From The New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/29/climate/coastal-cities-underwater.html (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/29/climate/coastal-cities-underwater.html).
Having visited several of the cities shown it makes me sad that they could disappear within my lifetime.
Finished getting the whole house outfitted with energy efficient replacement windows a year ago; they help keep down the interior temperature during the day. We still do not have central A/C, but last summer was the first time we put in a window unit because my elderly mother-in-law was staying with us. While winters are not nearly as cold and snowy as what I experienced as a child, summers seem to be getting hotter and more uncomfortable.
I have been getting a lot more interested in learning how to be a better gardener.
Given the global political chaos that will result from the ever increasing tides of refugees and migrants, I think international war gets ever more likely, with a possibility of nuclear war.
So it isn't just food shortages and temperature changes that we will likely face.
My current plan is to enjoy myelf now and check out when it gets bad.
Heavy-duty home insulation will save you money and help with emissions.
I think a major financial meltdown is coming sooner than the climate getting us, though. I'm buying tangible assets and learning how to grow food.
I've already gone vegan, reduced my flights down to one/year and taken car mileage down to about 5000 miles/year. There are a lot of online calculators you can use to see how much you're contributing.
I also vote for parties that will effect meaningful change, try to convince friends of the same (I'm sure they just love that), and volunteer time with organizations that I feel are helping. I give lots of money to charities doing real, actionable good out there.
Living low impact comes easy.
Also doing research that helps reduce the carbon footprint of important societal/industry functions, and mitigating the effects of climate change so those functions may continue as the region warms.
I don't own my home (and as long as I live here, I don't see how I ever could). So nothing much on that front, although I do have emergency supplies and a bug-out bag ready for local emergencies (fire, earthquakes, and tsunamis would all be a serious problem where I live, since transportation off-island is... not super high-capacity).
I do what I can to combat it. I try to live with a relatively small carbon footprint of my own (although my biggest contribution probably comes from having become vegetarian), try to educate my students about it where appropriate (it's directly relevant to one class, and easily associated with two others in module form), go to marches and rallies, write to politicians, get into arguments about it online (although much less now than ten years ago), etc.
Sometime this winter, however, I'm going to invest in some heavy-duty gas masks and a small pile of filters. This summer was pretty good to us, but we're gonna have more forest fire summers, and it's pretty much impossible to leave the house when the air is like that. Hell, it's not good inside the house, either. I suppose I should invest in a second portable air filter for the apartment, too.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/10/california-fires-and-pge-toxic-debt/600979/
At my age, I'll be dead before the worst hits. Then I'm giving my body to the medical school...if they will take it.
Quote from: nebo113 on October 31, 2019, 04:21:36 AM
At my age, I'll be dead before the worst hits. Then I'm giving my body to the medical school...if they will take it.
Someone will want your body: https://www.cracked.com/article_26769_the-horrifying-truths-about-donating-dead-bodies-to-science.html
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on October 29, 2019, 05:20:18 PM
I try to live with a relatively small carbon footprint of my own (although my biggest contribution probably comes from having become vegetarian),
Your biggest carbon contribution or your biggest carbon reduction contribution comes form being vegetarian?
My understanding is that vegetarianism is a lower carbon impact than being a traditional meat eater. I am a vegetarian for that reason.
It seems pretty clear that individual efforts to change eating patterns, recycle, take the bus, and the rest of it, (all of which I do), will make little difference. Even the international agreements on taking action on climate change are unlikely to make much difference. Nothing will stop the coming major changes in climate at this stage. It is too late. The only question is how bad it will be and how well different countries are able to adjust to the changes.
https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/fire-information/fires-near-me (https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/fire-information/fires-near-me)
Quote from: downer on October 31, 2019, 06:43:32 AM
It seems pretty clear that individual efforts to change eating patterns, recycle, take the bus, and the rest of it, (all of which I do), will make little difference. Even the international agreements on taking action on climate change are unlikely to make much difference. Nothing will stop the coming major changes in climate at this stage. It is too late. The only question is how bad it will be and how well different countries are able to adjust to the changes.
This. And the best estimates are... not so bad (at least in the US). Expected costs by 2090 are about $500bn/year when US GDP even at modest growth will be around $80tn. Not trivial (and we should do more to mitigate it), but that doesn't make it a top three issue. The trade war, health care, and the changing demand for labor are all already imposing a higher burden than this.
Even projections about flooding just assume no response on part of cities. NYC is investing $10bn in flood barriers that'll protect the city in the medium-term, which is pocket change compared to the 1.7tn of Manhattan's real estate value alone.
Other than making sure my finances are in order and voting for politically progressive candidates, I will admit that I'm not doing much. I would happily give up my car if I lived in a city that had excellent public transit, but my current city is terrible in that regard. I live in an apartment with very little direct sunlight, so I don't garden, I'm not a vegetarian, and I don't want to give up traveling. It's not that I don't care about climate change—I do—it's more that I don't feel empowered to do much without there being political willpower to implement structural solutions.
