So we both reach the same conclusion that nothing can be done.
Absolutely not. I'm actually very confident that lots can be done, is being done now, and that lots more will be done in the very near future. Technological change is exponential, and political and social change is cyclical and incremental, with the propensity for large jumps one way or the other in response to tipping points. We're all familiar with climate change tipping points, but there will also be tipping points in our response to the problem. We're going through one now in the transition in energy generation, the next one in the form of transport is on its way. Beyond that there will be significant changes in what we eat (far less meat basically) and consume (less waste and more reusability), and almost certainly there will be huge advances in natural carbon sequestration and storage in the form of reforestation and habitat regeneration. And then there's the tipping point in oil/fossil fuel usage. When it starts declining it'll accelerate as the world transitions en-masse to renewables.
Add all these things together and your doomladen vision of hell looks much less likely. Still, if you prefer to trudge the streets with your sandwich board saying 'the end is nigh' then go for it, but don't be surprised or annoyed if people walk on by without taking any notice.
does not understand the scale of the issue
Yeah we do, (as we all keep saying) stop telling folks they don't understand; when they clearly do.
without radical lifestyle change
Is one way, an alternate way is to bring people with you by consensus, the vast majority will be persuaded as they see its easier to switch lifestyles than be forced to, that's happening now.
in the west has no real grasp of the crisis that is coming
The news-media is filled with nothing but the coming climate crisis, it hasn't been out of the news for the last 20 years, which is why we have made the progress we have.
So then yo believe in magical solutions that do not exist and that the fiddling around the edges we are doing will make a difference. You really do not grasp the scale of the crisis. follow your path and billions will die. thats the reality. magical wishful thinking
Nickc - if you think the measures being discussed now at COP will do anything significant you do not understand the scale of the crisis and what is in the press is a very rosy vision of what is coming.
Also the progress we have made is a tiny % of what was needed.
We're completely stuffed if you ask me.
Apprently net zero by 2050 is impossible without actively removing carbon from the atmosphere, and we'd need to remove 5 billion tons. If all the planned projects work, we'll optimistically be able to remove 40 million tons. So we need a 12,500% improvement in the technology.
Remember during Covid, there was warning after warning and no-one did anything until the hospitals were overflowing and THEN they locked down and started doing something, only it was too late, so the lockdowns had to be more severe.
I think that's whats going to happen with climate change, only it's going to take longer, but there is more uncertainty and risk involved which people don't tend to deal with very well. (i.e. you can't precisely say if one particular storm was due to climate change, just that it was more likely).
TJ, I don't know if you've been following the parallel discussion we've been having where I've been mercilessly slagging off you and all your friends, but there has been a fairly monumental once in a multi-generational change in the last couple of years where boomers are no longer the largest voting block.
The next couple of decades are going to bring significant political and societal changes which, I think, are going to be a net benefit for the environment and for dealing with the environmental damage that has already been done and is on the way.
It's going to be 100,000 miles away from perfect, but a less skewed voting demographic should help everyone.
Maybe. Or maybe we're ****ed and I should go home and kill both my kids and then myself.
Personally I'd like to keep hoping that things might be OK or a bit longer.
Quite interested in what your thoughts @tjagain are when it comes to the climate crisis, around other countries and their vast pollution? Namely being India and China, African countries are also expected to have a massive boom due to their lack of debts and growing GDP's expected to be something crazy like 800% for the continent in the next 50-100 years (don't quote me on the specifics) and are forecasted to be the next major polluter up there with India and China, their defense is the west went through the industrial revolution and created most of the damage what we see today which in part is true, and they claim they have "every right to go through their own industrial revolotion to develop just like the west has" and seemingly DGAF about their impact. I can't remember where I seen the clip or the name of the politican of which country but I do remember it stuck with me. I've been trying to google it and find it but so far have been unable to.
So then yo believe in magical solutions that do not exist and that the fiddling around the edges we are doing will make a difference.
