Well neither is “free” energy, but as opposed to solar and existing technologies, cold fusion is claimed to offer energy so abundant that it’s basically free. Solar don’t work on the scale required to solve the problems that climate change bring (carbon capture, water desalination, replacing every critical earth system we’re breaking) AND maintaining the rising power requirements of modernity.

Solar and wind technologies would have been an excellent basis for building a different type of society, where we also vastly reduce our energy consumtion and rethink modern economy. That would be nice, but those discussions are simply off the table at the moment. People want cheeseburgers, Amazon Prime and pickup trucks. No such things in Solar Punk Utopia.

Yes, but let’s not forget that 1,5 degrees C was considered really bad to begin with.

The target of staying under 1,5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average temperature within the century was set less than 10 years ago. It was considered ambitious but possible back then, and so many world leaders and governments agreeing to it in the Paris climate accord of 2015, was considered a major political achievement.

However, there have been uncountable political setbacks since. Aside from Donald Trump’s two election wins and subsequent horror shows, we’ve gone through a pandemic that brought insane financial, monetary politics and crushing inflation, the Ukraine war and the advent of power hungry AI (that totally will be good for something and ain’t no god dammed bubble, seriously stop calling it a bubble, bro, it’s the future). All of which has reduced climate change to a niche topic that don’t hold any sway over political elections in the rich countries responsible for the brunt of greenhouse gas emissions (directly or indirectly).

Less than 10 years ago we thought it would be possible to stay below that target over the coming 85 years. Less than 10 years later that target is declared dead by the secretary general of the UN… Was it realistic then? Well, a lot of planning and climate policy has involved exceeding 1,5 degrees and then using massive deployments of imaginary future technologies to bring the climate back. Not exactly prudent reasoning.

Some countries are still sticking to their plans, kinda. Norway are making headways installing carbon capture technology on their off-shore oil rigs (!!!) so that they can keep drilling for fossil fuels with a smaller impact on their own reported national emissions.

I agree, inefficient magic use in the scientific community is to blame for this predicament.

Yeah, sure, about equal likelihood, to be fair

It’s no use going for collective blame and doomerism

Honestly, I think we could have done with a lot more doomerism. thisisfine.jpg-ism is the biggest reason why a political solution is impossible.

No, our best hope is that our best scientists learn magic and then rapidly enable wide scale adoption of fusion reactors that are efficient enough to generate free energy that we can use for a bunch of, yet to be invented, sci-fi technologies that deal with the huge pile of shitty challenges that are amassing at our doorstep.

The odds of short to mid term survival of civilization is statistically insignificant.

Here are some inventions by some really racist people:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:German_inventions_of_the_Nazi_period

It’s a mistake to underestimate the intelligence of fascists just because they subscribe to fundamentally dumb ideas. There are a lot of smart and sinister people serving those ideals.

Project 2025 isn’t the work of unintelligent people, the success of the extreme right isn’t a ”happy” coincidence resulting from ineptitude, and so forth.

From an individual health perspective that makes sense, but not worrying about the extreme proliferation of plastic an unknown effects of bioaccumulation is probably really dumb on a societal level (and not worrying is clearly the path all or most developed countries have doubled down on).

Thank you for this thought through response. I’ve been meaning to get back to it sooner, but I have been very tired after work and not feeling I have the bandwith the matter deserves. I’m afraid this might not be the evening either, but I found it rude to not respond at all.

One caveat I’d like to enter into the wider discussion is that the distinction between “acting” and “talking” is often more tenuous than either of us have acknowledged thus far.

Either way, to the point where you say we differ most, i.e. “but first people need to realize the switch is even there”. From my perspective, what I fail to understand is when you would consider that condition met. Should action be deferred until there’s a perfect consensus or at what point do you envision that enough people have come to that realization? Do you consider people embracing ideas like this to be likely to happen, considering real world conditions? Both genuine questions, not rhetorical.

I too am a believer that it is perfectly possible for humans to live good lives outside of the (selectively available) exesses of the fossil fuel paradigm. But I also think it’s evident that paradigm will only come to an end through either a decisive and global shift of our collective lifestyles and economies or through the looming risk of societal collapse. At this rate, my frustration is that collapse will come knocking before we’re done talking. I’m not as optimistic as you, that we can figure it out, let cooler heads prevail and do things perfectly and achieve a smooth transition. I think it’s worth considering that we might stand to lose a lot, whether we commit to change or not; one thing that sometimes get glossed over about fossil fues is that they’re damn near magical in terms of what they have enabled us to do.

Maybe we mostly differ in outlook, not predominantly in what we hope for. Because I sure do hope your more optimistic takes prove right.

My apologies for the jumbled and poorly proof-read stream of concioussness, I really need to go to sleep now.

I strongly disagree.

In a lot of ”very complex” issues, the answers are really simple, and we all know fully well how to solve them.

This is particularly true of the large existential problems we are facing. With climate change, for instance, we have known the solution for a long time: stop burning fossil fuels.

What to do about it has been clear, straightforward and simple all along, but not easy – it would have taken sacrifice to achieve it. We’d have to live more simply, do away with consumerism and have to put things on hold while we find sustainable ways to do them. And we probably would have had to take enormous risks to our own lives, to stop those that wouldn’t aggressively cut down on fossil fuels voluntarily. Without any guarantees of success.

Even transitioning to a solar punk utopia would have been hard, including for those on board from the start.

All while the alternative to the solution is to to have long warm showers at will, enough cheap food that we can get really fat and still throw half of it away, intercontinental air travel that costs less than a bus pass, and so on.

It’s not because we have talked too little or that the discourse hasn’t been good enough that we can’t seem to solve it – our most brilliant minds have talked endlessly for a generation about climate change and how to address it. It’s simply because quitting our fossil fuels addiction is a bitter fucking pill to swallow. And pointless if you do it alone.

The same goes for the ”slow” slide into fascism all over the West, a.k.a. the steady concentration of wealth in the hands of dumber and dumber financial elites. (Not that it’s a separate issue from climate change.)

If you want to beat it, whether peacefully or not, you eventually have to accept that your next meal won’t be guaranteed and that, you might get beaten, arrested or even killed – hungry, tired and cold.

As our American friends have showed us, on this matter, the stakes of disruptive protests are not very appealing – it’s better to continue going to the office, get that paycheck that keeps the lights on, holds off the bank from taking your home and lets the fridge stay full, even if that means paying taxes to and serving those you protest in the weekends and in social media posts.

Tackling these issues does not require exceptional individuals, but a lot of ordinary ones working together, accepting that it’s probably gonna suck really bad. Even so, there is already an abundance of extraordinary people out there, notably Greta Thunberg (of this thread fame).

And yes, it does also take talk to bring those people together, but that talk won’t get you around the hard parts.

The billionaires are probably pretty content with people trying to figure out ”truthful communication” while the people who stormed the Capitol keep winning.

While you make some good points, have you heard the expression ”talk is cheap”? There’s no lack of talk.

The same fund was recently caught having invested in an Israeli company that’s made bank during the war, maintaining Israeli jets making bombing runs on Gaza.

They don’t tend to die of natural causes while in power though, right?

Though that begs the question if it isn’t wasteful to save non-potable water when you could save potable water instead.

I agree with you on doxing and am very confused by burning normal people’s cars as a strategy.

Microsplastics have already trickled down to balls. This is what winning feels like, folks.