I live at a relatively high altitude far away from any oceans, so I figure my city will be relatively safe compared to coastal areas. But at the risk of sounding nihilistic, I've also decided that I'm okay with having a shorter lifespan than my parents and grandparents if the world descends into chaos. I've lived a good life and I've been able to do most of the things that I wanted to do. I don't want to die tomorrow, but I also don't think I have to live to 80 just for the sake of proving to the world that I can. (At the rate finances in the U.S. are going, I'll be lucky if I have any retirement at all, so what's the point?).
Anyway, I'd love to hear other viewpoints that are less cynical. What should we be doing?
I'm more into self protection than doing bits to reduce my own carbon impact. I accept that this might be a very selfish strategy.
So, on self protection - noting that I live in Australia.
- I am currently looking to buy a house. Top of my concerns are sea level rise, flooding from increased frequency of extreme storm events, and bushfire.
- Given the latter, I am putting together a bug out bag that assumes an evacuation into the sea or the lake. I've ordered a life jacket for my dog and will soon get one for myself. I'm thinking about buying a small inflatable boat. Water, torches, waterproof bags, and battery charges are also on the list.
FWIW, it's almost 10 pm here and 95 F. No fires close to me, fortunately, but the country is burning down.
SE
At my age, I figure the worst will hit about the time I die.
Quote from: pigou on January 03, 2020, 10:48:13 AM
Quote from: downer on October 31, 2019, 06:43:32 AM
It seems pretty clear that individual efforts to change eating patterns, recycle, take the bus, and the rest of it, (all of which I do), will make little difference. Even the international agreements on taking action on climate change are unlikely to make much difference. Nothing will stop the coming major changes in climate at this stage. It is too late. The only question is how bad it will be and how well different countries are able to adjust to the changes.
This. And the best estimates are... not so bad (at least in the US). Expected costs by 2090 are about $500bn/year when US GDP even at modest growth will be around $80tn. Not trivial (and we should do more to mitigate it), but that doesn't make it a top three issue. The trade war, health care, and the changing demand for labor are all already imposing a higher burden than this.
Even projections about flooding just assume no response on part of cities. NYC is investing $10bn in flood barriers that'll protect the city in the medium-term, which is pocket change compared to the 1.7tn of Manhattan's real estate value alone.
Calculating only the financial cost to the U.S. is pretty parochial way to do the math, and is telling about the scope of the social problem.
NYC is never going to build those fancy sluice gates, although it will probably find a way to spend the money tackling urgent infrastructure problems, one inch ahead of each increase in sea rise. (Raising the BQE, reinforcing the FDR Drive, etc. etc.) There will be no political will to sacrifice the North Shore of Nassau County, southern New Jersey, and southern Connecticut. There will also be no political will to save the South Bronx. The opposition is mobilized, as it was not when the same calculus left parts of New Orleans to drown.
Quote from: pepsi_alum on January 03, 2020, 09:35:06 PM
Other than making sure my finances are in order and voting for politically progressive candidates, I will admit that I'm not doing much. I would happily give up my car if I lived in a city that had excellent public transit, but my current city is terrible in that regard. I live in an apartment with very little direct sunlight, so I don't garden, I'm not a vegetarian, and I don't want to give up traveling. It's not that I don't care about climate change—I do—it's more that I don't feel empowered to do much without there being political willpower to implement structural solutions.
I live at a relatively high altitude far away from any oceans, so I figure my city will be relatively safe compared to coastal areas. But at the risk of sounding nihilistic, I've also decided that I'm okay with having a shorter lifespan than my parents and grandparents if the world descends into chaos. I've lived a good life and I've been able to do most of the things that I wanted to do. I don't want to die tomorrow, but I also don't think I have to live to 80 just for the sake of proving to the world that I can. (At the rate finances in the U.S. are going, I'll be lucky if I have any retirement at all, so what's the point?).
Anyway, I'd love to hear other viewpoints that are less cynical. What should we be doing?
Well, I drive a small car, walk and ride a bicycle much more than I drive (I've made a point all my adult life of living within walking distance of work), and set my thermostats several degrees below/above my comfort level at home to save on energy (You can save a LOT if you snuggle under a comforter during the winter and use a fan to take the edge off the heat in the summer). I eat less meat than I once did, though I'm hardly a vegetarian. I don't really do these things for the sake of climate change so much as out of a broader belief in trying to live simply and avoid extravagance. Plus some years of chill penury when I was younger made me used to being thrifty.
I believe in taking broader societal action to mitigate climate change and support it in principle. It blows my mind how many people are in denial or just shrug it all off now that the radical changes in climate are manifest. It reached 70 degrees on Christmas day where I live, for crying out loud! Winter is rapidly becoming a thing of the past in our region. The climate scientists very obviously know what they're talking about, so we ought to be trying to follow their advice about ways to mitigate the changes.
