LA is burning & our implicit political baseline is still that climate policies are acceptable if and only if they require zero sacrifice or even mild lifestyle change on anyone's part.
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"Tackling climate change effectively requires a shift to a more equal society, where happiness is prioritised over consumption. It necessitates radical behavioural changes, particularly from the wealthiest, and policies that enable these changes."
That's the catch: a more equal society. If you have friends from elite universities, talk to a range of them, esp those in finance or tech.
Peter Kalmus (Harvard '97) gave us thoughts on education in 2016, during a visit at his now gone house in Altadena https://newyork.thecityatlas.org/people/peter-kalmus/
This is why nothing goes anywhere. Bill McKibben (H. '82) & others never seem to have a plan, or *any effect whatsoever,* on their own peer group or successive classes from elite uni's. Harvard '25 knows who Greta Thunberg is. The STEM-skilled heading to finance cd be climate scientists themselves.
There is an enormous feedback loop at work.
In the US and the UK, bright people work for rich people, and rich people want to get richer. Inaction has nothing to do with lack of info on climate, and not that much to do w/fossil fuel co's, though they benefit from it enormously.
I mostly agree with you except for the bit about fossil fuel companies. They also should shoulder much blame for inaction. They’ve had 150+ years to rig the system and we need to unrig it!
The thought that minimal or little sacrifice is required to offset the rapid and urgent changes need to address the emergency is ridiculous The pain needed to shift away will be real and prolonged, but I doubt we have the will or desire
Stay home. Don't be a world traveler, watch drone footage on YouTube. If you want to see granny live in her town. Dont roast the planet to have thanksgiving and Christmas dinner with her. FFS use FaceTime. Every single moment of everyday day stay focused on our survival. Thank you 🌎
LA is burning at the same time President Jimmy Carter, the last president who ever asked Americans to conserve energy, was eulogized and buried at age 100.
Remember that time Jimmy Carter asked Americans to wear a fucking sweater & turn down their thermostat to save energy?Yeah some people are still big mad about that.
Starts at top. Until the neo liberal oligarchy and their puppet politicians stop flying around in private jets and owning multiple 40,000 square foot homes, everyday people will resist giving up their gas driven pick up trucks and air conditioning in the summer. As they should.
Nope. I’m pretty eco friendly myself. Live in city in apartment, don’t have car, etc. I’m saying it’s unfair for Oligarchs who run country to ask average Americans to change their lives while they have carbon footprints themselves equivalent to small armies. That’s all.
Quite possibly the only advanced sentient life in the known universe and we're killing our entire species for a handful of us to ... I don't even know anymore, they don't use the money for anything but making more money
For the US Republicans, it is now actively denying the existence of climate change and choosing policies to actually make it worse. Literally going backy
The political class is indulging an apathetic populace that they can have their cake & eat it. And everyone is quite happy to go along with it because truth is we are addicted to the lifestyle that fossil fuels afford. However these lifestyles will become increasingly uncomfortable, unless we change
2021 should've been game changing for climate denialism in British Columbia, but a man who got kicked out of the right wing party for his climate denialism went and rebuilt an even more right wing party and came hundreds of votes away from a majority government. I doubt the US will be different. 🙁
100%. Bravo. I would also say this explains the mallaise with our cakeist politics in general. If voters prioritise something over hear they must sacrifice something over there.
I legitimately don't get the big whoop about going vegan. Do you not want to be a self-respecting, compassionate human being - because others "get to be baddies"?
When they passed the inflation reduction act and said it was a “generational investment” in fighting climate change and I saw the amount relating to that was around $600 billion I thought you’ve gotta be kidding me.
People are delusional. One thing about Nature, it causes you to face reality or die. I’ve been through hurricanes, earthquakes, and flooding. Nature is always the victor.
Luckily I’m privileged enough to be able to disassociate with this. I live in natural disaster free area and I just don’t have the bandwidth to worry about everyone reaping consequences we as a country accept.
