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How would you propose we actually combat climate change?

Id like lemmings take on how they would actually reduce emissions on a level that actually makes a difference (assuming we can still stop it, which is likely false by now, but let's ignore that)

I dont think its as simple as "tax billionaires out of existence and ban jets, airplanes, and cars" because thats not realistic.

Bonus points if you can think of any solutions that dont disrupt the 99%'s way of life.

I know yall will have fun with this!

150 comments
  • dont disrupt the 99%'s way of life.

    This is ridiculous, because the problem inherently requires cooperative change, and as we've seen people will throw shitfits over things as small as plastic straws.

    A big thing would be to start switching from ever expanding auto infrastructure to public transit systems where possible.

    1. Fewer vehicles that transport more people
    2. Can use the space that is currently occupied for parking cars better

    Another big thing requires changing our diets. Some types of food are more resource intensive than others, but also we ship food all over the planet and the resources for transport also contributes. Eating food that is in season on your continent would make a big difference.

    The last thing is maybe the least obvious to regular people, but maybe we don't need to build that data center yet if we can't power it without fossil fuel. We need to entirely stop expanding energy usage until we've switched over entirely to sustainables.

    In summary, basically everything that needs to happen is going to affect regular people, and they're going to have to get over it, or we're going to make the planet completely unlivable.

    • and as we’ve seen people will throw shitfits over things as small as plastic straws.

      That's still depressing as hell, on both sides. One because they're freaking out over slightly different straws, the other because it's such a token gesture to plastics pollution that solves nothing.

    • Agree with you here, life needs to change. For OP I'd say - define change.

      I've gone almost completely carbon neutral (I mean, outside of groceries and things I literally need to survive), but for my house and my daily routine, I'm happy. I'd say my life has been changed - but not much. Now if you asked my conservative family if my life changed they'd be clutching their pearls and fainting.

      I have:

      • Went from a 2-car household to a 1-car household, replacing the aging vehicle with an EV with an in-home charger
      • My spouse can only drive to work (US based), but I now take the bus
      • I currently use Lime and am getting an e-bike soon for local travel
      • I've switched our HVAC system from gas furnace to a heat pump. I still have gas if it gets insanely cold, but last year it only turned on twice, so my usage is down about 95% from where it was before
      • My water heater is still gas, but within the next year I'll be converting it
      • My electricity is 100% renewable in my area, but even if it wasn't all of this would still be more efficient, and even then solar and batteries are still on the table.

      For me these have been relatively easy changes, minor impacts to my life. If I even mention that we went down to be a one car house my conservative family freaks out - unable to even imagine it. So for them yeah life would be pretty different - but as a whole it'd be better for us.

      It's easy to blame the corporations, but we buy their products. Yes the oil and gas are the worst. You know what would change those companies though? If we all stopped buying so much oil and gas. "But what about airlines or other industries". Again, we're the ones who buy them. We don't have much rail where we are but I vote with my wallet and take rail whenever I can. I avoid flying unless it's the only option. If everyone tried to do even some of these things we'd be having a noticeable impact. (Force the corps too, they don't get off scot-free, but damnit neither do we. We can do both)

  • Eat the rich. I remember when the Twitter account that posted where Musk's private jet is all the time and holy shit, he travelled a lot.

    Like, multiple times a week where this machine that fucks up the environment is used to transport a single person.

    Or the disgusting mega yacht that Zuckerberg uses.

    During my whole life I'm not gonna destroy the environment like every single one of leeches on society does in a month.

  • Proviso of this is that, globally, politicians grow a spine, along with a sense of morality, and long term planning. It would also require them to deal with the money hoarding issues with the hyper rich.

    • The first step is a massive push for renewables. They should be representing 200-500% of grid demand regularly. If nuclear can get up to speed and be part of this, great, but we can't wait on it.
    • That excess power should be soaked up by large scale, portable, energy storage. Green hydrogen is the current best option, but synthetic fossil fuels could also take up the slack. Depending on the area, desalination could also be combined into this.
    • We seriously decarbonise the transport networks. For vans and smaller, electric vehicles win. BYD have demonstrated that low cost electric cars are viable. For larger vehicles, where electric becomes inefficient, hydrogen is viable. This is where a lot of the excess hydrogen will be going.
    • Carbon credits with teeth. Rather than relying on a planned economy mindset, we can make capitalism work for us. We need a global fixed carbon emission limit. This limit should trend towards net zero on a preset timetable. Credits are bid on, akin to stock market trades. Companies must have credits by the end of the year/period. The fine for not having credits should be a multiple of the closing credits price (10x?). The fine for falsification should be multiples of that, erring towards corporate execution levels.