All that said, I just really don't see any reason for optimism that the problem will be successfully controlled. Even without the denialism, ordinary people don't show the stomach for making the kinds of radical, costly, disruptive changes it would take. I don't see how any political system, short of some imaginary utopian eco-dictatorship, could be up to a challenge this huge. The use of hydrocarbon fuels has just been too much a fundamental part of our way of life for too long, and has gained too much momentum to be stopped within the necessary few decades. And huge as it is, this is only a part of an even wider problem the human race has of making unwise and extravagant use of its technologies whenever it has the opportunity.
As for what we should be doing--well, keep trying to take reasonable steps to live in a more environmentally sound way as individuals, and keep advocating for more environmentally sound policies. The right thing is worth doing, even if it seems increasingly unlikely to succeed.
I can't help noticing what a striking resemblance the world we're producing through climate change bears to the world of the last days described in the biblical book of Revelation. Massive fires of the sort we're seeing in California and Australia, massive die-offs of sea life, massive loss of fresh drinking water, the drying up of the Euphrates River, and global warming itself--they're all there in that book written two millennia ago. Whether one believes in biblical prophecy or not, the world in anything like the form we know it appears to be coming to an end by the latter part of this century. Those of us who do believe in biblical prophecy at least have the comfort of believing that a better world than we humans have ever shown ourselves capable of creating is coming. That doesn't excuse any complacent inaction in the meantime. On the contrary, it makes us even more responsible. We need to be warning people to get ready for what's coming. Even if it means posting something about it on a board where 99% of the people who will see it will undoubtedly think you're crazy.
I wouldn't consider my view of what's happening to our world either cynical or nihilistic. But it's definitely apocalyptic--in the original sense of the word.
Quote from: AJ_Katz on October 31, 2019, 04:45:36 AM
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on October 29, 2019, 05:20:18 PM
I try to live with a relatively small carbon footprint of my own (although my biggest contribution probably comes from having become vegetarian),
Your biggest carbon contribution or your biggest carbon reduction contribution comes form being vegetarian?
My understanding is that vegetarianism is a lower carbon impact than being a traditional meat eater. I am a vegetarian for that reason.
My largest contribution to reducing my carbon footprint.
Quote from: pepsi_alum on January 03, 2020, 09:35:06 PM
Anyway, I'd love to hear other viewpoints that are less cynical. What should we be doing?
Individual contributions do make a difference. Just not at the scale we need. If there was ever a time to focus on individual contributions, it's long past--but that's not to say that changes in behaviour at the individual level are pointless. If we want to get serious about addressing climate change, the kinds of top-level solutions we'll have to implement in and impose on industry will entail significant changes in behaviour at the individual level. And the more people are OK with those changes (because they're not far removed from their lived reality), the easier it will be to generate the bottom-up pressure we need to ensure that those solutions and mitigation efforts are actually employed.
What we need are big, broad-spectrum political solutions that target the bulk of our carbon contributions, which occur at the industrial level, not the personal level. So what we need to do is to agitate for those measures. We need to actively oppose new pipelines, fracking, etc. We need to actively protest against subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. We need to agitate for a just transition, for a better social safety net, for adequate healthcare for all, etc. All these issues are inter-related, and no progress will be made on any of them if we don't stand up and
demand it from our leaders. We need to remember that this kind of huge, transformative change will only come from the bottom-up. We can't sit around waiting for top-down solutions. And we need to remember that the longer we dither, the more entrenched the problem becomes and the harder it is to implement solutions to it.
My main contribution to reducing my carbon footprint is not driving much - I use mass transit to get to work, for example. Voting or other political engagement in my case is entirely pointless, as here the parties are in agreement about doing essentially nothing (and certainly nothing more than the little that is already being done), and the folks now in power are the most pro-hydrocarbons party of them all.
In terms of preparing, I guess the answer is nothing. I'm faraway enough from oceans or large forests to not worry too much about the direct impact of rising sea levels or fires. As for the worst case scenario, of civilizational collapse, I don't think there's much I can realistically do to prepare. For lesser catastrophes, I've diversified my savings, including into gold.
One of the important aspects of climate change is that it is not just about rising sea levels. It is about changing and destabilizing weather patterns. It is also about the ensuing political change -- that may involve people from coastal areas moving inland, but also more international immigration and refugees. Maybe we can avoid global war, but when we look at the increase of nationalism in many countries and the rise of populist movements, that seems harder to imagine. There have been predictions of a huge farming crisis and food shortages, although I can remember those predictions from my youth, and so far the farmers have been able to increase productivity, so maybe that will not be so significant.
Preparing for all of that on an individual basis involves risk assessment that is hard to do in the long term. Maybe self-sufficency would be good -- but most people are vulnerable to extreme weather whatever their location. Probably being rich would help.