I live in coastal southeastern North Carolina. After Hurricane Florence and the deaths of 30+ people, my MAGA neighbors do not believe in climate change. While we’re dredging our beaches to “re-sand” them.
wonder if anyone reading this has noticed when camera crews are filming the endless rows of burned buildings, the amount of massive burned out trucks on driveways. It should be making us think. In a tiny tiny way, we're all singularly responsible
In developed countries it makes sense to incur some generall society wide cost, inconvenience, pony up for new tech, etc but in developing countries (I was just visiting South America) it seems like policies should be much more careful to target the wealthy only, at first anyway
Increasingly, the GOP wants people to sacrifice to accelerate global warming because their only policy position is to spite liberals. So they propose to end ev subsidies, ban new (cheaper) renewable energy projects, etc.
The whole world is burning. Not to take away from how horrific the fires in LA are. But people all over the US and the world have suffered many climate tragedies and it does seem that most ignore how bad things are on the planet.
this is so bad. diet and travel are two of the largest sources of personal carbon emissions and some of the easiest to tackle. waiting til 2035 to even start that process is shortsighted and moronic
I think this event will harden the views of the anti science climate change denialists. Human nature is like that. Throw in the lies, conspiracy theories, social media bullshit + Trump.
We’ve decided climate change is acceptable not because individuals refuse to make lifestyle changes, but because governments refuse to make the necessary changes to capitalism.
The liberal idea that climate change is the individual responsibility is not just daft ideology, but fundamentally undermines the real work needed to fix the problem
The complete freedom of capital must be curtailed, we must act collectively to stop this system of production destroying our world
It’s not as if we even LIKE or ENJOY our lives of rampant consumption. Oh no we’ll have to stop doing the thing that makes everyone miserable or we’ll all die. Except the newspaper says we can’t. Capitalism is whack
I'm pretty sure that if everyone switched to more fuel-efficient cars and stopped eating beef, the impact would be way, way bigger than everything AI is using right now. It's putting a strain on the grid in places but collectively AI isn't much more impactful than video streaming data centers
True that it's just one factor, but it's an entirely optional one. Driving more fuel-efficient cars isn't going to get us there. Average Joe flying less isn't going to get us there. It's not lifestyle change, it's corporate change.
Same thing with the water use. It's not nothing, but it's comparable to other types of data centers... And practically nothing compared to golf courses, or almond farms. Just almonds.
Green rain (rain with nitrogen fertilizer) has been ignored for decades as the source of grasses and brushes causing the uncontrolled wildfires. Green rain caused by excessive use of synthesized fertilizer and lack of urine treatment in sewage, Global nutrient enrichment can not longer be ignored!
The politics isn’t my job, but the carbon budgets are. You’re quoting my advice to Parliament. That advice meets the UK’s 2035 of 81% emissions reduction in line with Paris agreement - the first country in the world to work out how to do so for 2035. Full pathways in spring when we publish advice.
Arguably a relatively small change in comparison to what's possible, based on existing trends & food innovation. High ambition would have co-benefits like reduced water & waste pollution, lower antibiotic & disease risks & human health benefits. A lot depends on framing. Time to detoxify the debate?
@elpinchbeck.bsky.social would be really interested to debate this & discuss this with you some time. Globally, a lot hinges on reining in the shift towards meat-heavy diets, not just climate change, but also nature loss.
The Committee’s next advice is out in Feb: we’d be happy to debate it then. Helena, if you don’t know anyone on the Committee or team, worth contacting re your diets research? Thanks.
It's up to us to save our climate now. Trump/corp. 🇺🇸 will drive us into extinction - very quickly - unless we stop buying things we don't need, eating meat/eggs/dairy we don't need (no, we don't), having more babies, and traveling more than we need...RIGHT NOW.
that's been the fallacy in the climate discourse & why tech "fixes" won't work. Even if they make things more efficient/clean they just speed up convenience and consumption. My approach has been to tell the stories of how liberating it is to live with less, but tough sell for American bigness ethos.
