Comment by bastnerd on The Power to Solve Climate Change · 2019-09-23T21:52:04.866Z · LW · GW

I honestly dont get how everyone always argues that there'll be startups that somehow suck carbon out of the atmosphere, while at the same time we absoluty fail at even reducing emissions. The kind of energy you'd need for sucking carbon out of the atmosphere would be better invested in just instantly stoppig putting even more in it. If world it on zero or almost zero carbon emission, then its time for reversing and fixing. For me that kind of thinking feels like plain ignorance about thermodynamics.

Same goes for the whole "new green deal" movement. You can't really undock GDP from carbon emission. It's gonne be a painful peak downards in luxury and living standard, especially for first world countrys if we really want to stop falling off the cliff.

Also I want to add that 2° ist already a coin toss whenever or not civilisation as a whole will collapse so it's in my opinion insane to declare this as a valid goal.

All in all I think we seriously underestimated this problem, its very likely to drive humanity extinct and we should start acting according to it. To follow your point for me that'd be making policital pressure like crazy and never stop telling people that we're literaly all gonna die if we keep going like we do.

At this point I for myself am seriously think if the best course of action is building an complete self-sufficient village somewhere in canada or russia (and therefor resettle with my whole familiy across the ocean in the next 5 years) where climate apokalypse won't be as harsh or just say, "Nah doesn't matter anyway, I'll just start hedonism as much as I can and be sure I have a bullet for my head around when 2050 nears."