Europe has had five 500-year summers in 15 years(nationalgeographic.com) |
Europe has had five 500-year summers in 15 years(nationalgeographic.com) |
It reemphasizes the climate sceptists standpoints. They (most) are not denying there is a problem, but claiming there is widespread misinformation and propaganda around this topic and a strong exaggeration of the scale of the problem.
We have a kernel of truth around climate change. Let us cherish the kernel, instead of watering it down by popular media and scientists trying to jump the bandwagon by making vaguely substantiated claims.
The indisputable observable facts are:
1) The polar jet stream is slowing down.
2) This creates meandering air currents which produced the current heatwave in Europe and the so called polar vortexes in the US.
For many countries this is also a domestic divide rather than the traditional nationalism soaked debate that most people or news orgs focus on.
Southern US stands to lose a lot more from the charts I've seen. Surprised it isn't raised a lot more by their representatives.
After 5 in 15 years, and on course for a sixth, the benchmark looks way off. At what point should it simply become a 1:3 year summer, or just "summer"?
How deniers can experience it and keep acting like nothing's happening beats me.
Is it an obscure idiom (Native English speaker, so hard to tell)?
I had to read the article to finally made sense of it.
The article explain later what that means:
> Europe’s five hottest summers in the past 500 years have all occurred in the last 15 years, not including this summer.
And that means window units are not an option.
So if you don't have A/C, it's certainly not because you physically can't. I personally get by with a fan.
Though I definitely have culture shock when I return to Texas and remember people will have their A/C on 24/7 at 69F.
Wonder what sort of change that will bring to countries or regions in the world.
It's not really about the population it's about usage and greed.
edit: sorry, wrong calculation:
2 Steaks a week produce about 300Kg Co2 per year, which is the same as 7 People living DR Kongo produce
Who would pitch in to help me build a giant Mr Burns sun blocker in space?
If everyone on this site simply 1) exercised their right to vote fully, 2) invested enough research time to make sure their vote helps fight global heating, in even a tiny way, and 3) made one change per month, no matter how small, in their individual routine in a way that diminishes their contribution to global heating...
... That would contribute more to saving the world than all our “world-saving” startups combined.
But that would require admitting that we’re not as special as we think we are, which is hard.
Compared to a visionary engineering team raising let’s say $100 million to push forward new methods of sequestration?
YC has specifically called for startups in this field. Startups like SKH are pushing to get sequestration under $100 per tonne — compared to US per capita average of 20 tones, of which 8.5 tones is considered “innate” just for living in the US...
So while the absolute maximum personal impact an individual can have is around 10 tones, cost effective sequestration is the path forward to pricing and taxing carbon.
Once we have a reasonable sequestration cost, we can charge everyone and everything for their own emissions and use that money to actually negate it.
At current rates it would be ~$3,000 per capita which is still politically untenable. But at $300 per capital it becomes trivial. Somewhere in the middle in there it becomes economically and politically possible to actually eliminate the entire carbon emissions of the US, without even having to ask anyone to change their footprint.
So the question is what’s more important to you? Moralistically preaching to everyone how they should be living their lives, or actually reaching zero net emissions?
For example, you don’t need to eliminate international travel in order to eliminate the carbon footprint of international travel.
One top comment said "Over the next 40 years, (those 250 million tress) will absorb about as much carbon as the United States emits in a week."
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/c6lj7u/nonprofit_pl...
- Step one: _stop_ polluting (in like 1995).
- Step two: Work out ways to get the genie back into the bottle or co2 back into the ground.
It seems like we forgot to enact step 1 and now step 2 will pretty much be pointless because we are still spewing out co2 faster than ever.
If we're too survive we need to do both steps as of yesterday, unfortunately I don't think there are very efficient says to sequester enough carbon yet, so I think we might be in some trouble.
Huge supporter of climate change action, but scientifically is there any basis for the idea that current models point to human extinction? (Don't answer if you don't have a hard source, but I'd like what the projected point is for that)
> This image should terrify you. It should be on billboards.
