Can we pray it away?
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We have to think it away too; “thoughts and prayers” ya know.
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Problem solved, what’s next?
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The fracking boom has increased carbon emissions. It has also ruined a lot of aquifers and made the garbage patch worse. In my opinion, we can’t afford to go a la carte on the pushback.
If energy is the only thing to talk about, we might as well double down on nuclear power and the waste disposal hazards that come with it. Its like a rube goldberg machine, theres no changing just one part, without affecting all the others.
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FTA:
I see a business religion opportunity here.
I reached this same conclusion a while back. Given that the powers that be are likely going to continue extracting easily-gotten fossil fuels until there are none left, our goal should be to divert as much of it as possible to any activity other than lighting it on fire. So we should immediately cease with recycling plastics and instead focus on making sure as much of it as possible gets buried responsibly. This would increase the price of fossil fuels while accelerating the consumption of the finite supply of easily-gotten oil in less destructive ways, forcing the premature death of the pollution industry relative to the current timeline we are on.
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We don’t even have recycling down here. It’s widely believed to be a Commie plot.
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We’re not even talking about the larger problem. The U.S., even with all its manifold bad habits, isn’t the driver of the climate peril. China, India and all the nations in southeast Asia are. Outsourcing the economy outsourced the perpetuation of heat and carbon pollutants.
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I really don’t think there is anything intrinsic to human nature that makes solutions to these problems a fight against human nature. Part of why people favor things like cars is that we reworked major parts of the social fabric to make them the dominant choice. As an example, I hate driving. I would rather read on public transit than drive. My city used to (before my time) have a streetcar that ran on average every 4 minutes and averaged a little over 35 mph heading downtown. Driving isn’t really any faster due to traffic. I would love to take the streetcar, but that option doesn’t exist for me anymore. I can either take an hourly bus, active transportation or a car. My nature wants the cheaper, faster, more comfortable public option, but it isn’t available. Simply funding the public choice and taxing the externalities of the private choice would change that situation massively and that pattern repeats in large parts of our economy. We currently actively incentivize the worst choices.
I’m halfway there with you, but there is the very real issue of leachate from landfills. Reduction is still preferable to storage or recycling.
China is a fair critique, but India is still way behind the US and the rest of southeast Asia is further behind still on emissions. More than that it is weird to expect developing nations with large populations to take the lead before developed countries. It is hard to ask someone just escaping subsistence farming to take actions for the good of humanity when we aren’t willing to look at our zoning codes and style of car for the same reason.
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Thanks for making my argument for me. We do the wrong thing, over and over. That’s what I have observed in my life so far.
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I learned this today. One of those “I had no idea” type of things.
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However, as the cement cures it pulls that CO2 back out of the atmosphere. Over the long run it’s much more carbon neutral, except of course for all of the fossil fuels used to bake the limestone in the first place.
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Not according to this article. I am not a cement guy, so I claim no knowledge of the process.
ET: make it sound not so assholey
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Unless my reading is much mistaken the convention you cite doesn’t forbid taxation of aviation fuel; it just states that the fuel and equipment an aircraft is using on an international flight aren’t to be subjected to duties by the country(s) it passes through as though those flight consumables were imports(so long as they in fact stay on the plane and aren’t cargo being delivered).
Nothing forbids duties on imported fuel or domestic taxes on fuel; but once the aircraft has filled up according to whatever the local rules are it can’t be treated as an importer at each subsequent stop.
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Technically, yes. But the US and China have both used this interpretation of the convention to block attempts by France and the EU to impose taxes on airline fuel.
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But not always. We are capable of making those better choices and they are just as much a part of human nature. That streetcar didn’t grow fully formed out of the ether. Humans made the choice to build it and sustain it for decades. We can do the same thing again, if we are willing to stop listening to the small portion of the population who stands to benefit from destructive choices.
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It is the least we all could do.
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&
It isn’t about individual consumer behaviour. It’s systemic, and it’s driven by the rich and the powerful.
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(See also)
If the solution to the climate problem requires change to average American’s lifestyles in a way that significantly reduces real or perceived convenience or increases cost of living, then I think you are wrong.
The advocates of the GND continue to portray it as a win-win-win-win-win for everyone, rather than as a call to blood, toil, tears and sweat. There is a reason for that.
