[dohboi]

Everyone has to live with their own conscience, one way or the other.

But saying that 'nothing will really change until the system changes,' while true, does not, imvho, absolve one of all consequences of ones own actions.

If you woke up one day and found that you were the master of an Old South plantation, you would be right to point out that one plantation owners behavior toward or even freeing of his slaves would have little to know effect on the larger institution of slavery.

But that doesn't mean that you would be morally inculpable for killing your slaves, or beating them, or even continuing to own human beings like they were furniture.

Of course, people will jump up and down and say, 'That's not the same thing!' And of course, it isn't--that's why it's called a comparison and not a tautology. But I think the comparison is not without some merit.

[Ibon]

I think there is a meeting point where the top down approach meets the bottoms up.
A binding international climate change treaty is the top down. The conscious of individuals
making the choice in deference to our planet is the bottoms up. This is being lead by the likes of Greta.

There is a point where these two forces start to squeeze and create a momentum, one which starts to make it increasingly difficult to wiggle out of ones own culpability.

This may happen especially with the addition of some catalysts ... you know, those nasty consequences to corral us along this path.......

[Ibon]

One thing to add about increasingly volatile times..... the status quo gets undermined and we start to see more extremes culturally just like the weather. We will see more barbarism and more altruism, we will see extreme volatility in fact which interestingly is fertile ground for transformation.

That is perhaps more challenging and dangerous but it is certainly an improvement over the stagnant impasse of mediocrity we can witness for the past 40 years by pathetic Kudzu Apes.

[Plantagenet]

.... conscience....slaves....Of course, people will jump up and down and say, 'That's not the same thing!' And of course, it isn't--that's why it's called a comparison and not a tautology. But I think the comparison is not without some merit.

I'm not going to jump up and down, but I do think your comparison between CO2 emissions and slavery isn't a useful way to think about the climate change problem. I suspect you had a religious upbringing as a child or for some other reason tend to see things from a moral or religious perspective, and a religious/moral perspective is based on the classification of some things as being intrinsically "evil" or "sinful".

As you point out in your post slavery is, of course, an evil institution. You might even say it is a sin, if you are religiously inclined. There is no such thing as a "good" slavemaster. Slavery of any type is morally repugnant.

But CO2 emissions aren't like that. CO2 emissions are something that naturally occurs every second in nature. CO2 emissions are not intrinsically evil or sinful. Every animal on this planet, including the posters at this site, all emit CO2 every time they exhale. Soils, lakes and oceans all emit CO2 under certain circumstances. Natural forest fires emit CO2. Decaying plants and rotting tree branches emit some CO2. Every Neanderthal and every Homo Sapians cave man emitted CO2 when they made campfires to cook. And the planet itself has other natural processes that act to remove and sequester CO2 from the atmosphere. And everything worked fine until the industrial revolution when the amount of CO2 being produced by humans grew too large for the natural processes to handle. The problem isn't that all CO2 emissions are innately evil or sinful or that CO2 shouldn't go into the atmosphere....the problem is that the natural carbon cycle has been disturbed by the huge amounts of CO2 that have gone into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution started ca. 200 years ago. And thats something essentially everyone on the planet is contributing to, and has been for 200 years.

The bottom line is we all need to reduce carbon emissions, and thats why the UN climate change treaty process is so important. Its nice that all of us posters here at peakoil.com are trying to cut our CO2 emissions, but the only way to solve the actual problem is some kind of global treaty that mandates global CO2 reductions for essentially everyone in every country. But after 30 years of trying the UN treaty process hasn't worked yet and so we probably need to pray that somebody invents a clever geoenginnering method to remove CO2 from the atmosphere as well.


Cheers!

[Plantagenet]

The main reason Greta came to the US was to go to the UN and insist to the world's leaders that they finally do their jobs and act on a binding international climate change treaty. The demonstrations she is leading are directed at the UN and other governmental bodies in Europe and in the USA. She even went to the white house in DC and demonstrated. Its one of the reasons I like Greta's message so much....I completely agree with her that the world's leaders have failed us all.

Greta is back in NYC and she gave a hell of speech this morning at the UN----she really went after them for failing for 30 years now to act on a real climate change treaty. If you haven't heard her speech at the UN I suggest you check it out on youtube. It was very powerful and affecting and I think it will ultimately be seen as a historic moment.

