| > Even with trade pressures, etc. cheap energy is going to get used to increase the living standards of developing nations. This is often touted as a reason why we developed countries cannot do anything to mitigate climate change risks. This is first of all false, developed countries together (USA, EU, Japan, Korea, Gulf states) still account for more than 70% of the emissions, NOT including the emissions associated with importations. The lifestyles of the richest 0.54% in the world — 42 million people — are emitting more greenhouse gas emissions than the poorest half of the global population —3.8 billion people. It's about returning to reality. The lifestyles of most of us in developed countries should not exist. https://twitter.com/Klimaatzuster/status/1171078178762346496 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0402-3.epdf?share... > The real solution is working on reducing our dependence on the ecosystem and building more resilient systems Please come back to reality. The world spends trillions of dollars on the ISS to host 6 people. Anything remotely looking like an artificial ecosystem would be prohibitively expensive, not counting our limited resources on Earth would simply make it impossible for it to sustain life for more than a few million people. You can work hard to be part of the few richest million who would make it in this artificial biosphere, or you can change your own lifestyle and footprint, try to inspire others, and then you can realise that we can still live happily with a lower footprint. |
Right now a global drought for a few years can cause global food chain disruptions and starvation - focusing on stuff like algae/bacteria protein production that can be done in controlled environments, that is space scalable (ie. vertically stackable) etc. This has the potential to solve a lot of environmentally caused problems down the line. Or developing very resilient crops with GMO.
Then stuff like building protective domes around existing cities to protect from natural disasters, quarantines, etc. Maybe start as hurricane shelters for risky areas/small places and start developing the technology.
Then there are reliable decentralised energy sources like micro nuclear reactors that can power a city block - that can be scaled up and treated like nuclear batteries with localised/limited risk factors.
I'm not talking about building some random futuristic utopia - just focusing on technology that increases the robustness of society instead of focusing on economic optimisation. There is a joke that if economists designed a human 4 people would share a single kidney instead of having redundant organs on each person. The other thing is the green regressive dogma that the only way to solve the climate change issue is removing the human influence and everything is going to be fine ignoring how volatile the earth can be on its own.
These are all things that could get a lot more attention but the only solution to climate change talked by politicians is reducing CO2.