I recycle and reuse and I try to minimize my use of the world's resources in various ways when it does not interfere with what I want to do. (I do fly falrly often.) I do those things more for to appease my sense of guilt rather than out of a belief that it will make any difference. I do address some of the issues in my teaching when I can, in an effort to raise student awareness.
But these days, with the USA largely ignoring climate change, and even Western Europe doing relatively little about it, I'm less inclined to waste my time with individual efforts of being a good ecological citizen. It seems that the only thing that will really get people to make real changes to society is the dire predictions coming true.
Quote from: dr_codex on January 04, 2020, 07:09:52 AM
Quote from: pigou on January 03, 2020, 10:48:13 AM
Quote from: downer on October 31, 2019, 06:43:32 AM
It seems pretty clear that individual efforts to change eating patterns, recycle, take the bus, and the rest of it, (all of which I do), will make little difference. Even the international agreements on taking action on climate change are unlikely to make much difference. Nothing will stop the coming major changes in climate at this stage. It is too late. The only question is how bad it will be and how well different countries are able to adjust to the changes.
This. And the best estimates are... not so bad (at least in the US). Expected costs by 2090 are about $500bn/year when US GDP even at modest growth will be around $80tn. Not trivial (and we should do more to mitigate it), but that doesn't make it a top three issue. The trade war, health care, and the changing demand for labor are all already imposing a higher burden than this.
Even projections about flooding just assume no response on part of cities. NYC is investing $10bn in flood barriers that'll protect the city in the medium-term, which is pocket change compared to the 1.7tn of Manhattan's real estate value alone.
Calculating only the financial cost to the U.S. is pretty parochial way to do the math, and is telling about the scope of the social problem.
NYC is never going to build those fancy sluice gates, although it will probably find a way to spend the money tackling urgent infrastructure problems, one inch ahead of each increase in sea rise. (Raising the BQE, reinforcing the FDR Drive, etc. etc.) There will be no political will to sacrifice the North Shore of Nassau County, southern New Jersey, and southern Connecticut. There will also be no political will to save the South Bronx. The opposition is mobilized, as it was not when the same calculus left parts of New Orleans to drown.
It's just a matter of available data. Presumably, one could do an equal report globally, but it's going to be based on much less reliable figures. Nonetheless, claims by groups like "extinction rebellion" are premised on the notion that this could wipe out much of humanity, when we're talking about comfortably less than 1% of GDP cost of mitigation. Perhaps I am downplaying the consequences of climate change here, but I'm downplaying them from the level of public perception, not the level of actual scenarios in the IPCC. (Though, I'll also note that scientists have seemingly been unwilling to put probabilities on the various scenarios. Really hard to do risk planning when there is a wide range of possible outcomes and experts won't tell you how likely they think each one will be. That is left as an exercise to re-insurance companies.)
Doing policy based on emotions can be really costly. Take the response to Fukushima: Germany began phasing out nuclear power plants. Guess what they got replaced with... coal. The consequence? About 1,100 deaths per year due to the polluting effect of the new plants. The social cost (primarily health) of this switch is estimated at $12bn per year. And yes, it also increased carbon emissions, contributing to climate change. https://www.nber.org/papers/w26598
The article that started this thread also noted that cities like Shanghai might need to be evacuated, because they'll be under water. That's just not a sensible prediction and it undermines the credibility of people making the claims. Not that I'm doubting the projected sea level rise, but I'm doubting that China will just sit there and watch one of its largest cities turn into Venice without investing pocket change into infrastructure. So if that's the basis for a prediction of mass internal migration ("assume zero adaptation"), the model is fundamentally wrong and not useful.
As for NYC: we'll see, but the first defensive barriers are supposed to be finished next year. Not that city projects don't tend to take longer and cost more than projected, but I suspect the people working on Wall Street and living in the surrounding areas have enough political clout to make sure it gets done before their homes and offices are flooded.
And on Australia: yes, climate change is contributing to the severity of the fires. So do arsonists and lack of resources among fire fighters. The latter two problems are much easier to address than combating climate change. Especially because we're talking about the marginal benefit of, say, 2 degrees vs. 1.5 degrees increase from pre-industrial, not about going back to the temperature from... well, none of the agreements or IPCC reports actually define what the reference climate is, although this paper (https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/BAMS-D-16-0007.1) proposes we could use 1720-1800.
We put up a solar power plant that was a bit overbuilt for our household needs, and sell the surplus power to our local utility, providing more low carbon power to our community.
We chose to live near work, so day to day driving is not significant.
Next steps:
Improve the insulation in our house, research a switch from our current natural gas heater to an electro-powered heat pump system. We may look into adding a small wind turbine, and the ability to store electricity in a large battery system.
We also decided that relocation (looking for a better/different job elsewhere) is not advantageous (in terms of anticipating climate changes) given where we currently live, so optimizing our home and staying in it is the plan.