I only have to look out my window to see the wind turbines on the hills to know that these are real solutions. 20 years ago when like you I was banging on about climate change I would never have believed that the UK would be able to be powered on renewable energy, yet now we have almost completely eliminated coal generation and are well on the way to being a renewably powered country in the not too distant future. Energy generation is the single biggest source of carbon emissions in the world. This isn't a magical solution, it's real and it's happening.
https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/how-uk-transformed-electricity-supply-decade/
Extremists always think that extreme solutions are the only ones that can work and yet it is the moderate pragmatists that have delivered all of the important advances to date.
eatmorepizza
This is a real and huge issue - who are we to tell then they cannot have the standard of living that we have? This is why the west needs to cut hugely rather than tinker around the edges
Of course developing nations want phones and cars and fridges.
MY answer is two fold - we need to cut emissions radically in the west and at the same time put huge aid into the developing nations to attempt to make this development the least damaging possible
We need to help them to meet us in the middle - we cut our emissions hugely, to give headroom for a moderate increase for them so they can develop. We all meet in the middle with a truely sustainable lifestyle
Small reductions in western emissions will do nothing of significance
This thread has made me even more depressed about the future given the total unwillingness to accept that without radical change in western iifestyles we are fubar and the total denial of the scale of the issues
It’s sad to say, but once the boomers/GenXers start to depart the voter pool and the current generation of kids starts voting (assuming there will actually be someone for them to vote for by then) we’ll finally start to see some significant changes. Or at least I hope we will.
I think your hope is misguided. As your generation ages it will fall down the same traps of greed and selfishness. People change by the time they get to 50 which is why many more start to vote tory by that age. Why do you think your generation will be any different?
who are we to tell then they cannot have the standard of living that we have?
It's a red herring. There's no reason developing countries can't have a green industrial revolution rather than one based on fossil fuels. In fact they are much better placed to do that as they don't have as much fossil-fuel based infrastructure to transform. They do need investment and support though, and that investment and aid is currently at risk from the rise of far right governments and parties which are a result of working people in western economies being told they need to sacrifice their quality of life to 'save the planet'.
I think your hope is misguided. As your generation ages it will fall down the same traps of greed and selfishness. People change by the time they get to 50 which is why many more start to vote tory by that age. Why do you think your generation will be any different?
Once again, boomers are not inherently evil. Or at least no more evil than any other group of humans.
The issue with boomers is that they have been the largest single block of voters from around 1970 right up until a couple of years ago.
That means that we have had political parties tailoring their policies towards a single generation for over 50 years.
Humans are inherently self-interested and this kind of skewing of population can create some serious instability in the system. As we are now seeing right across Europe (and elsewhere).
It's not that Millennials are going to be better human beings. It's just that they will not be the single dominant generation.
I agree with Daz and Bruce.
They do need investment and support though, and that investment and aid is currently at risk from the rise of far right governments and parties which are a result of working people in western economies being told they need to sacrifice their quality of life to ‘save the planet’.
China is ready to step in. The "West" could lose out in this race to green power politically, not just economically. We have to step things up, not just as regards domestic supply, but also in developing and supplying the tech to the RoW.
Of course, it's only those working for oil (and shit stirring newspapers) that tell working people they have to sacrifice their quality of life... having an available working and constantly improving public transport system, for example, gives people a better quality of life. The reduced emissions is just a bonus. Same goes for having shops and services within 15 mins... life is better, not worse, when you don't have to travel long distances just to get milk or a check up.
That means that we have had political parties tailoring their policies towards a single generation for over 50 years.
And a voting system then amplifies it... lots of young voters concentrated in seats where their votes are weighed, and many town and country marginal seats where the boomers make all the difference.
I know people are wary of nuclear energy but if carbon is the number one concern it seems it would make a lot of sense. Or am I missing something?
Nuclear has its issues, but until something better comes along, it (along with renewables) has to be part of the mix. Arguably Green party demonisation of nuclear power in Europe has massively increased CO2 emissions. See Germany where they are reopening coal fired power stations because they have a doctrinal hatred of nuclear power.
the problems with nuclear is twofold
1) lack of fuel for massive expansion ( we have 40 ish years of known fuel reserves for the reactors we have - that provide a few% of the worlds energy say wewant nuclea r to be 20% of the worlds energy then fuel in be in short supply)
2) long lead times - 20 years to build a reactor from deciding you will have one to getting power out of it is the norm
Dazh - how do you develop ie get consumer goods for the billions without without a massive increase in emissions? go on explain to me how they can have cars and fridges and phones without creating massive amounts of emissions? More magical thinking?