    This will force easy savings out of the market quickly. It will then force compulsory emitters to factor in Carbon costs.

    • Combined with the carbon credits will be negative credits. If a group takes a ton of CO² out of the air, long term, they gain a new credit. They can sell this to emitters. This will provide the CO² emissions industry requires, while meeting net zero.

    An example of this might be large scale bio capture on the open ocean. Grow seaweed etc on pontoons, and turn it into a solid. This can then be locked up (old coal mines?) taking carbon out permanently.

    • Geo engineering. There are multiple methods of reducing incident sunlight on the earth. Everything from powders in the upper atmosphere, to mylar solar shades at the Lagrange point. They will be short term fixes, but will buy us time.

    None of these require massive reductions in quality of life. They do require changes in how we do things. It's also worth noting that I've not covered the numerous problems to be solved e.g. power grid upgrades to account for renewables. None of these should be insurmountable however, just engineering, or political/policing challenges.

    An no, I've no fucking idea how to get politicians to grow a spine and do what's required for our long term comfort/survival. Fixing the planet? That's just a (really big) engineering problem. Fixing human nature? ...Fuck knows.

  • In my opinion it is not possible to fight climate change while maintaining the same standards of life that we have now. Even if we are going to try, this will probably not be followed by many states with big population, so probably its not gonna work. From what I see, everyone is fighting climate change today by posting stuff on their social medias but when it comes to change habits, its another story.

    Anyway, my idea is that we don't have to ban things like cars and airplanes but we can use them more efficiently. We can repair more and buy less. Do we really need to change a car after 100.000 km? In my country, If you live in a big city you can use public transport most of the time, so why we don't start to connect well also the small places?

    Do we really need to buy fruits and vegetables that comes from other continents and needs to be chemically treated, transported, stocked and consequently generates pollution?

    In the consumer technology Sector people usually changes their computers and phones every 3-5 years even if the hardware is still working well. The software is usually becoming more heavier over the years without adding real features (See Meta's apps). We must accept that this is not compatible with fighting climate change because we are producing too much waste that is avoidable together with massive exploitation of resources. The majority of users are not educated to understand how our technology works at its most basic level, I think that we may start from here.

    Maybe we cannot erase billionaires but we can stop adulating or hating them and giving them unnecessary notoriety.

  • You are asking two how to questions "combat climate change" and "reduce emissions"

    To realistically combat climate change:

    • Admit that we need to try geoengineering (we are already doing this with all the CO2 and CH4 going into the atmosphere)
    • Weather it is SO2 injection or cloud seeding to artificially increase the albido; we need to reduce incident solar radiation to give us a few more decades to actually reduce emissions

    To reduce emissions:

    • Tackle the biggest emissions first.
    • Electrification of the passenger fleet; that means batteries. Keep fuel cells for heavy transport (maybe)
    • Encourage electric biking. And other micro-mobility. Along with better public transport.
    • Normalise a historical style diet, meat is a treat only once or twice a week.
    • Reduce concrete construction; keep it for the important things like the foundations.
    • Reduce the practice of packaging everything in plastic; again keep it for the important things only like electrical insulation.
    • Massive ramp up of solar and wind around the world.
    • Where we use fossil fuels, ask is this important enough to use FF here?

    Carbon taxes:

    • Tax CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) at a reasonable rate to encourage all of the reduction measures.
    • At less than $65NZD/T the cost is too low to encourage significant movement on the issues.
    • Have a ratcheting scheme in the CO2 market, i.e. add $5-8/yr/T for CO2e; in 10 years the price will be between $110-140/T. At the 10yr mark, make the ratchet $10-15/yr/T.
    • Add a carbon tariff; basically make it more expensive to buy from countries that are not pulling their weight.
    • Be careful not to double tax, this is important for buy in from the public. i.e. the carbon tax on fuel should be exempt from sales tax, taxing a tax is a great way to alienate people.
  • I'm going off the top of my head here:

    Okay so you know the concept of evaporative cooling for the new AI data centres? It's hugely wasteful, and definitely not the only way to accomplish the goal, but it's cheaper. I feel like if we actually figured out all the bullshit of that calibre and just outlawed it, we'd make a significant start towards improvement and only marginally impact the bank statements of a few ultra rich billionaires.

