lead and mercury into the atmosphere it isn't news. poo poo happens all day every day. Whatever, no big deal. Ignoring that it's a huge loving deal and is part of why the oceans are such a mess. Nuclear plant melts down? That doesn't even happen every YEAR. Even when it does happen the chances of having another Chernobyl ever are pretty slim but that's what everybody thinks about. "What if we have another Chernobyl?!?" Then you get into people rattling their sabers and vomiting fear whenever some country that doesn't have nuclear power wants to set up a few plants because we'd like to have modern society too, thanks, and nuclear anything just gets a bad name. Then you get people that won't the gently caress up about nuclear waste as if fossil fuel doesn't produce waste at all. Kind of rambly but I think that points at a few things people were asking here. Yes, it is a very good option to set up more nuclear plants because the just get continually better and safer. If you have a big rear end repository for all the waste somewhere you can store it in a way that is >99% safe but all people can think about is Chernobyl.
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Mar 21, 2016 22:44
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The problem for nuclear is that due to all the issues listed (site unique designs, limited number of vendors, strict regulation, etc) in the world we live in it just doesn't make sense for most large grids to increase their nuclear fleet size. Nuclear plants are very expensive to build and so much so that any and all downtime massively impacts the economic effectiveness of the plant. Crystal River and SONGS are more the fear of the people actually deciding not to build nukes than public opinion. If you care about climate change, then it becomes clear that the time it would take to fix these problems for nuclear (via socialism, new tech or whatever) massively limits the viability of nuclear as an advocatable policy course. We can't wait for new designs to get NRC approval, we can't wait for global socialism, we can't wait for a new and more perfect NRC to be passed into law etc.
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Mar 21, 2016 22:56
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Trabisnikof posted:If you care about climate change, then it becomes clear that the time it would take to fix these problems for nuclear (via socialism, new tech or whatever) massively limits the viability of nuclear as an advocatable policy course. We can't wait for new designs to get NRC approval, we can't wait for global socialism, we can't wait for a new and more perfect NRC to be passed into law etc. I think this is wrong for 2 reasons. First, we can do more than one thing at a time. Second, there is no hope that anything else is going to happen to seriously mitigate climate change so we might as well start on fixing what we can.
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Mar 21, 2016 22:59
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Nuclear plants, even operating with a once-through fuel cycle and no reprocessing, simply don't consume enough fuel over their lifetime for this to be a big issue. Logistically, it is not a big deal to just store it all on site. The rational behind repositories like Yucca mountain is that it is better to have one or a few centralized sites for long term storate of fuel/high-level waste, rather than just storing them on site after decommissioning for Reasons.
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Mar 21, 2016 23:13
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Salt Fish posted:I think this is wrong for 2 reasons. First, we can do more than one thing at a time. Second, there is no hope that anything else is going to happen to seriously mitigate climate change so we might as well start on fixing what we can. The price of nuclear power hasn't seen a massive decline, the price for many renewables have. I am fairly certain a solar plant today will make the money I invest in it if my accountants don't suck. Nuclear plants you still have to roll the dice every single outage. All of the changes required to increase mitigation efforts for non-nuclear technologies apply to nuclear too. So sure, once we get a carbon tax maybe the US fleet will stabilize, but you'd need so much more investment to make nuclear the huge chunk of the grid people fantasize about.
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Mar 21, 2016 23:23
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Trabisnikof posted:The problem for nuclear is that due to all the issues listed (site unique designs, limited number of vendors, strict regulation, etc) in the world we live in it just doesn't make sense for most large grids to increase their nuclear fleet size. It doesn't take ~*~global socialism~*~ or radical changes to nuclear regulations to make many nuclear power plants in a short amount of time, France being a (perhaps the only..) historical example. Really all it takes is: 1. One or two well established designs that have passed non site-specific regulatory approval 2. A means of reasonably quickly selecting sites such that site-specific approval is straightforward 3. A nuclear industry with a demonstrated ability to deliver plants on time and within budget, for well established designs 4. Enough government intervention to either outright build the plants with taxpayer dollars, or to guarantee/subsidize to a degree large enough to make biulding the number of plants required commercially attractive. 1 and 2. are basically already in place or very nearly in place, and do not require any heroic efforts to achieve. Number 3 requires the nuclear industry to get its poo poo together, because its present track record, at least in the US and Europe, is god awful. Industry consolidation and a far more vertically integrated structure would help a lot here, and this is basically guaranteed to happen if Number 4 is met. Number 4 is the big one, and boils down to allocating enough $$$, one way or another, to encourage massive nuclear development. I think that without substantial government subsidizing/intervention, a substantial increase in nuclear power wont happen. I also dont see it happening any time soon. But it would not take a global political revolution for e.g. US policy and public opinion to become relatively pro nuclear, given the increasingly obvious reality of global warming.
