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What should be done... about climate change


Rippounet

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10 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Do you prefer your fascism to dictate what you can and can't eat, or do you prefer your fascism to dictate whether or not human beings are killed en masse?

Why do you keep bringing up what one can or cannot eat? If you look at that EPA sources page, agriculture as a whole accounts for only 9% of the total and livestock is not even the largest component of that:

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Livestock, especially ruminants such as cattle, produce methane ( CH4) as part of their normal digestive processes. This process is called enteric fermentation, and it represents almost one third of the emissions from the Agriculture economic sector.

In other words, if all cattle were to be magically transported to an alternate universe, our greenhouse gas emissions would decrease by less than 3%. You might be able to get a bit more out of forcing people to only eat food sourced as close to them as possible and thus save energy on transportation and refrigeration, but given the resistance such restrictions will undoubtedly engender, I really don't see any government telling people what they can eat -- there's a lot of lower hanging fruit on the greenhouse gas reduction tree.

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21 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Why do you keep bringing up what one can or cannot eat? If you look at that EPA sources page, agriculture as a whole accounts for only 9% of the total and livestock is not even the largest component of that:

I like how you ignored literally the paragraph before that and the paragraph above that and just put that one in. Methane is not as big a deal as the land use, the fertilizer use, the transportation, refrigeration, and supply system of meat production. I linked before to that as well. 

21 minutes ago, Altherion said:

In other words, if all cattle were to be magically transported to an alternate universe, our greenhouse gas emissions would decrease by less than 3%.

See above.

21 minutes ago, Altherion said:

You might be able to get a bit more out of forcing people to only eat food sourced as close to them as possible and thus save energy on transportation and refrigeration, but given the resistance such restrictions will undoubtedly engender, I really don't see any government telling people what they can eat -- there's a lot of lower hanging fruit on the greenhouse gas reduction tree.

I don't think that you quite grasp what we'd actually need to do in order to fix things. There might- maybe - be lower hanging fruit than taxing and outlawing most meat production and consumption, but even if they are it still means we will likely need to change meat production and consumption as well! This, as @sologdin pointed out, isn't a either-or proposition. We need to move to clean energy AND we need to change how we produce and consume a whole lot of our foodstuffs.

That is, of course, assuming you care to stop things. IF you're simply interested in making things slightly less horrifying but still want to spend large amounts of budget on managing natural disasters and ecologically-caused refugee crises, then sure. By all means, we should just eat whatever we want and wherever we want to get it from. 

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21 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

Kalbears crack about steak puzzles me; there be a lot of real estate more suited to grazing than planting crops.  

You know, you don't actually have to graze things if you can. It's not a requirement! And you certainly don't have to do it on the scale that we currently do it now. I'm not suggesting replacing grazing land and planting wheat or corn there; I'm suggesting replacing grazing land with not actually producing anything there. 

And if you were wondering, grazing isn't actually the main way we feed cattle. Grazing in the world accounts for 9% of all beef production. So yeah, that's not really the big deal you think it is. 

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49 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I like how you ignored literally the paragraph before that and the paragraph above that and just put that one in. Methane is not as big a deal as the land use, the fertilizer use, the transportation, refrigeration, and supply system of meat production. I linked before to that as well. 

I'm not sure what you mean. Here is the paragraph above:

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Various management practices on agricultural soils can lead to increased availability of nitrogen in the soil and result in emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O). Specific activities that contribute to N2O emissions from agricultural lands include the application of synthetic and organic fertilizers, the growth of nitrogen-fixing crops, the drainage of organic soil, and irrigation practices. Management of agricultural soils accounts for almost half of the emissions from the Agriculture economic sector.

This accounts for an additional 4-4.5%, but you can't get rid of it altogether -- people have to eat something and this is how we grow crops nowadays.

56 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I don't think that you quite grasp what we'd actually need to do in order to fix things. There might- maybe - be lower hanging fruit than taxing and outlawing most meat production and consumption, but even if they are it still means we will likely need to change meat production and consumption as well! This, as @sologdin pointed out, isn't a either-or proposition. We need to move to clean energy AND we need to change how we produce and consume a whole lot of our foodstuffs.

