The 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement is no longer viable

"New goal: not exceed 2°C, then bring the temperature back down to 1.5°C" It kind of feels people have given up. I'm working on a startup that aims to replaces aviation (the most difficult emissions to avoid) with night trains in Europe (currently economically uncompetitive). It's an obvious impact story, but impact appears to be "out".

• jMyles · 12 hours ago

  Yeah, why _are_ night trains uncompetitive? Is it just so simple as "air travel doesn't have externalities priced in"?

  • 233mhz · 12 hours ago

    Jet fuel is barely taxed and most touristic places subsidies the tickets to bring in the consumer cash cows.

    • hsuduebc2 · 12 hours ago

      Exactly. Outcompeting this is hard when you basically don't pay taxes for fuel.

    • cpt_sobel · 11 hours ago

      Yes but the discussion is about places in Europe that a night train can reach, are these price-subsidizing tourist places among them?

      • 233mhz · 10 hours ago

        I don't think there is much of an overlap between the train mafia and the airline mafia, you'd have to ask them. You can start by asking that guy: https://www.politico.eu/article/ryanair-lashes-out-at-air-fr...

  • OtherShrezzing · 12 hours ago

    Beds as opposed to seats mean fewer passengers per train carriage, so the fixed cost of operating the train is shared among fewer tickets. You can make one trip per day with a night-train, whereas a seated train runs 16-20hrs per day. So again, fixed cost of the train existing is shared between far fewer ticket sales. Then you need to store the train during the day, and you need to securely park the train when it arrives at its destination at night (a normal train yard isn't secure enough if you have a hotel full of people, and a train station usually needs all of its platforms).

    • ant6n · 12 hours ago

      The capacity really is the main issue, in terms of cost. The second is lack of privacy, in terms of attractiveness. 6-people-per-cabin couchette cars have sufficient capacity, but the market isn't quite there anymore. We basically want to get as many cabins as possible in railcar (to reduce cost), but they're are comfortable and private (to increase attractiveness). With these levers, you can change the operating margin from -15%..-10% to around 10%.

  • olelele · 12 hours ago

    Pretty much yeah.

  • polytely · 12 hours ago

    I think last time I looked it was that jet fuel is exempt from taxes in the EU? but trains aren't so flights are artificially cheap

  • Ekaros · 11 hours ago

    Hundreds of kilometres of good quality electric railway infra is expensive to maintain. And by good quality I mean capable of relatively decent speeds like say 120-160 km/h. With airports you need to maintain lot less.

• marcyb5st · 12 hours ago

  I agree. I was looking at a night train from Milan to Lecce. It costed waaay more than flights+ the extra night in the hotel. Crazy if you think about it

• m4rtink · 12 hours ago

  IIRC night trains are kinda making a comeback - they are quite convenient that you can travel over night & wake up in your destination. Otherwise you would spend a day traveling & would need 1-2 days of accommodation on top of that.

• noelwelsh · 12 hours ago

  Nice concept. I caught European Sleeper last week, my first time on a night train. It was ok but I'd like something better if I was using it regularly. It's a tough time to do something about climate change. Short-termism is very attractive right now.

  • ant6n · 12 hours ago

    Well, European sleeper is an operator -- their ability to improve the technology/interior is limited, it's a huge task just to keep running. We are not an operator, so we will work with operators, basically adding our railcars to their trains.

• hackernud3s · 12 hours ago

  The problem is the people you would need to convince. You'd be selling to people who largely won't care and don't want to be inconvenienced.

• KellyCriterion · 12 hours ago

  > night trains in Europe That company from austria seems quite successfull, IIRC?

  • ant6n · 4 hours ago

    The last couple of nightjets in the order from Siemens were converted back to day trains (rail jets), presumably because the trainsets are not economical enough (too few beds).

• bluGill · 10 hours ago

  I'm against night trains. Much better to have high speed travel during the day and then at night close down the tracks completely and do your track maintenance so the tracks are good for the next day. You can get by with skipping maintenance here and there, but that quickly will come back to haunt you and make your trains even worse. Take a great day train, get some plays and then take a hotel room for the night. That's the most sustainable way to travel.

From the report: "Under current policies, only six G20 members (China, India, Indonesia, Russian Federation, South Africa and Türkiye) are assessed as likely to achieve their unconditional 2030 targets, while the assessment of the European Union is inconclusive. Overall, this suggests limited progress in narrowing implementation gaps across the G20." "All G20 members except Argentina, Saudi Arabia and the United States of America have new NDCs with mitigation targets for 2035."

• nolok · 12 hours ago

  It is very important to add that not all targets were created equal in the agreement, that was a major part of the negotiation. Not saying anything else, just that a simple reading of that statement might make you come to an underlying conclusion that isn't correct.

  • petcat · 12 hours ago

    Correct. For instance, still today China burns more coal than every other country combined. They are starting from a place that is so bad that even small improvements will look like huge gains.

    • Yizahi · 11 hours ago

      Also, I read a few years back an explainer about China internal issues in the scope of energy generation. We westerners think that China is monolithic monarchy of sorts and everything "happens in China" is representative of the country average. Well, apparently it's not. According to that analyst, every province is semi-autonomous and reluctant to cede power to the central govt. or neighbors. So all the new fancy solar installations are logically in the low population western provinces, and connected to the grid there. And in the east there are still a lot of local coal generation. And eastern provinces are simultaneously way more populated, way richer and have way bigger modern crisis threats (housing, inflation, unemployment, job and study application saturation and over competitiveness etc.). So now the provincial govt. is facing a threat of losing both local power generation, profits from running a coal plant business, and the most important yet another job loss prospect from shutting down plants and all the related infrastructure - shipping, storage, management, distribution etc. Bear all costs and get zero gains. So I suspect that there will be two mostly independent trends in China (and other industrial places like that) - solar installation will grow, but coal use won't be meaningfully cut without huge HUGE help from central and foreign powers at once.

      • boelboel · 10 hours ago

        It's not just a matter of population density, the sichuan basin and most the east coast is just doesn't get much sun/wind. If not for these 'resource provinces' they would've just gone full on coal.

        • Yizahi · 10 hours ago

          That too, yes

      • tonyedgecombe · 10 hours ago

        China’s coal use has shifted from decades of rapid expansion to a historic decline. Coal’s share of electricity generation dropped below 50% for the first time in 2026 (reaching 49.7% in the first six months), down from over 75% in the early 2010s and a peak share of around 81% in 2007, driven by massive wind and solar growth. It has still grown in absolute terms although even that seems to have flattened off in the last couple of years.

        • Yizahi · 9 hours ago

          There was no coal for generation consumption decline in China, yet. You look at the relative units (percentages), but instead check absolute units. The consumption steadily grew up until 2023 and now it is flat for two years, but it is not yet declining. So all the existing coal generation is running as it were, it's just the new plants maybe aren't constructed. But we are far away from the "deliberately early decommissioning" stage.

          • tonyedgecombe · 4 hours ago

            Did you not read my last sentence?

            • Yizahi · 45 minutes ago

              Oh, sorry, I got carried away and missed that part, my mistake.

Yes lets do it by continuing to outsource the pollution to China and deindustrialize Europe. Cut the nuclear, add the imported solarpanels and experience the joy of 10x electricity prices. Blame the consumer for not turning the kettle off during peak hours and make sure you give tax breaks to Google and BiGData to open a couple more datacenters that use more power than a average city. Oh, ban combustion engines, fuck up every batteryfactory by thinking its enough to buy the Make-Your-Own-Battery-Kit on Aliexpress. Wow such strategy.

• throwaway473825 · 12 hours ago

  Europe's strategy has indeed been stupid, but not for the reasons you write. Some parts of the energy transition are profitable, like EVs and heat pumps. This is where Europe dropped the ball. Other parts are unprofitable, like hydrogen. This is what Europe has prioritized, without anything to show for it. Then there are the ugly parts, like most carbon capture or importing virgin palm oil mislabelled as used cooking oil. Those things don't even decrease emissions. Again, Europe has focused too much on this. If Europe would simply have banned combustion engines and gas boilers, emissions would have decreased drastically while prices would also decrease. Alas, Europe prioritized bad stuff instead.