Too late to step up Nuclear. Countries that haven’t invested there (like the UK) can forget it. If your decarbonisation plans include new Nuclear, they won’t work. Longer term it may be key, but when it comes to what we need to do in the next 10 to 15 years… it’s a complete red herring.
Nothing to add the the general debate here right now, but...
I expect that plenty of GenXers are unhappy that Sunak, Gove and Rhys-Mogg are amongst the representatives of their (our) generation who’ve made it to high office.
So much this.
Unhappy is a slight understatement.
And as a proud GenXer, I resent hugely being lumped in with the concept of Boomers. The whole thing is just a cheap culture war construct anyway but seems to have stuck. Might depend on your own individual echo chamber, but for me GenX ought to be keeping the spirit of punk alive and kicking back against all the current crap rther than sitting alongside the gammony slippers demographic.
A few random questions lifted off the gapminder site I mentioned earlier. Most people get these wrong, but you lot are smarter than that. 100s more on there and they are searchable by subject/region etc.
70% of Europeans said they were planning to switch to a more environmentally friendly energy provider to fight climate change, in 2020. What was this number in China?
A. 34%, B.64% C.94%
Worldwide, how many babies are born with a trained health worker present?
A. 30%, B.50% C.80%
How many cases of smallpox are expected in the world this year?
A. Zero B.100,000 C.1000,000
How many university students worldwide get their degree in their home country (as opposed to abroad)?
A. 67%, B.87% C.97%
How many people in the world have some access to electricity?
A. 30%, B.60% C.90%
What share of the world's population lives in middle-income countries today?
A. 25%, B.50% C.75%
In low-income countries across the world in 2022, what share of girls went to school until at least age 11?
A. 20%, B.40% C.60%
What a depressing thread. Tj is right. It's pretty universally simple. No free lunch. The in, the out. The yin yang, whatever.You can't live, drive, eat, travel, poo, fornicate, holiday,buy and own endlessly. All this posturing about renewable energy is a red herring. No resource is endless and any idea that it could be is frankly lucicrous. It's like saying I can re burn the log on my fire that is now ash...
The issue with boomers is that they have been the largest single block of voters from around 1970 right up until a couple of years ago.
That means that we have had political parties tailoring their policies towards a single generation for over 50 years.
Absolutely the death throes we are witnessing are as ugly as you would expect.
No resource is endless and any idea that it could be is frankly lucicrous.
Well, one day the moon will no longer circle the earth, and tidal power will stop.
One day the Earth will no longer turn, and wind power will be no more.
One day the Sun will die, and stop raining power down on us.
But that's pretty long term thinking there... for the foreseeable, there is real renewable energy we can harness into the far future.
It’s like saying I can re burn the log on my fire that is now ash…
Yeah, burning stuff is pretty much one way. That's why we should do far less of that to generate energy.
The whole thing is just a cheap culture war construct anyway but seems to have stuck.
It's really not. It's a bulge in the population demographics that means the needs of a single generation has been prioritised for 50 years.
The boomer/GenX divide is a bit arbitrary, at least compared GenX Millennial divide. If you look at the graphic above, you see that the absolute peak was in 1965. This means that the divide between GenXers and Boomers happened when the birth rates of both groups were at their respective peaks.
The GenX/millennial divide happens when both sets of birth rates are at their lowest (when I happened to be born).
There is always going to be far more overlap between boomers and GenXers than between GenXers and millennials simply because one divide happened in a period of maximum birth rates while the other happened in a period of minimum birth rates.
For just one example of this, free tuition ended in 1998. Right when people born in the trough were ready to go to university.
Over the course of 50 years there have probably been hundreds of individual tweaks and changes made to benefit the largest voter bloc that all add up to make the generations following the boomer/GenX peak considerably worse off.