That is, of course, assuming you care to stop things. IF you're simply interested in making things slightly less horrifying but still want to spend large amounts of budget on managing natural disasters and ecologically-caused refugee crises, then sure. By all means, we should just eat whatever we want and wherever we want to get it from.

It's not an either-or proposition, it's a question of what you can do without the backlash destroying your faction -- in the electoral sense if you're lucky, physically otherwise. Even the Soviet Union was wary of outright banning meat in peacetime. Do you really think you can get away with this in the US or the EU? It's much more effective to save your efforts for transportation and energy generation.

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1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

I like how you ignored literally the paragraph before that and the paragraph above that and just put that one in. Methane is not as big a deal as the land use, the fertilizer use, the transportation, refrigeration, and supply system of meat production. I linked before to that as well. 

See above.

I don't think that you quite grasp what we'd actually need to do in order to fix things. There might- maybe - be lower hanging fruit than taxing and outlawing most meat production and consumption, but even if they are it still means we will likely need to change meat production and consumption as well! This, as @sologdin pointed out, isn't a either-or proposition. We need to move to clean energy AND we need to change how we produce and consume a whole lot of our foodstuffs.

That is, of course, assuming you care to stop things. IF you're simply interested in making things slightly less horrifying but still want to spend large amounts of budget on managing natural disasters and ecologically-caused refugee crises, then sure. By all means, we should just eat whatever we want and wherever we want to get it from. 

Again, refrigeration, transport, processing etc all falls under the 72% or so of emissions under the “Energy” category. All of which can be addressed by the advent of renewable energy supported by mass battery storage, that Tesla is working towards.

The answer is to flip the world over to sustainable energy. That is the biggest slice of the emissions cake by a massive margin.

Whether we eat steak or not is insignificant by comparison. I can’t help but think that the anti-meat crusade is influenced as much by misguided ethical objections to the meat industry as it is by actual climate change considerations.

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While it is a smaller fraction it is something that we can do immediately. That it may have other benefits matters less than it simply being an easier target; the lobbying reach of livestock farmers is far less than oil.

And again, we really dont have time to waste any more. 

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6 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

While it is a smaller fraction it is something that we can do immediately. That it may have other benefits matters less than it simply being an easier target; the lobbying reach of livestock farmers is far less than oil.

And again, we really dont have time to waste any more. 

 

Real tough sell.

Been reading a pile of climate articles dealing with everything from the melting Greenland ice sheet to record breaking temperatures.  Comments sections are dominated by far right conspiracy types who loudly insist the whole thing is a globalist hoax.

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11 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

While it is a smaller fraction it is something that we can do immediately. That it may have other benefits matters less than it simply being an easier target; the lobbying reach of livestock farmers is far less than oil.

How is it an easier target? The main opposition will not be from livestock farmers, it will be from people who like to eat meat and there are a whole lot of them. Unlike electricity or transportation, you won't just be fighting the producers, you'll be fighting both the producers and the consumers. It's arguably the hardest of the five sectors and certainly one of the top two.

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22 minutes ago, Altherion said:

How is it an easier target? The main opposition will not be from livestock farmers, it will be from people who like to eat meat and there are a whole lot of them. Unlike electricity or transportation, you won't just be fighting the producers, you'll be fighting both the producers and the consumers. It's arguably the hardest of the five sectors and certainly one of the top two.

Things like the impossible burger make it significantly easier. Same with the health benefits and whatnot. First you aim for the worst offenders - beef production, which is far worse for people's health and far worse for the environment. Yeah, people do like beef, but it's not hard to make it too expensive or too immoral to eat regularly. Fast food is already doing switching to things like beyond meat. 

But mostly, you don't have a trillion dollar industry fighting you. You have public opinion, which can be swayed far more easily than changing the oil production habits of those big companies. The notion that because you're fighting both means it's harder is obviously bullshit; fighting two infants is a lot easier than fighting one giant dude. We've already seen major success stories in the US with things like tobacco - something that people were fighting both the producers and the consumers. And after the producers were forced to tell everyone how bad their shit is, and we taxed it a lot, tobacco use dropped to a tenth of what it was in the US within 10 years. 

Lots and lots of people like eating meat, but that's because they enjoy the taste. It's not because they are particularly excited about killing a cow. Give them something that tastes as good as meat does and they'll be happy to eat that too. 

