Compilation: “Solutions”

Nutshell

The truth? “Solutions” is the wrong word.

Difficult as it is to communicate, absorb, process, accept, and as shrill / alarmist as it may sound, our shared atmosphere is on an accelerating course to reach a state of potentially unsurvivable, global climate extremes during the lives of today’s children and teens.

The climate (energy / population / democracy / justice) crisis is a clear, present, dire EMERGENCY that ALREADY displaces and KILLS millions each year and compromises the lives of billions RIGHT NOW.

It is no longer preventable. Things will get much worse for a long time to come no matter what. And the risk of sudden, catastrophic system shifts, tips, flips that can occur over time frames as brief as a few years (as they have in the past) is upon us.

So the only “solution” would require time travel or reversal back to at least the 1960s, when everything began to get carried away.

There ARE many potential responses that are within our current means and technology, AND possibilities yet to be discovered.

But our core afflictions — psychological and anti-science resistance and denial, political and ideological gridlock, delayed, minimal, incremental action, and our insane, oppressive, growth and inequality-based, fossil fuel-reliant economics that perpetuate, compound, and are the root of, the crisis — are contrary and disproportionate to the reality / physics / bio-chemistry and non-linear (unpredictable, abrupt, runaway) nature of the threat.

No less than the fate of all generations of all peoples and most species hangs in the balance TODAY. We’re in a race against time to prevent irreversible, worst-case, apocalyptic outcomes. And it’s far too late in the process for a gradual ramp up (mass, collective delusion) approach to have significant enough impact.

We must take extraordinary, disruptive, inconvenient measures to do as much as possible very SOON and very FAST.

That requires a sustained, ‘state of global emergency’-scale level of international urgency, cooperation, research and development, mass mobilization and implementation, resistance and protest — on a vast multitude of fronts — just to level off, let alone reverse and restore our destabilized global climate to the safe balance that allowed us to evolve.

Below is the start of a collection of best proposed (and necessary), least-awful responses / possibilities to attempt to confront — rethink, transform, mitigate, adapt to, drawdown, refreeze, reforest, rewild, survive — what is ALREADY the greatest crime against humanity, most life and future life EVER. (Compilation: Betrayal of Life.)

Specifics

The big picture comes down to these 3 things:

1. If we can’t change our economic system, our number’s up, George Monbiot — “To succeed is to destroy ourselves. To fail is to destroy ourselves. That is the bind we have created. Ignore if you must climate change, biodiversity collapse, the depletion of water, soil, minerals, oil; even if all these issues miraculously vanished, the mathematics of compound growth make continuity impossible.”

But system change won’t and can’t happen soon enough, so…

2. Project Drawdown “…maps, measures, models, and describes the 100 most substantive solutions to global warming. For each solution (and remember, “solution” is the wrong word), we describe its history, the carbon impact it provides, the relative cost and savings, the path to adoption, and how it works. The goal … is to determine if we can reverse the buildup of atmospheric carbon within thirty years. All solutions modeled are already in place, well understood, analyzed based on peer-reviewed science, and are expanding around the world.”

A lot of essential options that must be pursued to their fullest potential (though a few are problematic). But as the link below explains, even all of that by tomorrow would not be enough because the processes / physics / bio-chemistry of climate breakdown, disruption, destabilization are already too far along. And so there is no choice but to contemplate the hornet’s nest of hornet’s nests…

3. Geoengineering, climateye compilation — Whatever your position, important considerations and complications (con and pro) are discussed, like how carbon emissions reduction isn’t simple because there would be consequences, just as there would be tremendous risks and uncertainties in any attempt to manipulate the global climate (as we’ve done for many decades, by the way). But here we are. Out of time. Lousy options. And in quandary over least-worst.

Individual – Click image below to enlarge

Click image to enlarge. Climate choices: Seth Wynes/Kimberly Nicholas, Lund University Study, 2017

Individual – The big 6

Get informed, inform others, don’t be silent
Participate, organize, mobilize
Avoid flying — The single largest personal climate impact we can avoid
Avoid meat — The 2nd largest personal climate impact we can avoid
Avoid driving
Have smaller families

Individual – More sources

Political (more to come)

Books, articles, posts

A lot of white, male authors of a certain age and class, based in rich countries. Love to have a more diverse list. If you know of any others, please be in touch (contact).

Websites (more to come)

Essential climateye compilations

climateye’s most essential info