> As you can see, in either scenario, global emissions must peak and begin declining immediately. For a medium chance to avoid 1.5 degrees, the world has to zero out net carbon emissions by 2050 or so — for a good chance of avoiding 2 degrees, by around 2065.
> After that, emissions have to go negative. Humanity has to start burying a lot more carbon than it throws up into the atmosphere. There are several ways to sequester greenhouse gases, from reforestation to soil enrichment to cow backpacks, but the backbone of the envisioned negative emissions is BECCS, or bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration.
> BECCS — raising, harvesting, and burning biomass for energy, while capturing and burying the carbon emissions — is unproven at scale. Thus far, most demonstration plants of any size attaching CCS to fossil fuel facilities have been over-budget disasters. What if we can’t rely on it? What if it never pans out?
...
> Check out that middle graphic. If we really want to avoid 1.5 degrees, and we can’t rely on large-scale carbon sequestration, then the global community has to zero out its carbon emissions by 2026.
To state the obvious, we will not reach 0 CO2 emissions in the next 7 years. Everyone better strap in, because it only gets worse from here.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/21/carbon-engineering-co2-captu...
I look around my workplace, nobody seems to be compelled to change their lifestyle. Nobody seems to mind using a disposable cup every day, buying latest gadgets they don't need, talking about traveling to new places, etc.
I bought people on my team reusable coffee mugs to reduce the amount of disposable waste, but inevitably they get too lazy to clean it and they are back on disposable cups.
We need political action and economic incentives. Individuals changing their lifestyle isn’t going to accomplish anything.
Have people really got that lazy? Or is their work really that important?
In all fairness though, in America the power is only 110v not 240. So boiling a kettle is not going to happen. Plus the Boston Tea Party thing means y'all don't have a nice sharp cup of tea. So it is kind of not economically viable to just have a cup of tea, which for me, with no milk or sugar, comes in at less than 1p per cup + electricity. (58 tea bags cost 80 pence). Even then I often re-use the same tea bag, so totally different economic level.
I imagine my blood wouldn't be too useful if it was laced with caffeine, sugar, dairy products and/or artificial sweeteners on an hourly basis and that I might get too lazy to wash a cup. Maybe this is what happens.
There is a feedback loop that goes on with the wasteful lifestyle with people not able to regulate their body heat in winter or summer. So everything has to be air conditioned the whole time. In the USA this is a requirement but in England there was no such thing as air conditioning in the 1970's. You would open a window instead. Nowadays the windows have to be closed and the AC is on. Also in the 1970's you put lights on when it got dark. You didn't have the lights on mid day in mid summer, the glowy thing in the sky was considered sufficient.
Try turning off the lights in your workplace and see how people moan. Don't tell them that you are saving the environment, just say you had glare on your screen. See how they react.
I would like to see an office segregated into two zones much like how places used to be segregated into smoking and non-smoking areas. In one zone there would be the planet trashers. Then in the other the people who can do actual work without having to be overly nannied.
The 'eco' work zone would have no AC in places like England, instead there would be a breeze, some silence (instead of fans), nobody moaning about the weather but enjoying it and some sensible hours worked, so nobody sauntering in at 10 to moan all day, more of a decent lunch time, French style.
Meanwhile, in the other zone would be the people who are no longer able to regulate their body temperatures due to weight considerations. They would be paid slightly less as in their part of the building there would be the fizzy drinks machine to pay for, the disposable cups, the air conditioning, the excess lighting and the excess trash to landfill.
If this were in place then I am sure productivity would increase.
(Max time on top chart goes back to 1919)
Each year's high and low in the same line so there's no chance of noticing a trend or moving average, without plotting one.
Sure, we need to ramp up carbon capture capabilities, and we need to do it fast. That is a great challenge for the tech industry to tackle.
However.