Quote from: magnemite on January 10, 2020, 02:22:57 PM
We put up a solar power plant that was a bit overbuilt for our household needs, and sell the surplus power to our local utility, providing more low carbon power to our community.
We chose to live near work, so day to day driving is not significant.
Next steps:
Improve the insulation in our house, research a switch from our current natural gas heater to an electro-powered heat pump system. We may look into adding a small wind turbine, and the ability to store electricity in a large battery system.
We also decided that relocation (looking for a better/different job elsewhere) is not advantageous (in terms of anticipating climate changes) given where we currently live, so optimizing our home and staying in it is the plan.
I looked into solar energy some years back. Sticker shock kept me from ever revisiting the idea. I live in an (already) warm and humid climate where household cooling is a bigger energy demand than heating. And getting more so in a hurry at this point--this is the third year in which our usual mild winter has been replaced by what amounts to a ludicrously prolonged month of March. This is the second day in January with 70-degree temperatures, something unheard of only five years ago. Less than a decade ago 70-degree highs on any day in the winter months were unknown. Our winters are vanishing so rapidly around here that I wonder whether we've already reached some kind of tipping point here.
I don't know of anybody locally who uses household solar power, but there are large solar farms in the works in the region.
I'm shocked by how many people are of the "I'll be dead so I don't care" or "I'm American so I don't care" camp.
Could you be more self absorbed?
Not sure it's simple self-absorption...it's also a realistic assessment of the size of the problem and the Lilliputian scale of individual humans' ability to address it in any effective way over a limited lifespan.
Turning an ocean liner around mid-sea takes time....
M.
Quote from: pedanticromantic on January 12, 2020, 07:19:36 AM
I'm shocked by how many people are of the "I'll be dead so I don't care" or "I'm American so I don't care" camp.
Could you be more self absorbed?
Probably. I can't speak for anyone else on this thread, but I'm someone who has made some efforts to reduce my carbon footprint (eg I walk to work) but not others (eg I still fly about twice per year). I'm aware of the magnitude of the problem and I support the types of major social, political, corporate, economic, etc shifts necessary to solve this problem. But I'm also aware that individual changes can only get us so far without those major society-level changes. And I am not willing to sacrifice my mental health or significantly compromise my quality of life if it won't make a difference.
So, I'll vote and advocate for the big changes and continue to make small changes in my life. If we start making the big society-level changes, then I'll be fully committed to Team Humanity. But if I'm the last generation of my species able to die of something other than the effects of climate change, I'm going to see as much of this amazing planet as I can while I can.
It's self absorbed, but not so much as the people denying any of this is even happening and the corporations making it worse.
Quote from: pedanticromantic on January 12, 2020, 07:19:36 AM
I'm shocked by how many people are of the "I'll be dead so I don't care" or "I'm American so I don't care" camp.
Could you be more self absorbed?
Reducing carbon emissions is a solved problem: a carbon tax and a trade zone that imposes a tariffs on goods from countries that don't have a minimum prize on carbon. Whether it gets implemented is a political question that is largely not tied to whether you can convince another 5% of the population to believe in human causes of climate change or to support the specific policy -- much less whether you can convince them to fly less. And the fact that politicians talk about voluntary agreements and non-binding promises suggests there is zero will to make any of it happen.
In the EU, the number of airline passengers has hit a record height last year. So has the sale of SUVs (as a share of all cars). We don't have a proper counterfactual to say what would have happened without Greta and climate protests, but I'd be pretty confident in proposing a precise zero effect. If her actions and appeals don't influence consumer behavior, what makes you think yours would? So we're back to the impact of you as a single consumer. Whether you choose to fly or whether you bike to work has exactly zero impact on the climate. Your actions don't cascade to influence billions of people, and even if they did, consumer decisions aren't primarily where carbon emissions happen.
How many of the people who pledge not to fly actually fly a reasonable amount and are changing their behavior? Among the people I have seen on social media, they're perhaps forgoing their annual vacation. The people who fly between the US, Europe, and China on a weekly basis? Not cutting back on flights. Heck, they're probably not even cutting back to economy class (which emits much less carbon per seat). Fun fact: Apple has 50 business class seats between SF and Shanghai -- daily. That's on top of private jet travel: e.g. Tim Cook is required by his board to have his own jet and companies like NetJets offer private planes on demand to other senior executives. Demand for those rental jets, for what it's worth, is growing... and those emissions swamp out many households' total annual emissions in an hour of flight time.
It's not defeatism to acknowledge that, while a lot of people may express concern about climate change, they're not taking actions that are consistent with viewing it as an existential threat. How many Democrats would vote for a Republican if he pledged to support a carbon tax? I doubt that's a winning strategy. And even many Democrats wouldn't support a carbon tax if it were tied to eliminating other regulation like fuel standards, or if the money were returned to people rather than spent on various social programs. That makes it hard to push policies that can get bipartisan support, i.e. that can actually happen.
