this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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Solarpunk technology
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Exactly the line in my head while reading this post. Ready to become batteries guys (or we already are?).
I know. Instead of doing what we know needs to be done, let's come up with an over-complicated geoengineering solution that we absolutely do not have the capacity to manage or even predict the outcomes of!
Exactly this. I call these phenomena technological antisolutions.
Great essay
Thanks friend! Plenty more where it came from, and I've got one in the oven right now.
what could go wrong?
In general, this kind of thing has big issues at aren't really resolved
- You need to continue doing it for longer than civilizations last. People don't really have a good track record of that kind of thing.
- We end up with a smaller pole-to-equator temperature gradient, with real impacts on weather
- These changes can alter rainfall patterns in ways that might cause significant food supply issues in some countries. This creates a governance problem. (eg: should China nuke India if the changes needed to prevent lethal heatwaves in India result in famine in China)
- It does nothing about ocean acidification, so we still end up losing a big chunk of marine ecosystems
- Addressing climate change this way means we don't get any of the co-benefits of reduced air pollution we would otherwise get from phasing out fossil fuels
- Probably other stuff we don't know about because it's not well studied
Fully agreed, but o think the proble is that we're kind of in a pickle here with less and less options.
Yes, we need to remove our co2 dependance like there (literally) is no tomorrow. It still won't save us, it still won't fix the problem. The CO2 already there will remain there for pretty much centuries. And we're currently very close (or likely already over) the threshold where nature will start dumping more CO2 into he atmosphere all by itself.
So meanwhile we bake and bake more... we have to spend energy to remove the CO2 which will require beyond enormous amounts of energy (think 30-50% of the world's energy budget per year, every year, for probably centuries) and what do we do in the meantime?
It's a shit solution, I agree. But do we have other options left at this point?
Plus, please remember... we've know about this issue for over a century. We didn't do anything, we actually just added more. We've know it's potentially civilization ending proportions for at least the past 4 decades, especially the last 2 decades and we (humanity) haven't done anything more beyond a few pretty words, a few worthless treaties from which the US even withdrew even though it didn't do anything.
Humanity won't do anything real to solve this for at least another decade, or two, when people start dying by the millions or billions.
Then questions Neill be asked. Why didn't we do something before? Well, the shareholders were important too, you know!
And by then, options truely will be very limited. I see this happening because humanity is shit. We won't solve this problem in any meaningful way until it's too late.
I was surprised acid rain wasn't mentioned in the article, too. Isn't atmospheric sulfuric acid one of the causes of acid rain?
It is, but there are options for chemicals which don't use SO2
Wouldn't increasing drought and famine be worse?
That will happen regardless, might as well try something
Burn that bridge before we cross it instead of after. That's certainly a strategy.
Geoengineering isn't solarpunk, it's a yet another manifestation of man's hubris towards the natural world. Solarpunk is living in harmony with and improving the diversity of the natural world, not dominating it like a science project.
I disagree. I think what distinguishes solarpunk from anarcho-primitivism and anarcho-agrarianism is the belief that more advanced technology can help humanity to regain harmony with the rest of the natural world. Solar panels replacing coal burning power plants is one example. So is geoengineering, and CO2 capture, and an army of seagoing drones scooping plastic - don't we have not just a need but a duty to use our technology to cure some of the wounds our technology has inflicted?
Of course solarpunk means that advance technology can further develop humanity's place in compliment rather than in contradiction with the natural world, but geoengineering ain't it.
Your reply reads as if you lack engagement with real literature on what geoengineering entails. Many plants and animals have slowly adapted to a warming climate. Blocking the sun would cool the climate too fast to cause a catastrophic shock to ecosystems worldwide. If geoengineering is attempted, it cannot be stopped because to stop it would cause yet another catastrophic shock to the ecosystems that survived the initial shock would have begun to adapt to the cooler climate. That's two additional catastrophic mass extinction events that could be caused by adding sulfur dioxide to the climate, not to mention the amount of sulfur dioxide needed would absolutely kill innumerable disabled people worldwide.
Yeah, why don't we mess with our climate a second time instead of pursuing real solutions like renewable energy, degrowth, and decarbonization? I'm begging you to read up on geoengineering before making these uninformed comments.
Yeah, why don't we mess with our climate a second time instead of pursuing real solutions like renewable energy, degrowth, and decarbonization?
Because it's too late for those options to work.