Carbon capture is not a silver bullet. At best, it is a short-term fix which can buy us time to actually fix the root cause of global heating. To state the obvious: the root cause is unsustainable extraction and ignition of fossil fuels. Carbon capture does nothing to address that root cause! In fact, it may end up making things worse in the long run, if we insist on over-selling it as a silver bullet - like you're doing right now.
Did you know that when you build more freeways to alleviate traffic congestion, you actually make traffic worse? And did you know that after decades of scaling up "plastic capture" capabilities in the form of consumer recycling, we have basically nothing to show for it? There's no evidence that it has made a dent in the production of new plastic. In fact plastic production has accelerated: we've produced as much plastic globally in the last 13 years than in the 54 years before that.
Building more freeways, over-selling plastic recycling, and over-selling carbon capture are all examples of the same flawed reasoning. They are short-term patches to fundamentally unsustainable systems, and when we allow them to become substitutes to an actual solution, they actually make our problem worse down the line.
Which brings me to my criticism of the tech industry's priorities. Collectively, we are one of wealthiest and most influential groups of people on the planet. Our resources are immense, therefore our responsibility to allocate our resources wisely is also immense. And we are failing miserably in that responsibility, because although we are investing plenty of resources in short-term fixes like carbon capture, our investment in fixing the real structural problem (again: unsustainable extraction and ignition of fossil fuels) are basically ZERO.
The reason we're failing is simple: carbon capture can be solved with technology and venture capital. Those are things we understand, and conveniently they allow us to keep doing what we like to do while telling ourselves we are saving the world. On the other hand, solving the root cause of global heating requires dismantling the fossil fuel industrial complex. The biggest obstacle to doing that is political corruption, which no amount of technology or venture capital can solve. The way we fight corruption is by becoming better citizens. That requires things like: voting; researching issues and candidates thoroughly; protesting; calling our representatives; showing up at town hall meetings; informing our friends and family about important political issues; getting other people to vote; etc. Unfortunately, most techies do none of those things. Political apathy is the norm. Even worse, remember that the tech industry played a direct role in Brexit and Trump's election, both of which are catastrophic setbacks in the fight against global heating.
I am not "moralistically preaching" as you call it. I am simply describing a pragmatic strategy to solving global heating. Unfortunately it's neither fun not profitable to make the effort to be a better citizen, so techies just don't bother. This makes us collectively part of the problem rather than the solution, and I think that's a shame.
PS: for the sake of completeness, here are other catastrophic consequences of fossil fuel emissions which carbon capture won't solve:
- rampant plastic pollution (remember, plastic comes from oil)
- mercury poisoning of the entire oceanic food chain (did you know that most of the mercury accumulating in the ocean comes from the fumes of coal plants?)
- the rise of fascist regimes in the US and Europe, bankrolled in great part by the Koch brothers in the US and Putin's oligarchs in Russia - in both case that is oil money
- the rise of violent Salafist groups such as Al-Qaeda, ISIS and Boko Haram, bankrolled by Saudi Arabia - also oil money.
- countless oil spills;
I could go on.
The phrase, 'scientists say...' is often connected to hypotheses scientists have, which are partly backed up by models or proof. Often popular media falls back to "Johnny said X" to dumb down the complex findings for their ignorant viewership.
The following statements show that there is a proof:
- <person> proved <statement> - <person> discovered <statement> - <person> found <statement> evidence
Too many times I've looked up scientific results based on 'X said Y', only to find that the effect was more marginal than claimed, or purely hypothetical based on other findings. This is not isolated to climate change, but all of popular science.
I have seen people use similar logic before, even specifically for climate change.
keyword: may. This statement tells us nothing new. Everyone already knows that local changes in climate have global effects. That's why we have global climate models.
(cue: extreme forest fires, partly caused by mismanagement of forests)
"Temperatures are rising in the world, but the warming is strongest in the arctic."
Nothing new.
"Here the warming is twice as fast as the global average."