Quote from: pigou on January 12, 2020, 10:12:30 AM
Reducing carbon emissions is a solved problem: a carbon tax and a trade zone that imposes a tariffs on goods from countries that don't have a minimum prize on carbon. Whether it gets implemented is a political question that is largely not tied to whether you can convince another 5% of the population to believe in human causes of climate change or to support the specific policy -- much less whether you can convince them to fly less. And the fact that politicians talk about voluntary agreements and non-binding promises suggests there is zero will to make any of it happen.
It's not defeatism to acknowledge that, while a lot of people may express concern about climate change, they're not taking actions that are consistent with viewing it as an existential threat. How many Democrats would vote for a Republican if he pledged to support a carbon tax? I doubt that's a winning strategy. And even many Democrats wouldn't support a carbon tax if it were tied to eliminating other regulation like fuel standards, or if the money were returned to people rather than spent on various social programs. That makes it hard to push policies that can get bipartisan support, i.e. that can actually happen.
These are both good examples of identifying something that limits action to reverse climate change. That identification alone is an important academic contribution. Identifying approaches to overcoming those is also amenable to academic study, albeit by another subdiscipline.
I think it is valuable to find the academics who can advance the next steps when we hit the limits of what we can do in our own subdiscipline. The more common action is to throw up our hands when we realize we can't take it farther ourselves, and attributing it all to politics.
Engaging ones scholarship with society is critical, so that we study what is really happening among people. Teamwork helps a lot.
Quote from: downer on October 29, 2019, 02:35:49 PM
My current plan is to enjoy myelf now and check out when it gets bad.
This is my plan as well, though he gets cranky around Christmas and isn't much fun to be around. And don't
even talk to him about reindeer flatulence as a contributor to global warming.
I recycle. Beyond that, not much.
And that grim little goblin shaking her finger at the UN is going to change precisely nothing.
Quote from: secundem_artem on January 12, 2020, 04:59:56 PM
I recycle. Beyond that, not much.
And that grim little goblin shaking her finger at the UN is going to change precisely nothing.
Indeed, a room full of globalist elites cheering wildly as someone condemns them is a perfect microcosm of our age. That they all took private jets to get there--and that the child fascist had to fly her boat crew across the world--is merely the glaze on the donut.
Just adding that recycling is generally worse for the environment than throwing things in the trash/landfill, especially when it comes to using scarce groundwater. The saving grace is that recycling in the US is now so contaminated, because people "recycle" non-recyclables, that pretty much nothing gets recycled anymore and all just ends up back in the same waste stream and a landfill. But people are sorting and that makes them feel better, which is another wonderful microcosm of our age. (It's lovely transparent at my university, where facilities staff just take the 3 different containers we have and dump them in the same trash bag. We've given up pretending, just as long as the students don't observe it.)
Although an even better use would be to burn it for electricity, which some European countries (the most environmentally friendly!) do, it is mistakenly thought to be "dirty" in the US and hence would have no chance of gaining local approval.
The history of recycling is actually quite fascinating... people thought the world was running out of landfills to bury stuff in (not policymakers, obviously, but local concerned voters) and didn't want to build more. NPR has a fantastic episode on it, followed by a sequel on whether we should recycle (spoiler: perhaps metallic cans, absolutely nothing else): https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739893511/episode-925-a-mob-boss-a-garbage-boat-and-why-we-recycle
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I think it is valuable to find the academics who can advance the next steps when we hit the limits of what we can do in our own subdiscipline. The more common action is to throw up our hands when we realize we can't take it farther ourselves, and attributing it all to politics.
But the problem isn't academic research. The outcomes we observe are the direct result of economic incentives in markets and political incentives in policy, along with the profitability of being a doomsday priest. And I don't even mean this in reference to Greta: happens in financial news (the next recession! Unemployment figures are wrong! Etc.), technology (AI will take all our jobs!), immigration (immigrants are here to murder you!), even topics as boring as congressional district setting. Gerrymandering is supposedly undermining our Democracy! And while it's bad on principal, it potentially affects 10 seats in the house out of 435, and since both parties engage in it (yes, really) the advantage for any one party is even fewer than that.
Also take the bushfires in Australia: 20 million acres. An unimaginably huge landmass that's burned down so far, and counting. How does that compare to an average year in Australia? Well, on average, every year, about 125 million acres are burned. This current bushfire is more than a rounding error, but the reason it's news is that it affects parts of the country with people in it, increasing the potential cost to (human) life and property. But it's covered as an environmental crisis, which just neglects how (remarkably) usual such huge fires seem to be.
edit: mind you, the world is full of terrible non-solutions. There's genuinely a non-profit that's recovering plastic from the ocean... at a fraction of the rate (and with much greater damage to microorganisms) than if they set up a cheap net at one of the rivers where all the trash gets into the ocean. They're selling stuff made out of this recovered plastic, so there's that. I don't generally mind, because charitable giving primarily serves to make donors feel good and they're accomplishing that.
