That's because no one pays attention to the huge developments in infrastructure or the amazing new technologies coming to market - e fuels like sequestered carbon jet fuel made from excess renewable power, and no it's not a science fiction dream it's happening now. Of course we should have more funding for these things but they are happening.
A huge part of that problem is that people resist even the slightest positive change, paper straws are fine but I bet there are people who like this post who also liked posts complaining about them - if we stopped organized sports and spent that half a trillion on transitioning local infrastructure or establishing carbon sequestration systems with productive use of captured carbon (e.g. building materials that get landfilled at eol) we could move much faster, but no one will give up a single football game to save the planet they'd rather bomb something and feel like a hero
Not saying I disagree but methinks many of you don't realize everything we use fossil fuels for from plastic to fertilizer it's not just gas. You think costs are spiralling out of control now.... oooh boy just wait.
Society would change, a lot. I’d be very interested in what a plastic-phobic society would look like. Remember milkmen, who would take one empty glass bottle and give you a full one?
That's true, we need fossil fuels for so many things besides transportation. At the same time, we are simply running out of fossil fuels. Even if we ignore the impact on the environment completely, there will be a point in the not too distant future when there will simply be nothing left to pump.
So what I am wondering is, even if one thinks man made climate change is a hoax or something similar, shouldn't the first and foremost thing everyone agrees on be to still spare those scarce resources? For things we really ("really") need to make from oil?
The first thing that comes to mind (maybe since I work in the lab) is medical equipment. You don't really want to have to wash and reuse things like catheters, do you? I am not sure if bioplastics (i.e., still plastics, but made from plants) would be an alternative here once we run out but I sincerely hope so.
Prices will go up, in any case, and it will be a painful transistion. But now we are at a somewhat luxurious point where we can still make this transistion somewhat controlled and "smoothly". If we continue to treat oil as a never ending resource and then do a surprised pikachu face once there is nothing left this will be much much worse, won't they?
We already know how to create plastics from CO2 extracted from the air and hydrogen from water. There is no shortage of raw material for plastics. The main question for the industry is cheap plastics and the answer to that has always been cheap oil and gas.
Using proven reserves and current consumption you get to 47 years and things run out. That's a "within my lifetime" number for many.
We're working on all sorts of alternatives for fuels and for the plastics as you mention. I think we'll be fine as far as that's concerned. I agree that prices will go up and it will be hard. And it's up to governments to deal with these things responsibly.
The main issue is politics in a broken system and politicians being paid by companies that don't have our best interests in mind. How do we fight back?
Oh and trains. We need lots of trans because cleaning power supply is easier and cleaner than making batteries for trucks.
Even if we ignore the impact on the environment completely, there will be a point in the not too distant future when there will simply be nothing left to pump.
unfortunately the last two decades of discovery have provided ample petroleum and natural gas sources that won't be exploited unless we commit to fully and intentionally cooking the atmosphere.
we're not going to run out of petroleum, which will make it even harder to get people to leave it behind.
I wouldn't say we should get rid of all plastics. Some of it is required for medical purposes and food safety.
I would love for governments to grow some balls and start fighting against climate change. But in the case that that doesn't happen (and it probably won't because money). I would rather take price increase and inconvenience in exchange for a planet that's still livable in 100 years.
Really, the only way we are going to ween ourselves off fossil fuels successfully is if they are more expensive than the alternatives. I hear shit like that all the time (big example is meat alternatives). Simply removing the subsidies that fossil fuels do enjoy would go a long way toward making them less attractive.
Long life oil based plastic products aren't so bad.
Meat alternatives are bullshit. We need meat*, and grass fed beef and lamb are probably carbon neutral, almost definitely carbon neutral if anything comes of the seaweed fix for their methane emissions
And yes, kill government support for the oil industry and uses for the oil. Animals are going to be important for providing fertiliser for fields that abandon industrial stuff
*We can survive without it, we can do well with bacterial sourced creatine supplements, but we thrive on real meat
If you think prices will be high without the use of fossil fuels, oooh boy just wait for the coming climate collapse that will obliterate all modern agriculture, create billions of climate refugees, decimate human civilization as we know it, and end all global supply chains.
Almost all of the things have fossil fuel free alternatives and the out of control costs are mostly from corporate greed. Strict but fair price controls would enable a society that can afford not to use fossil fuels for all but a few things.
I'm PRETTY sure that's a "incognito mode and several kinds of privacy guarding software" kind of search better suited for a search engine that isn't also a US government contractor 😄
Am I the only person who remembers how we already decided that some jokes are very dangerous? You get some impressionable twenty something thinking everyone is serious...
I'd like just a little terrorism and murder, just enough to scare off investors and insurers from fossil fuel producers, refiners, distributors and mass users, to speed things up and maybe prevent the uncountable future deaths from failed monsoons, heat waves, overpowered storms, and eventually sea level rises
You're probably gonna make it worse for everyone. It's probably more profitable to have more security around the infrastructure than to just abandon it, so that's more expensive. You're gonna make it more difficult to convince people to actually believe in climate change and legislation that helps the cause, since the climate movement is associated with terrorism.