Interesting: we know that the polar jet has been slowing since the 60's, but the warming of the arctic seems to be equal to global warming in the first part of this graph. Also, very shoddy time-series analysis, imho.
"And that's causing the ice to vanish."
"...international group of researchers who've come North to see how it has been rapidly changing."
So here I really wonder. Why would you do that? We've got great sensor networks and satellite measurements.
"Without the ice, more water evaporates, contributing to more greenhouse gasses."
True, but locally. Increased cloud cover also has a net negative effect. It really depends on a complex interplay and requires a sophisticated simulation.
"Some scientists think this is supercharging extreme weather across the world."
This seems highly hypothetical. Why not make a factual claim, such as: "Scientists have proven this actively contributes to the number of extreme weather events."
"Call atmospheric scientist... who explains how the polar jet stream effected the US this past winter."
"There was a huge northward swing in the jet stream over the west coast, bringing lots of warm air over Alaska."
So, this is true, but the jet streams are not constant, and have never been. Connecting it with a slowing down of that stream is intentionally left to the viewer.
... news report ...
"Took a southward drive over the rockies and dipped way down into Florida."
... another news report, claiming that such events have happened in the past??? Wouldn't that debunk this line of thinking? ...
"At times 20 degrees above average, and warmer than NY city."
These local fluxes of temperature are normal in this region.
... more claims of the jet stream, causing problems. No scientific claims, however, just news reporting. ...
"Tokyo had its coldest day in 48 years." So what happened about 48 years ago?
"Some prominent climate researchers are skeptical."
Good for them. We'd better be.
"Scientists can't definitively say whether any one weather event was caused by the warming Arctic, conditions elsewhere, or by random chance."
So, this is one of two scientific claims. At this point I am wondering why I just watched 4 minutes of melting ice bergs.
"But Francis and others think the warming Arctic is loading the dice for extreme weather."
Think? What does that mean? They don't agree with the other scientists? Have they found proof?
"FRANCIS: We can confidently say that some amount of the increase in extreme weather that we're seeing, is because of climate change."
So... eh, what about the jet stream? The arctic? I agree with this statement, because... it is obviously true! When global temperatures rise, we obviously get more droughts and more extreme temperatures.
KINTICH: "One thing is for sure, extreme weather in North America is occurring more often."
And the relationship to the Arctic? The jet stream? Tell me more!
"Climate scientists have given this phenomenon a new name: cold arctic, warm continents."
But, this has always been the case! This does not automatically prove the opposite.
... summary ...
So my conclusion: nothing new has been said! The only true statement is that we cannot conclude anything yet.
Now, multiply these kind of videos by hundreds, and you might start to understand why certain people are getting tired. Stick to the facts! The facts are scary enough as they stand.
Because saying 'they do' is setting an extremely high bar. It would be saying the matter's settled, and some people will not accept any level of evidence. Even a very few climate scientists don't, as you yourself recognise.
> Why not make a factual claim, such as: "Scientists have proven this actively contributes to the number of extreme weather events."
Ditto. If you are saying these things, what 'proof' would you find incontrovertible?
I don't understand your post, it talks about 'proof' in a way that scientists would be very wary of doing outside mathematics.
To "Temperatures are rising in the world, but the warming is strongest in the arctic." you respond "Nothing new" so you seem to be accepting climate change is happening
You then quote "Some prominent climate researchers are skeptical" and respond "Good for them. We'd better be" so you seem to think strong doubt is appropriate about climate change.
Which is it?
I can't even tell if you've any qualifications in this area (you may well have), and whether you accept or reject anthropogenic climate change, could you elaborate please?
The situation is painted black and white by popular media and social websites. There are, however, many shades of gray. Most climate scientists are not on either end. However, due to duplicitous media coverage the discussion is quickly polarizing.
The polarization is the bigger issue. For example, we can agree global warming is happening and we can agree this causes increasingly extreme weather conditions. However, there are many secondary and tertiary effects. These, alleviating or contributing to global warming, are not part of our climate models.
