My feeling is we have to stop pumping it out before we will attempt to clean the atmosphere.
I did mention solar, wind and tide, there really is progress there. And RR are trying to create a modular nuclear reactor, more similar to the small reactors on nuclear submarines but which on land can provide energy for a few towns from each unit. There is progress towards clean electricity at least here in the UK. What the Chinese are doing I don't know, I expect they are still building coal powered stations at a rate.
And work continues to create fusion. It does always seem 20 years away, will we get there?
I think that is too negative, the planet has been through various warming and cooling periods in its past, while the current heating trends are down to human created pollution - if that is fixed (If, I know) there is no reason why we might not eventually enter a new cooling period which could reinstate glaciers etc.
There are too many humans and we are pumping out too many greenhouse gasses. Change is essential and also possible.
37 years ago I hitchiked round Australia. On the main roads both sides even far out into the outback there was trash for 15m either side of the roads. They ate and drank as they drove and chucked the packaging out of their car windows. They didn't care about their beautiful outback. And they didn't use solar power even with the abundance of sun that they have. My understanding is that they are using it now.
Don't you think the UK electric only car sales target is worth something? It has made the car industry sit up and take note and they are starting to reinvent themselves as electric car companies.
Personally, where I live there are at least 4 or 5 Teslas that I see regularly. One charges itself on my way to work attached to a very ordinary house. I wonder how they afford it, but they do.
One is not exclusive to the other, we need to be deal with this crisis at both ends and everywhere in between. I hate the notion of climate engineering and when the idea was first mooted I thought it was very obviously a disaster in the making. So long as anyone thinks there will be a fix further along the line, they don’t bother fixing what’s immediately in the vicinity. Kicking the ball into the long grass, as I think the vernacular has it. But since we’re now where we are, let’s get on with it and try what we can to reverse some of the damage we’ve caused.
Wind, wave, solar, even nuclear…. Whatever has been achieved here is a piss in the ocean, and anyway does nothing to address the real and immense ongoing issues. These replacements can only ever reduce our impact from this point on, not change the damage we’ve already caused. And anyway, they’re not free, not completely. Manufacturing and dealing with resulting trash also has an impact. At this point even small negatives create large impact. Because we’ve arrived at the point where any accumulative result is all pouring over the edges. When a bath is overflowing, it matters not whether it’s an extra cup ful or a whole bucket that’s been added, the existing and ongoing water pouring over the edge is the actual problem. Also, until we solve the problem of nuclear pollution, it’s not really a solution is it, it’s just more kicking the problem into the long grass.
The truth is that the carbon problem is only one of several intractable concurrent issues. It’s the biggest and the most pressing, especially for us humans, but there are others that will have similarly catastrophic outcomes. Plastics is the next one. Then there’s the chemical residue we’ve shrouded the entire planet with. And the disaster we’ve created with our squandering of antibiotics is another (I’m not talking about humans here, I’m talking about bacteria, the wider environment). Plus all the other pharmceutical chemicals that are having real and seriously detrimental effects in animals (look up medicine/drugs environmental damage).
What the Chinese are doing is not the issue. What we are all doing, each of us, and collectively, that’s the issue. All those people who got stuck in airports last week, none of them decided not to fly, they all felt entitled to go off for a week to soak up some sun with the family. And why not, it’s important, even essential, to have a break, lay in the sunshine, spend time with family, give the kids an adventure. Our individual requirements trumps everything else. That is the world we are tying to hang on to, the world where we can make these choices with impunity. And it’s over, that world is ended. Plenty of us will strive to preserve it just by stubbornly continuing to live in the old ways. The Chinese coming up with clever ideas and planting forests and buying up tracts of land in Africa to feed their people won’t make any bloody difference to my decision to drive to Cornwall or not. Nor will they discourage Sikicon Valley from coming uo with her more ways to drain the life out of us via our screens. Tik Tok etc must be a huge fucking sump for energy, carbon etc. and the endless new devices with their wrap around screens too.
As for breakthroughs like fusion….. well, it’s a nice idea, eh. And no doubt some folks will continue to plug away at the question, just as there are others who are banging away in their shed trying to invent the perfect deckchair. So much scientific endeavour is done for its own sake and with no real useful outcome. How much energy and waste goes into the scientific endeavour? Maybe not enough if we’ve still not managed to work out fusion,
And there will always be curve balls, like the pandemic. Waste and a dramatic downturn in recycling in organisations like the NHS directly resulted from the pandemic. When they come to look at the layers, they’ll be able to see the pandemic as a thin layer of predominantly blue plastic amongst everything else.
It‘s true that the planet has been through many fluxes before, and will again for sure, This crisis is not about The Planet though. It’s about humanity, and our current civilisation. If we hadn’t fucked up our civilisation so badly, we wouldn’t be in this crisis in the first place. We took a bad turn somewhere and we’re now in a cul de sac.
It’s not true that there are too many humans. If you pile us up, or line us up, we take uo very little space. It’s our exploitative abusive lifestyle that’s the problem. Our addiction to luxury and our point blank refusal to experience any want or lack. That’s what’s at the root of inequality /poverty, and it has impoverished the natural environment too. There are enough resources (or there was before we fucked it up).
Australia: I bet they still litter, and they may do a bit of solar power (10% last yea) but my god they’ve fucked up their rivers.
UK electric cars. Too little too late. Why wasn’t it being done following the energy crisis in the 70s? And this idea that electric cars will save us is a falacy. Where do you think the electricity comes from? And the batteries are disastrous in different ways
Four or five Teslas in your neighbourhood is a novelty, as you demonstrate by mentioning them at all.
We have to keep trying, of course we do, anything else is madness.
But I really do think we’ve passed the point where we can save the world we currently live in.
