SolarMech
Currently, a large diesel SUV typically emits a kilogram of CO₂ for every 3 kilometres of driving, compared to 15km for a light electric vehicle and 200 kilometres for an e-bike. An average electric vehicle currently emits 1kg of CO₂ every 7km.
Key takeaway I think. Vehicules that weight more than you, use energy to move themselves more than they use it to move you. It gets worse the heavier the vehicule is.
Where I’m from we bought the energy companies decades ago, and kept it public for the most part since then (I think some wind farms are private). I’m not sure how long we can keep it that way in the current political order, but it is definitely worth having.
It would solve a lot of this problem.
China will be hit pretty hard by climate change I would assume. Most of their population is located in the southeast coastline of the country. It is already hot over there, if it warms 3-4 degrees they might hit a point where you need AC to just survive. Probably a lot of those people would need to be relocated. That sounds pretty hard to achieve in a short timespan.
I’m always skeptical of this kind of news (but thanks for sharing it regardless). Even if it works, it won’t be the first solution we get, and the others still have yet to be put to use.
A better alternative is to try to eat less meat and dairy. I tried it a few years ago, slowly adding more vegan meals to my diet and it was surprisingly easy for me (but first I tried out various types of vegan or vegetarian foods to see what I liked). Better for the environment, better for the cows, better for me. I never quit completely but I rarely buy meat at the grocery store anymore. Even reducing significantly I feel can have an impact.
Even without the methane, raising cows still emit a significant amount of gas that cause climate change.
Of course on a wide scale if it was required for this industry then it would be great. But this is the kind of solution that gets in the way of reducing subsidies to animal farming (or regulating it further). So I’m wary it might be used for greenwashing or only when the pressure mounts to affect that industry in a real way, as a delaying tactic to evade more drastic measures, which might be more efficient at preserving the climate.
Ecosystems there won’t necessarily fare all too well. Trees are drying up because they aren’t used to that dryness/heat. New trees will take time to grow and they don’t necessarily support the same species.
The mix of species you used to have that lived in a balanced way is being disturbed by various invasive species.
I’m not saying those ecosystems will necessarily collapse, but there is a nonzero risk that they might.
It has a rocky start, and a lot of cruft from that era sticked around.
There are also a lot of horrible legacy projects from the pre-ES5 era which are a pain to work with. Often older projects were coded either before people knew how to do javascript right, or before the devs who wrote it knew how to write javascript right.
That said, working from home has so far saved me a lot of both time and money. This is a thing to consider as an employee when considering who to work for (or if your boss takes it away, if you still want to work there after essentially having a benefit revoked unilateraly).
Public transit pass. Actual time for transit which for me was around 90 minutes a day (7.5 hours a week!), more complex lunch logistics (time or money), etc.
A quieter workplace, no need to book rarely available rooms to take calls/meetings. There were upsides.
My first remote job had almost no issues at all. We already knew each other and we still took time to discuss issues via calls. New job not so much. We tend to be pressed for time so only focus on obvious “work” and then works suffers because of a lack of communication/common vision.
The part of the equation that can change, is the consumer variable.
No. I mean yeah, but we can change in so many more ways. that matter more. I think we need a multitude of approaches.
You can get active politically. Call your representative. Help get a better one elected if you can help out (and keep an eye out for a better one next time). You can learn to have those difficult conversations with friends, neighbor and family if you are good at that. Not all of those work for everyone. Some will swear up and down that direct action is better than getting involved in local or provincial/state elections. Then do that which you think will work.
As far as consumption goes, I tend to think withholding your consumption won’t do much (there are plenty of people who don’t care who will keep consuming, and we will look like a rounding error). However, I think support for alternatives matter more (whether they be habits which we spread in the population, or alternate products, like legumes instead of meat. Which I guess is also kind of promoting a habit. By forming communities that live our values, we can cause other people to be exposed to them and see how it can work out in practice. Hence eating more vegan foods bring those out. My hope is that such movements (and sometimes, as for vegan foods, markets) will grow exponentially at some point if it catches on.