Climate change global warming natural disaster freak weather etc. (7 Viewers)

[magicbastarder]

yeah, and the language isn't going to help. 'inevitable' will be taken by many to mean 'too late to do anything, may as well party'.

 

[JohnnyRaz]

There's a few die-hard free-market fundamentalists out there but my take is that the dominant economic system in the west is "me and all my mates deserve to be rich" and that's as far as it goes. They'll do austerity or they'll do massive public funding, whatever it takes to keep that going. They don't care about being hypocritical, they care about being rich. Not very sophisticated of me but then we're talking about the Tory Party and Fine Gael.

that's why I included the word 'culture'
for most people the practice of consumerist economics is actually not informed by an ideology beyond their own wants

and I'd disagree somewhat with the level of awareness analogy - past a fairly early point in the nazi regime dissent from the party line resulted in a lot more serious and immediate consequences than a twitter pile on - its not a lack of awareness of the issue, its a lack of grasp of the immediate consequences

 

[Lili Marlene]

yeah, and the language isn't going to help. 'inevitable' will be taken by many to mean 'too late to do anything, may as well party'.

I suspect this attitude mostly comes from people who weren't doing anything anyway, were never going to do anything, and just want an excuse to not feel guilty about it.

that's why I included the word 'culture'
for most people the practice of consumerist economics is actually not informed by an ideology beyond their own wants

I more meant the people in charge rather than a standard consumer buying whatever off Amazon. What I mean is, e.g. the Tories doing massive publicly funded projects at the moment is totally consistent with them wanting to stay rich and in power, even if it's not consistent with going along with what Thatcherite Hayek and Milton Friedman followers think should be done. They can be the party of big government, they can be the party of small government, it's immaterial to them at the end of the day.

and I'd disagree somewhat with the level of awareness analogy - past a fairly early point in the nazi regime dissent from the party line resulted in a lot more serious and immediate consequences than a twitter pile on - its not a lack of awareness of the issue, its a lack of grasp of the immediate consequences

Right yeah, fair. We'll see what happens over the next decade basically, but I'm not hopeful myself .

 

[magicbastarder]

colour me pessimistic anyway. i think we'd need to see a reduction along the lines of what happened last year due to covid, sustained year on year for at least ten years (and obviously i don't mean sustain the emissions from the last year - i mean sustaining a year-on-year reduction of that magnitude).

 

[ann post]

I wrote this about 3-4 years ago.

Making the Business Case for Survival - An Áit Eile

Procrastination is the thief of time. A few months ago a draft of this article was aimed squarely at the then Minister for the Environment, and half way through a few drafts that minister was relieved of their duties due to some behaviour that wasn’t doing well in the optics. I wish for the time...

aae.ie

You can just change name of the boxer.

 

[JohnnyRaz]

I suspect this attitude mostly comes from people who weren't doing anything anyway, were never going to do anything, and just want an excuse to not feel guilty about it.


I more meant the people in charge rather than a standard consumer buying whatever off Amazon. What I mean is, e.g. the Tories doing massive publicly funded projects at the moment is totally consistent with them wanting to stay rich and in power, even if it's not consistent with going along with what Thatcherite Hayek and Milton Friedman followers think should be done. They can be the party of big government, they can be the party of small government, it's immaterial to them at the end of the day.


Right yeah, fair. We'll see what happens over the next decade basically, but I'm not hopeful myself .

ok - get you on the government aspect.
yes - the right is more in the simply self serving populist vein than hardcore ideological purity.

not too hopeful myself either to be honest -

 

[magicbastarder]

the biggest problem with CO2 is that it's transparent. if it was actually visible coming out of exhaust pipes, boilers, what have you, people would be much more aware of it.

 

[taubstumm]

the biggest problem with CO2 is that it's transparent. if it was actually visible coming out of exhaust pipes, boilers, what have you, people would be much more aware of it.

in a similar vein, I remember thinking a few months back that if catching covid caused you to burst into flames or melt into the ground or some similar horror-movie trope, then the antivaxers would be nonexistent. instead it’s this ghost of a sickness, invisibly touching people in such arbitrary ways.

 

[magicbastarder]

i had also maintained that petrol and diesel tanks in cars should be transparent. people are completely divorced from how much they use - you never actually see the product (for valid safety reasons, it must be said).
but can you imagine arriving at the shops and buying 50L of milk? people do that all the time at the petrol pump and don't think about it.

 

[JohnnyRaz]

in a similar vein, I remember thinking a few months back that if catching covid caused you to burst into flames or melt into the ground or some similar horror-movie trope, then the antivaxers would be nonexistent. instead it’s this ghost of a sickness, invisibly touching people in such arbitrary ways.

if children were the demographic that were most susceptible the public response to this would have been very different I think

 

[ann post]

i had also maintained that petrol and diesel tanks in cars should be transparent. people are completely divorced from how much they use - you never actually see the product (for valid safety reasons, it must be said).
but can you imagine arriving at the shops and buying 50L of milk? people do that all the time at the petrol pump and don't think about it.