  • cbg0 · 12 hours ago

    "simply ban combustion engines and gas boilers" - there's nothing simple about this

    • bluGill · 10 hours ago

      Well, certainly not simple. It is actually workable and making a difference now because there's an alternative that works and is cheaper. the only thing we need to do is get people to start using it. We probably shouldn't talk about an outright ban. There are a couple of places where we may need to say, in your niche, those don't work, so we'll let you continue using it. We'll worry about those later. Let's stop the vast majority of cases first. Then we start worrying about the niches.

      • cbg0 · 10 hours ago

        What are you on about with niches? Most people can't afford a brand new EV car and have nowhere to charge it.

        • bluGill · 8 hours ago

          People buying a new car can afford an EV. They should have to justify getting a gas engine. Part of this is they need to demand chargers (and more people buying EVs will result in chargers) in useful places to charge their car. The above covers about 98% of all car sales: you can make an EV and if everybody else is also buying EVs that creates enough demand for things like chargers that they will automatically go in to fill the demand.

  • IslandRebel · 9 hours ago

    > If Europe would simply have banned combustion engines and gas boilers, emissions would have decreased drastically while prices would also decrease. Alas, Europe prioritized bad stuff instead. I will remove the gas boiler when you give me £15,000 to put solar panels on my roof with a storage battery and to remove all the gas stuff out my house. I don't have a large house either (2 Bedroom).

We are burning the only planet we have in a contest to be king of the ashes. Who gives a fuck whether the US or China win the AI race if they both burn tons of hydrocarbon to get there? Either way, the race itself will fuck the planet up worse than either victor would. Same about all the dumb wars of conquest, Ukraine, Iran. Who gives a fuck over those lines on a map if the map itself is on fire? All the burning of oil depots, all the explosives used are all an assault on humanity itself, not just on whatever state construct. I have a growing suspicion that this is the Great Filter. Dumb, self-important squabbles that destroy the material basis for a species' survival in an attempt to gain control instead of cooperation.

• netsharc · 12 hours ago

  Maybe we'll manage to launch some datacenters, then at least there'll be a backup of the database of how much each person's net worth is, floating above the dead planet... And if we have several of them in space, they'll use blockchain, of course.

  • KellyCriterion · 12 hours ago

    Let us put the Servers with the Blockchain into Space, so we can be sure the net worth status is stored really really save? :-D

• 233mhz · 12 hours ago

  You're right but you're on the wrong corner of the internet for such take

  • vrganj · 12 hours ago

    Its the only corner where one can try to talk some sense into some of the people directly involved in this process. The self-professed unideological technical minds that pride themselves on first-principle thinking. The walking contradictions that fail to recognize that it is in fact their ideology that is pushing us to this outcome, based on said first principles (thermodynamics ffs!) they do not actually take into account.

    • wallst07 · 12 hours ago

      Sense isn't common. Even in this forum you won't find consensus on what to do, it's all complaining and grandstanding. I don't have a solution, but what I do know is that any idea here that doesn't involve human psychology and motivation will never suceed.

• malloryerik · 12 hours ago

  Never saw Game of Thrones? Which maybe should have ended with everyone dying?

  • vrganj · 11 hours ago

    I honestly hoped the end would be the White Walkers just coming and killing everyone because they were too distracted and petty to mount a united defense. It would've made for a much stronger metaphor and fit in much better with the dark vibe and unexpected killing off of audience favorites that made the show a success in the first place. I feel like the Disneyfied ending we got instead really ruined the show for me.

• A_D_E_P_T · 11 hours ago

  > I have a growing suspicion that this is the Great Filter. Ackshually... It can be our filter, but it cannot be the Great Filter. The Great Filter has to apply universally, to every plausible society. If even a few are cooperative hiveminds, or empires ruled by an iron fist, or... whatever else you can imagine that doesn't squabble internally... then the Filter does not apply to them, which means that their absence is still weird. The Filter has three plausible answers, IMO: (1) Some variant of the planetarium or zoo hypothesis; (2) every advanced society, universally, decides to transcend into data centers powered by rotating black holes and stable for trillions of years, or something similarly weird; potentially also New Physics, like waste heat to mass conversion; (3) the filter is in our past and abiogenesis is a lot rarer than assumed.

When AGI is here we just have to ask how to fix it :)

• ExoticPearTree · 12 hours ago

  We might not like how it fixes it.

• shrubby · 12 hours ago

  42 yeah. But we already know what to do, why would AGI suddenly make us do that:D

• yyyk · 12 hours ago

  Skynet won't have to bother launching a nuclear war. It will just sit and munch digital popcorn, waiting for humanity to fix the humanity 'problem'. A tiny speck of time in the fullness of things.

• grumbel · 12 hours ago

  Darken the sky.

  • Yizahi · 12 hours ago

    Look at you, hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine. :)

• flowerthoughts · 12 hours ago

  I remember 10 years ago when there greentech was a thing and "carbon neutral" (by carbon credit shams or not) was a goal. I was a bit proud then. That has passed. Now it's just about heating data centers as much as possible. Apparently climate is a solved problem. The tech CEO's children and grandchildren are safe again, and we can go back to focus on profits. /s Tired of the complete inability of the human race to take in the Pale Blue Dot [1], and what it means. No one is coming to rescue your grandchildren. And it would be much easier for us to do something today, than them in 50 years. Actions compound over time: perhaps those actions should then be long-term positive. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot

• flanked-evergl · 12 hours ago

  Don't need AGI, we know how to fix it (nuclear), and have chosen not to, because nobody gave a fuck about the climate, it was never about global warming.

  • KellyCriterion · 12 hours ago

    Nuclear is not an option, esp most countries with nuclear do import their uranium primarily from one country...

    • bonesss · 10 hours ago

      Nuclear doomerism is what has lead us to this silly "status quo" and the subject of the article/thread. There is more than one kind of nuclear, and the fuel situation has known reserves that aren't being used because of lack of demand. Fuel costs in reactors are only a very small part of their operational costs so new mines are not the priority. We also have viable seawater extraction technologies that are waiting for appropriate demand. Past that, there are also breeder and waste-burning reactors long held-up as a vital and fuel-conserving part of a complete nuclear eco-system. Bluntly: the nuclear build-out France achieved in the 70s, scaled globally, would solve the climate problem and position us for synthetic fuel production at a civilizational scale. Modern technologies & robotics have us on track for facilities producing low greenhouse energy for more than a century. Global shipping, transport fuels, and energy-intensive industry require high-energy inputs. WWS are wonderful, but very awkward in those domains.

      • KellyCriterion · 9 hours ago

        If you would start to re-rollout nuclear, Uranium will be consumed within 10-20 years by all participants. In most countries, nuclear supplied usually a small but stable fragment of the overall energysupply.

        • FBRshill · 6 hours ago

          U-235 is the least useful fuel medium for long term energy generation, the us along has about 57 million TWh of breedable u-238 just sitting around in cooling pools and storage facilities

    • flanked-evergl · 9 hours ago

      Nuclear is 100% an option. Not exploring for uranium is also a choice.

  • Schlagbohrer · 10 hours ago

    Mass solar + wind + hydro and geothermal, with nuclear as a grid stabilizer for when solar and wind aren't working and the batteries are empty.

The question is... Was it ever viable? I remember, around 2016, a european climate scientist saying that he had to fill up more forms and prove every experiment in the most strict way. The justification was that their conclusions could have economical repercussions. The results of their experiments were always a few years late because of that. Welcome to the "absence of economical repercussions" world.

• meerita · 12 hours ago

  This is the same question I've asked myself. One country sacrifices its entire energy production in favor of green alternatives, while the rest of the world doesn't. It doesn't even move the needle. It's just a pitiful way to fail.

