Yeah - I seriously considered spending $10-15k to put up solar panels, even tho we consistently use 30 less energy than our most efficient neighbors.
And for what? To counterbalace China? Or W. Va? Just so people can buy cheap disposable plastic crap/electronics/clothing, live in huge houses, and drive SUVs and pickups?
Actually as more and more people put up solar and end up saving money it does help. The need to build new plants in the US has decreased thanks to efficiencies and solar. Many coal plants have been taken offline though that was also because of cheap natural gas which has its own set of issues.
But if you’re going to be in your home for at least 7 more years and have good southern exposure, the panels should at pay for themselves. So it isn’t really a hardship in those situation.
Also there is the option of reducing your rates without putting out cash at all. Many states have programs where companies put their panels on your roof and you get a 10-20% discount on electric use. I do not know the details of this one, but I might look into next year for my current house.
I do know a lot about having your own system installed if anyone had questions. Though we should probably spin off to a new thread.
I agree with your post, I will have to add that as one of the best educational channels I have seen (Kurgesagt) puts it in their short video, the best thing one can do to deal with climate change is, seriously, to vote out politicians that ignore the issue.
As discussed in frustrating length, the personal responsibility angle is overplayed.
For systemic changes in technology, politics and the economy of this magnitude, we need to influence the people at the levers.
Politicians need to know and feel strongly that the people care, that their own success depends on tackling rapid climate change.
When governments and local politicians are reluctant to change laws that affect theirbiggest tax contributors or campaign donors, we need to vote them out and then vote in people who respect science.
I’m no longer going to lose any sleep over what’s coming. Of course I’ll continue doing the things that are under my control, and condemn entities that don’t. But the international political aspect of this problem seems too hard to solve. Too many actors, too many spoilers. The US could and should be a leader, but a vocal minority has just enough power to prevent it from happening.
There are too many developing countries who (legitimately) resent being told they need to forego the most affordable, accessible energy sources because the Western fat cats have already blown the planet’s entire carbon budget several times over. What do we tell those people?
As I said, I’m not going to stop conserving and advocating, but I just can’t stress over this anymore.
I’d argue that this is the result of “intergenerational compacts” being torn, shredded, and outright ignored.
That encompasses 100% of humanity - those who have children, and those who do not - so what solution do you propose?
I’m sorry if I implied I have the solution for saving humanity from itself. Maybe get in a time machine and smother consumerism and corporate and political manipulation of the masses in the cradle?
I know it can be maddening, but one thing one can do is to fight to be a more noisy majority (we are already a majority, we need the noisy part) and demand better from our leaders and the media.
What many that saw the issue told them years ago (and the media here -specially the right wing one- is responsible for omitting this). They can develop just a bit longer in the old fashion way, but they require ramping up the change to new, less polluting energy sources. (AFAIK, the timeline for developing nations to stop developing the old fashion way is getting reduced). At the same time, developed countries should massively help to grow the less developed ones by leapfrogging over to new energy technologies.
In a sense; if the world moves to cleaner but more expensive energy, energy efficiency helps ameliorate the end user cost without sacrificing much in the way of quality of life. I’m just skeptical of calls for what amount to sumptuary laws.
I haven’t given up and I still do things to reduce my carbon footprint. I also have a realistic grasp that I am not a saint and can not yet go zero-emissions myself.
I and a few friends do have plans to retire up north which should retain livable temperatures, but not so far north that we have to worry about melting permafrost as the climate continues to warm. We have land. We are researching how to build a final home that will have minimal impact going forward but be adequate shelter for us.
As for who follows… I hope the succeeding generations do better than the past ones.
We aren’t serious about climate change, The right doesn’t believe in it, and the left is using it as a ‘crisis’ that’s too good to waste for getting wish list legislation passed that won’t do anything much about it.
In the meantime, when polled large majorities say they want something done about climate change. But when asked how much they would personally pay to help, the answer is something like $10 per month.
In the meantime, we pick at the edges of our energy economy in a way that is driving up prices and reducing energy independence but not actually reducing CO2, while the real problem - China’s rapidly growing carbon footprint - goes completely unaddressed because political parties can’t use it as a wedge issue to drum up votes.
We are on a path to raise energy prices to the point where it will simply drive heavy industry to countries without the same regulations. China will be responsible for more than 70% of CO2 emissiins by mid-century, so as long as they and India don’t play ball we are all spitting in the wind with all the economy-destroying moves we’re making against the domestic fossil fuel industry.
Like every other large issue these days, climate change has become so heavily politicized and dominated by special interests that it’s become impossible to do anything really significant.