Just did a back of the envelope style calculation on this - I'm running about 1000 Litres of fuel in the car a year.

These tanks you see that are pallet sized are 1000L.


Need to start cycling more.

 

[magicbastarder]

i fill the car typically once a month, so am getting through probably 600l.
equivalent to about 1.4 tons of CO2 i believe.

 

[Lili Marlene]

pretty good

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[flashback]

Ireland is one of those little countries.

And we're funneling tax revenues to subsidize farmers create extra carbon emissions. Farming practices have to change, the emphasis on meat production is obscene. If people want to buy meat they need to pay the real price, not this subsidized joke price.

It doesn't even take that much thought either. We've set ourselves up as a tax haven within the EU, it's a shitty and unsustainable position. Our corporate overlords might be cajoled into paying some fraction of the tax they should be paying into rewilding and attempting to create old-growth type forest here.

They get to shout about how much good they're doing, we get to create some jobs in habitat restoration.

There's a thousand avenues that can be gone down, Ireland's name is synonymous with green, but we're bunch of monocropping dickheads. We can behave a little better and sell it as eco tourism or whatever.

The feeling of apathy is crushing. That Kiwi lad is right, you can give things a fucking go at least.

Unless you're as clever as those cunts that make Southpark obviously. Then you'd know it's pointless.

 

[Lili Marlene]

I'm utterly doomer about it all but still gonna do my part, whatever that may be. There's no talking to anyone over 40 about changing their habits, write them off, let them come around on their own when they have grandchildren or the floods and storms are at their door. Look at the FF/FG vote share, a straight arrow down for 40 years, that generation is over.

The issue now is making this the priority, not an endlessly complex system of grants and go-nowhere market nudges that all get sucked up by the local scammers and back scratchers.

We want to install solar panels? Make them free or make them affordable, right now even with a grant it takes, what, 15 years for them to make their own money back? Sure they break in that time. Are the repairs and replacements free? No CAP-watching farmer is going to invest in that. (I don't even know if we do want to install solar panels)

It needs to be at the scale of electrifying the country which, as I constantly point out to people who say nothing is possible, we did in the middle of a trade war, in the middle of a world depression, as one of the poorest countries going.

It's all doable but asking people to care for others in the middle of an economic system that is designed to punish that idea is never gonna work. You either change the system directly or restore community power, anti-Thatcherite ideas that society exists. Maybe both?

The data centre stuff I have no clue what to do, I suppose it has to be tackled on a world scale, they're world systems, right? Start local and work up the EU I guess?

 

[ann post]

I wouldn't say the over 40's are a dead loss - Just a bit more attrition required - why do I claim this?

Well when I painted houses, the colour of house per season was more or less decided by the golf club, each summer some golf club member would paint their house a colour, and we'd spend the rest of the summer doing the same colour or one shade different on golfy places.

You lob a solar panel on one golf club house, there will be 15 by the end of the year. In fact, targeting the high earning types to build the market is probably faster than waiting for a green party majority. The 1% of cars in sold IReland that are electric (thats a year old stat, might be higher now) are going to these people as well. Tesla's are out of price range for mortals - and as mentioned here before, up until recently the lead was a second car type deal.

meanwhile i don't think the market solves anything.

The axis of data centre / electric car / supply is basically a raging fire. I spoke to someone rediculously high up in electricity about it and they 100% fluffed the answer on how that supply would be met.

Things I think at present (just in general)

Lobby politicians that people are actually higher in the electricity and water food chain than data centres, they will actually need to be told this.

Stop giving FFG a free ride. The paris accord was adopted by enda kenny, not eamon ryan- always ask FG about this. The ability for them do deflect to the greens has to come to an end.

I agree with you on the solar - the scheme is bullshit, and all the rest of the schemes don't come near an entry level wage so it's essential an upper middle jerk off. I've heard of German models of payment / non payment when generating that sound appealing. I live in a south facing house that could probably go 100% off grid easy, but I can't afford it....

 

[magicbastarder]

my father in law is a case in point, he got solar panels (water) installed several years ago as a keeping up with the joneses effort. but they're a waste of time, their shower is electric. they don't actually *use* the hot wateer generated so are actually worse for the environment.

 

[ann post]

Yeah same i've totally been caught out on a few things with the best of intentions, but for sure, once people see other people doing things, its only a matter of time. Was gonna do bit of a long post but I've thinking about doing a few articles about these things in the next month or two and probably need to let things stew a bit more..

 

[pete]

I've been looking into solar panel prices and they are MENTAL

 

[ann post]

I'll be sorta reading the IPCC report next week because that's the kind of thing I like to read.

Here's a short video version

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