  • tempfile · 12 hours ago

    I agree, countries that do not adhere to CO2 targets should be heavily sanctioned. They are killing us, after all.

  • KellyCriterion · 12 hours ago

    The paradigm was: Renewables will be that fast in roll-out and much cheaper and then other countries will follow the path. (which is funny, since China installed more solar in 2024/2025 than US+EU combined - so for them its working, in the beginning they were adptors, now they became shapers; same for africa: now a real option to get cheap energy, the only region where solar is more expensive than it should be, is actually EU + US)

    • meerita · 12 hours ago

      I've seen the consequences of the shift to renewables here in Spain: entire ecosystems destroyed, drought everywhere, wildlife displaced, and native plant species disappearing because of wind turbines and solar farms. I'm in favor of renewables, but at the individual level (your own home). Meanwhile, the Spanish government has made several moves to ban personal electric vehicles like EUCs and electric scooters, which only pushes people back toward gas-powered vehicles. Everything is being done wrong.

      • KellyCriterion · 12 hours ago

        do you know of any politician in charge who is doing anything/whatever-at-least-one-thing right?

        • meerita · 11 hours ago

          As libertarian, of course not.

          • ZeroGravitas · 11 hours ago

            Is it official libertarian dogma that solar panels and wind turbines cause droughts? Seems like an incredibly convenient, yet insane, thing to believe if you want to deflect blame from fossil fuel driven climate change.

            • bluGill · 10 hours ago

              That's not libertarian dogma by any libertarian, I know. It is right-wing, but libertarians it will remind you that politics is far too complex to try and move to one axis.

            • human305893 · 10 hours ago

              It has to be bait. No one could be that stupid.

            • meerita · 10 hours ago

              It's not the solution the problem, it's who execute it.

      • human305893 · 10 hours ago

        Renewables did all that? Are you stupid? If you actually cared about habitat loss there is a big list of things that take up more space than renewables. This is so idiotic it has to be rage bait

      • notpushkin · 10 hours ago

        Solar/wind farms are great when you have the land suitable for those. My favourite example is replacing the U.S. farms growing corn that is used to produce ethanol (which is then added to the gas) with solar farms. This would produce more energy while not disrupting any ecosystems (at least not more than the existing farms). So either Spain has no land like that, or the Spanish government has fucked something up. Judging by the rest of your post, I‘m leaning towards the latter :-)

• ZeroGravitas · 12 hours ago

  Yes, a simple carbon tax could have been phased in over time. We already had nuclear and trains and insulation etc. and we now know from our present (their future) that solar, wind, heat pumps, EVs are cost effective. Turns out the whole problem was politics, not science or technology or economics.

• jeroenhd · 9 hours ago

  The goals were chosen so countries and industries could stave off the climate doomerism on the long term. Countries like Saudi Arabia, but also India, are currently trying to delay the next report to make it miss the 2028 deadline to lessen efforts for combatting climate change where it doesn't align with their industries. Risks will always be underreported while targets will be optimisic, because that's safest for countries dealing in and reliant on fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, even if we exceed and then bring temperature back to 1.5 degree over preindustrial, the damage has already been done. Many ecosystems and species will be lost, and many of the feedbacks (for example arctic sea ice) have hysteresis in them which will not get us to the same state even though nominally our temperature will be lower again. And because of hysteresis, larger reduction in CO2 might be required to get us back to 1.5 degrees. That's why all this CO2 capture and drawdown using some kind of unspecified, new technology, is such a distraction. Ideally we shouldn't release the carbon in the first place.

• shevy-java · 12 hours ago

  I agree with the second paragraph. It seems as if some among the industry see a simple cash grab here.

  • jaapz · 12 hours ago

    It's the fossil fuel industry who is pushing for carbon capture (because they know it isn't viable). The fossil fuel industry is just running the tobacco company playbook.

  • lysp · 12 hours ago

    I think its more they don't have to reduce their pollution output. They can just pump it all out as much as possible, to make as much profit as possible, and "hope" a magical reversal tech arrives at some point in the future. It's basically no regulation, to only focus on profit.

• 233mhz · 12 hours ago

  CO2 capture is obvious greenwashing, just like electric personal cars. They're here to save industries, not the planet, I don't think anyone half serious believes anything other than that

  • hvb2 · 12 hours ago

    You could apply it to existing power plants for example. I could see a use there. But don't use it as a justification for a new coal plant saying it's zero carbon now....

  • kulahan · 12 hours ago

    It’s pretty easy to see how electric personal cars make a difference even if the initial vehicle manufacturing process is indeed dirtier, and plenty of serious people consider them a part of the solution. CO2 capture also isn’t greenwashing, it’s just handwaving away problems with the idea that tech will somehow save us, which is also true for like… every single solution to this problem we’ve considered.

    • 233mhz · 12 hours ago

      Both perpetuate the idea that we can just continue business as usual and that we'll find a magic solution later. 2 to 3 tonnes of metal and batteries to transport 75kg of meat and sit uselessly 98% of the time is not the optimal way to transport people, no matter how you look at it

      • kulahan · 4 hours ago

        Nobody has ever, at any point been talking about “optimal”, so that’s irrelevant. Optimal is completely abandoning science and returning to nature. There is no better outcome for nature. That’s the optimal outcome. Putting a bunch of meat in tubes is not optimal. Putting a bunch of meat on very large, multi-passenger vehicles is not optimal. Putting 9 billion bike and walking pathways for meat is not optimal. Cities made of concrete are not optimal. Who cares about optimal? Actually serious people are discussing living in harmony. If nobody is allowed to own a car, then nobody is happy. If the only way to own a car is to own an electric one, then many people are happy. This is not optimal. Nothing we’re doing or aiming for is, in any sense of the word.

  • KellyCriterion · 12 hours ago

    with fusion you would have enough energy to do it?

    • sfn42 · 12 hours ago

      It always puzzles me when people think fusion is just infinite free energy. You're not just gonna have one fusion plant producing a billion zetawatts of electricity. Each fusion plant will likely produce roughly the same as a large nuclear plant. So we would need to build hundreds/thousands of them, it would take many decades to build them. Fusion reactors are extremely complicated machines. And even if we did this, we would also need tens of thousands of carbon capture facilities, and the infrastructure to actually store the CO2 somewhere. Carbon capture (from air) is just completely infeasible. It's not even remotely realistic. There is absolutely no way it will ever make a significant difference.

    • imhoguy · 9 hours ago

      We have biggest fussion reactor available to us on the sky everyday relatively for free. But that won't stop our greed and overpopulation.

  • bebimbop · 12 hours ago

    Maybe, but cement manufacturing by itself is responsible for a staggering 8% of global co2 emissions. And we really don't have a viable option for replacing cement, and probably won't for a long time. Capturing and removing that co2 has a meaningful impact. Even if CCS were limited to just that one industry.

    • hnmullany · 11 hours ago

      There are absolutely viable ways to reduce concrete emissions by about 30% - but it is staggeringly difficult to get the construction industry (including architects, structural engineers, standards bodies etc.) to change practices.

  • hnmullany · 11 hours ago

    Yes on CO2 capture, but electric personal cars are substantially lower emissions than internal combustion cars. Anyone saying something different is pushing fossil propaganda - that is just not a fact-based argument. Yes, getting everyone onto electrified public transport + scooters is better - but EVs do provide meaningful emissions reduction.

• yyyk · 12 hours ago

  CO2 emissions trading is greenwash. CO2 capture not necessarily so. It could be a useful tool, so long as it's not used as an excuse to launder other emissions.

  • chamomeal · 12 hours ago

    A while ago (years ago?) I read something about how carbon capture is so energy intensive that it doesn’t really help much. Is that still true? I guess if you powered it with green energy, that’d be a net positive?

