The protocol designed to heal the ozone layer may also have fended off warming(technologyreview.com) |
The protocol designed to heal the ozone layer may also have fended off warming(technologyreview.com) |
Even if that isn't the case, planting trees is still a long term move, and it's going to take at least several hundred billion trees to make a difference. It's not something where you can say "just plant trees, and everything will be alright."
I remember the hole in the ozone layer thing from start to not being quite finished (there are still a few holdouts in some parts of the world)
I remember the breathless announcements on the TV news and realizing that the underarm deodorant I was using was a wrong one and doing fuck all about it (I was a teenager.) The manufacturer of that deodorant switched chemicals.
I remember fridges and freezers being dumped because they were using the "wrong" refrigerants by well meaning owners. Could they have been re-gassed up with a non CFC and continued to work? No idea but I suspect that a lot of waste was generated.
Pollution is hard to deal with, it's so easy to emit and so hard to withdraw. At the risk of trivializing the issue: try farting in front of your parents-in-law or considering doing it in front of 'er Maj Queen Elizabeth and considering the consequences.
I agree about nuclear, though. We should have been doubling down on them years ago, if only as a stop-gap until the renewable power storage problem has been solved. Although I'm of the opinion that they should be a solid percentage of our power output until fusion plants are viable. Our energy needs are only going to go up in the future.
I can't think of anything that is both expensive and easy to do. If something is very easy, why would it ever be expensive?
Change it over to "Cheap EV for clunkers", the government could/should cover most of the financials and it's a win for the car owner and the environment.
I think it could be argued that it's the government's job to fund things like this. Vision is all that's required!
The Montreal Protocol is a lot like the chemical weapons ban: a ban of something the rich and powerful really don’t need that is incidentally the right thing to do. This kind of enforcement regime will work on fossil fuels in about 20 years when we have fusion power, but until then incentives are too greatly against it.
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2927/examining-the-viability-o...
has the word "albedo" mentioned six times. This is what you are alluding to:
"In the near term and locally, says Saatchi, forest restoration may actually have a warming effect. As the trees mature, the new forest canopy cover would presumably make Earth’s surface albedo darker"
"presumably".
That's part of the coordinating as a species problem.
... In the US/Canada. This is for the most part a self-contained cultural problem.
SUVs/trucks numbers are a small percentage of the vehicles on the road elsewhere in the world, mostly because there is no space for them in the road/city infrastructure in most other places.
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/o...
Ditching fossil fuels on an individual level is easy. Ditching fossil fuels on a civilization scale is difficult and expensive.
1. I know it might feel the opposite at first glance when you think of how much EVs cost compared to a house in SF - but bear in mind that houses can be built extremely inexpensively.