There is so much upside and opportunity in attacking climate change and pollution, I cannot understand why so many are willing to bury their heads in the sand. Decarbonization and undoing the damage we done is the chance for a second industrial revolution, with a much higher quality of life.
I have the impression that most people opposing clinate change are afraid that the will loose something by the necessary changes, their cars, their perceived life style,... That's where politics come into play. Politicians have to communicate the necessary changes and come up with ways to manage the change without screwing the average Joe over. They found ways to divert billions to corporations with the best lobbyists, so there should be enough funds to combaz climate change. And once the western world started we are already half way there. The Paris accords used to be a global treaty, so there can be a global approach.
And global carbon emissions are at their highest ever.
It's good we've built renewables rather than fossil. But the scale of the problem is WAY bigger than 1 trillion over 20 years.
- walk as much as possible
- buy as less as possible (if the sales plummet, less sending products overseas I suppose) or local
- plant trees
unlike zeros
I know very well that people consumption aren't the main polluting factor but we.. are the people, we can divert part of the cycle
people aren't willing to talk about the heavy stuff... yet. we'll get there, but until people start talking about painful solutions - technology running daylight hours only, order of magnitude reduction in oceanic shipping, etc. - it's just feel good type stuff.
IMHO, the problem isn't as much individuals not choosing to do that, but a system that prevents these choices from ever being made.
Also, not all spending is equal; buying propane or gasoline or airline tickets are clearly worse than buying a share of community solar; or buying new insulation for your home, or building new high-density apartment buildings next to a train station.
I don't think that we will ever win over climate change by championing austerity; rather we need to champion change in the system, and that takes lots of spending.
Furthermore, we are now at a point that it's going to be absolutely necessary to start pulling CO2 out of the ocean or atmosphere and sequestering it. Without a whole bunch more prosperity and cheap energy, we will never be able to do that, so building a future with super cheap and abundant solar and wind energy is pretty much the only way I can imagine us avoiding > 2C climate change.
Our electrical grid is slightly behind pace for decarbonization, but nowhere near as far behind as all the rest of society.
The bad part of society that has my greatest attention lately is single family zoning; this necessitates massive energy use, massive car use, and disallows anybody from creating a low-energy alternative that has all the amenities that people need in order to live. Single family zoning should be illegal. Nobody should be prevented from building an apartment building next to a small grocery store. Big-box stores should be highly restricted, instead of highly restricting apartment buildings.
(apologies for the long rant!)
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/06/climate-chan...
That is only going to change through local action, which means going to city council and planning meetings and being willing to be yelled at and lied about by those who oppose all new housing.
So it's not enough just to go alone, you need to find local friends, get them to go too, and to make sure that this viewpoint is represented in these highly undemocratic forums in which local decisions are made.
But we also need to change the local as much as possible. Every single ton of CO2 we can avoid now is one less that we'll have to pull out later.
It seems that efficiency isn't enough because people will just use up more energy. Growth and how we think about the economy is incompatible with what needs to be done.
Without a democratic consense and legislation we won't manage to fight climate change because people won't support it and the industrialized world that is not authoritarian ruled won't buy into a climate dictatorship.
That being said, nothing good comes from dictatorship and authoritarian systems, never. If we atart to unilaterally dicide what is good and bad there is no way to tell when and where to stop. Or when we ourselves end up on the "wrong" side.
We already have plenty of rules that restrict economic freedom like not being allowed to steal or to kill people or thousands of others. If we have rules that limit the freedom to pollute there is plenty of economic freedom left. People and businesses would adapt quickly.
Like what?
but, to be honest, i think that's shirking your responsibility. it's just giving up in a slightly different way - "can't do anything about this any more, need authoritarianism; my hands are clean!"
we know a small % of people can enact revolutionary change. many people are afraid, comfortable, or unable to do something like sitting in front of $national_capital, risking their jobs, etc. until that change comes.
it's unfortunate but this idea that "the people" can't enact change is silly; there's just not (yet) enough willingness to really sacrifice to get it done.