Economics actually says it's far cheaper overall to stop polluting right now than trying to mitigate it in the distant future. But that goes against the short-termism our economic indicators are built around. The line must go up, and shareholders need their maximized profit next quarter. Meanwhile pollution will only become more of a problem the further away in the future you look. And that sounds like a problem for future us.

[–] notaviking@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Why I feel Stratospheric Aerosol Injection will be the route to go, yes stop pollution now is better long term, but no one wants to pay the price if there is a chance someone else will. So we might as well put on a bandage to the festering wound and continue using our carbon based energy like a still addicted junkie.

Up until a profitable solution starts making an appearance why would powerful selfish people make sacrifices

[–] msage@programming.dev 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This is the second time I saw this suggestion in the wild, and I from now on I will label every such comment as lubing us up before someone actually does this.

[–] notaviking@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The thing is, have you ever been to a coal mine. I am in the mining industry and have done multiple visits to coal mines, the magnitude of carbon they dig up, through underground or the cheaper dragline is jaw dropping if you realise that is going into the atmosphere. Like we have an exclusive club called a millionaires club for supervisors who in their section of the coal mine can extract more than a million tonnes in a year, they are greatly rewarded. This is excluding oil or petroleum products.

To counter this you need to put the same or more carbon back into the ground, what technology do we have that can do it economically or even scalable, carbon capture is a gimmick in my opinion to give stupid people hope that there is an easy answer that is just around the corner. Maybe I have lost hope but my belief is that the carbon put into the atmosphere will not be extracted by humans, but will after 100s of years be absorbed into the ocean only if we stop our current emissions. Should we in the mean time lose our ice poles, glaciers and ocean currents, have heat destroy the fauna and flora while we do nothing. We have engineered this hot climate, can engineer it to be colder while we get our shit together.

My country is the only developing country to be on target of meeting our Paris climate accord targets, how thanks to government corruption that led to the unavailability of our power stations where we have for years have rolling blackouts, or loadshedding as we call it. Fucks up our economy not having enough electricity, but great for the environment. I know there are green solutions to help alleviate our problems but our government has vested coal interests. So the best we can do is put solar power systems in our own homes

[–] msage@programming.dev 2 points 5 months ago

It's absolutely maddening that this is the current state of affairs.

We know we drove off the cliff, we know we need to do everything we can to mitigate the fall, and yet we keep acting like nothing is happening.

Stop the economy, put everything into housing and feeding people, while building renewables and research into other measures.

Instead we will cut our leg after shooting the foot. Without even thinking about slowing down. Fuck me.