Instead of jumping to conclusions, we should acknowledge the limitations of our understanding and our scientific findings. The foundation (IPCC climate models) should be discussed. Where are they accurate? How can they be improved? Does it help us predict local climate change, so we can prepare migrations and structural changes?
I suspect for most of us, and our descendants, it's pretty academic if the future holds extinction, some Mad Max future where the few survivors have the capability of the 19th century, middle ages, or somehow bomb^W emit ourselves back to the bronze age. All will see them surrounded by tons of surviving things (and packaging) they can see but can't understand, make, repair or refill.
> Also, my qualifications on this topic, how little I might have, should not interfere with finding common grounds.
You tell me which is more valuable: the testimony of an expert, or of someone with no qualifications? I think the former - do you disagree?
> The situation is painted black and white by popular media and social websites.
My fear is we're quite possibly terribly damaging the planetary ecosystem. That's pretty black and white to me.
> Most climate scientists are not on either end.
If you are going to claim this, please back this up when you say it. Claims without references are useless.
https://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-conse... - "Depending on exactly how you measure the expert consensus, it’s somewhere between 90% and 100% that agree humans are responsible for climate change, with most of our studies finding 97% consensus among publishing climate scientists."
<https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-06-15/97-per... - a more careful look at those figures.
> due to duplicitous media coverage
duplicitous - please justify that.
> However, there are many secondary and tertiary effects. These, alleviating or contributing to global warming, are not part of our climate models.
These being...? Specifically? I actually need to know these because I take a (non expert) interest in climate models. It's actually tangentially related to my current job.
> Instead of jumping to conclusions
At some point we have to accept or reject a hypothesis that we're putting ourselves at enormous risk. Or we can keep putting it off until we find out for sure whether that lump is or isn't cancer, by which may be too late.
W.r.t. qualifications I think the answer should be obvious. I am addressing (as a layman) the mode of communication as it appears in popular media, and try to distance myself from the contents of whatever is communicated.
> My fear is we're quite possibly terribly damaging the planetary ecosystem. That's pretty black and white to me.
Yes, that fear is on my mind as well. There is irrefutable evidence in coral bleaching and there are other globally occurring phenomenon. And because of that, we need to be extra careful on how we convince our fellow earthlings.
> > Most climate scientists are not on either end.
> If you are going to claim this, please back this up when you say it. Claims without references are useless.
Well, it depends on how you define 'the ends'. There are those who believe we are all going to die within a decade. There are those who reject all evidence. There are those who believe it is irreversible and those who think we are able to cope.
So, this is on the predicted effects of climate change and its extend. Most models are relatively accurate globally, but subcontinental predictions can still be way off (2-5 degrees either way).
In my opinion, the media goes either way: left wing brings us doom and gloom scenario's, while right wing paints a rosy picture. That should be a clear sign that we are not making progress. We should be finding common ground! I believe the viewership still has common ground, but the media is creating a Babylonian tower.
Then there is the whole discussion about what to do about it. People come up with all kinds of ideas, such as carbon tax (how to deal with CO_2 from imported products), solar panels (could be a real option, but requires heavy investing in infrastructure), biomass, political and diplomatic approaches, underground storage, etc.
And each of these approaches comes with another doom-and-gloom story, connected with these 'solutions'. Consider what it does for the non-scientific oriented population. Climate is now seen by many as a means to push products. Many switch to ignore mode.
Take this [1] article in National Geographic for example. It's all due to climate change! Not a word on bad forest management, bad water management, increased population density and more. It's outright duplicitous to not mention the other factors. And it's also sad, because the 'opponent camp' can now point at these articles and say: "You see! This is what they feed you!". Global warming is calculated to be around 24% accountable for these wild-fires.
> > However, there are many secondary and tertiary effects.
> These being...? Specifically?