    • throwaway473825 · 12 hours ago

      Yes, but in an indirect way. Direct carbon capture (DAC) is so energy intensive that it's only viable in places with 100% clean electricity, like Iceland. It's a non-starter in most countries. However, places that have 100% clean electricity are often isolated. You need to ship in all equipment, which is made elsewhere, and fly in all personnel. This quickly adds up: https://heimildin.is/grein/24581/climeworks-capture-fails-to... Capturing carbon from the source, like a coal power plant, is much easier. But the capture rate is only 50% on average, so a coal power plant with carbon capture is still horrible while also ridiculously expensive, so it doesn't really make sense.

    • pbmonster · 9 hours ago

      Of course, direct air capture of CO2 is extremely energy intense. You can only do it if you've built excessive renewable energy overproduction. And I mean unimaginable excessive. We've emitted more than a trillion tons of CO2 since 1990. If we want to put just that back into the ground (pump it into old oil wells), the final storage will be several thousand cubic kilometers of high pressure CO2. Just the direct air capture will cost more than an Exawatt hour of renewable electricity (currently, humanity produces around 30 PWh of electricity per year from all sources). You can use some tricks. Turning all agricultural waste, forestry waste and organic garbage into bio char (instead of letting it decompose on the fields or in compost facilities, which emits CO2) captures a few billion tons per year, but that's far more labor intense and requires a lot of automation work.

  • jltsiren · 12 hours ago

    Carbon offsets are greenwash. Emissions trading mostly works, because it's just about the government setting a quota and then letting people figure out who gets to use it.

  • yread · 12 hours ago

    CO2 emissions trade for about 50$/t. CO2 capture costs 500$/t. So, both are useless - it costs 10 times more to get the carbon out, why are we selling them so cheap, it costs 10 times more to get the carbon out compared to not emitting it, it will never be economical.

• hvb2 · 12 hours ago

  > That's why all this CO2 capture and drawdown using some kind of unspecified, new technology, is such a distraction. Ideally we shouldn't release the carbon in the first place. But imagine your oil and gas... One way to keep your expertise be valuable is to offer the solution to the externalities you produce. By proposing to store that externality using your drilling/rig assets. It's a win win, for the company, a loss loss for everyone else.

• olalonde · 12 hours ago

  It was still worth it on the metrics most people care about: life expectancy, child mortality, poverty, food security. Cutting off cheap fossil energy decades earlier would have been far worse for humanity than the slight warming we're getting now.

  • mrmanner · 12 hours ago

    On average, maybe yes. But in the rich world we also used a huge chunk of fossil fuel for relatively small marginal gains in quality of life (adding a fifth weekend shopping trip per year, buying a superyacht), and sometimes worsening life expectancy (driving too much, eating too much beef).

    • JuniperMesos · 11 hours ago

      Why should I believe your assessment that a huge chunk of fossil fuel use by the rich world went to "relatively small marginal gains in quality of life"? I think they went to massive quality of life gains for huge numbers of people, and that suddenly removing fossil fuels as an energy source would be catastrophically bad for huge numbers of people, and not obviously worse than the effects of global warming over a comparable timeframe.

      • mrmanner · 11 hours ago

        I never suggested we should suddenly remove fossil fuels as an energy source, that is a huge exaggeration. We wouldn't have needed to do anything suddenly 40-50 years ago when we started to understand that there was a problem, and we won't suddenly remove fossil fuels in the upcoming few years either. But that is also a false choice: Not all CO2 emissions in the past 40 years were net beneficial. I firmly believe humanity would have done better with fewer (not zero, fewer) flights, less (not zero) beef, and fewer (not zero) fossil fuel car journeys. All while continuing to raise people from poverty and providing real improvements, of course.

  • sfn42 · 11 hours ago

    We could have just built nuclear power plants. Invested into the technology, built breeder reactors and all that. We wouldn't have had to sacrifice anything, except of course for the astronomical profits of oil and gas companies. And sure this wouldn't have solved the entire problem, electricity generation only accounts for like 40-50% of CO2 emissions or so? But it would have made a huge difference, and allowed us to focus entirely on the other half of the problem. And it's not "slight warming". 20,000 years ago the global average temperature was about 3 degrees celsius lower than the reference point. That was the last ice age. Today we are 1.5 degrees above the reference point, 4,5 above the ice age. In a few decades we'll be at 3 degrees above reference, 6 degrees above ice age. The transition from ice age (-3) to the temperate climate that allowed humanity to thrive, took place over about 12,000 years. The transition from reference to +3 is taking place over about a century. And we won't stop at +3, it'll keep going. Already at 1.5 it's having huge profound effects. Look at this chart, this should help you understand the severity of the situation. https://www.dpg-physik.de/veroeffentlichungen/publikationen/... This is literally the end of the world as we know it. It's already well on its way. We are already seeing widespread crop failures, water scarcity, blistering heat waves, extreme weather etc. It will get much worse, this is just the beginning.

  • qwytw · 9 hours ago

    To be fair switching to nuclear was an option in the 70s-90s. Obviously it would have a been a bit more expensive but it would have slowed down climate change by 10-20 years.

• luplex · 12 hours ago

  "the damage has already been done" is dangerous wording, because it implies that we won't cause more damage. However, we will cause way more damage than has already been done!

• Yizahi · 12 hours ago

  > That's why all this CO2 capture and drawdown using some kind of unspecified, new technology, is such a distraction. Ideally we shouldn't release the carbon in the first place. This is in my amateur opinion, an absolutely bonkers and crazy stance. I can't understand why any pro-green person would affirm this. There are two facts, (again, imo) one - all our emission reducing efforts would maybe slow their acceleration or in other way to frame it, maybe we collectively would cut tens percents of annual emissions. We, humanity, will a always emit a lot of CO2 from the sources we can't reduce without going full stone age. Fact two - there is a lot of CO2 and other GH gas in the atmosphere now and even more would be there tomorrow. We MUST remove it somehow. Like, there are literally two components - either we remove the insulator (CO2&Co) or we remove the energy (sun rays). We can't do either of course, yet. The more greenwashing and muddying happens, with overfocus on cutting emissions while deliberately skipping RnD on the CO2 capture or sun shield tech, the more humans will be fucked in future. Or to provide a different analogy. We are in a completely closed system here, an oven. Turning the regulator from III to II helps of course, but the meat will eventually cook either way, unless either the power is disconnected or the insulating door is opened.

  • sfn42 · 11 hours ago

    The bonkers crazy stance is yours. Carbon capture cannot work. We would need to build at the very least tens of thousands of carbon capture plants, way more than we currently have power plants. So to me, the bonkers crazy stance is "let's just continue destroying the world, and hope magic future tech will save it". Especially when the tech you're talking about it just completely obviously entirely infeasible. Add to that the fact that we are destroying the world now . The ship is currently sinking. A solution in 50 years is a solution 100 years too late. The actual solution that we do have is nuclear power. We could have replaced all fossil fueled power production decades ago if we wanted to. That would have reduced our emissions by nearly 50% and we would have been able to put all our efforts into solving the remaining half of the problem. As it stands right now I fully expect the world to end quite soon. Maybe within my lifetime. Unless I die early I'll definitely see +3C in like 20 years or so, and probably +4 and +5 as well if not even more than that. I'm not having children because I don't want to put someone into this world just to suffer through the end of it. I have absolutely no faith in our ability to solve climate change. I believe we could have, if the world wasn't full of corrupt rich people and stupid people voting for them. But it is what it is. We've doomed ourselves and we're watching the end unfold before our eyes while everyones like that meme with the dog in the burning house saying "this is fine".

