“How do I justify to voters taking away subsidies, school funding and health care to build a waste-processing plant or a big sea wall?” asks a finance minister. “In 20 years of course it will be useful, but it is the cost now that is concerning.”
The justification for lack of climate action in a sentence. No one wants to forego now, for a better experience in the future.
Call me crazy, but I would say that new schools and hospitals also improve the experience in the future. The issue is that the poorest countries really need to do all of it schools, health care, infrastructure and going green, but they can not afford it, so they have to make really hard choices. For rich countries that is much less of a problem. For a normal Frenchmen $1000 less per year means no vactaion, to a normal Zambian it means starvation.
Just to give it a real world example. Between 2012 and 2022 Chinas electricity generation from coal increased by 1,675TWh. Globally it only increased by 1,329TWh. So coal emission would have decreased, if China would have built some sort of low carbon power generation instead. The other country adding a lot of coal in that timeframe was India with 576TWh. To put that into perspective high income countries generated 2,192TWh from coal in 2022. So just working in the rich countries does not solve climate change alone(it has to happen thou). All poor countries should however also be aware that even if they get rich, they face the same problems rich countries have today, of shutting down perfectly good fossil fuel infrastructure to save the planet.
That is precisely part of why the problem we face is so massive.
We have solutions for climate change, but implementing those means we can’t keep our standard of living.
It’s also a problem in rich democratic countries, because you don’t win majorities with a politic of degrowth.
So we hold tight on the hope of future technology being able to save us without reducing our living standard. We have been waiting for decades and time is running out fast.
We have solutions for climate change, but implementing those means we can’t keep our standard of living.
I don’t know. There are still low hanging fruits like meat, high speed rail and less car centricity. The reverse is also true:
We have solutions for climate change, and not implementing those means we can’t keep our standard of living.
As she said; Change is coming, wether you like it or not.
The best time to make the necessary changes is still today. The longer we wait, the more we’ll lose.
I totally agree with you. Not going for change now will make everything only worse.
Still, doing nothing compared to changing now will save a couple of dollar here and there for a couple of years and that seems to be what most people look at.
Especially in politics, politicians want to get reelected next term, so it’s preferred to work on issues that can be helped within a few years, not something we need to invest now, but impact will be after next election.
I don’t say it’s right, it is just the way it is and I believe that this is contributing to why we still go the wrong way.
Go out on the streets and ask the people if they are ready to make a sacrifice today so they’ll be less hurt in future.
If you ask me, yeah, go ahead! Stop subsiding fossil fuels, maybe even restrict nutrition, invest in renewables and education and finally put higher tax on wealthy people while changing the electric grid and the way we consume!
We have solutions for climate change, but implementing those means we can’t keep our standard of living.
We would have to change our way of life, but that does not mean it will be worse. The technology we have should stay the same or even improve, so that by producing less, we have to work less. Imagen what a two day workweek would do for a society. That is btw how you really need to run degrowth. That is go for early pensions and reduced workweeks. There are also a lot of health benefits to replacing fossil fuel technologies.
My initial post wasn’t about not changing or not accepting what is heading towards us. It was more a try of explanation why we are soon slow in reacting to this crisis.
I believe technology will improve, but we are simply not there yet to just replace fossil fuels and having no impact on the standard of living.
I am on one page with you, we need to change, fast! If it is not too late already, but anyway, change, change, change!
If we still got time for it, we’ve got about a single shot at this.
