Because the solution is not something we can throw money at and expect a fast cure. Even cancer has the hope of a treatment that works in months to years. Climate change requires changing nearly everything about how we generate energy and requires us to find novel ways to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. This latter bit can have money thrown at it, but without the former it’s pointless. It’d be a cancer treatment while the patient huffs burning asbestos.
The difficulty in treating coupled with the fact that climate change is a slow process that wreaks havoc over years to decades means the short-term-focused economies and markets largely try to adapt to long-term changes instead of solving the issues. When you’re only concerned with a few fiscal quarters at a time, why would you think on the scale of decades?
Should have started it on the scale of decades 40 years ago when scientists were saying we had 40 years to fix it. Too late now, we’re in the beginning of the apocalypse.
We’re at a point where it’s too late to avoid all impact, but we’ve got a very real choice about exactly how much impact we do see. There’s a big difference between 1.5°C and 2°C and more.
As @vivadanang@lemm.ee pointed out, it’s extremely likely we’re going to be at 1.5°C in just a few years. Even if we went carbon negative literally right at this instant, we’d likely still fly past 2.5°C in the relatively near future (well, depending on which research you believe re. how fast carbon neutralaity / negativity would affect temperature change.)
This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t do anything, but I think we really need to start putting more resources and thought into survival instead of just blindly hoping that mitigation will save us (and it’s not exactly looking great on the mitigation front).
I’ll be surprised if mass-scale industrial society is still around in 100 years and we’re more or less fucked, but we’ll be even more fucked if we don’t start thinking more about how we’re going to deal with the inevitable.
There was this moment after 9/11 when Tom Daschle proposed a ‘Manhattan Project for Green Energy’ to get us off foreign energy and help avoid climate change. Imagine if Al Gore had been president at the time, what might have happened. This was 20 years ago! But instead we (extremely questionably) got W. Bush and endless wars and ‘drill baby drill’. Such a knife’s edge for history and we came off the wrong side of it…
We’re also seeing a big shift to heat pumps for space heating, electrification of transport, and even the beginnings of steel reduced by using hydrogen made with electrolysis instead of using coal. So a lot of things are happening, but not yet on the scale and pace we need.
Not only CO2 but also Methan. It is 84 times more harmful in the first 20 years. But it is degrading on its own with a half-live of 7-12 years in the atmosphere. Methan makes up 20 to 30% of the human made GHG. Change to a plant based diet can reduce the emissions by 40%.
It is one of the few things we can change on our own very fast and does not need additional technological solutions to have a big impact.
Because the solution is not something we can throw money at and expect a fast cure. Even cancer has the hope of a treatment that works in months to years. Climate change requires changing nearly everything about how we generate energy and requires us to find novel ways to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. This latter bit can have money thrown at it, but without the former it’s pointless. It’d be a cancer treatment while the patient huffs burning asbestos.
The difficulty in treating coupled with the fact that climate change is a slow process that wreaks havoc over years to decades means the short-term-focused economies and markets largely try to adapt to long-term changes instead of solving the issues. When you’re only concerned with a few fiscal quarters at a time, why would you think on the scale of decades?
About 70% of new electric generation is non-emitting already. It’s actually not that big a change to go to 100%
So yes, we can do it on a scale of decades
Should have started it on the scale of decades 40 years ago when scientists were saying we had 40 years to fix it. Too late now, we’re in the beginning of the apocalypse.
We’re at a point where it’s too late to avoid all impact, but we’ve got a very real choice about exactly how much impact we do see. There’s a big difference between 1.5°C and 2°C and more.
Thanks. Please propagatw this fact more.
I hear and read it too often that people are falling into devastation mode and say, back up, we lost, its over.
However its a difference in being “over” which is 2.5 - 4.5 degrees or above.
As @vivadanang@lemm.ee pointed out, it’s extremely likely we’re going to be at 1.5°C in just a few years. Even if we went carbon negative literally right at this instant, we’d likely still fly past 2.5°C in the relatively near future (well, depending on which research you believe re. how fast carbon neutralaity / negativity would affect temperature change.)
This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t do anything, but I think we really need to start putting more resources and thought into survival instead of just blindly hoping that mitigation will save us (and it’s not exactly looking great on the mitigation front).
I’ll be surprised if mass-scale industrial society is still around in 100 years and we’re more or less fucked, but we’ll be even more fucked if we don’t start thinking more about how we’re going to deal with the inevitable.
well put.
1.5c by 2030s? lol, we’ll have 1.6c in the next couple of years. it’s bonkers. literally.
There was this moment after 9/11 when Tom Daschle proposed a ‘Manhattan Project for Green Energy’ to get us off foreign energy and help avoid climate change. Imagine if Al Gore had been president at the time, what might have happened. This was 20 years ago! But instead we (extremely questionably) got W. Bush and endless wars and ‘drill baby drill’. Such a knife’s edge for history and we came off the wrong side of it…
and electricity only makes up 28% of ghg emissions globally.
We’re also seeing a big shift to heat pumps for space heating, electrification of transport, and even the beginnings of steel reduced by using hydrogen made with electrolysis instead of using coal. So a lot of things are happening, but not yet on the scale and pace we need.
The elephant in the room still exists, all the added CO2. I applaud change, and fast moving even more, but it needs to be faster
Not only CO2 but also Methan. It is 84 times more harmful in the first 20 years. But it is degrading on its own with a half-live of 7-12 years in the atmosphere. Methan makes up 20 to 30% of the human made GHG. Change to a plant based diet can reduce the emissions by 40%.
It is one of the few things we can change on our own very fast and does not need additional technological solutions to have a big impact.