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On our current trajectory, the report warns, "planetary and human systems [are] reaching a 'point of no return' by mid-century, in which the prospect of a largely uninhabitable Earth leads to the breakdown of nations and the international order."
The only way to avoid the risks of this scenario is what the report describes as "akin in scale to the World War II emergency mobilization"—but this time focused on rapidly building out a zero-emissions industrial system to set in train the restoration of a safe climate.
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2050 is When Analysts Suspect Widespread Global Strife Will Begin
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If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
-- Tom Robbins
(Score: 3, Interesting) by LAV8.ORg on Saturday June 15 2019, @06:23AM (3 children)
A circumscribing problem is that humans are terrible at internalizing problems that aren't *directly* evidenced by visceral experience; without being felt, especially seen, it's unlikely to grok, even if it's understood and accepted at the high level of conscious thought.
To illustrate, I live in a locale that is notorious for air pollution, which also harbors a significantly larger than usual proportion of active, outdoorsy types. When the air sours in the winter, it is clearly visible for all, and those actives who breathe deep can feel it. Everyone knows there's a problem, but they do not see or feel what is causing the problem. As such, there's a lot of outspokenness about the problem, complaining, even public campaigns bringing yet more attention to the obvious, and little to no action on the actual causes which are well known and widely documented. I guarantee that if a harmless colorant was added to gasoline so that tailpipe emissions looked like what the air eventually comes to looks like, there would be considerable progress forthwith. The summer pollution further illustrates the point, because it isn't visible and that alone is enough for it to barely reach a whisper in the mind at large, despite being very nearly as bad for living organisms as the winter pollution.
Similarly, there was intense uproar when POTUS ordered a major reduction in a state park. Yet again the entire focus of outrage and consternation was on the consequence, the reduction itself, not the source of the problem, which was energy extraction. Which is a good lead in to double down on the point; oil has the visible consequences and a bad reputation at this point, yes, but that serves to distract from the bigger picture problem! Energy consumption writ large. Electric cars are not a solution, they are the same problem with a different bow on top; a civilization built on the premise that it is a practical necessity to employ thousands of pounds of machinery to move individual hundreds of pounds of human short distances does not scale.
But yeah oil is especially problematic, attempting to stay that course is killing our health and our environment, and increasing the pressure on the keystone of the global economy; the single point whose failure would bring the entire structure down, made of an irreplaceable, finite resource that is being depleted at a rate of 4,200,000,000 gallons per day.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 17 2019, @03:29AM (2 children)
Actually modern civilization is an excellent demonstration that such things scale to billions of people. Funny how certain ideologies need certain fatuous falsehoods in order to survive.
(Score: 1) by LAV8.ORg on Tuesday June 18 2019, @07:00PM (1 child)
Fixed that to avoid narrow interpretations.
Actually the number of cars in the world has just passed 1 billion, so in fact it hasn't scaled to billions yet. Here's one source you can draw a (high) estimate from http://www.oica.net/category/vehicles-in-use/ [oica.net]
Mind you I mean *short* distances, as in <5 miles. Beyond that, heavy machinery works wonders (with varying degrees of efficiency).
Even basic "modern civilization" amenities like indoor plumbing have yet to be implemented for the majority of the world's population, so I reckon your perspective of the world is a bit skewed.
Funny how certain ideologies need vacuous dismissals void of any facts or reasoning in order to survive. To have fit so many logical fallacies in one shallow line... you're well trained at chomping this troll bit. Too bad, I appreciate the sport of legitimate challenges to my "ideology."
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 20 2019, @04:55AM
Umm, when are we going to see that fix? I suspect the fix will have the problem that either reality remains a counterexample, or you're excluded any real world relevance - if zero civilizations do this thing, then it doesn't matter. I await the next iteration of your fix.
And trains, planes, ships, etc. And what's going to stop working for the slight increase in scale to the entire world's population? I get that traffic congestion is not an easy problem. But it is a problem that can be solved.