Precipitation is still very difficult to model. Increased temperature means increased evaporation, increased cloud cover and increased precipitation. It depends on what kind of cloud cover is generated whether this will have a net cooling or heating effect.
Another factor is the mixing of salt and sweet water, which due to the melting of the polar ice has effects that, if I'm not mistaken, is not yet precisely modeled.
We can accept that we are putting ourselves at risk. However, I am sure we will come to the right conclusion faster if we let people make their own conclusions and not make this into a polarizing shouting match.
[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/11/clima...
satan himself was a creation of God, that doesn't mean we just lie down and indulge all manner of sin.
>Why on Earth would anyone work directly against the actions of God, or try to take responsibility for something that God is clearly in charge of?
All things that occur, do so by the will of God (i.e: occasionalism).
>I have seen people use similar logic before, even specifically for climate change.
I'd assume their theology has shaky foundations.
I’m trying to think of what regimes would qualify: the US, China, the EU... India, Brazil. One of those? Is that what you’re thinking?
I guess it would be easier to understand what you think is a high probability event if you give just an example of a a regime that think is at risk.
This will push people to kigrate or start wars. And our system won’t be able to handle a much larger amount of migrants, it’s straining even under existing low numbers.
You generally never saw a collapse in just one part of an empire. So I mean a collpase of lur global civilization, on the scale of past collapses that affected prior local civilizations.
We depend on caebon to feed the people we have, too. If we try to reduce and can’t replace, we have trouble. But if we don’t reduce, we have worse trouble as temperatures keep going up.
If we sort out energy and figure out how to suck co2 from the sky we can reverse this of course.
So using reusable cups may not on its own solve global heating... But neither will any single election, tax or international agreement.
Instead of telling each other “what you’re doing is not solving everything therefore it’s useless”, we should be saying “what you’re doing is a good first step, and here are other ideas for doing more”.
The way I see it, someone who makes the effort to switch to reusable cups is very likely willing to make another effort. They might just need you to point you in the right direction. For example, the issue of why we make so many non-reusable cups in the first place, where they come from, who has the power to stop them but doesn’t, and how they can be held accountable. Just a suggestion of course! :-)
I agree that a single individuals actions will have minimal impact, but isn't it the individual that makes up the whole?
"Individuals changing their lifestyle isn’t going to accomplish anything."
Why do you say that?
Does any evidence exist that individuals making changes doesn't do anything?
For example, my partner and I no longer own cars, that's hopefully two whole cars off the road for practically a lifetime. Does this have zero impact ?
Also think of it this way, imagine if all of the people in the world right now who couldn't afford to fly, own cars and consume as much as you, could afford to do so and proceeded to do so without thinking about the consequences, it would be 2050 pretty quickly.
I agree legislation and emissions trading schemes etc are important but i don't see it happening fast enough just yet. So why not take some ownership of your own and do your best in the meantime ?
An obvious observation: Individual change and collective change are not mutually exclusive, so I think the choice between them is a bit of a false dilemma.
To pick an extreme example: Me not stabbing anyone is not enough to end knife crime in general, but this individual action (of not stabbing anyone) can still be considered an ethical baseline, so it's still good for me to not do that. Similarly, you aren't going to stop climate collapse by not driving, but...
The impact is that you inspire others, which makes political change possible in the long run.
But beyond that... as long as oil is coming out of the wells, and it's legal to burn it, somebody will do it.
Therefore strong, decisive political action is mandatory. Individual actions, personal incentives can't be enough: we need an effort similar to what Great-Britain did when it entered "war economy".
Published CO_2 emissions would include an estimation of the total CO_2 emissions estimates of the complete production flow of each product you buy, the distance you travel for work and all other energy consumption.
Would that incentivize people?
(for the purpose of this argument, assume we can actually make such an estimate)
But, what’s the new norm we want to establish?
“Let’s all use 20% less energy”
Vs
“Let’s produce all energy from renewable sources”
I feel like the second option is the only one that’s going to save us, and option 1 is a distraction.
