Early Retirement Extreme Forums

All the experts or authorities out there (or at least many of them still at this stage) say that if we are to make the necessary "hard" choices we can mitigae climate change and "save the planet."

That sounds great and everything, but how can we do that when we still have
-77 million in population growth every year
-Car racing
-Airplane travel
-Shipping and logistics for goods delivery by fossil fuels
-The dire need to rebuild ciritical infrastructure (and I am guessing not with Solar powered machinery)
-Wars and threat of wars around the world
-All food production based on fossil fuel machinery
-Majority of the jobs in this world in "Sales" to sell items all based on fossil fuel usage along the way.

So might the narrative change soon? I expect it will it has to this narrative can not last forever with the planet's conditions changing this fast, or will the narrative stay longer until its way past too late..

electric race cars

I'm betting on us not doing a thing about it until we are already fucked.

BRUTE wrote:electric race cars

Like this.

Don't worry. Elon Musk will save us!

On a more serious note, I'm with Daylen. No top down policy will be radical enough for a drastic reduction in emissions. We're already locked in at the minimum (2C I think?) and it'll just continue get worse. People think of climate change as something that happens in some distant future but we are already dealing with its issues. Temperatures significantly above normal year after year(especially in the north), significant changes in precipitation totals and increasing seawater levels among other things. Nobody seems able to put 2 and 2 together. I don't really have any hope for change in this department.

+1 to the prediction that nothing will be done.

Also see related.

Agreed. As far as I can tell, the only hope for a less-bad future is that a small group can do something to reverse it, instead of all of humanity (well... mostly the rich countries) adjusting their lives.

Something like iron-priming plankton sequestering enough carbon that climate change is reversed and it doesn't fuck up the ocean too much. If that worked, a semi-rich environmentalist person could stop climate change without having to rely on millions of people, whereas even a lot of that person couldn't make millions of people do much of anything.

BRUTE wrote:electric race cars

I'd rather have one of these:

http://lightningmotorcycle.com/

I wonder how long I would live.

stand@desk wrote:That sounds great and everything, but how can we do that when we still have
-Car racing

I would think that the millions of people commuting daily in SUVs/pickups that get <20 mpg is far more significant than the thousands of people racing cars on the weekends.

@GTOO, If local traffic is any indication of global behavior, I suspect maybe he was referring to that very thing?

theanimal wrote:Don't worry. Elon Musk will save us!

On a more serious note, I'm with Daylen. No top down policy will be radical enough for a drastic reduction in emissions. We're already locked in at the minimum (2C I think?) and it'll just continue get worse. People think of climate change as something that happens in some distant future but we are already dealing with its issues. Temperatures significantly above normal year after year(especially in the north), significant changes in precipitation totals and increasing seawater levels among other things. Nobody seems able to put 2 and 2 together. I don't really have any hope for change in this department.

I don't want to, but I reluctantly agree that we will blow right past the prudent action points (as we already have) and wait way too long to get serious. I think people in the West really do actually care about this, but the "2+2" problem is largely due to the culture of 1) waiting for someone to present a solution (e.g. Elon Musk), then 2) buying it. People are far too passive and consumer oriented in this respect. They want the change, but they only know how to bring about that change by purchasing something. The problem is, there really isn't anything to buy for the climate that is more effective than less overall consumption. Swanky electric cars included.

Well, we can forget about a carbon tax. Or income or payroll, or capital gains, or tarrifs.

We can fix this CC thing easily.

Tax children, heavily.

Problem solved. Next?

@Riggerjack - Coming right up... looks like the Trump Tax plan is to get rid of head of household filing and increase the standard deduction from $6kish to $15kish but remove the $4kish exemption for dependents entirely. It's not exactly a tax on children, but it is removing the government subsidy for children. Given the proposed numbers, this would hurt consumer units that have more than ~(15-6)/4=2.25 children per adult.

However, many countries around the world are still paying incentives to increase the number of people because they need more soldiers, voters, consumers, faithful devotees, or tax payers to fund pension liabilities. More people are predominantly believed to be the solution to the problem rather than the cause of it.

I don't think its as simple as 'too many people', even as I'm constantly grumbling about all the people in my vicinity. It's a problem of too many people with the wrong story for their lives. They get this story from their cultural story. So change the cultural story.

7 billion people living an ERE story would work just fine on this planet, however, those of us that have even a shred of a good story going aren't allowed to bring anything of the sort up IRL lest we be shunned. So good luck changing anything.

@cmonkey - We've currently overshot sustainable carrying capacity by 50%. The world's current GDP is $16000/person, so that suggests that sustainable consumption is about $10,000/person (And declining, since we've overshot => we're living off of "principal" rather than "interest"). I don't know how much slack that leaves us in terms of planetary support systems (i.e. oxygen generation, regulation, etc.) Anyhoo, looks like I made the [moral] cut ...

Ooh, and as a added bonus, by making children rare, we could curb child abuse and neglect. If there's only one kid on the block, everyone's going to notice when something goes wrong.
And class size won't be a problem anymore...

Honestly, I think a world population of around a million would be great. Enough space to do what you want, small species footprint (comparatively) and more people than you could meet.

Probably slow the rate at which Olympic records are set, though...

jacob wrote:@Riggerjack - Coming right up... looks like the Trump Tax plan is to get rid of head of household filing and increase the standard deduction from $6kish to $15kish but remove the $4kish exemption for dependents entirely. It's not exactly a tax on children, but it is removing the government subsidy for children. Given the proposed numbers, this would hurt consumer units that have more than ~(15-6)/4=2.25 children per adult.

Nice!

However, many countries around the world are still paying incentives to increase the number of people because they need more soldiers, voters, consumers, faithful devotees, or tax payers to fund pension liabilities. More people are predominantly believed to be the solution to the problem rather than the cause of it.

Hey, "be the change you want to see in the world..." right?

Riggerjack wrote: Probably slow the rate at which Olympic records are set, though...

Let them use all the PEDs they want.

daylen wrote:I'm betting on us not doing a thing about it until we are already fucked.

jacob wrote:We've currently overshot sustainable carrying capacity by 50%.

Riggerjack wrote:We can fix this CC thing easily.

who's this "we"?

Imaginary collectives. But I do that too.