CHEERS!

[asg70]

One thing to add about increasingly volatile times..... the status quo gets undermined and we start to see more extremes culturally just like the weather.

I would agree that this political polarization is a canary in the coalmine.

And it was quite a pendulum swing to go from a black left-of-center president to a right-wing demagogue like Trump. It reflects this polarization, as does the chaos over Brexit.

We're also already seeing a rise in scapegoating movements. Blaming scientists, anti-intellectualism, anti-semitism, anti-everything as long as it distracts people from the unfolding tragedy.

[asg70]

I think there is a meeting point where the top down approach meets the bottoms up.

Outside of dictatorships, no government will sign a binding treaty if it feels it will face riots in the streets over it. It's not really possible to decarbonize while maintaining BAU. Only the most blinded techno-utopians believe this. Even something like Amazon's pledge to shift to electric delivery trucks is spread over many years. A graceful transition really takes too long. It should have started back in the late 70s/early 80s. A sudden transition crashes the global financial system. So that puts a ceiling on how much can really be done. Asking for more is pie in the sky. This is a dilemma now, not a solvable problem. And like any dilemma it requires arguing over tradeoffs, which just drives endless political deadlock.

[The_Toecutter]

But its still possible for individual travelers to have the same kind of 19th century-style travel adventures today. For instance, when I travelled the Camino de Santiago across Spain by bicycle there were many many other people traveling the pilgrimage route on foot or by bicycle, having a very local and very wonderful non-motorized travel experience.

You should try such a thing with a velomobile. Ability to store camping gear/food/water, and much faster than a bicycle. It's not uncommon for fit riders to maintain a rolling average 20-25 mph over hundreds of miles in a day, completely under their own power.

If you put an electric motor in it, it ends up being something like a car in terms of utility and possible performance capability(depends on whether you're willing to follow the laws or not, but making one perform like an automobile is not hard), but with a very tiny percentage of the ecological footprint of a car, probably so much so reduced vs a car that there may be enough room on planet Earth for all 7.7 billion people to have and regularly use one even in a power down scenario without killing the planet.

Spain is much more bicycle friendly than the U.S., but parts of the U.S. are improving.

Once I get the chance, I plan to do some touring in the one I built. As is, I use it for all regional travel. I wish I'd have had the work space to put one together earlier than I did. I didn't know how much fun I was missing out on.

Of course, you COULD buy one if you're willing to spend as much for one as a decent late-model used car.

[asg70]

Plant can't drive an EV of any kind because he thinks it will give him cancer--or that's his excuse at least.

[Cog]

You eco-terrorists should just kill tourists to show your conviction of your beliefs. We have threads on "How rich people are killing the planet, How the Middle Class are killing the planet, How Meat-eaters are killing the planet and now this thread on how Tourists are killing the planet".

Environmentalists and climate change wackos are members of a death cult. Nothing I have seen posted here in the last eleven years convinces me otherwise. Just skip the discussion and do what you really want to do.

[Plantagenet]

You eco-terrorists should just kill tourists to show your conviction of your beliefs. We have threads on "How rich people are killing the planet, How the Middle Class are killing the planet, How Meat-eaters are killing the planet and now this thread on how Tourists are killing the planet".

You must have missed my new thread on "SF6, Windmills and Electricity are killing the planet."

Environmentalists and climate change wackos are members of a death cult. Nothing I have seen posted here in the last eleven years convinces me otherwise. Just skip the discussion and do what you really want to do.

Certainly there are extremists on the fringes of the environmental movement who hate people and want to see massive population reductions on the planet. But its no more fair to judge the environmentalist movement by the statements of the wacky extremists then it is to call all Ds and other leftists communists because a few wacky extremists at the far left of the political spectrum are communists.

Considering there are only about 8 people posting regularly here, I am constantly amazed that people can't at least be civil to one-another in their posts.

Speaking of which.....Good morning!

Cheers!

[Revi]

It would be nice if people could get to most of Maine with public transport. I was talking to some people this weekend and there is a welded rail track that runs from Brunswick to Rockland. It would be a great way to access the windjammer fleet, the ferries to the islands and the whole mid-coast area. I think a lot of people would travel to this state by train if it existed.