A number of years ago, I read about something called a traveling wave reactor. It has several advantages over the traditional ones. They use about 90% of the power in the fuel, rather than 10%. Concomitant with that, they produce far less nuclear waste and that mostly has half lives of tens of years instead of millions. And they can use up nuclear waste from traditional reactors, getting the energy left in it.
So why aren’t they being developed and built? The main reason is that it would be a long, expensive process to engineer and test a new kind of reactor and no one is willing to carry it out.
My restrained opposition to nuclear reactors has not been based on the danger of a runaway, but on the problem is disposing of the waste.
I have essentially given up, insofar as I’m glad that I’ll probably be checking out in 25 to 30 years, but not insofar that I’m prepared to give up. I have always, in my working life and with the exception of five years in which it was unavoidable, either walked, bused or biked to work (for a total of 33 years), though I will admit that I’m lucky that I enjoy walking and biking a lot.
Once married, we have always been a one-car couple.
But I agree with Elmer_J.Fudd in that somehow we have to uncouple quality of life from economic growth and/or from resource usage. IANA economist and I have absolutely no understanding of how to do that while not becoming some sort of totalitarian society.
Additionally, ISTM that there are all sorts of hypocrisy. I have a sister who is or was a card-carrying member of the Canadian Green Party but she and her husband have two cars and a motorcycle and, during a five year period during which she could have easily biked or bused to work, she drove; I’m sure that this is not unusual and I’m also not judging as I have no doubt that I am also guilty or culpable in some way.
I suspect that none of us in the west, if we really think about it, are truly prepared to do the heavy lifting, and make the sacrifices, required to win this battle.
As a childless person, I don’t feel this way. The thing is that my stake in the future is not in my children, but in all children and humanity as a whole. Most people with children seem to value them above humanity as a whole, and make decisions that may slightly alleviate their children’s dismal future prospects at the cost of damning others.
If nothing else, how many times is it said that we need to reduce the world’s population to sustainable levels? By not having children, I’m doing the best I can without actually killing anyone.
When we get to where fossil fuels are no longer in use as a primary energy production, then we can start thinking about replacing nuclear with solar or wind.
Until then, we really need everything we can get that doesn’t contribute further to climate change.
“Here’s some solar, wind, and nuclear plants, provided at a subsidized rate that is significantly lower than if you build your own fossil fuel generation systems.”
Those, of course, are massively different levels of “not-seriousness”. The right is actively sabotaging all efforts to deal with this problem by their criminally irresponsible refusal to admit the problem exists.
Actually, $10 per month, or $120 per person per year, could in fact accomplish quite a bit to address climate change. The $300 billion that that article talks about amounts to less than three years of such small contributions by one billion people.
Completely solving the problem, of course, is going to cost a hell of a lot more money than that. But then, failing to address the problem is going to end up costing even more money in the long run, and that’s the path that the right seems committed to.
My response to the OP would be that it depends what “giving up” means. If I have truly “given up,” would I be telling the young people in my life that their hopes and dreams are futile, because their world will be hell by the time they’re adults? Would I be telling them not to have kids? Would I be cashing out my investments and living as best I can now, or making any other major drastic life decisions on the assumption that climate change will definitely and definitively impact the medium term future?
I’ve occasionally wondered if folks who have truly “given up” (because there must be some) have committed heinous or self destructive acts because of it.
Cool, easy to say, but who’s actually committed to writing checks to make that happen at scale? Those commitments aren’t cheap. Plus there’s ongoing maintenance. That’s a promise you can make to, say, Burkina Faso. India, not so much.
The global community hasn’t even been able to assemble enough collective will to solve food in those countries, and we can credibly tell them we’re going to solve their energy problems?
I haven’t quite given up hope, but I’ve given up optimism, and I too, am taking cold comfort in the fact that I am probably too old to be around for the great human die-off.
I mostly feel better, but I do feel like something of a hypocrite anymore, when I congratulate someone on a new baby.
I threw in the towel when I bought my last car. My brother made his pitch for me to go electric (as he had). But he owned a house, and had a power station in his garage. I lived in an apartment; there was no way I was talking my landlord into putting in a power pump for my electric car-- on top of keeping the space reserved for me.
And two things that aren’t helping are covid and the “return to normal”. The province of Quebec, for example, is starting its civil servants on a graduated return to work process, and I’ve read enough about some companies that want everyone to return to the office. If the various levels of government claim that they want to address climate change, while at the same time want to return to pre-covid normal, with its attendant traffic and congestion, then I think that we have a problem.