We Broke the World by Accident. We’ll Fix It on Purpose

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-we-solve-the-climate-crisis/

by GeraldKutney

18 comments

  1. I like Hank Green, but this was no accident. We knew better and we did it anyway because the people in charge wanted the short term gains for themselves at the expense of later generations. This was sociopathy, not stupidity.

  2. More tech bro, exceptionalist bs. Unless we get world population below 1B and regrow the planet to its climax state, the rest is grasping at straws. The best solutions involve local community and local agriculture and the replacement of capitalist economies with economies where the actual workers own the means of production. Saying we can use the same technologies that got us here is like inviting the fox to live *inside* the chicken house. Wendell Berry’s “The Unsettling of America” is a great way to start the conversation.

  3. By accident LOL they knew about climate change in the 1800’s

  5. I agree with the idea that we can solve this too. And nature is needing for us to go back to its ways, I will call it Earth’s economics, its real and royal systems. There is plenty for us, but we can take it only respectfully, caring for the biomes, ecosystems, species, that are part of the whole system to which we pertain. But humans that designed economical and political systems, created a game of oppression to nature (and between civilians). So, we are in the nations era, where health is business, war, education too.we are like a device where all components work for itself and are in conflict with the other, therefore the device is not well functioning and overheating.

    All external debts of the countries of the world, are debts to reality, to what is truth, to nature.

  7. We knew about all these climate issues in 1970, we just collectively decided to do NOTHING about them.

  10. Sure, the destruction was an unintended consequence of high-volume microscopic activities: bananas in February in Michigan, commuter traffic, Shein hauls, a Caribbean cruise, etc. but all of those small actions are made available through the cooperation of thousands of people who have a positive and definite benefit to their performance. Not only do you get to eat that banana, but the grocer got to stock and sell it, the shipper got to ship it, and the farmer got to grow and sell it. They benefit mostly because of the cheap energy used to perform their actions, and getting a banana to Michigan in February without using fossil fuels would be much harder. That would incentivize everyone along the supply chain to do something easier instead. Running western civilization with less carbon is going to be slightly more inconvenient, which makes it a whole lot harder to convince everyone involved that it’s worth it. Most of the solutions come down to enforcing rules, which is very *intentional*, but people are going to hate every minute of it, because of the loss of volition and convenience. 

  11. Lol, it would be cooler if he admitted the truth – that things are out of control. But he’s got his family and he has to compartmentalise reality to get through his day. And he won’t give a candid assessment because he needs to keep getting paid to write articles – the money helps to raise the family.

    This is more of a self-help article that encourages us to maintain ‘hope’ than anything scientific.

  13. Perspectives like Hank Green’s provide optimism that I personally need, to be honest. Climate change is depressing, and it’s easy to fall into a trap of nihilism and defeatism. To get people energzied, inspired and organized you need to believe that we can do something to mitigate the effects of climate change and preserve life on the planet. People shouldn’t read this article and feel relieved that people in charge are going to do the right thing — we still all need to do our part and make sacrifices. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being hopeful for our children.

    I agree that past generations should have done all they could to move away from our reliance on fossil fuels once climate change was understood. However, people in the past faced the same obstacles, possessed the same human flaws, as we do now. It’s no surprise that the entire world didn’t band together to stop climate change – nor did they have the resources or technology at the time to move away from fossil fuels on a massive scale, as far as I know. It’s pretty hard to organize billions of people to make the necessary sacrifices, especially in a pre-internet world when climate change wasn’t as widely understood or studied.

  15. False hope with existing technology. Carbon capture doesn’t scale.

  16. so much hopium

    have we done **this** before? really?

    we need everyone globally to switch off of oil and gas which was designed as the lifeblood of our economy. and we need to do it yesteryear.
    the glaciers and polar caps are never coming back. its already 1.6c on the way to 2c quickly and at 1.5c, 1/16th of the canadian forests burned. how many more years of this can we handle?

    direct carbon capture is a scam and most other cabon capture methods fail to scale.

    so the uk co2 is lower but how much of their goods are made abroad and isnt their co2 just released elsewhere still

    i would like hank to rewrite this after reading james hansens paper

  17. I think it’s the other way round, ‘we broke the earth on purpose, we’ll fix it by accident’. 

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