But then I do have to listen to geniuses talking about disinvestment, because they were evidently not required to learn the basics of how financial markets work before making policy proposals. Dumping stocks because you're concerned about the morality of the company's business model has precisely zero effect on the company's stock price. Stock prices, which frighteningly many people don't seem to understand, are the discounted expectation of future cash flow... which does not actually change when a university decides no longer to invest in oil companies.
So maybe the proper academic question is: how can we make people care less and disengage? Maybe this could lower health costs, too, because anxiety disorders cost the US about $45bn per year and affect about 1 in 5 adults.
Quote from: secundem_artem on January 12, 2020, 04:59:56 PM
I recycle. Beyond that, not much.
And that grim little goblin shaking her finger at the UN is going to change precisely nothing.
I am in the 'I'll be dead about the time the worst hits" AND I live in a county which has NO recycling. None. Nada. Nil. I would have to drive about 70 miles to recycle. We are a consumerist culture. Buy anything on line lately? How much packaging vs. amount of product? i get ragey....
Well, I've recently bought an insulated tent to be used inside my apartment to sleep in if the weather gets too cold.
And I've kept all my very light dancewear components (like thin tights and gauzy overblouses) to wear in case it gets too hot.
But beyond that, I don't own a car, I rent*, I keep the thermostat very low, all my windows are sealed with bubblewrap inside and thermo-plastic outside
I buy a mix of fresh and pre-made stuff, and I fly economy when I fly.
I figure I can change myself, but I can't change much else, unless it wants to change.
M.
*My only heat inefficiency issue is not of my doing: my inane landlord blocks open the basement door on the back landing whenever he goes to Florida for the winter. (I think he thinks it will prevent radon buildup, for which there is zero evidence, but whatever...). This makes my place colder; I wait a week until his son or daughter have come and gone a couple times, then I take out the rolled-up rug he's stuck in the door, pull a looped wire through to lock the hook-and-eye contraption at the top of the door, and let them each think the other did it.
That's worked for 5 years now....keeps my heating bills down, too. - M.
Early on Sunday our region had a severe March storm--in what's supposed to be the dead of winter! Our town was virtually unscathed, but neighboring towns and rural communities were hit very hard. The county seat is still entirely without power after two days. Several of my staff still don't have power in their homes. There were three separate tornadoes, leaving several church buildings and a number of homes wrecked. Thank God there were no serious injuries.
More 70-degree weather bringing more storms expected within the next few days. It's all very well to speak complacently about how it's only projected to cost us X percentage of our GNP and so on, but the increase in violent weather is costing real people and communities dearly. Some of them are our own friends and neighbors.
Quote from: mamselle on January 13, 2020, 07:03:32 AM
Well, I've recently bought an insulated tent to be used inside my apartment to sleep in if the weather gets too cold.
And I've kept all my very light dancewear components (like thin tights and gauzy overblouses) to wear in case it gets too hot.
Is this a worthwhile activity for that dancewear?
Fighting Climate Change with Dance | KQED Arts (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N41d7BjShY)
Quote from: Hibush on January 13, 2020, 09:17:59 AM
Quote from: mamselle on January 13, 2020, 07:03:32 AM
Well, I've recently bought an insulated tent to be used inside my apartment to sleep in if the weather gets too cold.
And I've kept all my very light dancewear components (like thin tights and gauzy overblouses) to wear in case it gets too hot.
Is this a worthwhile activity for that dancewear?
Fighting Climate Change with Dance | KQED Arts (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N41d7BjShY)
Well, like much else in dance (in my opinion), the choreography is excellent, but the dancer should avoid making claims about motivation that rely on half-baked ideas whenever possible....
I very much like the shifts in impetus, the swift, fluid directional changes, and the exhilarating range-of-motion challenges, but sometimes dancers and artists should shut up and let their work speak for itself/themselves.
If it's good work, it doesn't need an apologia, although a few balloon strings let down to help out a populace that's never been trained to look at and appreciate dance in and of itself seem to be necessary these days, and some kind of angst-driven statement about meaningfulness and intentionality always plays well in those arenas as well....
The light-green stuff works well, provides good visual contrast, and lightens the scene.
But it will probably be read by the audience as "leaves," not "green snow" (and if you have to tell them, that's bogus as well.)
Likewise, this is not the first or only dance to allude to the environment: one thinks of Taylor's "Esplanade" as a celebration of life 'en pleine aire':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-B2J7YyiOk
(This is the original, and the rich petal-like colors are gorgeous-- but I'm pretty sure by the time I saw it, 5 years later, they'd gone to dappled white, light blue and green 'tights and 'tards, but I might be wrong about that...)
or "Airs," (go to 1.45 to skip the discussion):
https://the-dots.com/projects/how-merce-cunningham-reinvented-the-way-the-world-saw-dance-dazed-digital-307160
or both Cunningham's "Rainforest" and "Summerspace" (my favorite ever), both shown in clips here:
https://the-dots.com/projects/how-merce-cunningham-reinvented-the-way-the-world-saw-dance-dazed-digital-307160
As I say, the choreography is excellent and I'd like to see the whole piece if possible. It would be very worthwhile.