1.5 degree temp rise is baked in now. 2 degrees is almost certain, 3 degrees is likely. thats going to have apocalyptic effects on food supply and water supply. I’m not being eeyore – I am being realistic
We’ve been down this road before - All of those predictions are based on socio-economic resource use models. They don’t take account of technology change, societal shift or myriad other things.
there is no significant attempt anywhere in the world to do what is required. all folk are doing is burying their heads in the sand and fiddling while the world burns
More money has been invested in Fusion research in the last 2 years than the last 20 combined. There are now 3 distinct pathways to fusion and Commonwealth have committed to supply power by 2030.
More money has been put into green technologies in the past 2 years than the previous 10 combined.
Airbus have committed to a pure sustainable aircraft by 2035.
NONE of these are included in IPCC models. They won’t reverse the damage done already, not directly anyway, but will significantly reduce the upward trend.
Technology might not save us, but it will help us and could, possibly save us.
Technology will help to a huge degree but we can’t, as a society, continue to live the lifestyles we do without consequence. There needs to be a radical shift away from consumerism and measuring a nations worth on purely financial terms. The two are incompatible with mitigating the effects of climate change. Technology can do some heavy lifting but is only part of the solution.
GenX ought to be keeping the spirit of punk alive
Hate to mention this, but Punks were Boomers. As were the people that created the internet, 80s pop, rap and ‘politcal correctness’.
We Gen Xers created social media and the idiot Liz Truss.
Millenials it’s your turn to do better if you can whilst Gen Z mocks you from below.
Social media is a GenY creation. Gen X was 65-80. GenX got to see the birth of the internet and the mobile phone but also remember a time before both.
T’internet was created by boomers.
It’s not humanity that’s peaked, it’s the unfit for purpose neoliberal capitalist economic system. Everyone knows it is destructive and dysfunctional, even it’s main supporters in the US, UK and Europe, but no one has quite figured out what to replace it with.
Concern is for me - quite a few people have done extremely well out of this system which has filtered down to people who have done okay (accidental asset increases) out of it too. These lot are keeping the shift to a new system in deadlock believing they have some sort of skill-set to make money from nothing when all that's happened is the state has been stripped of things such as housing (leaving a massive supply issue) which simply moves money towards those with housing stock/assets. Most assets are simply by-products of a parasitic system of concentration of wealth and serve no good purpose other than for a few people to own more stuff to the detriment of everyone else. The pain for me is - a lot of this is supplied by the state, and no one has the will to accept the state is a huge conduit for solving these issue. In fact it's the only way for climate. Just like the state underpinned society in the Pandemic.
I can't blame Centrists for everything but my God have they done the Lord's work for the right, encouraging a dysfunctional system that just needs to be operated with competence. (James O'Brien I'm looking at you.)
All the things listed in the OP are by-products of this.
When change is offered it doesn't help the Guardian et al pisses itself and can't come to terms with it. This goes for a lot of people too - the status-quo is a safe haven despite its ruinous trajectory. (I don't exclude myself totally from this camp - short term comfort.)
It's bizarre to see the country run in the same direction which will eventually see it downfall. I believe both Labour and the Tories are out of ideas to fix this - because neither will spend the cash. It's preposterous as we're not short of cash in any way shape or form - just ideas and political will.
(1) lack of fuel for massive expansion ( we have 40 ish years of known fuel reserves for the reactors we have – that provide a few% of the worlds energy say wewant nuclea r to be 20% of the worlds energy then fuel in be in short supply)
This report suggests that there are probably more deposits to be found if we needed to do that. So while at present consumption rates there's 200 years left, there probably the same gain in undiscovered reserves and if we need to take uranium form the sea (expensive, but a again if we need to) it's more or less unlimited, certanly enough time to figure out something else.
2) long lead times – 20 years to build a reactor from deciding you will have one to getting power out of it is the norm
This article suggests that the average build time from first lay concrete to working power generation from 1950 to present day is about 5-8 years. The longest is 15 years. It notes that there's no real data about the planning and political horse-trading that's probably most of the bottleneck.