I agree this particular geoengineering idea isn't sufficiently thought out yet. But the problem is: the world won't stop polluting, won't stop growing its economies, won't stop expanding. Even if the US and Europe cut their emissions and slow down, the developing world, India and China and Nigeria and Kenya, and so on, won't. They see the standard of living in the West, they think their people deserve to live just as well, and they see we got there through unchecked resource consumption within a capitalist economic system, and how the hell do we have the right to tell those countries to stay poor for the sake of the environment when we got rich by fucking the environment?
So the only things that will save the world are globally organized, probably UN coordinated, technological solutions to mitigate the damage done by unchecked capitalist expansion, because we can't stop capitalism.
I support geoengineering because, frankly, it's the only hope left.
You are passing a lot of assumptions as facts here.
But the problem is: the world won’t stop polluting, won’t stop growing its economies, won’t stop expanding.
Unless you are a time traveler, this is a belief, not a fact.
Even if the US and Europe cut their emissions and slow down, the developing world, India and China and Nigeria and Kenya, and so on, won’t. They see the standard of living in the West, they think their people deserve to live just as well, and they see we got there through unchecked resource consumption within a capitalist economic system, and how the hell do we have the right to tell those countries to stay poor for the sake of the environment when we got rich by fucking the environment?
Here you are assuming a lot about how those countries / populations might analyze the situation. Also, that the path we followed to develop is the only one, and that they are bound to follow our example. That's quite a colonialist point of view.
So the only things that will save the world are globally organized, probably UN coordinated, technological solutions to mitigate the damage done by unchecked capitalist expansion, because we can’t stop capitalism.
If you start from the premise that there is no alternative to capitalism, that this rather young form of social organization is the end of human history, I can understand why you reach that conclusion. But don't assume that your line of reasoning is the only logical conclusion one can reach.
I mean, my assumption is "people will keep doing what they're doing now", and, barring a global eco-religious revival, I don't really think that's an unreasonable assumption.
Yes, and here you are also assuming "people" is a homogenous group, that the western culture you are from (aren't you ?) is hegemonic.
But looking at how geopolitics are evolving lately, the world is increasingly multipolar, with multiple models of civilization competing. I don't know, maybe India will wake the fuck up before us and thrive, while Europe rots and USA goes down the toilet drain?
Honestly it sounds a lot more like you're throwing out pie-in-the-sky possibilities as more realistic than they actually are.
Of course I'm making this shit up, that's the whole point. Because I don't know what tomorrow is made of. And I'm just pointing out that OP doesn't know either.
He is pontificating about how things cannot change, how he got everything figured out, but in the end he is just a random guy on the internet talking out of his ass, like all of us.
Because it’s too late for those options to work.
And the solution is what? To pollute the climate with sulfur dioxide, initiating another mass extinction and the social murder of millions of people through disease and starvation?
But the problem is: the world won’t stop polluting, won’t stop growing its economies, won’t stop expanding.
And your solution is what? Find salvation in technology? There are no technological solutions to social problems. You can't engineer your way out of ecological crises. Ecological crises are intimately social crisis, so the solution to ecological problems are found by addressing social issues. Technologies are deeply embedded in a social matrix—technologies are things that exist in specific social contexts. Your very justification is based on the premise that greenhouse gas emissions cannot be cut, thereby justifying a technological solution that allows the continuing dumping of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. See how this technology serves to only entrench climate injustice?
They see the standard of living in the West, they think their people deserve to live just as well, and they see we got there through unchecked resource consumption within a capitalist economic system, and how the hell do we have the right to tell those countries to stay poor for the sake of the environment when we got rich by fucking the environment?
There we see your bias, that you cannot imagine a fundamentally different way of life that what bourgeois ideology tells you about. The solution to the climate crisis doesn't mean poverty for all—though a failure to solve the climate crisis will mean poverty for all—but rather that well-being and standards of living ought be disentangled with emissions. Solarpunk technologies and philosophies already give us insight into what kind of technologies can be used to disentangle the good life from bourgeois standards of living and the carbon emissions associated with it. Instead, you essentially assume that solarpunk is impossible (or rather that genocidal projects like geoengineering is solarpunk), thereby already dismissing the plurality of what life could be in a post-carbon world.
I support geoengineering because, frankly, it’s the only hope left.
Then the world you support is dystopia, climate chaos, and genocide, because to be clear: geoengineering will kill millions in ecological devastation, drought, and geoengineering-related diseases. Those on the side of climate justice will oppose geoengineering just as much as we oppose the system that is destroying the world. When the time comes, we will see which side of the barricades you find yourself.
or, and i know this is an outlandish idea, we could eat plants instead of animals.
ChatGPT tier take
Which wouldn't end global warning
it'd put a massive dent into global warming.
Agriculture at least in the United States makes up like 12% of total emissions. Land use overall sinks like 12% of carbon as well.