And yeah, that little gossamer overblouse I used to use for warmups would work well as part of a costume for this or some other piece...
But I get irritated with the idea that a work of art a) has to "say something" and b) only gets funded if you tie it to some good cause.
I'm absolutely for responsible living and consideration for the stewardship we owe the earth as our wider global homeland.
But I'm with Bell (Clive, that is) in those situations where the question of Art's purpose (significant form, basically) are up for discussion....and with Paul Weiss, who (he would say, with Aristotle) saw energetic action as a representation of life in and of itself, therefore needing no "explanation," or apologetic (as opposed to positively stated) apologia.
M.
Quote from: apl68 on January 10, 2020, 03:22:48 PM
Quote from: magnemite on January 10, 2020, 02:22:57 PM
We put up a solar power plant that was a bit overbuilt for our household needs, and sell the surplus power to our local utility, providing more low carbon power to our community.
We chose to live near work, so day to day driving is not significant.
Next steps:
Improve the insulation in our house, research a switch from our current natural gas heater to an electro-powered heat pump system. We may look into adding a small wind turbine, and the ability to store electricity in a large battery system.
We also decided that relocation (looking for a better/different job elsewhere) is not advantageous (in terms of anticipating climate changes) given where we currently live, so optimizing our home and staying in it is the plan.
I looked into solar energy some years back. Sticker shock kept me from ever revisiting the idea. I live in an (already) warm and humid climate where household cooling is a bigger energy demand than heating. And getting more so in a hurry at this point--this is the third year in which our usual mild winter has been replaced by what amounts to a ludicrously prolonged month of March. This is the second day in January with 70-degree temperatures, something unheard of only five years ago. Less than a decade ago 70-degree highs on any day in the winter months were unknown. Our winters are vanishing so rapidly around here that I wonder whether we've already reached some kind of tipping point here.
I don't know of anybody locally who uses household solar power, but there are large solar farms in the works in the region.
If your largest use of power is home cooling, and this is needed during the longer-daylight portions of the year, then it seems to me that solar would be ideal. Prices have gone down quite a bit, there is still a federal tax credit, and it is worth checking your state to see what they do (my state offered a sales tax break, and also requires the power company purchase the surplus power our system produces).
I drive an 18 year old car *knocks on wood*, recycle, watch my water and electricity usage and reuse plastic bags for veg. When things break, we try to fix them instead of just buying another item. Clothes are mended, electronics are taken apart and repaired, etc.
The only thing I am preparing for long term is running out of cheap energy. When I can't make it to the gym I go for a long walk instead and try to get psychologically prepared for when I might have to walk more often. I would like to bike more but my town is sort of hilly and dangerous for biking.
Regarding recycling, keep in mind that with more technology society tends towards dematerialization. Bucky Fuller called this ephemeralization. We do more with less material. All of your food packaging has gotten thinner. Copper phone lines were replaced with glass fiber optic cables and then now WiFi signals. I gave up on saving bottles and cans for two reasons. I can't accumulate too much garbage in my apartment and the local recycling centers are useless. They close down for various reasons or they say they are out of cash to pay back your deposits. I did start recycling plastic bags and cardboard boxes simply to use for my online selling gig.
The only serious change to fossil fuel consumption will happen when we have effective urban planning and mass transit but that won't be easy in the USA.
On the plus side I don't own a car, mostly walk, sometimes take transit, rarely ride share. However, I do fly about 4-5 times a year, which probably cancels a lot of that out (but better than driving AND flying).
As someone mentioned earlier on the thread, my biggest contribution is probably being a life long vegetarian.
I moved from an apartment to my own house this summer, which is probably net negative in that I'm using more space and it's an older house which is not very energy efficient and has an oil boiler. However, it has enabled me to start composting my food waste which will keep it from producing methane in the landfill, and I'll be putting in a veggie garden this spring.
I pay a small premium to get 100% wind energy (yes, I know the electrons are the same, but it offsets costs of increased production).
Things I'm planning to do: see about adding more insulation to the house and replacing the windows with modern insulated ones (need to save up for that though), looking into solar panels (there are companies that will essentially lease your roof and sell the electricity back to you), looking into converting the boiler to natural gas (still not great but better than heating oil).
Its hard not just to feel helpless about it all, but we do what we can. . .
Snowfall total this winter seems to be less than a third of the average. I heard a brief radio announcement a few days ago about heightened brush fire risk. In February. I think I'm going to invest in some rain barrels.