My ex-employer declared sound decarbonization program. Then forced people back to the office. That means, that I am burning 40 liters petrol a week to get there. Software group might work from a Moon base, but they’re forced back to the office too. While radiators in the office are running max temperature, the windows in the kitchens and toilets are open since there is no ventilation system.
I am tired of green washing and scary climate change. If this problem would be serious the governments would mandate by law to put everybody who can work from home to the home office. Low hanging fruit to save 10% emissions.
Seriously. I work for a Fortune 100 company that gives lip service to sustainability and fighting climate change, but is making everyone work in the office four days a week. The vast majority of us worked remote with no issues for years. Any company that makes people who could work remote come into an office cannot say jack about climate change.
But won't such a mandate cause a lot of screaming and moaning from those who hate the government, with the standard "They want to control us!" screams?
The democratic governments are stuck, they're too afraid to take action because these might lose votes, something that happens more if their voters become unemployed/feel some economic hardship coming.
Before WFH I took the subway to work every day and didn't need a car for a decade, now I drive daily around the suburbs. Not everyone's experience is the same as yours.
Imagine subways being less crowded and more attractive. Mandatory home office would have more positive side effects. Less fuel burned in traffic jams too. Avoided collapse of public transportation in Munich.
The problem is serious now but the consequences happen in a few decades when current politicians are retired or dead so there is no incentive for them to act now.
We most likely already emitted enough carbon dioxide to kill all glaciers worldwide. Regions who depend on glacier melt for their water supply need to act now.
half the world relies on water from the Himalayas and the tibetan highlands. China, SEA(Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand Myanmar) and South Asia all rely on glacial water for large scare agriculture
The only issue is pretty much all the good sites for a reservoir already have a reservoir by now. Whats left is expensive stuff like digging out underground reservoirs that you can imagine would take national support for a lot of places to achieve.
The oceans store plenty of water, we will just have to extract the salt. Ya, and build more reservoirs, poorer countries are going to get hit really hard.
Sun automatically extracts salt-free water via evaporation, then the vapor is conveniently carried by winds all over the world and literally rains from the sky.
At this point with the way political will is structured on this planet, the most direct way might be to overlay a satellite map of industrial emissions, drop leaflets to tell people not to show up to work, strike these targets, then argue you had no choice in front of the UN.
> Not many will read this far, and that's OK. I can't force anyone.
> try to make your software use less energy?
I mean this in the best way, because I believe you want to solve the problem: That is the message of a quitter, and you are spreading your despair to the rest of the locker room. The enemy is celebrating your bizarre embrace and spread of their message. Nobody needs that cancer on a team. Lots of people are doing what you are - that's probably where you got the cancer, but that makes it worse, not better. That makes it more important to lead in a different direction.
The other option is to stand up and start contributing and leading. Our position is good: The good people outnumber the bad, by a lot; we've just been convinced to quit and spread that message among us. Stand up, get to work, get organized, like all the prior generations have done. What will be our legacy to future generations?: 'We quit. We didn't do anything. It was hard. We felt hopeless.' Imagine if our predecessors had done that.
Are we going to be the worst generation, or the best?
>But if you do read this, and you develop software, will you try to make your software use less energy?
That would mean an outright ban on Electron Apps. But yes hopefully this sentiment will move forward. Optimising App is no longer just about performance.
> If people survive, will this time period and our selfish inaction be referred to with hatred and confusion by our descendants?
How is WW I judged by people living today? Or the industrial revolution (both good and bad parts)?
I suppose once there's no living memory of this event, it will be seen as "just humans being humans".
Personally I think humanity will survive, but many of us - including me - will have a much lower lifespan and die of preventable (at least today) causes.
The first modern heatwave in Europe killed in excess of 70k people. Subsequent ones didn't. I see myself as one of those poor bastards that will be caught in a new type of calamity before we adapt.
My prediction is that it will not be some giant visible catastrophe like your analogy suggests, but a slow, continuous degradation over the span of decades and centuries (as it has been happening in fact already for the past few decades/centuries). People will be adapting, but the quality of life and the environment will get worse and worse.
Those who will point it out and will dare to say we don't live in the best of times, will be mocked and accused of seeing the past with rose-tinted glasses.
Not sure how the same group that is screaming about the existential threat can also be so active in blocking nuclear power. It can't help but appear the real goal is deindustrialization, not fighting climate change.
Instead of making your software use less energy, help advocate for clean abundant cheap electricity.
If we assume you're right and we are heading towards mass death and catastrophe - why is the solution to make software that uses less energy? Seems a little weak of a response to mass death?
Why not something like cloud seeding with sulfates?
Why not the easy technical solution that doesn't relegate people to use less of a basic resource required for human development?
