Ask Lemmy

Guns, we fly a space ship to Mercury make a landing party and start shooting everything we have at the Sun. Tell it to cut the crap or we'll tarrif all of its light.

Make it sexy.

If we had an easier time getting laid fighting back instead of going along, then that's what people would start doing.

I think it's too late. But theoretically speaking, it would require totalitarian measures because people will not willingly choose degrowth and a significant decrease to their standard of living. People will not choose "less."

You would also have to get all nations across the globe to magically work together. The reason is that those who limit themselves based on sustainability will be outcompeted by those who don't impose such limitations. To use an example that is relevant to the present: as much hand-wringing as there is about AI and its various hazards (environmental and otherwise), simply "not doing" AI isn't really an option so long as other parts of the world are going for it. Opting out of an arms race can put you at a severe disadvantage.

Human nature is really working against us.

• heavily tariff companies that attempt to move their companies or operations overseas
• nationalize the biggest environmental offenders
• any company that resists is investigated and charged with crimes against humanity and their company is nationalized
• once tried, executives are imprisoned or executed to set an example
• tax the wealthy with an 80% flat tax, use the income to subsidize impacted industry/workers while also investing in green or net-zero environmental companies

edit: just to add, this would be the less aggressive solution I would want to see. the more aggressive solution would have blood running in the streets of every executive of a fortune 500 company that has negligently damaged the environment and harmed workers rights/safety.

the economic turmoil would be harsh and would take decades to crawl out of, but we could do it. nobody crawls when we're dead on a dying planet.

solutions that dont disrupt the 99%'s way of life

This is not possible. Barring some miracle technologies being developed, we would have to radically change our standards of living and give up our modern convenient lives to make meaningful changes.

attack the capitalist system.

Stop burning fossil fuels. There is no way that doesn't include that.

Vote.

Edit: to be clear, vote in every election you have access to. Local voting and primaries are just important. Voting even if you don’t like any of the options is still important.

If you don’t vote then you’re part of the problem.

But it's time to disrupt 99% of life.

Survey humanity, produce an agreed on level of technology and lifestyle.

We probably need to limit ourselves to housing, food, internet, and safety/defense for everyone and not much else - then slow all industries based on HOW people want to live.

So getting rid of things like, plastic toys, gizmos, extravagances. Phones wouldn't be updated as often. People would only be able to update their tech if they could meaningfully show it was necessary.

Lots of technology companies would be folded. Lots of industries would be nationalised and folded. International tourism would be greatly restricted. All the stuff we don't need basically.

People would be mostly employed in the basics: Housing, food, internet. Too far beyond that and you'd have to rely on local people/groups/makers/repair companies.

So massive degrowth, nationalization, and restrictions/regulations to the market.

Most of all, corporations would no longer count as people. In fact society should have to rely on person to person contracting. I don't really think corporations should exist becuase they become Zombies/Golems that do a lot of destructive things.

Basically degrowth, and restructuring society around degrowth.

Ban planned obsolescence and make a rigorous standard that any new device is designed repairable, reliable and long lasting enough to last at least 10 years if treated right, 20+ years for vehicles and machinery..

This whole 'you gotta get a new thing every year' era causes sooo much unnecessary waste and pollution ☹️

The idea of personal action vs. corporate/government action is a false choice. The government can force the corpos to stop burning the planet, but that will mean significant lifestyle changes for everybody.

It also means getting our shit together about immigration/ migration/ refugees. And not just in the US, but globally. A humanitarian catastrophe is assured otherwise.

I'm not optimistic.

Genuinely there needs to be a fee that companies must pay for the pollution they create, with it written into law that they can't palm the cost off on their customers.

We need to move shipping away from the 'barely more refined than crude oil' fuels they use

We need to ensure protection of the oceans by making it so that outflowing waste from industry never reaches the watercourse in the first place.

Single use plastics need to be removed from the supply chain (alternatively changed at the production level so they're made from plant cellulose or a material that doesn't break down into PFOAS or microplastics)

We also need to block petrochemical companies from lobbying or interfering with politics, and prevent them from funding smear campaigns against renewable energy sources

dont disrupt the 99%'s way of life.

This is ridiculous, because the problem inherently requires cooperative change, and as we've seen people will throw shitfits over things as small as plastic straws.

A big thing would be to start switching from ever expanding auto infrastructure to public transit systems where possible.