The only way we put a massive dent in global warming is if we tax carbon and in the use of fossil fuels. All of this eating meat shit is a distraction.
Does taxed carbon do less damage to the environment? My guess would be that the only thing that would happen are increased consumer prices. Wealthy people simply pay their "pollution fee" and keep going.
Does taxed carbon do less damage to the environment
Just put your ignorance on a big billboard for us.
A tax on carbon, administered properly, is the most effective single way to get people to reduce their carbon usage over time by increasing the cost of polluting.
You start with it fairly low, and you crank it up over the years such that businesses and other groups are encouraged to move away from carbon wherever possible in order to save money, because the carpet is more expensive than non-carbon alternatives.
The point is to make a gallon of gas so expensive that's someone chooses to carpool or drive a bike or move closer to where they work. So yeah it's going to increase consumer prices, but that's what you have to do in order to reduce carbon emissions. Our lifestyle is where the carbon emissions are coming from.
No other scheme is as effective and as simple as a ramping carbon tax. It's very easy to tax carbon at its origin, the oil wells and ports. And the market ensures that all prices you apply at the oil well slowly filter down through the economy and impact areas that use more fossil fuels more thanks to the increased costs.
And then with a revenue neutral carbon tax, You can make it so that there is near zero net impact on people's well-being, short of the fact that people who pollute and emit more carbon will get less money back relative to their increase in cost.
Companies are the biggest polluters. And production of products with high CO2 footprint would simply move to countries that don't care. That's what happens with most environmental or financial regulation. What makes you think a carbon tax would be different? Imho a system that is based on unlimited exponential growth is the problem.
Companies are the biggest polluters. And production of products with high CO2 footprint would simply move to countries that don’t care
Then you apply import taxes. Any restriction we take on carbon will have that effect.
Imho a system that is based on unlimited exponential growth is the problem.
Our current existence is unsustainable. If we stop growing we will snuff ourselves out. The only way out through shrinking would be a thanos style culling.
The only way forward is forward.
Then you apply import taxes. Any restriction we take on carbon will have that effect.
Every country now has to measure the carbon output of factories in every other country in order to correctly impose import taxes on carbon. Either that, or just blanket raise import taxes, which would strangle any country that is isn't large and developed enough to at least theoretically reach self-sufficiency, which none currently are in practice. This is not realistic or sustainable. Stop trying to tax the problem away. The invisible hand of the free market is a myth. Real problems require real hands to fix them.
Our current existence is unsustainable. If we stop growing we will snuff ourselves out. The only way out through shrinking would be a thanos style culling. The only way forward is forward.
This is capitalist jibber-jabber. There is no reason we can't slow down on the non-essential overconsumption rampant in modern society, and still be able to efficiently manage and redirect those resources and labor towards necessities in a more sustainable way. We have way more than enough resources to live in comfort and still be sustainable. "Yolo, floor it" is not a sane policy.
Every country now has to measure the carbon output of factories in every other country in order to correctly impose import taxes on carbon
No you don't. Just text the shit out of any of the imports until they are cost competitive with the domestic ones.
which would strangle any country that is isn’t large and developed enough to at least theoretically reach self-sufficiency
Boo hoo. Cry me a river, I don't give a shit. I give a shit about global warming not happening. They can tax their oil in the same way and they won't have issues.
There is no reason we can’t slow down on the non-essential overconsumption rampant in modern society, and still be able to efficiently manage and redirect those resources and labor towards necessities in a more sustainable way.
Yeah, there's a slight problem in that. You're talking about a Soviet economy. You're talking about intentionally impoverishing people.
You're talking about taking people's freedom away from them in order to mandate what they can and can't have.
And you're doing it all in the name of an end goal that won't even fix the problem, because at the end of the day as long as we are still using fossil fuels we are still going to run out of time when it comes to global warming.
A shutdown Soviet style economy is not going to create the innovation we need to actually innovate our way out of this problem.
“Yolo, floor it” is not a sane policy.
It's almost as if my actual proposed policy would be one that encourages innovation and movement away from fossil fuels while not absolutely annihilating the economy and empowering government to fuck over our lives.
No you don’t. Just text the shit out of any of the imports until they are cost competitive with the domestic ones. [...] Boo hoo. Cry me a river, I don’t give a shit. I give a shit about global warming not happening.
And this is the fundamental problem right here that you don't understand. It doesn't matter if you don't give a shit; if it means suffering because they cannot sustain themselves now, they are not going to do it. When a solution doesn't work, you don't whine and demand the world reshape itself until your solution does work, you look for a better idea. We need real solutions that work in the real world, not technocratic dreaming of alternate realities.
