I didn’t claim that my list is better. Just that it’s shorter. There’s only one thing on it. One could elaborate on that one thing for the length of several books and I guess those few sentences I foolishly chose to add were too much for your taste, but the basic idea is not complicated in any way. It’s very clear what works. Stop burning fossil fuels. Right now. Nothing else.
The problem is that people tend to start by thinking of clever ways to advance humanity incrementally towards that goal. That’s the wrong place to start. It won’t happen that way. That approach has been failing miserably for several decades now and it will continue to. What we need instead is to start by honestly accepting the necessity of giving up fossil fuels right now, and then look at and accept the consequences of that. As Gail Tverberg in today’s other post says, and she knows all about oil, “we need heavy oil if our modern economy is to continue.” Well then our modern economy can not continue. We will not “maintain our lifestyle and economy.” Either we give that up along with oil, coal, and gas, or else we let it be destroyed by climate change and its consequences. The seemingly universal inability to acknowledge this when discussing what needs to be done is the point I was trying to get at. The degree of change that would be required of us is seldom suspected by readers of Forbes and never mentioned in articles like the one linked to here. It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of burning fossil fuels.
I didn’t claim that my list is better. Just that it’s shorter. There’s only one thing on it. One could elaborate on that one thing for the length of several books and I guess those few sentences I foolishly chose to add were too much for your taste, but the basic idea is not complicated in any way. It’s very clear what works. Stop burning fossil fuels. Right now. Nothing else.
The problem is that people tend to start by thinking of clever ways to advance humanity incrementally towards that goal. That’s the wrong place to start. It won’t happen that way. That approach has been failing miserably for several decades now and it will continue to. What we need instead is to start by honestly accepting the necessity of giving up fossil fuels right now, and then look at and accept the consequences of that. As Gail Tverberg in today’s other post says, and she knows all about oil, “we need heavy oil if our modern economy is to continue.” Well then our modern economy can not continue. We will not “maintain our lifestyle and economy.” Either we give that up along with oil, coal, and gas, or else we let it be destroyed by climate change and its consequences. The seemingly universal inability to acknowledge this when discussing what needs to be done is the point I was trying to get at. The degree of change that would be required of us is seldom suspected by readers of Forbes and never mentioned in articles like the one linked to here. It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of burning fossil fuels.
Great comment
Not to diminish any particular arguments, but this is how these conversations always play out in my view:
But we are in overshoot.
But we won’t be able to keep up agriculture.
But we won’t be able to keep up industry
But we won’t be able to keep up consumerism
But people will die.
But the rich will loses their riches
but but but
Just because an ask is nigh impossible, does not mean that it is foolish or that it comes from ignorance.