[dohboi]

I won't even address P's version of the old Exxon ad 'life itself would be impossible without carbon.'

Revi, that sounds like a great idea. Are there any organizations that might get behind it?

Meanwhile:

Jonathan Safran Foer challenges everyone to fly less to fight climate change

https://mashable.com/article/jonathan-s ... mmit-2019/

This year's Summit focused on discussing solutions to climate change, and Foer shared his own plan to fight climate change on an individual level.

"My plan — eat vegan for breakfast and lunch, vegetarian for dinner, don't fly for leisure in 2020, three cab rides a week maximum," Foer said.

[Plantagenet]

I won't even address P's version of the old Exxon ad 'life itself would be impossible without carbon.'

Science is so inconvenient sometimes.

-------------------------------------------

OK....back to your idea that we should view carbon emissions as a moral failing and a "climate sin."

Did you see the news story about the theology students who were confessing their climate sins to some potted plants?

theology-students-confess-climate-sins-to-potted-plants

Should we all be doing that, D?

And how is that more useful then scientists studying the carbon cycle, or engineers working on geoengineering schemes?

Cheers!

[asg70]

And how is that more useful then scientists studying the carbon cycle, or engineers working on geoengineering schemes?

I'll tell you why it's more useful.

Humans are SOCIAL creatures. SOCIAL standing matters. Why do you think #MeToo twitter mobs are a thing? Stigma and social shaming serves a very important function in healthy societies. If it gets to the point where carbon gluttons are treated as pariahs then a lot of those carbon gluttons will go on a diet.

---

BTW, Plant, I drove my last car for over 15 years to stay out of debt and because I know all about embodied energy. I don't feel guilty buying a new EV and finally not having to burn gasoline anymore. It's not equivalent to your totally unnecessary jetsetting lifestyle from the Arctic Circle to Cuba, Africa, Spain, and who knows wherever else.

[Newfie]

Lots of reasons why that rail line won’t work. There are safety regulations that require the cars to have a specific crash worthiness, that makes them hugely expensive.

I don’t know what freight traffic if any is on that line. The passenger train has to stay out of their way. That often makes the run difficult to impossible to schedule effectively.

If the line is ina five the. Decommissioning it and performing all the necessary ongoing maintenance and testing would be hugely expensive.

However the biggest issue is that folks just aren’t that interested, low ridership.

Finally, it would probably be better for the climate, release less CO2, to just run a bus. Trains really aren’t that environmentally friendly.



https://www.buses.org/assets/images/upl ... ssions.pdf

[dohboi]

1% of English residents take one-fifth of overseas flights, survey shows

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... rvey-shows

The figures, published in a Department for Transport survey, also reveal that the 10% most frequent flyers in England took more than half of all international flights in 2018. However, 48% of the population did not take a single flight abroad in the last year.

Environmental activists said the new figures showed the UK could cut air traffic and emissions without affecting ordinary holidaymakers.

Leo Murray, director of innovation at 10:10 Climate Action
“What we need to do is target a minority of problem flyers and stop them from taking so many flights,” he added.

The findings are based on responses from more than 15,000 English residents who participated in the 2018 National Transport Survey and were revealed to the Guardian following a Freedom of Information request.

There is currently no country in which travellers pay an escalating levy on each flight they take in a year.

Chris Stark, the CCC’s chief executive...argued that the UK should take a leading role in cutting emissions from the sector, rather than wait for more comprehensive international agreements to be struck.

[rockdoc123]

1% of English residents take one-fifth of overseas flights, survey shows

the reason so many UK residents go on overseas flights is because for about 150 quid or so they can fly on Easy Jet or Ryan to nice warm spots like coastal Spain. Their holiday when it is all said and done probably costs them less than going down to the seashore in southern England. Given they cram those planes with passengers my guess is when you compare the emissions per person versus if they all drove their own cars somewhere in the UK for holiday (or God forbid across the chunnel to France) it would be quite favorable.

[clif]

Ummm rocdoc, the 1% do NOT squeeze into the cattle car flight to Spain,

nice try but your logic missed .... if ya thunked about it.

[asg70]

I am constantly amazed that people can't at least be civil to one-another in their posts.

It's at least an improvement from when PStarr was here. Now you're the worst offender.