    Stop allowing people to dump exhaust and waste untreated into the air and otherwise in the environment, full stop. Full illegal, if you violate it the entire company is dissolved. That'll suck for shipping, manufacturing, fuck it. We need to actually stop this to achieve some kind of meaningful change. Go back to sails and windmills if we need to, we achieved global industry and shipping before the internal combustion engine existed, we can do it again.

    Phase out fossil fuels. It'll suck a bit, fuck it. Increase reliance on public transport and population density. Make it so you don't need individual transport to accomplish basic necessities for the vast majority of people.

    Ramp up public collaborative research into batteries, power storage, carbon capture, climate science. At this point we're playing catch up, we need everything we can to try to rectify this shit storm like yesterday.

  • Sorry, not sorry, but the

    I dont think its as simple as "tax billionaires out of existence and ban jets, airplanes, and cars" because thats not realistic.

    is not something we can skip as ducking billionaires and private jers are a large part of the reason we're here in the first place.

    Ban private jets, all of them. Maybe exceptions for medical flights only. There is no reason for their existence, there is no human right that says "well humans must be able to own their own airplane!"

    Ban super yachts, there is no reason why they should exist beyond showing off what an abusive hoarding asshole the owner is.

    Make cities for humans, not for cars. That doesn't mean ban cars outright but do make cities like in the Netherlands and more. Cars should be kept out of cities asuch as possible. Pedestrians and bicycles first (and in many places, only) and replace the vast majority of cars with electrified public transport. Make neighborhoods mixed buildings with homes, stores and bars and restaurants. All industrial stuff in industrial parks.

    This will change the urban design of cities. You'll get many more smaller stores all around, people don't need a car to go yo Walmart, they walk to their neighborhood store. This will make all countries as nice as "oh my god the Netherlands is so nice, it's so nice with the small streets and the bicycle allowing you to go everywhere". It'll also lower CO2 by a shit load. In the Netherlands, a huge amount of the population doesn't have a car because they don't want a car. It's expensive and they no longer actually NEED one. Cars that are left should all be electrified.

    Tax the rich, and not just a little bit. The 1% and 0.1% are extreme polluters and take and waste beyond anything that can be construed as normal. There is no inherent human right to be a billionaire. Tax the rich and prohibit anyone from having a networth over 10 million dollars (example figure, but something around that) by taxation. Any income after you reach that is 100 % taxed. Of course there will be tax brackets, starting at zero for the poorest, going up and up to that 100%.

    Limit company sizes to 1 billion dollars networth and or 1000 employees. After that billion, revenue taxes go to 100% equally. No company should be too big. If the company is worth that, btw, you'd need loads of shareholders as each individual can only have a networth of 10 million, remember?

    Teach our children that being super rich is something shameful. You've been abusive, you've been hoarding, it's abusive and you should be ashamed, and (as said above) prohibited

    Require all product producers that all their products are recyclable, repairable, built with sustainable materials from sustainable sources. If it's not sustainable, don't sell it.

    Same for packaging, bit also require all packaging to have only one packaging, not twenty, and all packaging material must be paper

    Require stores to also sell used versions of their products. This requires that they also buy used products from their customers. This of course doesnt apply to food and such :)

    Prohibit stores from dumping unsold items. If something doesn't sell, they can give it to the government for distribution

    Ban plastics where possible. No plastic in packaging, for example. No plastic bottles, go back to glass. Standardize certain bottle sizes and colors for easier reuse.

    Teach kids hat he basics of Capitalism is okay, but that it can become an evil beast if not controlled well. Consumerism is not okay, you don't need half the crap people have in their homes these days

    With that said, prohibited ALL advertising. If I'd have to see another single lie from a company about how their product really is the best, it'd be too much

    Stop inheritance. You should be able to inherit some memorabilia from your loved ones, not that castle they owned

    Make all enormous homes with 50 rooms into nice spa hotels. Nobody has the right to have a home that is crazily oversized.

    Tax meat heavily. It's still okay (for now) as it's such a staple of everyone's diets, but seriously, you don't need a two pound steak. Limit the amount of meat allowed in single servings. Push for laboratory meat.

    Require farms to have all livestock to be able to roam free, have good food, etc.

    Those are a few rules to staet with a generally healthier and better world for everyone. I'm sure some rules are incomplete, need more detail, need exceptions or slight modifications, but the basics are there.

    Nothing not what we have today HAS to be the way it is, it is the way it is because we all allow it. Changing economic systems is usually disastrous, so let's keep capitalism, it's the best system to make capital. But with these basic limits, nobody gets too rich. The government gets loads of money that it can use for social systems like free healthcare, free education, free food and housing, universal basic income, etc.

