What Would You Do About Climate Change?

[mongers]

Yup. To the question what would you do about climate change?, I think the most effective answer is vote for people who actually give a shit.

Zoupa, in this scenario that's implicitly already happened:

Imagine a scenario where the World's govenrments agree a binding climate plan, they'll then enact it and policy begins to filter down to the people.

In this situation what measures would you agree to take as part of your government plan?

Or Indeed what significant changes have your yourself already made?
....

So the question still stand, what would you do?

[Zoupa]

Me personally? The easiest would be restricting meat consumption, as I'm already eating very little.

Switching to electric transportation/mass transit would be ok. But I think the question is a non-sequitur (maybe I'm using that wrong).

The onus is on legislators. Individual citizens or consumers will always go for the cheapest option in 90% of cases because our day to day life is fucking rough as it is.

[Berkut]

Im not sure how to vote though - I am not going to do anything other than respond to the incentives placed before.

If you want me to cut my use of fossil fuels to push my car around with my fat ass inside of it, then force me to pay for the actual cost of a gallon of gas, to include the carbon offset cost, then use that added money to re-forest - for example.

We basically have to do the following:

1. Cut emission of greenhouse gasses to net zero.
2. Remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
3. Adapt the world to the changes that we cannot realistically prevent or reverse from items 1 & 2.
4. Create a government agency with the resources, power and capability to coordinate these efforts in a non-partisan, non-political manner, to the extent that is possible. Something like the militaries Joint Chiefs of Staff for wartime - a group of technocrats responsible for shaping policy and making recommendations to Congress and the Executive.

Item #1 should be attacked by agressive carbon tax, cap and trade, and regulations. It should go after the creation and release of carbon into the environment at every stage. That means taxing it when comes out of the ground (combination of tax and cap and trade). One thing that must happen is we need to stop actually subsidizing fossil fuel generation! It is insane that the government actually gives money to companies to create more pollution. That must stop immediately of course.

Continue ramping up wind and solar, and aggressively subsidize research into modern nuclear power generation options - look at the Gates Foundation research into smaller scale, modern reactors that are fail safe. Create significant incentives for agressive research into power generation options that are carbon neutral.

Item #2. Start looking very hard at agriculture, and how we can make better use of land under cultivation (not sure there is a lot of uplift here, since there is already plenty of economic pressure in this space). But make sure that the true cost of meat production is factored in, and replace most farming subsidies with subsidies for large scale, carbon neutral farming methods.

Aforestation and re-forestation. We need to (again, agressively) treat deforestation as a global problem. Define it as a international crime subject to international action to deforest. Combine carrot and stick diplomacy to make it simply not good politics or economics to engage in slash and burn. The rain forests used to cover 12% of the earths surface, now they cover 5%. If there are countries that are doing this because their economies demand it, then make it in their interest to no longer need that - whatever gains they make, they need to compensated for by the rest of the world to stop destroying these global resources. It makes our fucking air. Sorry it is in your country, and your country has been shit on for a long time, but still, it makes our air damnit. You can't cut them down anymore. And if you insist (fucking Argentina) then the rest of the world should treat you the way it treats other rogue nations.

The state of New York used to be pretty much all forest. Now there is very little. We can change that/

Urbanization. Embrace it. Suburbs were a great idea, but yeah, turns out they were actually a pretty fucking terrible idea for a variety of reasons. How do we align incentives to kill sprawl and concentrate people again?

Those are just some starting thoughts. It takes political will however, and the will to drive through the considerable tactical resistance that will be inevitable from the various vested interest groups (plenty of them actually environmental groups, in fact).

[Sheilbh]

Item #2. Start looking very hard at agriculture, and how we can make better use of land under cultivation (not sure there is a lot of uplift here, since there is already plenty of economic pressure in this space). But make sure that the true cost of meat production is factored in, and replace most farming subsidies with subsidies for large scale, carbon neutral farming methods.

One aspect of the meat side of this that I find challenging is that the meat that is best environmentally is worst from an animal welfare (and flavour - I would argue) perspective. The least environmentally harmful form of meat production is industrial farming, the worst is organic, free-range giving the animals a good life.