Just vote for the candidates that actually care about the climate and invest in preserving it. You can also help a little bit by using things that have a very low carbon footprint over its lifetime, like an electric car or using public transportation. These things are just off the top of my head but terrorism ain't it.
That's my point. I knew y'all were wannabe terrorists for a while, but everyone kept denying/downplaying it. I now have several highly up voted posts to point at. I'm sure the denial will continue, but this a start.
Imagine you're in a room and someone is pumping some gas into the room. SSsssssssssssssss.
The people pumping in the gas say "don't worry it'll be ok, just keep on doing your work, trust us!" But the smartest people in the room all say "yeah... that's gonna kill us eventually."
One guy starts kicking at the vent the gas is coming from.
Another guy says "keep that racket down! I want to be a good boy and get my work done!"
I fully agree with the sentiment... but I'm also not sure kicking at the vent will do much to stop the room from filling. To solve that I think we'd need to tackle the larger forces creating a situation where someone somehow benefits from the absurd situation of pumping gas into this hypothetical shared room....aka economic system.
Your mistake is to assume everyone is on the same level, having access to the same amounts of resources. The guy asking you to let him do his job is doing so in order to survive. He doesn’t think four generations ahead. He barely thinks four meals ahead.
So the guy working to survive is the reasonable one, whilst people with no food, power, living, clothing, infrastructure, or any real form of insecurity, who ask them to start kicking the vent are just too obtuse and unaware of the real world to start thinking about reason.
Global warming is bad. Your kids crying themselves to sleep because of hunger is worse. I don’t care what your argument is. It is worse. So stop attacking people trying to survive, and start looking for alternatives before asking people to give their lives up, for your kids future. Be less selfish.
I'd be much more likely to support and sympathize with a group blowing up fossil fuel infrastructure than standing in the fucking road, blocking traffic.
When an oil refinery blows up and gasoline prices are suddenly 8x what they are now are you going to be saying "OMG why did they do this without any kind of warning"?
Consider the possibility that blocking traffic, throwing paint on paintings and yachts, the orange dust, etc. might be a warning. If your commute is being blocked, use that time to think about what your plan will be when you can no longer afford to put gasoline in your car. Put emotion aside and think about how you would logically solve that problem. Because you might have to soon enough.
If you think blowing up a pipeline is a good thing because it feels like you're saving the world, can I blow your head with a gun because I think that without oil people will starve?
See, when you want to use violence, I assure you that you won't win, especially the simps that support violence for climate nonsense don't know how to fire a pistol. Let's be civilized and avoid violence and aggression.
Maybe you should learn how to convince people with your ideas, regardless of how stupid, ridiculous, immoral, uneducated and propagandized they are.
Without doing a moral calculation, what I can say is that shooting people in the head is less effective in dealing with climate change then blowing up oil pipelines.
Blowing up oil pipelines will make it more expensive for oil companies to do business. This will decrease the amount of oil production which will directly effect how much CO2 is put into the atmosphere.
How effective will it be? Will it stop climate change? Those questions are unknowable at this point in time. But it is pretty clear that we're getting to a point where lots of people are going to start dying due to climate change.
I disagree with you, and I think if we stop using oil hundreds of millions will starve in days.
Do I care what you think? No, I don't give two shits about your opinion on climate change. I'm done discussing it. However, you're free to have all the stupid opinions you want. Just don't use violence because you don't have a monopoly on it, we all can do it.
Yeah, right. Go try to make a joke about blowing up airplanes in the airport then tell me "sorry, I was joking". We don't joke about violence without acknowledging it's wrong.
I mean if removing people from the equation is on the table then targeting billionaires with a carbon footprint of small nations would be the logical place to start.
That aside, this meme is calling for collective violent action against infrastructure. Your example is an individual violent action against a person.
In my opinion, you said a very stupid thing and I don't care about your opinion. I'm done discussing dumb climate change nonsense. So, as long as you're not using violence, I don't give a shit what you think as you're free to think all the stupid things you want, otherwise, I'll share the violence you're causing with you.
This is dumb. I hope some mentally unstable person takes this to heart and fucks everything up for everyone so we can atleast have someone to point fingers.
Ah yes, "enlightened" centrism, where causing relatively insignificant damage to stop the destruction of the planet is just as bad as destroying the planet for profit.. 🤦♀️
This shitty take reeks of being
more devoted to "order" than to justice; and preferring a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice
Bruh this has nothing to do with centrism. It's "if we blow up an oil pipeline, the oil will spill out and be far more destructive than it would've otherwise"ism.
Fuck off with your "Insignificant damage" bullshit.
Fuck fossil fuels, fuck the industry that peddles them, but your ideas would just cause way more problems than they solve.
Your take is bad. The person who is destroying the planet isnt some conpany that sells you shit. They just give you what you want for some competitive price. I would bet my entire life that if most people had the opportunity to pay more for a greener product/greener service, they would still choose the cheaper/worse for environment option.