    Sounds pretty neat in my head, I'll start refining and adding to this list.

  • Encourage decentralisation and self-sufficiency. Produce and consume more locally. I think residential solar is a good start, as it may lead to reduction in overseas shipping for LNG, oil and coal. Small farms and workshops for daily necessities or repairs will further reduce need for commercial transportation. Work from home or encouraging local offices instead of corporate campuses will spread the population, make local businesses more viable, and reduce personal transportation.

    All these encouragements should be done via tax credits or subsidies, so vote for parties who'd deliver those.

    • Decentralization in general is less efficient and therefore requires more resources. For example small scale farming has less yield per acre compared to large scale farming, thus you have to use more acres to produce the same yield leading to more environmental destruction. Or with the small local workshops, each of those workshops will require a vast array of machines and tools to handle every situation, some that may be rarely used if at all, so you need to produce thousands of copies of these tools for every shop that may not be used, using more resources, as opposed to having to only create one copy for a central repair facility.

      The cost, including the environmental cost, of transport rarely exceeds the gains in efficiency from centralization. Working at an office for a computer job is the exception as theres very little gain. But working from home in a job where you cant send your work over a wire to the next worker would obviously lose a lot of efficiency from work from home.

      We don't want to spread people out, the more spread out they are the longer it will take to get places and the more likely they will use a car. We need people in dense centralized places because that's where we get these efficiencies of scale. Public transportation becomes better with density, distribution of goods becomes easier, heating and cooling large complexes is more efficient than individual homes.

  • This response is focused on the US since that's the place I already have a very good idea of the current laws and challenges affecting climate action. I'd start by passing the following legislation immediately:

    • Mandate remote work options for all positions that can be performed remotely. We saw during the pandemic how much commuting to the office negatively impacts the environment as well as people's lives.
    • Carbon tax with a gradual but short (say 4 year) implementation period where it rachets up to the full tax value for carbon emissions directly created by the industry. The carbon tax is intended to make polluting and wasteful choices far more expensive than cleaner alternatives as well as raise tax dollars for significant infrastructure redevelopment
    • Create new taxes and tax breaks plus subsidies for rental properties with poor insulation to encourage updating all rental properties to have modern insulation (and similar tax breaks and subsidies for homeowners to upgrade their insulation)
    • Federally allow the construction of ADUs in all residential zone types (likely also creating a more relaxed permitting process and building code for ADUs to reduce cost and encourage their construction)
    • Federally allow 2 family housing in all single family zoning (meaning a single family zoned lot can now have the main dwelling converted into a duplex plus an ADU constructed, tripling the permitted density)
    • Federal tax break and subsidy for the purchase, maintenance and use of bicycles including ebikes and bike trailers (many places are bikable but people just don't choose to bike. For example, every small town is mostly bikable within town save for any highways that cut through them, and residential streets are very safe places to bike even if they don't contain dedicated bike infrastructure)
    • Gradually but significantly increase annual vehicle registration fees, racheting them from the current ~$120 per year to ultimately cost several thousand dollars per year, with some discounts available to those who do not live in an incorporated community, NEVs and classic cars, thereby greatly discouraging vehicle ownership and car commuting. Also instituting significantly higher registration fees for heavier vehicles

    In the longer term I'd also take the following steps:

    • Use carbon taxes to fund a massive transit shift away from private cars to build more railroads and better bike infrastructure
    • Nationalize the north American freight rail network and turn all railroads into rail operators, and either an existing federal agency or a new agency takes over maintainance, dispatching and expansion of the rail network, significantly lowering the bar for new railroad services and companies to be created
    • Massively expand Amtrak services with many new routes and expanded service on existing routes

    And for an even longer term cultural shift to encourage slower growth I'd pass the following legislation:

    • Impliment UBI as an eventual replacement for all social safetynet programs. Probably a value of around $1k/month per adult and $3k/month per retiree/disabled adult would make it enough that creative individuals could live entirely off of the UBI but low enough to still encourage working. Most importantly this UBI would be decoupled from the stock market so stock market crashes would not affect people's ability to retire. This fits into climate legislation as it removes one of the primary incentives for infinite economic growth (saving for retirement)
    • Strong right to repair legislation combined with minimum warranty terms of 5-10 years (plus minimum expectations for warranties such as limiting how long a repair/replacement may take to receive) for products to ensure higher quality construction
    • Greatly expand the EPA's powers so that a nimble agency can forcibly stop companies from finding new ways to legally pollute our world, as well as providing a second mandate to the EPA to help consumers live more sustainably (this could come in the form of EPA-funded repair workshops and tool libraries for example, probably also EPA-funded vehicle rentals including ebike and ebike trailer rentals so that people can more easily go car-free)

    And that's what I have off the top of my head. Start with the changes that will make a big impact without requiring individual lifestyle change, and in the longer term financially encourage a more sustainable lifestyle. Removing the financial forces that encourage wasteful resource consumption can be all of the incentive needed for people to live much more sustainably and can be enough to put the world's climate goals within reach

  • No plastics but natural materials, wood, leather stuff like that Renewable energies, reduce consumption, public transport everywhere instead of cars. Higher density of living together.