I have so many questions like what are the actual projections and how do we know it's effects. What of past projections that failed. Where are we getting this claim of mass death, when is it expected. Does it account for changes like the fact that we phased out coal. Does it account for the fact that we recently reduced cooling sulphate in the atmosphere.
The answer seems to be don't ask questions and if you do lots of people will die. That doesn't sound like science or good policy.
> Why not something like cloud seeding with sulfates?
Same reason we don’t reach for surgery every time anything in our body hurts: we want a least intrusive (for the planet) method rather than crazy ideas that we don’t know the consequence of. We know very well what happens when people use less carbon, there are plenty of countries on the world right now who are doing that. But no, if it’s not out of sci-fi it doesn’t tickle your fancy enough to try.
Drastically cutting down on energy is itself a crazy idea we don't know the consequence of; it could have catastrophic effects on the economy and on how people live. Weird tech solutions are not crazy alternatives to business as usual; they're crazy alternatives to other crazy alternatives.
So when we say we don't need surgery then are we conceding that there is no climate emergency and things might not be as catastrophic as they are sometimes made out to be. If we have time to look for less intrusive methods than cloud seeding maybe we have time to also look for less economically intrusive methods
We know very well what happens when we tell that people should use less carbon - they don't.
From the perspective of what countries are willing to do, spending some billions of dollars on some technology is far more feasible than large cuts to energy consumption or restricting beef consumption.
As a general rule, I do listen to experts in fields in which I myself am not an expert. This rule is extremely useful, for example I am in good health thanks to listening to doctors; I also save so much time by trusting the civil engineers who built the bridges or tunnels I pass, instead of doing my own calculations, or trusting the aviation engineers who designed the planes I sometimes fly.
I think I would be unable to function in the modern society if I wouldn't trust experts (in their fields).
I think experts are given credence because they can do a deep analysis. I expect a civil engineer to do calculations instead of just saying "I'm the expert trust me"
Is this whole trust the expert thing some new phenomenon? Because I feel confident scientists were very keen to provide the reason and evidence for their beliefs. Saying someone should be trusted just because they are an expert seems against the spirit of science
So is there reasons to believe in man made global warming? Is there is lots of reliable evidence. We should focus in that instead of who is making the claims.
You and the parent are making different versions of a similar fallacy - his is ad hominem and yours is appeal to authority. The flaw in both is they focus on the identity of the speaker rather than evaluating the validity of what is said
When I say that we should trust the experts/scientists, I don't mean trust or belief in the same you would trust a priest or a guru or your parents when you're little. Experts should be trusted in their fields because other experts in those fields trust them, and they trust them because they published and they studied and they prove they understand their field.
It's not appeal to authority when I go to Einstein and ask about quantum mechanics and then reference his answer that light manifest a wave-particle duality; he is after all an worldwide recognised expert in quantum mechanics. But! If I were to ask him about whether abortion and then say: Abortion is so and so because Einstein says it's so and so and he's worldwide recognised expert -- that is appeal to authority.
I think it is an appeal to authority. Consider this, imagine Eisntein had some new idea about physics, he couldn't just say trust me because I'm Einstein. He has to write out his reasons and proof and his words will be judged on their merits and not on his identity or expertise
it's more complicated than that because of the scale of human society. example: mandatory LED light bulbs.
any individual person considering only themselves, would be correct to choose filament over LED because of cost and very little electricity savings. However, every light socket in the country switching to LED in aggregate represents a significant amount of energy savings for power plants and therefore less carbon output. this is a basic complication.
going one level deeper, there is the supply chain of LEDs vs filament bulbs and the relative impact of their carbon footprints and mining of rare earth minerals. This is where it starts getting difficult to parse which is a net gain for the planet.
another level below that is what you cite, the costs associated with the transition itself. A lot of energy (both electrical and human) is wasted by both supporters and detractors arguing in the public sphere, spending entire global broadcasts on the subject, flying around in private jets, etc. How much of this is necessary depends on the net savings from the first two levels, which is pretty hard to calculate accurately.
So you do you, but personally I try not to commit to blanket statements that erase all nuance and subtlety - generally that leads to missing important context.
LED bulbs are naturally way better. People install them in their house because they last longer and a simple calculation tells you that they are a better value. Also they are safer because of reduced operating heat.
The government doesn’t need to force people to use green technologies, they are usually better.
Lawn care products are a good example as well. Gas powered mowers, edgers, blowers etc are being phased out because their electric counterparts are simpler, quieter, and cheaper. Not because the government forces people to use them.
A first principles understanding would suggest that more efficient technologies will win in the market usually because of reduced cost.