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Mar 21, 2016 23:25
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Morbus posted:It doesn't take ~*~global socialism~*~ or radical changes to nuclear regulations to make many nuclear power plants in a short amount of time, France being a (perhaps the only..) historical example. Really all it takes is: Even in France Areva is failing. But ignoring all the flaws in the reality of nuclear. Even if we assume Bechtel will do better this time, realize the timescales you are describing, even in this optimal scenario. How many billions would you need to throw at nuclear to "encorage massive development"? Clearly, that's not just fiat permitting plants no one wants to build. How long would it take to transform one of the most complex industries to be the lean machine you want, while being just as safe? How many of those plants you spend billions on will fail before their lifetime? And how are you so sure that we shouldn't have spent those billions on conservation, efficiency, demand response, renewables or storage?
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Mar 21, 2016 23:35
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For the US nuke industry to be that Lean Machine to meet #3, they'll have needed to be deploying standard template plants for decades. Hillarity option 2: railroad gently caress You policy.  "Don't build that windmill it's ugly my property value will drop." "gently caress you. "
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Mar 22, 2016 00:11
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Trabisnikof posted:Even in France Areva is failing. I think we are mostly on the same page. Areva's contemporary failings are a good example of why I said the nuclear industry needs to get its poo poo together. And I don't think Bechtel would do any better--see my post. But just because the industry in the US/EU is making GBS threads its pants in many ways now, doesn't mean it is inherently dysfunctional or that the shitshow with e.g. the EPR is inherent to nuclear reactors. Look at France in the 70's, for a counterexample. The problems that Areva or other western nuclear firms are having has little to do with strict regulations....for example in Areva's case they aren't meaningfully more strict now than they were in the 20th century, when France crakned out perfectly good reactors like sausages. From 2nd hand experience I get the impression that a lot of it is organizational, with a mish mash of several different firms interfacing in laughably inefficient ways, and a serious lack of top-down direction or planning, combined with an emphasis in consultancy firms/subcontractors on billable hours instead of long term deliverables. Again. France in the mid/late 20th century is a good example of a functional nuclear industry, its not something that has never existed or can never exist again. But, you're right, the resources that would need to be marshaled to encourage a meaningful (in terms of global warming) ramp up in nuclear development are pretty massive, and there is no guarantee that it wouldn't end up being an anemic fuckup anyway. My point is just that it wasn't always this way, doesn't always have to be this way, and "fixing" things, although probably an insurmountable hurdle in my opinion (at least in the next 20 years), does not require world-changing political revolutions. As far as conservation, efficiency, renewables, etc. The bottom line is that the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that are needed, at this point, to plausibly stabilize the climate are truly staggering. Efficiency, demand response, (energy) storage--simply aren't going to get us there, without a massive increase in some sort of carbon free energy generation. This isn't to say such things aren't important, but they are supplemental components to a strategy that must incorporate huge scaling up in renewables or nuclear or both. As far as renewables vs nuclear goes, I'm not sure that investing in nuclear is a better option than investing in e.g. solar, but im certainly not sure of the reverse either. The bottom line or me is I can point to a time and place in history when at least one economically developed large country developed a nearly carbon free electricity generation infrastructure using nuclear energy. Furthermore, they did so in the space of ~2 decades or less, they did so economically, and they did so without needing to radically change their political or economic structure. I can't point at the same thing for renewables, not even remotely close. Given the urgency and complexity of the problems surrounding climate change mitigation, I am tempted to take the "easy" way out and just say: "hey you see that thing that would solve our problems and those other people did before and it worked, just do it again". Morbus fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Mar 22, 2016 |
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Mar 22, 2016 00:15
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 The things we could do in a dictatorial society led be perfect people with great forsight. Sigh. "Don't tax me an extra 10% on my power bill and gas to subsidize a massive renewables project." "gently caress you. "I'm looking at getting a condo in 6 more months of saving, but drat it I wouldn't have anywhere to stash a solar array or dig in a capacitive diurnal HVAC system. I've been dreaming of going off power grid since elementary school, but dang it I can't find a way to live somewhere suitable while not adding a 45 minute commute to the beginning and end of my work day in Atlanta. I live a 10 minute walk from work and with zero effort -- just designing my life a little -- cut my energy $$ in /half/ in my FY14. There is so much built-in benefit to living in a condo surrounded on five out of six sides by neighbors effectively slashing HVAC needs to conparatively zilch while basically never needing to drive my now very small car. I'm finding it hard to back-of-envelope Excel my way into justifying moving to the country or suburbs.