They also wouldn't be pulling it out of the ground without state's subsidies, protection, and even military aggression of foreign countries, which are all lobbied heavily legally and illegally behind the curtain by oil companies.
Dude, there’s a billion cars on this planet. That’s a billion oil customers right there. They’d do it without a single subsidy because they still have a shitload of customers.
They would probably be producing less of it in the USA without the $18 billion or so in federal tax breaks (+ additional ones at the state level), but the majors would likely produce more elsewhere.
I do wonder how much the IMF’s poorly reported numbers are skewing the discourse; see my 📌ed skeet.
I am more than prepared to allow others to make lifestyle changes and offer sacrifices that benefit me. I am very magnanimous.
Tragedy of the commons and game theory in one sad sentence.
Over here, the UK’s pretty broken and - I’ll let you into a secret - it’s not just the climate policies. Apparently nothing should cause anyone any inconvenience*. Although no one appears willing to admit that non-functioning public services are a little…inconvenient.
I’m pretty sure the vast majority now acknowledge it was a huge mistake. Those who don’t are generally aware that publicly claiming otherwise doesn’t do them any favours. It will be very interesting to see how the next four years shapes opinion further, shall we say.
I’m not sure she does want to cut them, but is lacking the money/resolve/imagination to do anything else.
I think the main thing this govt are showing us is just how broken things are. I don’t know how to fix them, but I really wish they did.
Taxing the tech bros might be a good place to start.
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https://theconversation.com/keir-starmer-says-the-uk-can-decarbonise-without-disruption-thats-neither-true-nor-helpful-243636
Peter Kalmus (Harvard '97) gave us thoughts on education in 2016, during a visit at his now gone house in Altadena
https://newyork.thecityatlas.org/people/peter-kalmus/
But Peter was in what seems to be a fairly constant minority at top schools, maybe 3%. In his class, more than half of grads will be in finance and tech. Here's Harvard now:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/22/business/gen-z-college-students-jobs.html
In the US and the UK, bright people work for rich people, and rich people want to get richer. Inaction has nothing to do with lack of info on climate, and not that much to do w/fossil fuel co's, though they benefit from it enormously.
More than 35 years have elapsed since then.
Meanwhile this just happened:
Plant-based food can be no less delicious too.
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/10/nx-s1-5232139/2024-hottest-year-human-history-global-warming
(Yeah, the article gives context, but the headline is terrible, and the words "climate change" occur once, in a caption.)
Geothermal should be standard everywhere it is viable. So much waste is built into the system itself.
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaires-emit-more-carbon-pollution-90-minutes-average-person-does-lifetime#:~:text=Fifty%20of%20the%20world's%20richest,new%20Oxfam%20report%20reveals%20today.
"We basically have three choices: mitigation, adaptation and suffering. We’re going to do some of each. The question is what the mix is going to be."
18 years on, that mix is looking pretty lopsided.
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/30/world/30climate.html
The complete freedom of capital must be curtailed, we must act collectively to stop this system of production destroying our world
“The American way of life is not up for negotiation.” George HW Bush re Rio Accords
https://getenergysmartnow.com/2013/01/01/to-challenge-imagine-life-differently-two-new-years-resolutions/
The asteroid was a mistake. Dinosaurs should still rule the planet.
Make the commitment. NOW.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DEoDqiYSmsk/?igsh=MW8xZTMzb3dvOXh5NQ==
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/04/just-57-companies-linked-to-80-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-since-2016
I do wonder how much the IMF’s poorly reported numbers are skewing the discourse; see my 📌ed skeet.
And the Marin representative spent their time complaining that GHG mitigations limited the number of allowable highway expansions in the plan
https://planbayarea.org/meetings-events/2025-01-10/mtc-planning-committee
Tragedy of the commons and game theory in one sad sentence.
*Apart from Brexit, obviously.
I think the main thing this govt are showing us is just how broken things are. I don’t know how to fix them, but I really wish they did.
Taxing the tech bros might be a good place to start.