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I'm sure it's not nearly so simple in reality, but I feel like conquering climate change is a simple matter of banning some of the bad stuff with obvious alternatives (gas vs electric consumer vehicles, for example) and watching the market self-correct. But everyone is afraid to pull that lever because it could be political suicide.
Monday, 02-Mar-20 05:01:17 UTC from web-
@thismightbeauser Consider: china has a debt leash in nearly all major economies, and any attempt at imposing environmental restrictions could be easily countered by them with a threat of crashing the challenging country's economy within a day.
The countries that would actually listen to environmental concerns, which are mostly western nations, are already on a steady yearly drop of pollution and carbon emissions.
There's no actual solution to the issue past unleashing nuclear fire on half of Asia, which would be an environmental disaster on itself.Monday, 02-Mar-20 06:11:39 UTC from web-
@nerthos The one nation that might be able to pull themselves off this mess is ironically Russia, as they have been consistently ensuring their economical stability and independence through hard backing of their currency for the last decade, and have enough of an arsenal to deter any military intervention.
Monday, 02-Mar-20 06:17:11 UTC from web -
@nerthos Would setting fire to Asia actually be so bad though? The Chernobyl exclusion zone is supposedly thriving ecologically.
Monday, 02-Mar-20 16:03:10 UTC from web-
@thismightbeauser At the scale that'd be required? yes. Chernobyl was just radiation leakage followed by human abandonment of the region. Blasting India and China with enough firepower to cease human activity would also glass every living creature, animal or vegetal, within the region and destroy the soil. Most of the upper soil layer is organic matter and full of bacteria, superheating it would make it barren. Maybe in a few thousand years new ecosystems would form, but for the first few decades it'd be an ashen desert. Also there'd be worldwide impact from the dust and debris causing a nuclear winter.
You could aim exclusively for the urban and industrial centers to only eliminate polluting hotspots, but that'd mean retaliation, and climate damage is a much better option than a nuclear hot war.Monday, 02-Mar-20 16:43:17 UTC from web -
@thismightbeauser An actual solution to the issue is deglobalization of economies and achieving food and industry autonomy in every relevant country, but good luck cutting the flow of shekel just like that. There is a reason any sort of nationalism is treated as evil incarnate by mainstream political parties and economic groups, a global market that depends on countries not being self-sufficient is extremely profitable, no one can stop buying or selling or their internal situation crumbles within months.
A secondary effect of this, while a positive from an environmental point of view, is that a lot of countries simply don't have the capacity to achieve food autonomy due to having bigger populations than their fertile land can sustain. Take Nigeria for example, <1 million km2 of surface with a rapidly growing population at 190 million right now. Without world trade the country would starve, and lead to open war in the region.Monday, 02-Mar-20 16:50:53 UTC from web-
@thismightbeauser So you not only need to completely reshape the economy of most countries but also need to regulate the population of each to levels their own land can sustain (without further destroying the environment to grow more crops)
Some countries have a food surplus of 10 times their internal consumption, so they can keep their current populations without issue. But what happens with a country that has a food deficit of say, 50% of consumption? the population has to be cut in half or starve. Either way, you have a disaster in your hands with no clean way to solve it. You can pick between genocide, mass starvation or civil war, neither acceptable by any humanitarian standard. And you can be sure it'll spill to neighbouring regions.
In short, environmental damage is such a big issue because there's no clean way of solving it, nations and fortunes depend on the wheel spinning, and genociding the world to a sustainable population numbers is off the table.Monday, 02-Mar-20 16:58:01 UTC from web -
@nerthos I think some of this makes sense, but I have a hard time believing that the world's current population level isn't sustainable, just that we haven't figured things out yet. There's a lot of junk produced that isn't necessary, or made in inefficient ways that could be cut out. I get what you're saying about deglobalization and the whole "buy local" slogan that environmentalists have been pushing kind of points back to that. Where do you draw the line though? Even goods shipped within larger countries like the US or China can travel vast distances before reaching their destination. Do those countries have to be split into regions then? People would probably be freaking out about that. No more California oranges in PA? No way! Probably not a great example due to Florida being closer, but still.
Tuesday, 03-Mar-20 17:59:34 UTC from web
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