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Mar 22, 2016 00:28
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Morbus posted:The bottom line or me is I can point to a time and place in history when at least one economically developed large country developed a nearly carbon free electricity generation infrastructure using nuclear energy. Furthermore, they did so in the space of ~2 decades or less, they did so economically, and they did so without needing to radically change their political or economic structure. drat, that's...convincing in ways I have not consisted. I'm deeply confirmation biased but drat.
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Mar 22, 2016 00:35
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Given their safety record and USA! USA! USA! military-wank why not push to have new nuke plants built, run, and overseen by the US Navy.
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Mar 22, 2016 00:38
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Potential BFF posted:Given their safety record and USA! USA! USA! military-wank why not push to have new nuke plants built, run, and overseen by the US Navy. That would make too much sense.
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Mar 22, 2016 00:40
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Overflight posted:How exactly do you guys handle it? Is it fear of death that simply keeps you from doing anything drastic? There are a lot of really interesting projects you can read about which offer some hope, which I try to read at least as much as the doom-and-gloom Guy McPherson predictions. Off the top of my head, there's biochar, CO2 capture (to turn it into a biofuel or make it into carbon nanotubes or sequester it or a half-dozen other things), urban farming, algae curtains, advances in solar, electric cars, cloned meat, the Great Green Wall of Africa, kelp farms, etc. The government is slow to react at best, current capitalism is likely incompatible with dealing with this problem, and we're still struggling with people in high places who aren't even willing to admit there's a problem, but progress is being made every day, in a number of different ways, and there's plenty you can do or read or watch that makes things look like they might be okay in the end. Our extinction is not guaranteed. Sure, your descendants might eat a lot of kale, soy, and cloned protein, but they'll be there.
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Mar 22, 2016 02:24
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Potential BFF posted:Given their safety record and USA! USA! USA! military-wank why not push to have new nuke plants built, run, and overseen by the US Navy. Which is how the nuclear industry started out, before going on to be mostly functional for a few decades. Potato Salad posted:drat, that's...convincing in ways I have not consisted. South Korea is the current example of an industrialised country doing nuclear right, and they're pretty much doing precisely what Morbus put on his list. China is the other example of a country trying to do it right, though it will take a few years to see if it turns out well. If small modular reactors take off, it will probably be easier for the US/UK to get it right. Even if you don't crank up the rate of megawatts worth of nuclear generation deployed per year, SMRs are small enough that you'll need to build truckloads of them in a factory line to replace the half-dozen one-off giant reactors that would otherwise get built. They're also small enough to be more resilient so it should be easier to just plop them down pretty much anywhere safely.
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Mar 22, 2016 08:13
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Overflight posted:My nightmare scenario, like I said, is one akin to Interstellar where everyone is pressured into becoming farmers and even technology and progress is a dirty word. One where everyone is forced to work 12 hours a day growing their own food until their backs give out and the rest of the community puts you down for being useless. Honestly, if you live in a first world country and are over 30, I doubt you will really see any of the really awful elements of climate change. You will not have to move to a farm to grow food (not really sure what the point of that would be anyway because we are going to see more automation). I think life will be effected in practical ways. Food will probably get more expensive with less selection for most of us, but I don't think we are going to see any mass starvation in the west anytime soon. I am not even sure what kind of long term investments would be good, but I would definitely avoid places like Florida or coastal areas that are likely to get pummeled in the future. Things like Katrina and Sandy are probably going to be far more common. This is one of those problems where there is no point in driving yourself crazy about. I mean you could move north and become a survivalist, but reality is that for most of us this is going to just be a slow lousy roller coaster with our quality of life decreasing on it. God help the next generations who will get the real poo poo sandwich.
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Mar 22, 2016 10:00
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This is more movie chat but the Interstellar future involved crop plagues that were so pervasive that even with everyone farming (with fleets of automated equipment no less) Earth was still struggling to feed everyone. Barring some kind of wheat-Zika, our own agricultural future is probably going to involve falling crop yields due to climate changes in current areas and less than ideal conditions in newly "arable" regions, but if anything that will continue to get automated so only a tiny portion of the population will need to be farmers. We all get to pay increasing food prices however!
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Mar 22, 2016 15:17
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