    PUNISH THE COMPANYS! NO PRIVAT JETS OR IN LAND FLYING!

    Go vegan/vegitarian. Not just for the enviorment but personal health! And when meat then not mass produced meat. Butcherm if you cant afford it then maybe dont. Its not neccissary

  • Locally with your community. None of these governments are prepared to bite the corporate tit that feeds them.

  • Not possible. In order to be effective we need a global generational commitment that is beyond our current capacity for cooperation.

    China, US, India, Russia. 1, 2, 3, 4. Guess who is least likely to take part in a global agreement?

    Russia and China signed on to the Paris agreement, but largely ignore it. Trump famously pulled the US out of the agreement. Twice.

    India has been making the right noises about hitting goals by 2030, but I'm not sure how they're actually progressing, not that it means much without Russia, China and the US.

    We need an agreement that commits our people not just now, but for multiple generations into the future without regard to who the individual rulers of the countries are. Won't happen.

  • My proposal... this is a "long con", so this seem more like a political proposal rather than something that can quickly fix up our society to be less polluting:

    1. Start/contribute to a political party that is catered towards young voters, with somewhere between center-left to full left-wing orientation. Note that sadly this party cannot be "far-left" so no eating billionaires or drastic corporate taxes... yet. Climate change will be a core part of the agenda, but at this point the party has to only focus on low-hanging fruit options (improve recycling & waste management, fines on recycling, taxes on cars, company cars, and high-consumption households, etc). Very important that intermediate steps such as nuclear is accepted (in contrast to some Green Parties), we can't afford to ruin the economy at this point
    2. Try to pre-emptively rule out serious cases of corruption and/or nepotism, and try to base party focuses and decisions on politically unbiased scientific outputs; might need to hire a good scientific panel
    3. Use whatever means possible to try and gain popularity without changing the party's principles. Ads... yes. Social media... yes. Paid influencers... have to swallow a hard pill here but also yes
    4. Try to win enough seats to form a majority coalition government with left-leaning and/or green parties. This is where point 1's not being far-left yet comes into place as the party will need to be at least somewhat popular with most voters and most other politicians
    5. Work with the coalition to reduce tax loopholes, try to classify more forms of rich-people "income" into regular taxable income, and shift the main beneficiaries of party politics to focus on the working class. So no more tax loopholes for the rich as much as we can try... and the "no corruption" part from point 2 becomes very important here as otherwise the plan can go to waste
    6. The government should have a healthy tax base at this point. Now start giving tax incentives to perform more serious individualistic environmentally-friendly options (for example, subsidized high-speed rail instead of plane, install solar panels, biking instead of driving), and heavily tax or penalize situations that are polluting with no particular upsides (one-time use plastic, private jets, ,,,)
    7. Now THINK BIGGER. Invest tax money to public transit and green energy infrastructure; the population might be accepting of more radical interventions such as banning private jets or prison time for some execs now so we can start doing that

    ... Frankly, if anyone actually carries out this plan until like step 5 or 6, I think the exact details regarding combat climate change would be trivial, since the government would have very sufficient resources/good will/power to do so at that point

  • Eliminate cattle agriculture. No more growing alfalfa in the desert.

    Carbon capture in the form of mass re-forestation.

    Zoning out single-family homes.

    Increased taxes on rural residents. Decreased taxes in urban areas.

    Nurembergesque trials for oil company executives.

    Refocusing the Department of Homeland Security on fighting forest fires exclusively. ICE agents will be sent to forest fires all over the globe and tasks with putting them out or die in the attempt.

    Every citizen gets 4 flight credits a year. 1 credit needed per flight. These roll over if you don't ude them.

    Removal of Trump supporter's reproductive organs for population management

  • CO2 seems to be the main problem, so why don't we just burn it. Powerstations powered by burning CO2 would be good for the atmosphere while providing heat and power for communities. And CO2 is abundant so it should be cheap, too!

150 comments