    • Yizahi · 10 hours ago

      First - I'm well aware about CO2 capture being a fantasy and not viable today. The "tiny" problem is that it is still one of the 3 possible faint solutions to overheating and we WILL need at least one of them operational in the next 50-200 years. If we won't start the RnD today, then it would still be a fantasy in a century or two, when we won't have any time left to play around. Second - where exactly did you get a notion that CO2 capture = "let's just continue destroying the world"? Of course every other tech should be mobilized and improved too in parallel. Third - nuclear generation at scale is as fantastical as DACs. Please read about actual issues with real life construction of plants and about actual emissions attributed to each plant cumulatively, without greenwashing like selectively ignoring whole parts of supply chain and maintenance and decommission. I love nuclear energy btw, despite literally suffered through the worst accident in their history (I'm from Kyiv) along with my whole family. We do should construct more of them and SMRs can't come quick enough. Fourth - there is a collective delusion that moving 100% to renewable energy would cut emissions by 50% or any other similar fantasy number. In reality the whole world energy generation is only 1/4 to 1/3 of all world emissions, and course the so called "net zero" or "carbon neutral" catchphrases are greenwashing, it is impossible. A 100% world renewable generation would only cut part of that part of global emissions. So let's say renewables reduce energy emissions by 50% or maybe even 75%. So then the non-generation emissions would decrease by only 15-20% (for example Xnew = Xold * (1 - 0.25 * 0.75) = 0.8125 * Xold or 18% decrease in other words). This is what is often ignored in a green advertisements.

      • sfn42 · 9 hours ago

        > The "tiny" problem is that it is still one of the 3 possible faint solutions to overheating and we WILL need at least one of them operational in the next 50-200 years We need them now. We currently don't have any time left to play around. In 50 years the global average temperature will be somewhere in the 3-5C range, which is apocalyptic. We'll be too busy fighting wars over water and arable land etc, to do anything meaningful about global warming. My view is that capturing CO2 is hopeless, what we need to do instead is simply not emit the CO2 in the first place. But we aren't doing that, we're just building new coal/gas plants every year instead like a bunch of idiots. Because that's what we are. Bunch of morons who are dooming ourselves. Whatever money is earned burning a ton of coal/gas, it will cost multiple times that amount to sequester the resulting CO2. > where exactly did you get a notion that CO2 capture = "let's just continue destroying the world"? I view it as an excuse to continue burning fossil fuels. It's not actually a solution to the problem at all, but it's presented as a solution when the reality is that it simply will never make a dent in the actual problem. There is no money in CO2 sequestration. We have a huge amount of investment in fossil fuel extraction and power generation etc because it makes money. CO2 is worthless, the only way anyone could possibly make money capturing CO2 and pumping it into the ground is if states paid them to do it. So a much simpler solution would be to pay them to generate clean power instead. "But where would the money come from" I don't know, where will the money for CO2 sequestration come from? We can't afford to pay a little extra for clean energy but somehow magically future us will be able to pay way way way way more for CO2 sequestration? It's not going to happen. > Third - nuclear generation at scale is as fantastical as DACs. Please read about actual issues with real life construction of plants and about actual emissions attributed to each plant cumulatively, without greenwashing like selectively ignoring whole parts of supply chain and maintenance and decommission. Google AI: Nuclear power plants produce zero direct carbon dioxide emissions during operation. Across their full lifecycle—including uranium mining, enrichment, plant construction, and decommissioning—nuclear energy averages about 12 to 50 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2e/kWh), making it one of the lowest-carbon electricity sources available. Solar PV: ~85 g CO2e/kWh Wind: ~26 g CO2e/kWh Hydroelectric: ~26 g CO2e/kWh Natural Gas: ~499 g CO2e/kWh Coal / Lignite: ~888 to 1,054 g CO2e/kWh There are over 400 operational nuclear power plants in the world, the technology clearly works. Yes Chernobyl was terrible, it was caused by the dysfunctional Soviet Union political environment, it's not a fault of the technology itself. The state withheld information about a critical flaw in the reactor design. Coal kills more people in a week, than nuclear has through its entire history. > So let's say renewables reduce energy emissions by 50% or maybe even 75%. As you can see from the numbers I shared above, renewables cut emissions by over 95% compared to coal, 90% compared to gas. I'm not saying we could be entirely carbon-neutral. I'm saying emissions from electricity generation specifically, which according to Google represents over 40% of CO2 emissions, could be almost entirely eliminated. Instead of 40% it could be less than 5%. From there we could work on other things such as shipping, farming etc. Maybe we'd just stop farming cows. I love beef but I'd be okay with that. Aviation could go as far as I'm concerned. I love vacationing but I'd rather have a planet that's going to continue being habitable. I could still go pretty far using trains, electric buses, my own electric car etc. Shipping could be electrified - nuclear submarines and warships already exists, that could be an option. And yes, I know all these solutions don't eliminate 100% of emissions. But they eliminate a large amount of them. EVs, over their lifespan, cause 60-70% less emissions than a comparable fossil fueled car. Yeah it's not 100% but it's a whole lot better than 0%. All the "solutions" to global warming are entirely fictional. Yet we keep barreling headfirst into it, because the world is full of idiots who aren't taking the problem seriously. Any rational person who really understands what's at stake would happily sacrifice some comforts, but most people aren't rational, they don't trust science because they don't understand it, and the rich control the propaganda machines that fill their feeble minds with bullshit instead.

  • FeepingCreature · 11 hours ago

    Fully agreed. We're not gonna get out of this without something a bit crazy, and CO2 capture at least has an actionable theory: "what if power was 10x cheaper". That's imaginable at least, much more so than "what if we committed a few genocides" as was proposed elsewhere in this thread.

• palata · 12 hours ago

  > the damage has already been done "I lost a finger, the damage has already been done. No need saving my arm, you can go ahead and cut it". Unless you meant "Damage has already been done, there is a lot we won't get back. And that's exactly why we should now fight to preserve what we can"?

  • js8 · 11 hours ago

    That's not what I am saying at all, I am just pointing out that venturing to 2 degrees (or more) and back to 1.5 degrees incurs the cost. Maybe it's well-known at this point, and I am just stating the obvious; but it's not my general impression.

    • palata · 7 hours ago

      I am not sure what you are saying then, with this: > Unfortunately, even if we exceed and then bring temperature back to 1.5 degree over preindustrial, the damage has already been done. We won't be able to get back to 1.5, and in fact the way it's going we're still accelerating our emissions, so it will get a lot worse. Now, if we could get back to 1.5, it would most definitely be better than not getting back to it. So "the damage has already been done" is wrong. If we managed to keep it at 2 instead of higher, it would most definitely be better than not keeping it at 2 . So "the damage has already been done" is wrong. If we managed to keep it at 3 instead of higher, ... you get my point. What's happening is that we've already caused damage that will hurt, and we are now actively working towards causing more damage that will hurt more . The faster we get our shit together, the less it will hurt. There is no "it's too late, it's done". There is "it will be painful" and "it will be more painful" and "it will be a lot more painful" all the way down.

      • js8 · 6 hours ago

        It was suggested by TFA: "The urgent task is to ensure that global warming remains below the 2°C threshold, with the aim of returning to 1.5°C by the end of the century." I disagree it's impossible but I agree it is difficult, and (as I said) the damage will be done.

        • palata · 6 hours ago

          > and (as I said) the damage will be done. Nope. "damage" will be done. "The damage" implies "all of it", and that is wrong. Going back to 1.5 actually means less damage than not going back. So "the damage" is not "completely" done.

>“Every additional fraction of a degree and additional year of warming above 1.5°C raises the risk of irreversible changes including in ice sheets, permafrost carbon, ocean circulation and coral systems, along with devastating human impacts,” the report states. The mention to coral systems, from an ignorant perspective, seems weirdly specific to me. Kinda like "civilization will collapse and the price of sweaters will go up". Does their disappearance have indirect consequences I'm not aware of?

• stdbrouw · 12 hours ago

  People really like coral reefs. "Civilization will collapse and this baby kitty will die."

  • exe34 · 10 hours ago

    Baby kitty and 1bn people competing for your dinner.

• martinclayton · 12 hours ago

  Not sure what consequences you are aware of but the key point with corals is loss of biodiversity. It's (I believe) the tipping point that goes at the lowest temperature rise.

