rudatron posted:

Also talking about the morality of western consumption (and requiring it to 'exculpate') is 100% bullshit. Deploying moralism to solve climate change will absolutely fail, because high resource consumption is not a loving moral failing, it's the fairly standard desire to have a better quality of life. Moralizing about the 'evil west' is just a self-serving and self-righteous way to dodge the fact that people want better lives, yet the technology to give that to them is costly in terms of a specific set of resources. The developing world will eventually increase their consumption per capita to match the US, the issue is how that same quality of life can be delivered as cheaply and sustainably as possible.

In essence, to invert the accusations of 'techno-fetishism' thrown around in this thread, this is a problem that can only be solved with the newer technology, which also concurrently means having the political will to develop that technology in the first place

But we actually have to live up until the point that that happens, so that means adapting to circumstances, which means management of limited resources, notably fresh water and arable land, and the products that they are used to produce.

Or, in other words, ban biofuels, ban cotton, replace all natural fibers with synthetic fibers, place limits or disincentives on meat production and especially large disincentives on using cropland to grow feed for animals, put water management schemes into place and regulate the activity of farmers to a greater degree. Also invest in better rain catchments and flooding protections, as well as drought protection measures, because you're going to get less rain but it'll probably be more extreme when it does happen.