2. Climate change demands a radical transformation of modern lifestyles.A bit off-topic, but I'm sad that this was politicized, as that's exactly what's required to stop global climate change.
There are too many geopolitical forces standing in the way of concerted efforts to stop it. And even if we could summon a multilateral front, the process is probably too far along to be stopped via centralized brute force anyway. As we've passed the inflection point, the next 20 years may bring 1.5 to 2 times the warming we've already had since 2000, tipping into a runaway positive feedback loop.
Somehow everyone's got to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and go solar, drive electric cars, buy local, etc. We're probably conservatively talking $10,000-100,000 USD per household, or about $40,000 if we use the logarithmic mean. Times 2 billion households, perhaps $80 trillion USD to a first-order approximation to go sustainable tomorrow. But that financial burden alone would disrupt lifestyles in the short term..
Now that's what's needed, but of course we probably won't do that. We'll just double down on our current lifestyles as developing nations join the industrialized world and fire up a bunch of nuclear plants and start scrubbing CO2, then add fusion sometime in the 2030s. Maybe put sunshades in orbit at L1, pollute the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight, seed algae blooms with iron to suck CO2, do all of the other things as we continue to deforest and desertify the planet as we finish out the 6th mass extinction of the holocene.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
But hey, that's just an externality, who cares.
IMHO a distributed approach at the individual level is the only one that has a hope of succeeding. We could all choose to conserve and grow victory gardens as our patriotic duty like in WWI. But no matter how much proof is presented, people believe what they want to believe, for no other reason than to disagree with the environmentalists and academic community. Even here on this very site with some of the smartest people in the world, I suspect the opinion on this is split 50/50.
For all of those reasons, I think it's irresponsible for the article to call something like climate change a game. A nuisance we'll simply ignore to our detriment sure. But not a game.
A bit off-topic, but I'm sad that this was politicized, as that's exactly what's required to stop global climate change.
There are too many geopolitical forces standing in the way of concerted efforts to stop it. And even if we could summon a multilateral front, the process is probably too far along to be stopped via centralized brute force anyway. As we've passed the inflection point, the next 20 years may bring 1.5 to 2 times the warming we've already had since 2000, tipping into a runaway positive feedback loop.
Somehow everyone's got to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and go solar, drive electric cars, buy local, etc. We're probably conservatively talking $10,000-100,000 USD per household, or about $40,000 if we use the logarithmic mean. Times 2 billion households, perhaps $80 trillion USD to a first-order approximation to go sustainable tomorrow. But that financial burden alone would disrupt lifestyles in the short term..
Now that's what's needed, but of course we probably won't do that. We'll just double down on our current lifestyles as developing nations join the industrialized world and fire up a bunch of nuclear plants and start scrubbing CO2, then add fusion sometime in the 2030s. Maybe put sunshades in orbit at L1, pollute the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight, seed algae blooms with iron to suck CO2, do all of the other things as we continue to deforest and desertify the planet as we finish out the 6th mass extinction of the holocene.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
But hey, that's just an externality, who cares.
IMHO a distributed approach at the individual level is the only one that has a hope of succeeding. We could all choose to conserve and grow victory gardens as our patriotic duty like in WWI. But no matter how much proof is presented, people believe what they want to believe, for no other reason than to disagree with the environmentalists and academic community. Even here on this very site with some of the smartest people in the world, I suspect the opinion on this is split 50/50.
For all of those reasons, I think it's irresponsible for the article to call something like climate change a game. A nuisance we'll simply ignore to our detriment sure. But not a game.