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38 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Things like the impossible burger make it significantly easier. Same with the health benefits and whatnot. First you aim for the worst offenders - beef production, which is far worse for people's health and far worse for the environment. Yeah, people do like beef, but it's not hard to make it too expensive or too immoral to eat regularly. Fast food is already doing switching to things like beyond meat. 

But mostly, you don't have a trillion dollar industry fighting you. You have public opinion, which can be swayed far more easily than changing the oil production habits of those big companies. The notion that because you're fighting both means it's harder is obviously bullshit; fighting two infants is a lot easier than fighting one giant dude. We've already seen major success stories in the US with things like tobacco - something that people were fighting both the producers and the consumers. And after the producers were forced to tell everyone how bad their shit is, and we taxed it a lot, tobacco use dropped to a tenth of what it was in the US within 10 years. 

Lots and lots of people like eating meat, but that's because they enjoy the taste. It's not because they are particularly excited about killing a cow. Give them something that tastes as good as meat does and they'll be happy to eat that too. 

Solve the energy problem and the climate change issue is resolved. Force people to stop eating meat through some humongous social engineering / outrage culture campaign, and the climate change threat still remains largely unchanged.

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24 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Things like the impossible burger make it significantly easier. Same with the health benefits and whatnot. First you aim for the worst offenders - beef production, which is far worse for people's health and far worse for the environment. Yeah, people do like beef, but it's not hard to make it too expensive or too immoral to eat regularly. Fast food is already doing switching to things like beyond meat. 

But mostly, you don't have a trillion dollar industry fighting you. You have public opinion, which can be swayed far more easily than changing the oil production habits of those big companies. The notion that because you're fighting both means it's harder is obviously bullshit; fighting two infants is a lot easier than fighting one giant dude. We've already seen major success stories in the US with things like tobacco - something that people were fighting both the producers and the consumers. And after the producers were forced to tell everyone how bad their shit is, and we taxed it a lot, tobacco use dropped to a tenth of what it was in the US within 10 years. 

Lots and lots of people like eating meat, but that's because they enjoy the taste. It's not because they are particularly excited about killing a cow. Give them something that tastes as good as meat does and they'll be happy to eat that too. 

Alright now you're getting near my area, or at least something I can respond to.  Places with the impossible burger will still have the actual thing available, and the latter will outsell the former for time immemorial unless there's something I'm missing.  It might work on the coasts, though, albeit I'm not really sure on that point - from my understanding they're pretty equivalent to actual burgers when it comes to health, and how much energy does it take them making that shit in a lab?

As for public opinion, I dunno.  Not sure anyone knows.  How do you change that?  The GND - that was an attempt, and it was introduced with, charitably, a mix of courageous symbolism and righteous idealism.  And that's it.  I don't know public opinion, and neither do you, so stop acting like you do.  I would love to try to get someone up for something like the GND.  I just don't want it to be Jay Inslee.  Anyway, it's unlikely to make any effect.   

I'm just glad my uncle stopped selling off the calves too.  He was making good money for a while there doing so, but I guess eventually you gotta keep your hands "clean."  Do "lots and lots of people like eating meat"?  Uh, yeah.  And that's not gonna change cuz of fake meat that's just as (un)healthy.  You're asking the entire culture to change things based on what?  Some guy in a lab?  Good luck.

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6 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

See, of those two choices I prefer the wall over the “eco fascist state” option thankyouverymuch.

Of course you do.

But as was pointed out you're getting some form of fascism anyway. Either a universalist kind or a nationalist kind. I don't believe the nationalist kind will have that many more "freedoms" to offer. Its main purpose will be to protect the current socio-economic structure, it won't actually give two figs about individuals.

Next you're missing my point. Assuming some countries try to selfishly hide behind walls... how will everyone else react? It's not just desperation... many humans would rather have everyone die than let the others survive at their expense. We're in this boat together and walls do not stop nuclear missiles. 

Which is why everyone is also missing the point about meat. It's not *that* much of a problem today. It's still impossible for all humans who want some to consume it. We simply can't afford the entire world to adopt a Western lifestyle and it's crazy to assume the rest of the world will tolerate a Western "exception." Long story short the Western lifestyle *is* the problem and we need to let it go for the world to move on.