Everything else in your post is just more jibberjabber that doesn't mean anything. What I've proposed isn't "Soviet", it isn't impoverishing (but what you suggested absolutely is, so don't pretend to care about that), and it actually solves the problem instead of these candy-ass solutions. "Just tax everything and then the problem will just magically solve itself through innovation, somehow!" The product of a deeply unserious mind.
Get it through your head that these indirect methods that supposedly set in motion a series of events that will totally eventually fix it have never worked, they're not going to work now, and we need real action and not people soying out over idealistic nonsense. Your time to try this passed by 30 years ago. Give up your silly Rube Goldberg contraptions and start looking for real, direct solutions.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t give a shit; if it means suffering because they cannot sustain themselves now, they are not going to do it.
I'd say bring able to trade with one of the biggest nations in the world is a pretty darn good incentive to implement a carbon tax of their own.
You understand your idea of sustaining themselves is burning more carbon and letting their needs undercut our emissions reduction. This is a net loss.
Your time to try this passed by 30 years ago. Give up your silly Rube Goldberg contraptions and start looking for real, direct solutions.
Says the person whose "simple" solution involves a far far more disruptive answer whose unexpected consequences will far surpass a tax.
I'd say bring able to trade with one of the biggest nations in the world is a pretty darn good incentive to implement a carbon tax of their own.
What trade? You told them to levy hefty import taxes on everything. You've killed most trade.
You understand your idea of sustaining themselves is burning more carbon and letting their needs undercut our emissions reduction. This is a net loss.
I want a collective effort to directly end carbon emissions. You just want to make it more expensive.
Import taxes on carbon would only work if we could track the carbon along the supply chain. Don't get me wrong, we're on the same side basically I'm just pessimistic that it'll be that easy. Having said that, I have to admin that I don't have any idea about how to fix that.
You don't have to track the carbon along the supply chain because carbon is sourced very easily from a single place, the oil taken out of the ground.
Theoretically you could do stuff like tax the manufacturing of CFCs, but those are largely handled and easily handled by regular regulation already.
There's more than the oil. There's gas, other resources like lithium, deforestation and the list goes on. Let's say you buy solar cell panels. Were they produced using electricity from renewables or burnt oil? That should make a big difference if you want that tax to reduce carbon output. Right now there's no way to track that.
Edit: Maybe your idea is to tax the resources right at their sources. That would help indeed, but good luck with the leaders or countries like Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, ..
That should make a big difference if you want that tax to reduce carbon output
It would be a difference. If you tax carbon at the pump you couldn't build the solar panels without paying the carbon tax that was charged at the pump.
As for countries like China, that's what tariffs are for
That might work theoretically. The problem with that is that you cannot differentiate between that absolutely wasteful things (like private jets) and things we need in day to day life (like pharmaceuticals). You might even want to exempt the solar panels from the example above, because they will probably save more carbon than what was used to produce them. So that's really the "sledgehammer" kind of solution.
you cannot differentiate between that absolutely wasteful things (like private jets) and things we need in day to day life (like pharmaceuticals).
The point is to make things that use carbon cost more than things that use less. Some sectors like private aircraft will have people willing to pay whatever because they're already hugely expensive, but on the larger scales a carbon tax will clean up the vast majority of waste.
For a few of the worst examples like private jets it's possible to pass regulation against them, but I'd be very very hesitant to accept the government deciding what is or isn't wasteful across the board. It'll be hilariously harmful in the long term.
And the tax should apply to important things too. We need carbon removed across the whole economy, including medications.
Some industries, like the pharmaceuticals, may not be able to switch away from mineral oils so easily. That's why I prefer a balanced approach that makes unnecessary or even luxurious things way more expensive. The carbon tax approach would work in terms of "reducing carbon" but the people who are already struggling in day to day life would be hit the hardest. Those are the poor folks that have to commute to work with older cars because their bosses decided that there is no more home office.
The government making a list of what is wasteful and what not would probably fail, you're right about that. In the long term the carbon tax is a good solution. It's easy to implement but that doesn't mean that it's easy to make the transition for many people. And by "not easy" I don't mean "stop eating meat because of the carbon", which would be very easy compared to "buy 3 times more expensive gas to go to work or buy food for the week and loose your job".
If we implement an effective mitigation measure for global warming, why would those who profit from emitting CO2 feel any urgency to stop?
Despite the potential usefulness, i suspect it would find justification to allow continuation of fossil fuel consumption.
maybe don't do Sulfuric acid
Put some Ice Nine up there
Why not launch a giant cloud of space glitter to block 1-3% of sunlight?
Who's paying?
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