[adrianN]

There are perfectly good solutions. Wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, and power-to-gas facilities. If you want to some nuclear reactors. Add insulation for homes, heat pumps, electric cars and public transport and you're there. We just need to build them. It's not hard, it's expensive. There is no new technology needed at this point.

[Rolivaw]

Most of what you mention are sustainability propositions, which are not useful long term, probably not even short term. We can’t create sustainability, it’s a fad we’ve all been fed, based on anthropometric views of the world which aren’t going to improve it. They will cause stagnation and that will cause collapse faster than climate change ever could.

Electric cars still cost to produce what non electrics do, we have to take into account the backend (mining ect) as well. Gas is most likely as bad according to many reports. Countries which have made the switch like Brazil in cars haven’t produced the results expected, again the production is still not clean.

Wind is unreliable in most cases and non scalable. Solar is ok, but expensive and we can’t deploy it for everything(think maritime transport).

The way to solve our problem is with innovation that can really replace our main source of consumption. Think population bomb/explosion in the 50-60s. Whaling shift to electricity and vegetable oils late 1800s. All was replaced by new tech, which has decayed into bad tech, and the new tech we develop will probably also decay into bad tech again in 100years. That’s the way it works. Only realistic current solution is fusion.

Fusion, carbon-sequestering tech, geo-engineering, betavoltaics(One can dream) and new innovations are always the way forward. The rest are bandaids on the dam + have cost us a lot of money/time at subpar results.

Sorry for the quick type, but you can see more here: https://link.medium.com/4p3O0AuImZ

[adrianN]

I guess we have to disagree here. I prefer we solve the problem with the solutions we can implement right now instead of continuing to increase our emissions hoping for some deus ex machina that fixes the damage we caused. Fusion for example is not a current solution. It's still in the research stage. With adequate funding we might be able to rush to a demo reactor in a decade or two. But by then the damage is done. If we can't prevent the permafrost from releasing its carbon or the Greenland ice sheet from disappearing it is very unlikely that we'll be able to geoengineer our way out of it.

[Rolivaw]

I guess we do disagree. The way I think about it is what gets us to from point A to point B in the least amount of time is best. All other solutions aren’t real not the least because china and India aren’t going to play ball. Also because they aren’t 10x better than the rest (only solar is, just not enough to supply whole world) So we have to be develop something worthwhile and long lasting. Even more nuclear reactors in the meanwhile are a better solution. Predictions of gloom/doom have been around since the 1600s. Everybody in every generation says it’s different this time and it’s really over. I don’t mean to come across as this not being an important issue. I just don’t like the defense of if we don’t do something now we are screwed forever, forcing us to make bad decisions. I’ll take the other side of that bet any day. Predictions in complex systems are mostly wrong Because they don’t take into account future developments and see the world as static which it isn’t.

One more thing. The only reason fusion is 10-20 years away is because we are still focusing on failed technologies (wind and gas) and not throwing enough resources at fusion. If the government took a Los Alamos approach to fusion and nuclear energy in general we could be up and running in 5 years.