• Cheshire
    1.1k
    In this case Xlaxtric is referring to the central planning of economies. Seizing the heights of industry and so forth. That thing that no one tries to do anymore because it gets supplemented with an untaxable 50% black market; or everyone starves.

    Assorted tantrums for reference only:
    Too big of an idiot, I see. That’s fine. Save your simplistic comments for elsewhere.Xtrix
  • BC
    13.6k
    Why?Xtrix

    Without 100% electricity sourced from wind, solar, nuclear, and hydro, electric vehicles is business as usual.

    There are about a billion cars on the world's roads. If we were serious about global warming, we would not be devising plans to replace 1 billion internal combustion autos with electric ones. Aside from the energy to power these vehicles, there is an extraordinarily large energy requirement to recycle 1b old and manufacture 1 billion new vehicles. We do not have a global electric grid free of CO2 and methane emissions to power a billion cars (and more trucks, trains, planes, etc.)

    We require transportation, BUT the choice is clear: either cars for all and failure at controlling global warming, or greatly reduced resource consumption and possible success at controlling rising CO2 levels (plus methane, etc.) and steady heating.

    The existing global economic model is flat out unsustainable. We are failing at limiting global warming, which isn't just an inconvenience, it will eventually be an existential threat.

    That's why.
  • BC
    13.6k
    To hell with these political leaders and these corporations.Xtrix

    Fine by me. The efforts of "these political leaders and these corporations" has been directed for many decades toward neutralizing the masses as a political force capable of pursuing their own interests.

    That is why the best they can come up with for plans to save the planet is to convert 1 billion internal combustion engines to 1 billion electric motors -- overlooking the massive carbon output that will require.

    Under capitalism, planning must be directed toward sustaining capitalism as the dominant paradigm.
  • Mikie
    6.7k
    Without 100% electricity sourced from wind, solar, nuclear, and hydro, electric vehicles is business as usual.Bitter Crank

    Sure, but that doesn't happen overnight. I think it's good to transition to that, get the infrastructure up, and then work on sourcing electricity only from renewables. If we don't start getting that going, nothing will happen.

    I'd rather there be a push for public transportation, but if that "can't" happen for political reasons, this is the only way I can see of transitioning.

    We are failing at limiting global warming, which isn't just an inconvenience, it will eventually be an existential threat.Bitter Crank

    Agreed.
  • BC
    13.6k
    Let me beat this probably dead horse a little longer.

    At the rate the planet is warming, there probably won't be enough time left to implement much of the electrification plan. Having warmed up, it will take a very long time for the oceans to cool back down. Having warmed up, it will take an ice age to refreeze the tundra (which is busy leaking methane).

    The kind of life-way that will result from global warming -- a life-way we are definitely going to find very unsatisfactory -- is not being planned for as a likelihood--nowhere, really, not just in the US. The key piece of an appropriate long-range planning process is the steady, continuous, and permanent rollback of consumption to 1880 -1900 levels and content.

    Such a 120-140 year roll-back would be no sort of dark ages. People used to not consume as much non-food stuff as they have, ever since the 1920s. Less clothing, less household furnishing, less heating, less cooling, no cars, no planes. People walked, used public transit, or bicycled. Few people owned horses to just to ride around on. For longer trips, inter-city trolleys and trains were used.

    Houses built for the working classes did not have huge walk-in closets and 8 drawer dressers, shoe racks, and so on for clothing. Even up to the 1950s many people bathed once or twice a week (not twice a day as some do now).

    As long as we continue to expect increases in GDP every year and a "rising standard of living" whatever that means, no significant slowing or reduction in greenhouse gases is going to happen.
  • frank
    15.8k
    The kind of life-way that will result from global warming -- a life-way we are definitely going to find very unsatisfactory -Bitter Crank

    The people who adapt to it will think it's cool as shit. They'll be heartbroken when it cools down again. The worst part of the temperature spike will last about 1000 years, then it will be mostly back to normal in 10,000 years

    Volatility is the problem, not so much the heat itself.
  • BC
    13.6k
    Maybe so.

    Over the last 400,000 years, we can assume that humans lived in some fairly difficult conditions, and those that were not dying in agony probably liked their lives well enough. That's true right now. Not dying in agony? Hey, it's time to party! So sure, no doubt there will be people on the Arctic Riviera who will think life is happiness indeed.

    I've always assumed that humans, along with some other animals, insects, plants, fungi, bacteria, and viruses would make it through the thermo-culling event. And they will likely breed their way back to the global nuisance we have become to ourselves.

    If things go badly, billions will not survive. The Arctic Rivera, Tierra del Fuego resort and casino, and the settlements on various mountains here and there, won't offer refuge for all that many people. So... exit stage left, right, front, and back.
  • frank
    15.8k

    There will be some gruesome times, I'm sure, but stress is fuel for creativity, as Harry Lime pointed out. Who knows what we'll come up with?
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