I genuinely think people will not change until the worst affects of climate change begin.
On our current course I'm quite optimistic that we'll be able to turn the ship around - I think between tech accelerating and the climate itself starting to put the screws on us, we'll have powerful enough tools and enough resources poured into them to save ourselves. However, that's if we stay on the apparent current course. I'm really scared we'll hit a discontinuity of some sort.
Release of CO2 has entered a positive feedback loop. Thawing tundra, burning forests, ocean acidification.
Even this we could counter (painfully) with massive industrial scale sequestration.
What worries me is methane. I'm not sure we can mitigate methane released from the tundra. And if the stuff tucked under the ocean pops, we're toast.
If we were in a positive feedback loop, then global warming will just continue to accelerate no matter how small our emissions are. In fact, we'd be equally screwed if we magically stopped emitting CO2 in 1950, it would just take a little bit longer before we're screwed.
Can anyone explain how to reconcile these arguments?
https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch4s4-4...
Citations elided:
"Arctic and sub-Arctic ecosystems (particularly ombrotrophic bog communities, see Glossary) above permafrost were considered likely to be most vulnerable to climatic changes, since impacts may turn Arctic regions from a net carbon sink to a net source. Literature since the TAR suggests that changes in albedo and an increased release of methane from carbon stocks, whose magnitudes were previously substantially underestimated, will lead to positive radiative climate forcing throughout the Arctic region."
will not be enough of a problem for the most-polluting humans to care about
I live in the country that pollutes the most per capita. I'm ashamed to say I haven't significantly changed my behavior and consumption patterns. But I look around myself and nobody else has either. Heck, we even voted in someone whose team wants to take actions that accelerate climate change. So this party will keep going until something terrible happens that actually impacts the folks at the top.
You shouldn't be ashamed about this per se, because the type of action that will combat climate change is action by governments and corporations. An Inconvenient Truth made everyone think that small personal decisions are the way toward a greener future (think changing your lightbulb), but they aren't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Using less CO2 (for a given activity) without reducing well being much just means we are becoming more efficient with it. Which means we could potentially use more CO2, globally.
Don't get me wrong, I think individual action is good. But will it solve it? I think the only things that would solve it are:
1. Making a source of energy superior enough to CO2 that people don't even desire carbon 2. Leaving the carbon in the ground
I think #1 may be a precondition for #2.
Of course, if the small personal decisions help develop the technology in #1, they may help more directly than simply reducing consumption.
However, the impacts of an individual, even collectively, don't matter much on this issue. The change has to come in the way energy is generated in the large scale if it's going to make a difference in the problem. It also takes actions from government like a carbon tax or incentives to create more clean energy sources, or both to push these collective decisions in a better direction.
in my opinion it will be more necessary to find a way to suck co2 out of the atmosphere and place it somewhere, rather than attempt to limit how much demand there is for things that produce it as a waste product
That's what forests do, and we're cutting them down with alacrity.
Also, I don't think you're done the "number of humans" x "energy consumption of suv + mcmansion" + "carbon density of likely fuel sources" math yet. It is simply impossible to sustain.
The main benefits from forest are habitats for wildlife, prevention of erosion, and ways to improve biodiversity. Their benefits to climate change are limited to reduced sunlight absorption because of their higher reflectivity and a small amount of a carbon sink if they take over land that was cleared and turned into plains, or farms or whatever.
i am pro forest
and yet many actors from many different societal origins are chopping down trees for furniture, building, fuel, etc etc. If the answer is as simple as "hire a bunch of people to plant trees", then it makes one wonder why money hasn't been diverted for this either at a governmental or charity level
I have a bad memory but I seem to recall Sergey Bring or Larry Wall or someone "important in technology" saying that this is basically already a solved problem -- heavily investing in to CO2 scrubber technology, hooking the things up via solar, and deploying them across the world's deserts -- but that todays problem is that leadership problem you mentioned. No one (Government) wants to foot the bill.
I don't know if I'm a pessimist or a realist.