A thing that a lot of people forget is this also, what do we mean by a long term solution? Even if we pollute the world and wipe out a lot of the life and ourselves in the process, in a few million years the world will be fine, we won't exist, animals and plants will evolve to fill available niches. For many people that's an acceptable long term solution.stylofone wrote: ↑Fri Dec 01, 2023 9:53 pmI think what's emerging is that that is not actually a long-term solution, because there is NO long-term solution, there is only a short-term solution. We either have shock therapy and immediately stop burning fossil fuels, or we cause such a climate catastrophe that there will be a broad scale collapse of ecosystems which will result in a catastrophe of massive proportions... I mean billions of people dying from famine and economies collapsing.stevebrooks wrote: ↑Fri Dec 01, 2023 8:51 pm the only long term solution is to remove fossil fuels from the energy mix
The need for the immediate end of fossil fuels is what I keep reading in the scientific reporting. The political and economic discussions happen downstream of that, but they don't change the science. I expect something that looks like a the beginnings of science fiction level of climate disaster to happen in the next ten years, I think it's possible any time. Of course I don't know, it's only an educated guess.
I get what you're saying about what people will accept, e.g. the "reliance" on ICE cars is hard to break. But the reliance to do what? It's not worth it, modern life is rubbish.
For what it's worth I think we started going the wrong way not just in the last few years or decades but before the turn of the century, the textile mills were the beginning of the long path that brought us to where we are today, it's not a recent problem by any means. It may take as long to fix things, and yes millions or billions may die before that happens, but I suspect shock therapy is indeed coming because the fossil fuel economy will collapse by itself. Even so, even if we stopped using fossil fuels tomorrow, it's would still take a good century to even approach something acceptable.
So when I say long term solution this is what I mean, not that we shouldn't stop burning fossil fuels as soon as possible, because we should, but that's not a solution, there are no short term solutions, it's a short term price we need to pay to start fixing things, but the long term solution means changing society in a way that repairs the damage we have done over the last century or two and making sure it doesn't happen again. The only problem is, what indeed is possible? Ask a hundred people, get a hundred answers.