The same is happening with cars as more companies invest and scale up their technology. Government incentives are accelerating this of course, which is good.
> LED bulbs are naturally way better. People install them in their house because they last longer and a simple calculation tells you that they are a better value
In theory, yes. In practice, they just seem to be more expensive.
It is amazing how the luminous intensity of an LED bulb can decrease over time.
> "I am here today to cry out from the rooftop of the world: stop the madness," the UN chief said via video message, calling for an end to the "fossil fuel age".
Indeed: declare RTO unlawful. What can be done from home, must be done from home (or anywhere else, for that matter).
Guterres, the UN chief, is telegraphing fear and despair, and everyone knows it on some level.
This appeal is merely Guterres putting head in sand. The problem isn't knowledge of the catastrophe, it isn't science, it's simply a socio-political force: The reactionary right - the right-wing movement, in the US, Europe, etc., that embraces extremism, demonizes (literally at times) anything liberal, including classical liberalism like human rights and freedom.[0]
Everyone knows that they are the obstacle to solving climate change, that unless they are dealt with then nothing will happen. If Guterres, the UN, leaders, activists, etc. - and you and I - are not dealing with that problem explicitly and directly, we're hiding from it. And that spreads like a cancer; others see you and I, and especially leaders hiding, and they despair and give up too. Worse, they see where the power lies and for safety and conformity, follow it.
Around here, climate activists are just blocking roads when normal people go to work. And the people who really have a saying are flying their private jets, undisturbed.
Remember when they told us Maldives would be sunk by climate change. It's still there.
If the proportionally tiny amounts of anthropogenic CO2 are really that big a factor we are already sunk.
I'm starting to wonder if there's an unconscious death cult in the developed world that fetishizes planetary doom. That is the logical endpoint for the nihilism that has overtaken developed countries.
"By 2021, 90% of islands in the Maldives experienced severe erosion, 97% of the country no longer had fresh groundwater, and more than 50% of the national budget was being spent on efforts to adapt to the effects of climate change" [1]
With climate, there is a significant time delay between cause and effect.
Maldives are already lost due to our actions, it just will take quite a few decades to materialize. The current actions will determine how large the change will be, nobody is really discussing ways to stop or prevent it (the time for that was in the last century), the discussion now is about limiting the growth of the change.
I think there's a lot of truth to what you are saying. However I still think man-made climate change is real and I think some of the response to it has been positive - like trying to design walkable communities.
But I agree there is also a lot of unnessary fear mongering and accusations at ordinary people and doomsdayism.
I hope what is essentially a positive thing (wanting sustainability) doesn't get overtaken and misused by fanaticism or people with other agendas.
Is anyone else getting tired of people saying “we must move forward on climate change“ without telling us what that looks like?
Must be curb consumption nothing‘s gonna change, not that we can do anything at this point anyway. So maybe we should do nothing about climate change and let climate change do it it needs to do.
And I’m 100% sure my climate footprint is smaller than that guys.
I don’t know why this is being downvoted, but it’s OK. It convinced me to leave hacker news because all I’m doing by using the server and my phone and the internet is contributing more to climate change.
I've cut my climate footprint by (as a wild guess) 90% and my standard of living has improved. I'm healthier, happier, more comfortable.
Most of what I changed were things I just did based on habit - habits probably formed by my parents when they thought energy was basically free. It's not hard at all. For example, I kept changing my thermostat until I found the minimum needed to be comfortable - it turns out I could cut energy consumption there by ~75% with zero impact on comfort, and enjoy much more fresh air.
The issue is politics. The reactionary right, which seems to be the most influential power in the world right now (the only one not wallowing in despair), portrays liberalism of any sort as a catastrophic, demonic threat (no exaggeration) and otherwise has the characteristics of an angry mob. They are going to attack anything associated with liberalism, including climate change knowledge, action, discussion, etc. Until that problem is solved, nothing will happen.
Politics is just a different word for interests, relationships and motivation - the majority of people are not willing to cut their consumption nor support any leaders which have policies that will restrict consumption. It's not limited to some small boogeyman faction of "others", it's for mainstream parties across the whole political spectrum, as the position of liberal parties is to talk the talk and take symbolic gestures but even they do not propose anything which would actually make a significant cut to consumption or price in climate costs to fossil fuels, because they aren't stupid and know all too well that even their mainstream voters aren't ready to that and will rather vote for any populist who won't impose such demands.
> Politics is just a different word for interests, relationships and motivation
That's not true. Politics is the distribution of power; to politicize something is to turn it into a power struggle. People have lots of interests, relationships, and motivations sans power struggles.
People hate change. Just look at how upset they get when Facebook changes their design. Most people love being told they can continue doing whatever the hell they want. And by the time the folly of it all is realized, it will be too late - assuming it isn't already.