• vrganj · 12 hours ago

  Coral systems are a major part of aquatic life, so you'd lose a ton fish, a major food source. You'd also lose erosion protection on coasts, plant systems like Mangroves (e.g. CO2 sinks). Additionally, the biodiversity in coral systems has been a rich source of biochemicals, think Alzheimer treatments, cancer and arthritis research.

• n4r9 · 12 hours ago

  > Coral reefs are some of the most diverse and valuable ecosystems on Earth. Home to over 4,000 species of fish, corals, and other marine life, coral reefs cover only 1% of the world’s oceans, but provide habitat for at least 25% of the world’s marine life, with many reef species still to be discovered. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/tutorial_corals/cora... > Coral reefs have an estimated global value of £6 trillion each year, due in part to their contribution to fishing and tourism industries and the coastal protection they provide. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/quick-questions/why-are-coral...

• tantivy · 12 hours ago

  It’s the marine equivalent of “forests die worldwide.” You might not know why you need them, but you’ll probably miss them when they’re gone

• NooneAtAll3 · 12 hours ago

  replace "corals" with "temperate forests" to realize the scale of affected animal populations/species corals are along the coasts all around the tropics and they are food chain, from plants to herbivores to predators

• defrost · 12 hours ago

  Sometimes called rainforests of the sea, shallow coral reefs form some of Earth's most diverse ecosystems. They occupy less than 0.1% of the world's ocean area, about half the area of France. Yet, they provide a home for at least 25% of all marine species ... ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_reef Aside from being home to a lot of seafood they also play a not fully understood part in the breeding of a good number of other seafood in ways not yet fully understood. ie. Lose the reefs .. and then we find out how our supply of seafood is impacted.

  • torben-friis · 11 hours ago

    That's what I was missing yeah. I always took the bleaching of corals in media as a visible 'canary in the mine' situation, never knew they were so central to marine life.

• exe34 · 10 hours ago

  A quick Google suggests 25% of marine life and 1bn people.

• jeroenhd · 9 hours ago

  Coral is the first to go. It's the metaphorical canary in the coal mine. We will probably survive without coral (we might lose a lot of fish but humanity will persist). Coral bleaching is also accelerated by ocean acidification. Acidification due to CO2 being absorbed into the ocean affects all marine life, but importantly, also plankton. Phytoplankton produces most of the oxygen on earth, and we kind of need that to live. It's not exactly "coral reefs are dead = oxygen depleted", but you don't get many visual representations of oceanic climate change that could threaten all mammals on earth.

We could always make more war in the Middle East (and Europe) and then 1,5°C would be totally viable. /s Seriously now: Attempts to cut fossil fuel supply are worthless unless done en masse and in big scale - any single country doing it will just spur investment in another country. Since the world will not come to a truly binding agreement, the only thing that can be truly regulated is demand which can be regulated locally without necessarily increasing demand elsewhere. The big new ticket is data centers, which strongly tend to use fossils due to SLAs and regulations. This can be fixed by new regulations, but only if people act now before the new approvals and builds are done.

• antupis · 12 hours ago

  Well cutting is happening right now and very large scale. USA is kinda laggard here but eg new electric car sales is up 70% in Europe or new Solar installations are up 50% in Africa.

  • yyyk · 12 hours ago

    Your examples are examples of cuts on the demand side. They satisfy current transport/electricity demand with a means that costs much less carbon, so fossil demand goes down. (By contrast, a supply cut is 'not developing new fossil resource cuz someone else will buy it and burn it', which is obviously a dead end).

I'm sure temperature ceiling will just work like debt ceiling.

• tovej · 12 hours ago

  Difference being nobody ever died as a direct consequence of the national debt.

• vincnetas · 12 hours ago

  debt is imaginary, temperature is not

To be fair: setting it as a temperature range was very stupid from the get go. Also, to not consider the economic impact, was also stupid, and the CO2-tax is also beyond idiotic since it creates a fake-economy where people buy the right to pollute. That runs counter to the idea of green energy. I think one should abandon the Paris Agreement and label it as the failure as it was. However had that does not mean that green energy should be abandoned. There need to be more incentives towards green energy (see how Putin uses gas as means to amplify his genocidal activity against Ukrainians). Meaning, companies that verifiably transition towards more renewable, need to get positive incentives to go towards that and maintain it at all times. The CO2 tax should also be eliminated without compensation. And there also has to be more realism - it makes no sense to cut down an economy, producing more unemployment in the process. It has to be a cohesive unit.

• 233mhz · 12 hours ago

  > Also, to not consider the economic impact It's going to be the least of your problem

  • greyw · 12 hours ago

    Its the other way around. Climate is going to be least important of your problems if you cant put food on the table.

    • TheOtherHobbes · 12 hours ago

      Climate catastrophe will be the reason there's no food on the table. This is already happening to crops like cocoa and coffee, and crops like maize and wheat are next. If we're too stupid as a species to understand this, we can just let Darwin clean this up and give the planet another chance with different species in a few million years or so.

      • goda90 · 10 hours ago

        Humans are probably the only Earthlings that have any chance of achieving interplanetary civilization and persisting long term. If this civilization collapses and our energy technologies are lost then any future attempts at civilization will be facing a steeper slope to get those technologies back without the cheap and abundant fossil fuels we burned up. Many of those fuels may never return to this planet because life has evolved considerably so things like the Carboniferous may not happen again.

        • 233mhz · 6 hours ago

          > Humans are probably the only Earthlings that have any chance of achieving interplanetary civilization and persisting long term. Stop watching sci fi my dude, there is 0% chance we leave the solar system and probably even earth. It's not a video game, there is no speed run, there is nothing out there for us, what's the hurry with burning and destroying our home planet ? Do you think we'll have it better on Mars lmao?

          • goda90 · 5 hours ago

            I'm not sure why you're responding as if my comment is some sort of hopium. I'm saying that if we don't stop ourselves from making Earth uninhabitable to us in the very near future, that this is the peak of technological civilization on Earth for all time. Whether human descendants or another sapient species comes out of the climate turmoil and tries to advance again, they're gonna hit a wall. All our ambitions and dreams for the future hinge on reversing the damage we've done.

    • 233mhz · 12 hours ago

      > Climate is going to be least important of your problems if you cant put food on the table. ??? We're already having record low crop yields CAUSED by climate change right now my dude. You won't have food on your plate BECAUSE of climate change

• gmueckl · 12 hours ago

  Abandon the Paris agreement and then what? International politics won't allow for anything better to be put in its place for the foreseeable future.

• TheOtherHobbes · 12 hours ago

  Not sure which economic impact you mean when the ultimate economic impact of climate catastrophe will be the complete destruction of the global economy. This is not hyperbole. If nothing changes that's a completely realistic outcome within 50 - 100 years.

  • andsoitis · 11 hours ago

    > complete destruction of the global economy. This is not hyperbole. If nothing changes that's a completely realistic outcome within 50 - 100 years Saying the global economy will be completely destroyed within 100 years does indeed sound hyperbolic, uninformed, alarmist, FWIW.

I would not say people have given up. The problem is that this search for saving the planet and humanity all together is hard to understand for the common folk, much in the same way other banners that have been imposed on people in the past 2 decades. Common people want to go to work and know that they have a working transport system, that they can walk in between a few streets and feel safe, that they can have enough money for a mortgage and to feed themselves and their families. None of these things are exactly addressed by putting solar panels, and wind farms all around, especially when the cost of fuel keep rising. When the security of the grid on a once thought-of super-power like UK is constantly put in question. The common people doesnt care much about these topics and explanations because they don’t have time for it, because they do still need to get on with life. It’s generally youth and retirees the ones gluing themselves to the pavement, have you noticed? whats in common in these two groups is they can both still afford to be idealists. Then you turn on the TV and see how much damage is being done to the environment in other regions, and so, why do I need to suck it up in my jumper all winter then? Why am I the one using paper straws that break before I finish my drink? This whole thing was always a tough sale, but it’s gotten even harder in the current political climate.

