Hey there!
Climate change has become an important issue and a hot topic since last year’s summer. So, what can we do about it?
Because if we don’t do anything billions of people may be going to die from famines in the next decades.
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Can’t believe, no one responded to this for three days, in a forum that should be “a place for envisioning and creating a better future”!
I’m no climate expert, but i think we should start with the obvious actions, like saying goodbye to fossil fuels and eat (much) less meat. Or even better: No meat at all!
Global birthcontrol could also be a thing, I think.
But none of that will happen early enough through capitalism, mankind’s laziness and mankind’s general reluctance to change, so it will result in just fighting the symptoms, probably with geo-engineering and such stuff…
i don`t think climate change can be stopped. probably it is inevitable. in many cultures existes a myth of a great flood, there will be one in our too.
it may be more usefull to develop immediately strategies for surviving the cataclysm, than to expect a wonder.
It can’t be stopped completely, it’s already here. People are already dying from it’s effects. Obviously we have to prepare for climate change. That is called climate change adaptation.
But we also have to slow down climate change and eventually stop it completely and even reverse it. Otherwise there will come a time where adaptation is simply not possible anymore. That is called climate change mitigation.
I believe as a single person you can do the following:
- change your own ways (stop flying; get around with bikes & public transport more; stop eating meat; reduce your consumerism and save the money to buy more sustainable products that might cost more, but also can last longer; reduce waste; stop using oil and gas for heating in your house; change to 100% green electricity; insulate your home, for example with green walls and roofs; …)
- inspire others (small scale: get your friends and family to eat less meat or switch from a normal to a e-car; large scale: engage in activism; …)
- promote changes in your communities (champion greener policies in the company you work at; get your sports team to switch to vegan dresses next time you need new ones; ask your favorite online forum if their servers run on 100% renewable energy; …)
- put your money where your mouth is (use your purchasing power for good by supporting companies that are pioneers in a greener economy; donate money to non-profits that fight climate change if you can; withdraw all your money from banks that don’t support your ideals and switch to green banks; …)
- engage in politics (obviously vote for green socialist parties or whatever comes closest in your area; create your own party if there is none; go to protests; sign petitions; tell your representatives to support bills that facilitate system change, like the green new deal; …)
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Many impacts are now locked-in thanks to the modern culture denial, compelling strategies of coping with them rather than preventing them. The geography of much of the world is, no question, going to be radically altered over the next several generations. But there is much still that can be done. The general transition to renewables is critical, as are efforts in active reduction in carbon footprint for the civilization. A growing number of scientists are advocating geoengineering options they once were very reluctant to talk about.
My personal solution, developed as a result of my work with the First Millennial Foundation, is the comprehensive development of OTEC through the development of industrial scale mariculture facilities based on pneumatically stabilized platform structures. I proposed a project called Luz Azul to the Buckminster Fuller Institute detailing the concept some years ago, but it was ignored for lack of pretty pictures…
Briefly described, OTEC is a well established renewable energy technology that exploits the temperature differences between warm surface seawater and cold deep seawater to drive a more-or-less conventional Rankine cycle generator system. Essentially, it treats the sea as a vast solar collector --one which actually has enough latent energy to drive a civilization ten times the size of our own.
Though a very old technology, like other solar thermal technologies, it has struggled for commercial development because of the remote equatorial locations demanded for its optimal use and the lack of practical packaging mediums for distributing its power output. However, when combined with industrial scale mariculture, the processing and shipping of those goods providing an at-hand use for its energy output, it becomes a self-sufficient system.
OTEC combines well with polyspecies mariculture as, in operation, it discharges vast amounts of nutrient-rich deep seawater much like a natural upwelling zone, driving algaeculture and a food chain of different species to provide feedstock for product seafood. This is also very significant in the context of carbon-sequester, as it has the same effect on the natural environment around the OTEC as mass iron seeding concepts without the high risks of chemically altering the sea. The nutrients driven to the surface in natural upwelling zones stimulate the growth of algae which absorb carbon from the atmosphere. This, in-turn, stimulates the growth of salps that feed on the algae. Salps are vertical migrators. They rise to the sea surface to feed in the cool and dark of the night, then drop to the deep by day where they excrete the remains of their food as dense pellets of carbon that, at this depth, don’t re-enter the marine food chain and just fall to the sea floor.
This is a key part of the sea’s natural carbon cycle and exploiting this for mass carbon sequester was proposed by the famous scientist James Lovelock. His plan, though, called for the creation of millions of wave-driven sea pumps to create this upwelling effect --a multinational megaproject with no return-on-investment. OTEC-based mariculture facilities, however, turn a profit that can be directed into their exponential replication. One 100MW OTEC plant costs about a billion dollar to build, but can earn about a billion dollars in profit per year through its various energy, chemical, and mariculture products. With such more-or-less exponential growth, one OTEC could become dozens and completely sequester and offset the entire carbon output of the civilization in a few decades.
At the same time, these complexes would create novel new homes on the sea. One would think this would appeal to the Seasteading community, but I’ve found their obsession with American Libertarian ideology has made them overlook the potential of winning support for seasteads as a solution to Global Warming --perhaps because a lot of them are climate change deniers…
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