1. Fewer vehicles that transport more people
2. Can use the space that is currently occupied for parking cars better

Another big thing requires changing our diets. Some types of food are more resource intensive than others, but also we ship food all over the planet and the resources for transport also contributes. Eating food that is in season on your continent would make a big difference.

The last thing is maybe the least obvious to regular people, but maybe we don't need to build that data center yet if we can't power it without fossil fuel. We need to entirely stop expanding energy usage until we've switched over entirely to sustainables.

In summary, basically everything that needs to happen is going to affect regular people, and they're going to have to get over it, or we're going to make the planet completely unlivable.

Tax billionaires out of existence, ban fossil fuels, invest in carbon capture, ban corporate greed, switch all solutions to the slightly more expensive, green alternative

Engineer a virus to send back in time to slow down CO2 emissions

wait a minute...

Aren’t we at the point of no return?

Eat the rich. I remember when the Twitter account that posted where Musk's private jet is all the time and holy shit, he travelled a lot.

Like, multiple times a week where this machine that fucks up the environment is used to transport a single person.

Or the disgusting mega yacht that Zuckerberg uses.

During my whole life I'm not gonna destroy the environment like every single one of leeches on society does in a month.

In my opinion it is not possible to fight climate change while maintaining the same standards of life that we have now. Even if we are going to try, this will probably not be followed by many states with big population, so probably its not gonna work. From what I see, everyone is fighting climate change today by posting stuff on their social medias but when it comes to change habits, its another story.

Anyway, my idea is that we don't have to ban things like cars and airplanes but we can use them more efficiently. We can repair more and buy less. Do we really need to change a car after 100.000 km? In my country, If you live in a big city you can use public transport most of the time, so why we don't start to connect well also the small places?

Do we really need to buy fruits and vegetables that comes from other continents and needs to be chemically treated, transported, stocked and consequently generates pollution?

In the consumer technology Sector people usually changes their computers and phones every 3-5 years even if the hardware is still working well. The software is usually becoming more heavier over the years without adding real features (See Meta's apps). We must accept that this is not compatible with fighting climate change because we are producing too much waste that is avoidable together with massive exploitation of resources. The majority of users are not educated to understand how our technology works at its most basic level, I think that we may start from here.

Maybe we cannot erase billionaires but we can stop adulating or hating them and giving them unnecessary notoriety.

Proviso of this is that, globally, politicians grow a spine, along with a sense of morality, and long term planning. It would also require them to deal with the money hoarding issues with the hyper rich.

• The first step is a massive push for renewables. They should be representing 200-500% of grid demand regularly. If nuclear can get up to speed and be part of this, great, but we can't wait on it.

• That excess power should be soaked up by large scale, portable, energy storage. Green hydrogen is the current best option, but synthetic fossil fuels could also take up the slack. Depending on the area, desalination could also be combined into this.

• We seriously decarbonise the transport networks. For vans and smaller, electric vehicles win. BYD have demonstrated that low cost electric cars are viable. For larger vehicles, where electric becomes inefficient, hydrogen is viable. This is where a lot of the excess hydrogen will be going.

• Carbon credits with teeth. Rather than relying on a planned economy mindset, we can make capitalism work for us. We need a global fixed carbon emission limit. This limit should trend towards net zero on a preset timetable. Credits are bid on, akin to stock market trades. Companies must have credits by the end of the year/period. The fine for not having credits should be a multiple of the closing credits price (10x?). The fine for falsification should be multiples of that, erring towards corporate execution levels.

This will force easy savings out of the market quickly. It will then force compulsory emitters to factor in Carbon costs.

• Combined with the carbon credits will be negative credits. If a group takes a ton of CO² out of the air, long term, they gain a new credit. They can sell this to emitters. This will provide the CO² emissions industry requires, while meeting net zero.

An example of this might be large scale bio capture on the open ocean. Grow seaweed etc on pontoons, and turn it into a solid. This can then be locked up (old coal mines?) taking carbon out permanently.

• Geo engineering. There are multiple methods of reducing incident sunlight on the earth. Everything from powders in the upper atmosphere, to mylar solar shades at the Lagrange point. They will be short term fixes, but will buy us time.

None of these require massive reductions in quality of life. They do require changes in how we do things. It's also worth noting that I've not covered the numerous problems to be solved e.g. power grid upgrades to account for renewables. None of these should be insurmountable however, just engineering, or political/policing challenges.

An no, I've no fucking idea how to get politicians to grow a spine and do what's required for our long term comfort/survival. Fixing the planet? That's just a (really big) engineering problem. Fixing human nature? ...Fuck knows.