I don't necessarily think that nuclear is the way forward forever, but if we needed to, we could build the capacity for it. pretty easily and quickly, But I don't think your objections to it stack up.
Having had my formative years bang on in the middle of that period, yeah it felt like a hopeful and progressive time with lots of positive potential on the horizon.
But doesn’t everyone’s teens/twenties feel like that?
To drag up a comment from page 1... Brexit happened in my twenties, so no
From about the age of 12, 1980, I already hated the Tories. I had to live with them and the people voting for them since then with a slight respite during the slightly less tory Blair years.
Sure I have been very advantaged by things such as housing over those years but not something I was responsible for and I don't go around saying shit about how 20 years old should be buying a house as realise they can't.
Back to the actual question though, does anyone think it will be better by say 2100 or worse?
More money has been invested in Fusion research in the last 2 years than the last 20 combined. There are now 3 distinct pathways to fusion and Commonwealth have committed to supply power by 2030.
Fusion is a 22nd century technology. It will not help the climate problem, but when it comes along it will potentially solve the economic problems we currently experience.
In the meantime we need to scale up conventional nuclear and leverage new reactor designs. The nimbies seem to have won the battle on that one though, which again leaves us with renewables.
Airbus have committed to a pure sustainable aircraft by 2035.
Another red herring. Air travel is one of the areas which can't caontinue as it does today. We're going to have to fly a lot less in future, but that will not happen unless we get working people on side, and that won't happen if we don't first reign in the air travel of the richest sections of society. Normal people are not going to give up their holidays if the rich continue to jet around the world consequence-free. We probably need some form of rationing system which allows people one flight a year/every couple of years, but that's not going to be possible until other stuff happens first and people are firmly in the mindset of living a carbon-free lifestyle.
does anyone think it will be better by say 2100 or worse?
Define 'better'. It's a bit of a daft question really. Things will be different for sure, some people will be better off, some worse off. Assuming we don't blow ourselves up, if global economic trends of the past 1000 years are anything to go by though we can probably safely say that more people will be better off than they are now. IMO the technological changes that are on the horizon (fusion, AGI) in the next century will create social and economic change the likes of which we can't really comprehend or predict.
Back to the actual question though, does anyone think it will be better by say 2100 or worse?
Hugely worse. By then the eco collapse will have been in full swing for a decade or two. Mass starvation in marginal countries and food shortages even in europe. mass migration from uninhabitable countries, water wars, Billions dead, billions displaced.
there will not be enough productive land to produce enough food for the worlds population, low lying countries will be flooded
Recently,I have had to accept that I will (probably)never be a Grandparent.
Talking with my boys and their partners,they do not want to bring any children in to this world.
It I think of it too much it makes me incredibly sad.
I hope in their future they find a way to adapt and share their caring nature with others along the way.
Talking with my boys and their partners,they do not want to bring any children in to this world.
I remember 25 years ago we said that too. Then biology kicked in and now we have two teenagers. Besides not having kids (as long as you stick to two) causes more problems than it solves. It's really not a solution either to the climate change problem, or your own insecurities and worries about the future.
Average global temperature not changed for the last 10 years
Coral reef doing better than ever
Humans dying from extreme weather events lower than ever in history
Number of humans lifted out of poverty rises year on year
Worst floods in ****stan in the last 100 years were in the 1940s. But take a look how last year's monsoon season and flood were spun.
Sure is some next-level lying going on.
Average global temperature not changed for the last 10 years
Coral reef doing better than ever
Humans dying from extreme weather events lower than ever in history
Number of humans lifted out of poverty rises year on year
Worst floods in ****stan in the last 100 years were in the 1940s. But take a look how last year’s monsoon season and flood were spun.
Sure is some see lying going on.
Care to back that up with some credible data so we can let them know at COP28 that they can call it all off?
Sure is some next-level lying going on.
And some next level hiding of heads in the sand. 🙄
Despite all the arguments back and forth about what to do and how to do it, I know one thing for certain, wilful ignorance will not solve a thing. Good job this stuff is in the hands of people who know what they're doing than the likes of yourself.