Tl;dr: this global problem requires a universalist solution. Because of human psychology there is no alternative. We cannot start a competition between nations in a world with nuclear weapons, so we need solutions everyone will agree on. Which is why eco-fascism is the only one that will allow humanity to survive. 

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36 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I wasn't familiar with ecofascism till reading posts here.

No one is, it hasn't been theorized yet. So far it's mainly an insult thrown around by climate change deniers. The occasional etho-nationalist might claim to be an eco-fascist but that's only because they're too dumb to understand that "eco-fascism" by definition can only be inherently universalist - and globalist. Or perhaps they're smart enough to know that it's about to emerge and want to preemptively coopt and taint it. Or a bit of both  (cognitive dissonance is common in ethno-nationalists).

The term is scary and I'm only using it so that it's clear that dealing with global warming means rethinking our conception of individual liberty. Of course it doesn't have to be an ideology to be feared... it will only be if we don't act soon. It's the prime irony : the sooner we act and the less oppressive environmentalism will be. Otoh the longer we trust "the market" and the darker our future will be. It's up to us, really. 

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3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Of course you do.

But as was pointed out you're getting some form of fascism anyway. Either a universalist kind or a nationalist kind. I don't believe the nationalist kind will have that many more "freedoms" to offer. Its main purpose will be to protect the current socio-economic structure, it won't actually give two figs about individuals.

Next you're missing my point. Assuming some countries try to selfishly hide behind walls... how will everyone else react? It's not just desperation... many humans would rather have everyone die than let the others survive at their expense. We're in this boat together and walls do not stop nuclear missiles. 

Which is why everyone is also missing the point about meat. It's not *that* much of a problem today. It's still impossible for all humans who want some to consume it. We simply can't afford the entire world to adopt a Western lifestyle and it's crazy to assume the rest of the world will tolerate a Western "exception." Long story short the Western lifestyle *is* the problem and we need to let it go for the world to move on.

Tl;dr: this global problem requires a universalist solution. Because of human psychology there is no alternative. We cannot start a competition between nations in a world with nuclear weapons, so we need solutions everyone will agree on. Which is why eco-fascism is the only one that will allow humanity to survive. 

I think unless some kind of benevolent AI takeover happens a global nuclear war is kinda unavoidable at some point. The USA will most likely come out on top if that happens.

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5 minutes ago, Wolfgang I said:

I think unless some kind of benevolent AI takeover happens a global nuclear war is kinda unavoidable at some point. The USA will most likely come out on top if that happens.

Yeah, on top of a pile of frozen ashes...

I'm ok with giving power to an AI though, humans are fools. There's an Asimov story along those lines. Or was it K.Dick? 

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12 hours ago, Rippounet said:

In a nutshell, climate change is bad enough, but you need to add human geopolitics on top of that. What happens when the entire agricultural sector of a nation that has nuclear weapons fails? Will that nation simply accept its fate and peacefully disappear?

They could attempt buying food off of countries that still have some. How on earth would nuclear war improve their situation? Do you think they'd simply launch a nuclear attack out of spite because some countries have it better?

12 hours ago, Rippounet said:

I may be alone on this but I'd even rather live under a totalitarian eco-fascist state of sorts. Take my car and my computer and my steak... I don't mind if it's for the greater good. "Freedom" is just a buzzword anyway.

Totalitarian states for a "good cause" have happened before. It has never worked. I have a very hard time seeing fascism as the solution to the climate emergency.

4 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Which is why everyone is also missing the point about meat. It's not *that* much of a problem today. It's still impossible for all humans who want some to consume it. We simply can't afford the entire world to adopt a Western lifestyle and it's crazy to assume the rest of the world will tolerate a Western "exception." Long story short the Western lifestyle *is* the problem and we need to let it go for the world to move on.

The Western lifestyle isn't going anywhere. If that's your best shot at solving the problem then you have already failed. Solutions (like electric cars, veganism, cycling to work, etc.) may be incorporated into the Western lifestyle, though. You can't go backwards in history to a simpler, safer time or a simpler, safer lifestyle. You'll as soon get rid of Western lifestyle as conservatives will get rid of feminism or identity politics.

4 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Tl;dr: this global problem requires a universalist solution.