We should have been working on this problem 30, 40 years ago. But on the upside, I guess I have the internet in my pocket.
As a species, we seemed to have handled nuclear weapons relatively well. But it looks like we really fucked this one up.
I'm not much of a leader. But we've already done pretty much what we can. Most of our stuff is 2nd or 3rd hand. The vast majority of our trips are done by walking or bicycle. Our AC is set to 80 in the summer.
Even people I know who claim to care about climate change don't care to change. AC set to 72. Heating set to 70. New laptops every year. Driving to save 5 minutes. 6k square foot house full of crap.
I have had some neighbors notice and comment that "it's great" that we do some of these things (mainly not using the car very much). But they still don't care enough to change. Bleh.
Look at how far you've gone down the despair rabbit hole; look at the endless rhetoric - fashionable these days. It's like a religion; people will debate for it and insist on it. People fighting for despair!
You are a leader, you just don't realize it. What you do, how you do it, what you say, it moves others. Let's stop debating this absurdity and let's get to work.
This is necessary and indeed admirable.
A family member saying they’ve given up on using gas/electric clothes dryer has convinced me to take the baby step of reducing my own use. I do t put towels in the dryer anymore. I hang them dry. Baby steps.
Cutting your own footprint is good but not enough.
We've been building renewables for a while now, has it actually made any significant decrease in fossil fuel consumption?
"Despite further strong growth in wind and solar in the power sector, overall global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions increased again," said the president of the UK-based global industry body Energy Institute, Juliet Davenport.
That was some quick googling on my part, it seems not?
You can produce more energy via renewables and people will simply expand demand to absorb it, in much the same way you can build more roads and car usage will expand to congest it.
But certainly I'm not saying we should stop building more renewables, I just think people will happily use fossil fuels and renewables as much as possible because cheaper energy allows for better standard of living.
Now imagine how much more carbon we would emit without the renewable terawatt hours. Btw in most countries where the renewables are being built carbon emissions do go down. They’re just being outpaced by China and India ramping up coal consumption.
That’s the problem though. China is already building more renewables than any where on the world (probably more than the rest of the world combined). They still have to ramp up coal production to meet demand despite all those growth. The question isn’t about whether to build more renewable, but how.
Thank you, this is what I mean. They keep saying renewables are the answer, but we all know that more renewables we create the more energy we use. We’re not stopping energy consumption. So all of you who are saying this has been talked about, yeah it’s been talked about but that’s all it’s been done. What I’m saying it’s time to stop talking and time more doing.
Methane (the primary component of natural gas) has a global warming potential 21 times higher than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period, though methane persists in the atmosphere for much less time (around a dozen years) than carbon dioxide (many decades).
Beyond technological changes to the power supply and carbon taxes and regulations for industries, the bottom line is that the number of people is the multiplier for the carbon footprint. So a country like Japan, which is often ridiculed as being xenophobic and foolish for allowing their population to decline (what about the economy??? the liberals say), is really a model for a more sustainable future. Economic growth is propped up by population growth, and both of these are at odds with tackling climate change.
Japan is hardly a model. You can’t just deny immigration in every country in the world and have the worlds oppressed and poor floating in international waters. Japan also has the US funding certain things it would have had to fund out of taxes if it were actually fully independent after wwii ended, and not a de facto client state reconstructed for american military and business interests.
Japan is the model because they don't rely on continual immigration.
Most Western countries react to young people saying they cannot afford to have kids by bringing in immigrants. Not reducing the cost of housing or raising a family. Japan doesn't just import people to solve the affordability problem and that's why they're the model. Unlike Britain, Canada, Sweden or the US
> You can’t just deny immigration in every country in the world and have the worlds oppressed and poor floating in international waters.
I understand that this shouldn't happen for moral reasons, but at least some aspects of that are very likely - if anything, it seems totally fictional to expect that the unequal burdens and harms of the climate changes will be shared equally by the world offering all the support, all our history and sociology demonstrates that while there will definitely be some charity and support, on the grand scale the self-interest of various groups will be a dominating factor.
> You can’t just deny immigration in every country in the world and have the worlds oppressed and poor floating in international waters.
Well, you can and even much worse. Depending on how bad the migrant crisis get, we might well see that much worse. Those boats that the coastguard don't get to in time... yeah.
the State of California produced volumes of well-written documents.. both "assessment and signs of climate change" and more "actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions" under Gov. Jerry Brown and continued by that hair-gel guy in China
I am tired of green washing and scary climate change. If this problem would be serious the governments would mandate by law to put everybody who can work from home to the home office. Low hanging fruit to save 10% emissions.