• pluc · 12 hours ago

  There is no amount of paper straws that will offset anything the rich deciders do. It's a ploy for time for no reason whatsoever.

  • fy20 · 12 hours ago

    It's not even that. If you take a look at videos of India etc you will see rivers full of plastic, plastic rubbish being burned, etc. It's just normal way of life for them. But we are told that plastic straws are the issue, and switching to paper straws (that you need to use twice as many of when they inevitably dissolve) will solve the problems. Meanwhile, the H&M polyester dress that you wear 3 times before throwing it away takes as much energy as 2000x paper straws to manufacturer.

    • guitarlimeo · 12 hours ago

      If you see a neighbour with an untidy lawn does it make you want to give up keeping your lawn clean?

      • haizhung · 12 hours ago

        You do understand that they are suffering because of choices made for them, by the west? Its our plastic that flows through their rivers.

        • JuniperMesos · 11 hours ago

          It's not, it's their plastic, and their choices.

          • haizhung · 11 hours ago

            Well, color me surprised, but you’re right: in contrast to china, Malaysia, and other SE Asia states, India’s plastic trash is mostly (97%) self-made, with the largest contributor being single use packaging for consumers.

            • tonyedgecombe · 10 hours ago

              Another thing that might surprise you is 75% of the waste in the great pacific garbage patch is lost or discarded fishing gear.

      • wallst07 · 12 hours ago

        If the neighbor is on the other side of the globe, hardly makes a difference to most people. My actual neighbor, gets a talk then a call to the local enforcement agency if it doesn't improve.

        • guitarlimeo · 11 hours ago

          But according to his post it makes a difference? "Why should I care because they are polluting on the other side of the planet?" It's unfortunate we can't call a local agency to fix their attitude, but at least we can do our part. What it's worth if you don't even try?

        • my-huge-pony · 11 hours ago

          >My actual neighbor, gets a talk then a call to the local enforcement agency if it doesn't improve. Is there a local enforcement agency for... tidy lawns where you live?

          • notpushkin · 11 hours ago

            I suppose homeowner associations are useful for something.

          • macNchz · 10 hours ago

            Enforcement of tidy lawns is genuinely a thing in very many places in the US.

    • draugadrotten · 12 hours ago

      Chinas expansion of Coal power plants(1), India's behaviour with dirty rivers and pollution, Middle East burning rubber(2) so it is visible from space, etc, are all examples of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory on a global scale. 1. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-coal-power-ri... 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJPxWu0qqiQ

      • roenxi · 11 hours ago

        Seems like a tough argument to make stick. The Chinese & Indians are clearly benefiting more from the economic growth than they are suffering from the downsides of pollution. They would not swap their current environmental problems for clean poverty. It isn't a broken windows problem as much as drawing 2 billion people out of poverty is more urgent than most other concerns.

        • AlexandrB · 10 hours ago

          Exactly this. Living standards are closely correlated to energy use and no one is going to volunteer to live in poverty. The environmental movement does itself no favours either by pursuing high social cost but low impact interventions like paper straws and ignoring (or outright vilifying) nuclear as a viable path forward. Finally, there's a huge disconnect between the (supposed) low cost of renewables and what people experience on the ground. Countries like Germany are a good example of this. The constant refrain is that solar and wind are super cheap and are running more and more of the country, but those savings (if real) don't make it to the average rate payer. Something is clearly wrong here. Either the cost claims are incomplete and don't factor in something important or the auction mechanism used to set prices must be discarded. But the disparity between claiming massive cost benefits while having people pay more sours the public on the technology and destroys credibility.

          • teiferer · 9 hours ago

            > The environmental movement does itself no favours either by pursuing high social cost but low impact interventions like paper straws How much energy has the environmental movement put into the paper straw topic compared to the attention it is continuously getting from those trying to ridicule the environmental movement? None of my environment activist friends ever talks about plastic/paper straws. They tend to drink straight out of the glass/cup/bottle/can if anything. The only people bringing this up are those continuously pushing against change and those not realizing that it is just a big distraction topic to get people worked up. It is quite exemplary how often the topic has been mentioned independently in just the discussions of this article. Please stop falling for this.

      • ShadowOfThePit · 10 hours ago

        And it gets worse. Like LOOK AT THIS "the methane emissions alone from Turkmenistan’s two main fossil fuel fields caused more global heating in 2022 than the entire carbon emissions of the UK" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/31/turkmeni... "The biggest event was a leak of 427 tonnes an hour in August, near Turkmenistan’s Caspian coast and a major pipeline. That single leak was equivalent to the rate of emissions from 67m cars, or the hourly national emissions of France." https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/06/revealed...

    • jurgenburgen · 11 hours ago

      What is this nonsense about straws? The reason plastic straws are banned is because they were one of the top 10 things littering European beaches. Indian plastic straws have fuck all to do with littering _our_ beaches.

      • gpderetta · 10 hours ago

        similarly for plastic bags.

      • ptero · 10 hours ago

        And why then did plastic straws disapperaed in the US before slowly coming back? The story (in the US) I heard when I asked was usually "because we can and because it is good for the world". That was a big self-own from a group that thought they have a carte blanche and can just ignore those pesky normies instead of explaining why the changes are good for them, too. And being smarter in picking battles. And minimizing inconveniences from unavoidable sharp edges.

      • AlexandrB · 8 hours ago

        Why did Alberta ban plastic straws then? There are approximately zero beaches here.

    • teiferer · 10 hours ago

      > But we are told that plastic straws are the issue, and switching to paper straws (that you need to use twice as many of when they inevitably dissolve) will solve the problems. Could we please stop with this strawman (sorry pun) topic of paper straws? Nobody claims that they solve the problems and they have just become this distracting meme that ridicules all efforts at environmental protection. Yes plastic straws are bad, no they are not among the top-10 problems humanity needs to address and yes the topic has been blown out of proportion just to make fun of things. If you care, do you not realize that every time you bring this up you are doing us all a disservice? So, please, let's drop it and focus on actual issues of regulatory approaches to climate change instead.

    • thinkcontext · 9 hours ago

      > It's just normal way of life for them. Sanitation service is expensive. It's an under valued historical victory in rich countries.

  • mr_mitm · 12 hours ago

    Were paper straws ever about climate change? This feels like a red herring. Pollution has many aspects to it, and you can work on several problems simultaneously.

    • jurgenburgen · 11 hours ago

      No, they are about cleaning up European beaches. Anyone using plastic straws as an argument against combating climate change is acting in bad faith.

      • AlexandrB · 8 hours ago

        Plastic straws are simply emblematic of the environmental movement as a whole. "Political capital" is not infinite, folks will only tolerate so much disruption to their lives. Going after plastic straws instead of something more consequential was a mistake.

        • ZeroGravitas · 8 hours ago

          This isn't supported by polling. Even in America and among Republicans there's support for using less plastic straws and unless there's some extremely unexpected overlaps in opinion it basically means the only people who think it's a bad move also don't care about climate change and environmentalism seperate from the straw issue.

  • tonyedgecombe · 10 hours ago

    I never hear environmentalists talking about plastic straws, only people with an anti-environmentalist agenda.

• kulahan · 12 hours ago

  Doubly frustrating when you consider that Americans would actually have needed to backslide on creature comforts for 1.5 to have ever been viable, at a time when people overwhelmingly want them. This problem starts and ends with corporations and government regulations. It’s barely worth it to talk to people about it right now. Maybe in 10 years when things are a bit more on fire and people are more willing to listen.

  • rob74 · 12 hours ago

    The problem is: when things will be on fire, it will be much more difficult or impossible to get them back to an acceptable level.

  • tonyedgecombe · 10 hours ago

    >This problem starts and ends with corporations and government regulations. That's what we have been relying on for the last forty years and we still have an issue. Corporations respond to demand. If someone is willing to buy a barrel of oil to burn then you can be sure you will find someone else to pull it out of the ground for them.