If you were to, say, mount a solar panel on the roof of your electric car, that would probably be a better message to send than to drive less.
I'm quick to defend the belief at a 'meta level'. It seems good to pretend we each can make a difference, in the same way it's useful to pretend free will exists: if you act 'as if' such a thing is true, then you avoid the outcome of acting as if it is false, one that seems to me utterly terrible - 'you could have made a difference, but you chose not to'.
I'd rather bring important but optimistic goals down a peg than abandon them - thinking I may as well leave things up to Moloch [2] leads me to despair.
[1] https://www.restarters.net/about [2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
I'm with though, people are too selfish and too short sighted to be mildly inconvenienced to spit on the fire and some government action needs to happen, I guess all we can do is be vocal about it and hope people cause science friendly politicians come election time
If we want to to beat climate change, we have to do the math. And then check it twice.
Right now it's almost impossible to know the impact of what you buy, or which is better. Or how the impact of some produce available year round varies across the year. I know buying a lettuce in winter is going to have larger impact than in summer, but I have no way to quantify it.
It would also be an excellent starting point for building a carbon tax, that could slowly escalate to punitive.
The only problem is: the general public knows nothing of this!
No, because, much like the "water crisis" in California, individuals didn't make the direct choices the led to the crisis. Shipping your food from half a world away was not a direct choice any consumer made. Making your clothing half a world away was not a direct choice any consumer made. Building all infrastructure around cars was not a direct choice any consumer made.
If you want to reduce CO2, you have to do something to bake it's price into wherever it is being used or created.
(The "water crisis" in California is actually an "agribusiness water crisis"--if every individual in California quit using water for drinking, showers, lawn watering, swimming pools, etc., the Central Valley agribusinesses would still be unable to irrigate without pumping out the aquifers. The only solution to the California "water crisis" is to shut down the agribusinesses and make them move to somewhere with water. We are actually seeing this with desalinization in California--desalinization can actually supply almost all the people but isn't going to do anything for businesses.)
You assume people are incentivized by price, but people are incentivized by status. That's why they buy fake Rolexes and put themselves in extreme debt.
Connect CO_2 emissions with status.
What's easy and effective is a CO2 emissions tax directly on the emitter. Anyone who burns coal or gas or oil has to pay.
But I think that the total amount of oil that will be burnt only depends on the price of extracting the next barrel vs the price of other energy sources.
All we need is to derive the impact from each step, and some helpful way to present it. For presentation we know approaches that work. So it's really just requiring the carbon/impact accounting - and penalties for fraud. :)
Then we can decide if we're better off, environmentally, buying a Thinkpad, a Macbook, or a Mac Mini with LG monitor. Whether to pass on those out of season lettuces, or should really be concerned about something making more impact. All we can do right now is guess for just about everything.
What is the ethical way to live staring an unavoidable catastrophe in the face? When can we honestly give up?
The problem is that if an individual makes every single choice they can to reduce their CO2 footprint, they still won't make a dent in CO2 emissions. It's effectively pissing in the ocean.
So, you can connect it to status and make people feel good, but you have to go after the big things if you want to actually dent CO2 emissions (this is simply a case of Amdahl's law in reverse).
And the big one is transportation. If you can get every single car and truck onto electricity, you win multiple times. Traffic jams don't convert energy to CO2; electric motors are quite a bit more efficient than internal combustion engines at low speeds with high torque; multiple distributed CO2 sources now become single point sources (at the power plant--much easier to apply technology to).
After that, the next big thing, if I remember correctly, is that you need to switch from AC transmission lines to high-voltage DC transmission lines as the loss is so much better. And a LOT of energy gets lost to simple transmission (also has the advantage that your grids are much easier to interconnect and stabilize).
After those two, then you take a look around and see what the next big 2 or 3 are, and go attack those. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Until you are at CO2 negative.