In reality, does anyone see anything other than a bad ending to all of this? I wish I could start a poll here, but does anyone really think there's still time? Really?<p>Political-economic forces, they're just not going to cave until it's too late. 10 years? Unless the economy fumbles soon Trump will have the next six of those. So, four left. Four damn years to change everything. I think a lot of the focus goes on reducing energy emissions because it's easy political blame gaming. But it's too late and it's not going to work. We're going to destroy the Earth while bickering about it.<p>Assume consumption will continue to rise, assume that oil will continue to own politicians. People will continue to consume, expect to maintain their standard of living off cheap goods shipped from China, heating for ever-larger homes, buying from companies with huge carbon footprints, and blaming others.<p>I think the reasonable thing to do is invest more in the cleanup scenario. But that doesn't score political gotcha points and it's not profitable /right now/, so that probably won't happen either.
My suggestion is that every product should include environmental fact sheet, so that consumers could make better decisions. Every product should be tracked through the supply chain and every process including energy production and transportation would be included in the final product fact sheet.<p>If consumers would buy more environmentally friendly products, markets would direct every producer and supplier to be more environmentally friendly, without any other government intervention or sanctions. Just make it mandatory to be transparent and to include this information in every product. Put warning labels on products that have missing information.
> Cattle are a huge source of methane; in fact, if they were a country, they would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases!<p>Imagine how opposed to a carbon tax the beef industry would be.
It's not clear to me that these issues don't simply boil down to energy problems.<p>The limiting case: an endless source of free energy. Using this, it seems obvious that any carbon-emitting procedure can be mitigated, by capturing the emissions and storing them.<p>The question is whether concrete, cement and so on are viable building materials under this model; whether meat is viable; and so on.<p>Essentially, these are uncaptured externalities. If you tax the emissions at a higher rate than it costs to capture them, they will be captured, the question is whether demand decreases as a result of increases in cost.
This is interesting for cattles, think I saw it here a few weeks back. <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/cows-seaweed-methane-burps-cut-greenhouse-gas-emissions-climate-change-research-a8368911.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/cows-seaweed-metha...</a>
Remote work tackles so much of this: Less cars on the road. Less cars being created. Smaller roads. Less gas/electric on transport. Fewer offices/smaller. Significantly less stress. Less stress eating. Fewer cows consumed.
I am wary of all this talk about breakthroughs. It diverts attention from the hard choices we have to make. Namely change diet, drastically reduce consumption, emphasise circular economy etc. Those breakthroughs may never come.
There's something about the way most people talk about climate change that strikes me as really off. They talk about consumption and growth being the root cause of the problem. They also have a way of talking about wealth that makes it sounds like it means nothing.<p>There's something wrong with that world view. I'm unconvinced that the solutions to climate change are going to revolve around lack of growth and curtailing consumption. It seems more likely that they will come from applying wealth to the problem. Growth and wealth are tightly linked. Saying that we'll solve this problem by curtailing growth seems to me that we'll solve it without wealth - I don't think that will happen.
Investing in alternatives is laudable but Bill Gates should support the only credible path to avert an unlivable earth: a worldwide progressive ban on fossil fuels and plastics made with fossil fuels. Then invest billions in alternatives.
Saw this last night: <a href="http://www.anotesark.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.anotesark.com/</a> Had never heard of Kiribati (pronounced roughly Kiribahs). That country could be the canary in the coal mine for the rest of us. Glad there are people such as Gates who are not waiting around.
Wow took the quiz at the end. Switching to plant base diet for 1 yr is only half as effective as not doing a transatlantic flight. In the future I think we’ll agree to not take so many self indulgent vacations to other countries far away or have some sort of global ‘travel credit’ system to keep track
There are cow backpacks. We can harness the energy from cows and we have an alternative clean energy source. We'd be tackling an electricity problem and the cattle issue.
We would make a progress on some environmental challenges by simply taxing externalities and letting the market do it's work.<p>Climate change - carbon tax.<p>Trash Pollution - packaging and recycling tax.
Bill Gates lives in a house that is SIXTY SIX THOUSAND SQUARE FEET.<p>Bill Gates flies in a private jet.<p>Bill Gates has a lot of work to do just to get his carbon footprint in line with the average multimillionaire let alone the national average.<p>Bill Gates should realize that the fundamental challenge is getting people to consume less than they can.<p>Maybe his net blog post should detail his personal impact relative to the average citizen and what he is doing to make his impact below average.<p>We don't need more blog posts. We already know everything we need to know to plot a course of action.