That's partly why I think I'm better off just reducing/cutting it out.

It's a bit like fish (which I love and would pick over meat any day) which I find really difficult to buy just because of how unsustainable our consumption is of certain fish stocks. I have an app which gives me the Marine Stewardship Council's recommendation, but unless I travel to a posh bit of town and go to a fishmonger, everything is amber or red. Except for tilapia

[Valmy]

So I should only eat Tilapia? Bummer. But I could do that with some good sauce.

[The Larch]

One aspect of the meat side of this that I find challenging is that the meat that is best environmentally is worst from an animal welfare (and flavour - I would argue) perspective. The least environmentally harmful form of meat production is industrial farming, the worst is organic, free-range giving the animals a good life.

Huh? Where do you get that from? Industrial farming has tons of issues, it is in no way the best environemtal option for meat consumption.

[Sheilbh]

One aspect of the meat side of this that I find challenging is that the meat that is best environmentally is worst from an animal welfare (and flavour - I would argue) perspective. The least environmentally harmful form of meat production is industrial farming, the worst is organic, free-range giving the animals a good life.

Huh? Where do you get that from? Industrial farming has tons of issues, it is in no way the best environemtal option for meat consumption.

https://fcrn.org.uk/sites/default/files/project-files/fcrn_gnc_summary.pdf
Agree it has a ton of issues, but free range has a bigger environmental impact - especially as, in the winter, those free range cattle are fed the same sort of soy feed as the intensively farmed animals.

This is why with meat I think it is just important/better to opt-out/cut-down in general.

[Admiral Yi]

https://www3.epa.gov/carbon-footprint-calculator/

Calculate your carbon footprint.  Does not include air travel unfortunately.

I got 9,744 pounds a year.  US average is 24,550.

[Admiral Yi]

https://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx?tab=3

Using this site to calculate air travel adds 1.09 metric tons.  That's 2,403 pounds.

Shit that's a lot in comparison to home energy, car (I drive very little) and waste generation.

[mongers]

https://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx?tab=3

Using this site to calculate air travel adds 1.09 metric tons.  That's 2,403 pounds.

Shit that's a lot in comparison to home energy, car (I drive very little) and waste generation.

Interesting, but the first calculator linked to seems very crude so nearly anything would be an improvement.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Mine is 18,733. Unlike the average American, I have the advantage of primarily using public transit to commute. I would guess that 36% of Virginia's electricity being generated by nuclear power would also help keep me below average.

[Admiral Yi]

Mine is 18,733. Unlike the average American, I have the advantage of primarily using public transit to commute. I would guess that 36% of Virginia's electricity being generated by nuclear power would also help keep me below average.

Did you manually put in the renewable energy percentage in the box below electricity, or did you assume your zip would cover that?  It wasn't clear to me.

[DGuller]

Mine is 14,700.  What kills me are the stupid PTACs in my apartment, which must be horribly inefficient for their purpose.

[viper37]

Imagine a scenario where the World's govenrments agree a binding climate plan, they'll then enact it and policy begins to filter down to the people.

In this situation what measures would you agree to take as part of your government plan?

Or Indeed what significant changes have your yourself already made?

You've got up to 6 votes, mainly so you can answer the first 5 pairs of linked questions.


Note by significant I mean greater than 50%

I don't travel much, so I can't really cut on that, I mean, last time I boarded a flight was 30 years ago.
My heating is at 17C, I use wood and compressed wood pellets to maintain temp between 22-24C.  In summer time, I only use a/c in the office, due to equipement failures from excessive heat.
I'll settle for using my car a tad less often to travel outside my home town.  That way, I'll become depressive and commit suicide, so I won't be polluting the earth anymore by breathing.
And you're welcome to take my red meat from my cold dead hands.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Mine is 18,733. Unlike the average American, I have the advantage of primarily using public transit to commute. I would guess that 36% of Virginia's electricity being generated by nuclear power would also help keep me below average.

Did you manually put in the renewable energy percentage in the box below electricity, or did you assume your zip would cover that?  It wasn't clear to me.

I assumed ZIP would cover that. It would be trivial to get that data at least on a state level given the ZIP code.