unspeakablehorror (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
unspeakablehorror) wrote2019-07-07 03:49 am
unspeakablehorror) wrote2019-07-07 03:49 am
Entry tags:
Fixing Climate Change
Fixing climate change will require doing something about the enormous corporations who are not doing remotely enough to curb it, and indeed commit gross negligence in this respect, but at the same time it's important to keep in mind that change at the individual level will also be necessary. Changing the corporations will lay the groundwork for fixing the infrastructure, but there is no realistic way that individuals can expect that nothing will need to change in our lifestyle, especially for those of us who live in the first world. Either it will change because we did not act fast enough and the ravages of climate change will destroy our livelihoods (and very possibly our very lives), or it will change because we did act and made the needed adjustments in our lifestyles. Not all of these changes would mean a reduction in quality of life, but likely many of them would be, or at least would be seen as such. We must implement great structural changes above the level of the individual, and these changes will be necessary to halt climate catastrophe, but they will not be sufficient.
I suspect that the vast majority of individuals, especially in the first world, will need to reduce their use of energy, their use of plastics, and the distances they travel (not only on vacations but also for work and errands). We will probably need to own fewer electronics (a painful thought to me, as I'm a tech enthusiast, but if we make such technology much more widely available in libraries, that would go a long way to helping me get over the loss). Another example--A lot of people in the US are not used to public transit, and the US doesn't have anywhere near the public transit infrastructure it needs to support everyone in the US, so in the short term while that is being built it's likely that people will simply need to drive less without any comparable alternative to replace it. There's no doubt that represents a significant sacrifice for many people. At the very least it will mean that many people's lives will look very different, even if all the necessary structural changes are made (eg. making it easy for people to live close to work or telecommute). On the bright side? No more traffic jams, transportation fatalities would almost certainly drop precipitously, and people who can't drive could be more independent in a society that is built around reducing driving. We will need to reduce our use of the plastics we have come to rely on for so many things. This is not an easy or trivial task, as plastics have many properties that can make them difficult to replace with other materials. I'm not even sure if it's possible for us to completely eliminate our use of plastics, but we need to find as many avenues to reduce and reuse them as possible. Not to mention the changes in diet that would almost surely need to come with any of the vast structural changes we would need to make to agriculture to reduce its impact on climate change. Any change to the type or quantity of foods produced will be very noticeable to people. The important thing we need to understand is that we can either guide that process ourselves to ensure the least amount of suffering, or we can let climate change destroy our current means of production and force sudden radical changes and starvation. There isn't a no consequences scenario, not for the majority of us.
I suspect that the vast majority of individuals, especially in the first world, will need to reduce their use of energy, their use of plastics, and the distances they travel (not only on vacations but also for work and errands). We will probably need to own fewer electronics (a painful thought to me, as I'm a tech enthusiast, but if we make such technology much more widely available in libraries, that would go a long way to helping me get over the loss). Another example--A lot of people in the US are not used to public transit, and the US doesn't have anywhere near the public transit infrastructure it needs to support everyone in the US, so in the short term while that is being built it's likely that people will simply need to drive less without any comparable alternative to replace it. There's no doubt that represents a significant sacrifice for many people. At the very least it will mean that many people's lives will look very different, even if all the necessary structural changes are made (eg. making it easy for people to live close to work or telecommute). On the bright side? No more traffic jams, transportation fatalities would almost certainly drop precipitously, and people who can't drive could be more independent in a society that is built around reducing driving. We will need to reduce our use of the plastics we have come to rely on for so many things. This is not an easy or trivial task, as plastics have many properties that can make them difficult to replace with other materials. I'm not even sure if it's possible for us to completely eliminate our use of plastics, but we need to find as many avenues to reduce and reuse them as possible. Not to mention the changes in diet that would almost surely need to come with any of the vast structural changes we would need to make to agriculture to reduce its impact on climate change. Any change to the type or quantity of foods produced will be very noticeable to people. The important thing we need to understand is that we can either guide that process ourselves to ensure the least amount of suffering, or we can let climate change destroy our current means of production and force sudden radical changes and starvation. There isn't a no consequences scenario, not for the majority of us.