    • kulahan · 4 hours ago

      No, for the last 40 years we’ve been trying paper straws, “reduce reuse recycle”, and keeping our thermostat low while corporations build such intense computing centers we can’t buy a damn personal PC anymore. Of course companies respond to demand. That’s why we need governments with militaries to give them a second consideration to respond to.

  • bilsbie · 10 hours ago

    We could all stand to drive less and wear sweaters inside during the winter.

    • kulahan · 4 hours ago

      Nope. Not even close. I will turn my thermostat up 3 degrees for every degree you lower yours. It still will make such an insignificant difference that I’m less than a rounding error. This is on corporations. They use millions upon millions of gallons of water, they use entire cities-worth of electricity, and they break environmental regulations with wanton disregard. This idea that personal responsibility is standing between us and a clean planet is also, by the way, a primary strategy of these criminals.

• onion2k · 12 hours ago

  I would not say people have give up. On the contrary in fact, I think a lot of people have decided to do something that will have a tremendously positive impact on the climate in the future: they've chosen not to have children. There will be downsides to that decision, but as far as climate goes it's by far the most impactful thing anyone can do.

  • Keyframe · 12 hours ago

    They could off themselves as well. That would help too. 4 billions of years of evolution end with me! What an absurd take. I'd understand one child, fewer than desired, etc.. but no children as a conscious effort to help the climate is something I don't buy that ever happened. Other reasons are at play for that. Nothing to do with the climate.

    • guitarlimeo · 11 hours ago

      Until recently I was strictly against having kids because of the world climate, both weather and political. But then my partner wanted them and I couldn't stand the notion of losing her, so I was able to compromise on my ideals. But yeah without her, definitely.

    • onion2k · 11 hours ago

      but no children as a conscious effort to help the climate is something I don't buy that ever happened That's not what I said. People are choosing not to have children for lots of reasons. One of the benefits is that they end up having much less impact on the climate; that's not saying it's the reason they're doing it.

      • skeptic_ai · 9 hours ago

        What’s the point of climate if there is no humans? If humans were not here there won’t be a concept of climate to even care about. We only do it for ourselves. Not for the plants or animals.

        • nostrademons · 9 hours ago

          But that is the root of the climate crisis. When it was just 150M Americans living a developed-world lifestyle, the climate was fine. As soon as you broaden that out to the 8B+ people living today, allowing all the folks in China/India/Africa to have the same lifestyle as the West, you have problems. In 1960 the average American emitted 16 metric tons of CO2; China emitted 0.5 metric tons and India 0.2. In 2020 US emissions actually decreased to 13.8, but China is at 9.2. Per capita emissions can decrease modestly but if you increase the number of capita by 50x, total CO2 emissions will increase accordingly. Likewise, the climate crisis is far more likely to be solved by WW3 reducing the population down to ~1B than by individual per capita reductions.

        • onion2k · 8 hours ago

          I don't think there's any expectation that humans will go extinct. We're here to stay. Suggesting this is about the extinction of the human race is a strawman. The question is each of us needs to answer around having kids is firstly about whether or not you want to raise them in the world we live in, and secondly about whether you want (or care) that your children live in a world where the climate is broken, and having to deal with the resource issues, heat, wars over liveable land, etc. Heck, I'm sure plenty of people on HN are under 30 - there's every chance that they'll be around to see these problems first hand. People who do want to have children are arguably very fortunate that there are lots of people who don't. The children who are born with have to deal with less contention for resources. That said though, they're still in for a pretty bad time by all accounts. Even if technology magically fixes everything, you still have to wonder if your kids will be in the part of society that can afford it.

        • dpkirchner · 3 hours ago

          One of the things we all have to be mindful of, including you, is binary thinking. Very few are calling for there to be "no humans" and you know it.

    • yifanl · 6 hours ago

      What are you proposing exactly, global distribution of cyanide capsules?

      • Keyframe · 6 hours ago

        CaaS? Sounds like a business plan. I don't propose anything, except the notion was a bit absurd. Takes mostly two to make a child, so even having (only) one is still a cull that goes well into that narrative. Make one, teach it to take care of nature, to prompt less and thus consume less energy, and to teach the same to others.

  • my-huge-pony · 11 hours ago

    This is the kind of take that causes more traditional (including right wing, but also people from non western countries) look at climate activists as crazy fanatics. You are technically right, but I think advocating for childlessness causes people to disregard the whole movement as insane.

    • onion2k · 8 hours ago

      I'm not really advocating for childlessness. I'm accepting of people who choose that life, but I don't have any skin in the game regarding whether or not anyone besides myself have kids. It's their choice. The only judgement I make is people who have children and have no regard for the environment. I think those people are risking their children's long term welfare. That's a dick move. If you have kids you have a moral obligation to try to make sure the planet they live on in adulthood isn't fucked.

  • roenxi · 11 hours ago

    It's hard to find a coherent perspective where that makes sense. Most parents have had kids when future conditions looked far worse than they do now. The situation actually looks rosy in 50 years given the promising moves the Chinese are making in nuclear and renewable technology. It is more likely that children are inconvenient to the lifestyles people want to lead. That is more consistent with how bad people are at long-term planning.

    • HPsquared · 9 hours ago

      Late-stage individualism.

• tnecio · 12 hours ago

  > None of these things are exactly addressed by putting solar panels, and wind farms all around, especially when the cost of fuel keep rising. Don't want to nitpick but this touches on a topic I think worth discussing. I feel that for many people, investments in green energy are a needless sacrifice we do for the sake of the environment (and a naive sacrifice at that since other countries can just keep on emitting their greenhouse gases anyway). It follows, since we invest in green this must have its costs elsewhere like in higher gas prices and obviously then people ask -- why should we keep doing this when we are hit with economic downturn? But really green energy is all about the unaccounted for future costs. We can burn fossil fuels now but we are going to be in a whole lot of trouble when they become more expensive and dealing with their side effects (climate change) will become expensive as well. Green energy is a solution - you don't need to care about high fuel prices and what happens in Middle East if you can get all energy from the sun and wind.

  • martin_a · 11 hours ago

    Yes, totally correct in all points, but people just don't care about the future. I fear it's easy as that.

    • pelagicAustral · 11 hours ago

      The argument is, why would the common folk care about the future? Why should they be the ones making the sacrifices if hardly ever they any benefit? None of this concerns the type of person that can easily just move on to green technology, of course not, I am not talking about your average HN user, I am talking about the people that has become ever more invisible, poor and disenfranchised. For these people, what does the future has to offer anyway? Why do think people are not having babies anymore? If you live day by day, and that is all you can afford, what kind of future you think people going to try and cultivate?

    • HPsquared · 9 hours ago

      They aren't having any children, so it's hard to care about 100 years from now.

      • chneu · 5 hours ago

        In my experience the folks having kids care less about the environment than others.

  • Nursie · 11 hours ago

    It’s also about energy security - why expose your energy markets to insane fluctuations in international fossil-fuel markets if you don’t have to? Surely the last few years have shown that energy independence is a critical social and defence policy now? For many/most countries, investing in renewables is the best, cheapest and fastest way to move in that direction.

  • presentation · 10 hours ago

    Well the solution is just that green energy is already cost competitive with fossil fuels, so we just need to let the market do its thing and have people buy the cheap thing, which is increasingly green energy.

• vlyan · 12 hours ago

  an important factor, I believe, is that a lot of "common people" are childless. about half of Western millennials are, and that was the last generation that didn't grow up in the clown world we live in now. zoomers and forth will be even more so. I don't know why should a childless person give a damn about the future beyond their own lifespan. I think most of them don't, in their heart of hearts, and that's the only logical stance.

  • wrs · 11 hours ago

    It’s an equally valid (i.e., not valid) observation that most of the people with children obviously don’t give a damn, or we wouldn’t be here.