A universalist solution would require a universal consensus or an empowered global actor, none of which really exist right now. This is as unrealistic as Kalbear's religious solution. If lots of small-ish initiatives from a diverse bunch of actors ranging from national governments to NGOs to Elon Musk to Greta Thunberg can't do the trick... then the trick will not be done.

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38 minutes ago, Mentat said:

If lots of small-ish initiatives from a diverse bunch of actors ranging from national governments to NGOs to Elon Musk to Greta Thunberg can't do the trick... then the trick will not be done.

This is what I was alluding to. You're already behind and you don't even realize it.

A few days ago Greta Thunberg made a speech in front of the French National Assembly explaining that we only had 8 years to act in order to prevent +1,5°C.
That afternoon, that very same afternoon, the Assembly ratified the CETA, a free-trade agreement between Canada and the EU that everyone knows will make things worse.
We're not just not making things better, we're actually making things worse. I think the best case scenario now is somewhere around +3°C and that's extremely optimistic. In actuality I'd say we're going to anywhere between +4°C and +10°C (+10°C of course being a way of saying "killing everything and everyone on the planet").
Now some representatives did wake up and refuse to ratify the treaty, even among the presidential majority. That's something. But it's too little, too late, and the treaty was ratified anyway.
What this means is that our current institutions have already failed us. Look at the US: even if Trumpism magically disappeared and someone as radical as AOC became president in 2020 she'd have her hands tied behind her back by a Republican Senate.
China? They're trying, but it's healf-hearted at the moment. I guess they do seem smarter about it than Trump but that's a low standard.
And then you have Bolsonaro in Brazil.

We're already talking about survival. This is not hyperbolic or hysterical, at this point this is cold hard fact. Thunberg has already failed. Musk won't be fast enough. The question each and every one of us should be asking themselves right now is: do we act or not?
What is needed is a massive political transformation and we have less than a decade to achieve it.

38 minutes ago, Mentat said:

The Western lifestyle isn't going anywhere.

The Western lifestyle is already dead. What "trusting the market" means is making almost everything so expensive that only the wealthiest 10% (maybe 20% if we're extremely optimistic) can afford what you think of as the "Western lifestyle."

Combine this with neo-liberal policies and with social mobility essentially gone you have a highly unequal stratified society in which power is held by the very corporations that are responsible for the mess in the first place and at least 80% of the population have to deal with its consequences on their own. It won't matter much that we still have supermarkets when we start suffocating because our massively polluted megalopolises become unlivable...

Again, you should realize this has become the realistic outcome. We're already seeing it! I experienced it just last month!

38 minutes ago, Mentat said:

Totalitarian states for a "good cause" have happened before. It has never worked.

Well that depends what you mean by "worked." Of course totalitarian states are disasters from a humanist perspective, and there's doubt as to whether they can really endure in the long-run (though NK may be a counter-example... ).
I'd posit that totalitarianism tends to work just fine if i) its ideology has the support of a significant proportion of the population from the start and ii) it delivers on its most important promises.

Thing is, the way things are going, humanism is already dead. So why be so intent on protecting structures that have already failed? It makes no sense. People who'd rather be free than alive probably have no children.
Not that I'm advocating for totalitarianism mind you, what I'm saying is that unless we have a political awakening, that will become the last resort.

38 minutes ago, Mentat said:

They could attempt buying food off of countries that still have some. How on earth would nuclear war improve their situation? Do you think they'd simply launch a nuclear attack out of spite because some countries have it better?

Pretty much, yes. Of course, spite apparently won't be the main reason for it. As you say, nations will attempt to buy food, or water, or oil... The prices will be too high for the buyers, trade negotiations will go south, and wars will begin. At some point, someone on the losing side will choose mutual assured destruction rather than slow painful death and/or foreign occupation.

38 minutes ago, Mentat said:

This is as unrealistic as Kalbear's religious solution.

Today it may be, because we're only starting to feel the first effects of global warming. In a few more heat waves I'm pretty sure everyone will see this as perfectly realistic.
When the heat rises and resources dwindle it will come down to a political fight between universalism and nationalism. And if nationalism prevails we'll all end with a mushroom cloud. That's why I opened this thread: if Kalbear's religion doesn't exist yet it's high time we created it.

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