Optimism is one thing, action is another. I'm glad people are optimistic. I just hope that there are specific steps of action that we can all take that actually improve things, on a global scale. I know it's not that we can't, we certainly have the knowledge and the technology is coming fast enough. The question in my mind is whether we will. Here's hoping that this new world being described is one that we are pulled into whether we like it or not.
The economics will drive most of this, especially the energy and transport sectors where green solutions are absolutely going to be the cheapest as well as the best.
@@garethrobinson2275 its not as rosy as these techno-optimists like to think and their false p[promises are a cause for not putting the high emitting nations (everywhere except for Bhutan) on a Climate Emergency footing and RATIONING emissions.Its an excuse for wealthy people (that’s most in USA for example, in spite of the huge wealth and income inequality) to not change their lifestyles or vote for emergency climate responses. We are now up to our necks in climate collapse, this kind of false optimism, hopium as it’s referred to sometimes does as much harm as good in my opinion.
Our most quickly scalable innovations are coming from the private sector, because they have to prove to shareholders their innovations will be profitable. Example: Tesla
That’s not true. Most innovation and major technological breakthroughs start in publicly funded universities first. Sometimes it requires regulatory frameworks to create the stating phase of adoption furnaces. . Even Tesla rely on and partner with universities not just for innovation but for training staff. If you wanna talk cars seat belts, catalytic converters , ABS and heaps of other improvements were innovated in the private sector but not adopted until governments insisted via regulation that they be adopted. Car makers complained but had to do it.
ICE car makers have shareholders too. How come they actively resisted the EV revolution for decades? Shareholder value and a culture that puts profits above the planet. Tesla, even before musk arrived there, had a different vision. That’s what’s significant about Tesla not the fact that they are river or have shareholders. They didn’t even have shareholders in the sense of publicly traded shares in the early days.
I’ve lived in these communities where people throw water bottles into rivers and the sea without a moment of reflection and that’s just laziness and lack of education not a “lack of prosperity thing”. Rich people do it - not just poor people. I’ve seen it with my own eyes as well dressed middle class and rich Indians throw plastic bottles into the sea. Almost with bravado. And they have tens of thousands people in urban areas collecting and recycling everything in India DUE to extreme poverty, it’s a way to scratch out a living for the very small resale value on plastic, foil and paper packaging. Rich people in USA needed lecturing about litter and industrial waste so why not anybody else. Municipal waste collection didn’t magically stop people littering it was “lecturing” and environmental advocacy. They kind Mr Dorr mocks at every opportunity and way to go with mocking a Greta, Mr Dorr. I can’t think of any single person who’s done more to raise the profile of the climate change existential risks we face at a global scale and motivate a generation of young people to rise up about the total lack of adequate solutions deployed for decades now. In case you miss it, emissions are still rising.
There's a channel called Adam Something. He often publishes videos about urban stuff and bashes electric cars stating, those aren't the solution. He says public transportation is. While not wrong about the latter, he is very narrow minded in my opinion. Still, he has over a million subscribers. Why not this channel? Why aren't these optimistic views are more popular?
Just wondering out loud here: Fishermen often just dump nets in the ocean since it's the easiest way to dispose of them. I wonder if the problem of discarded fishing nets (50% of ocean plastic) could be largely solved by getting the producers to fund a deposit return scheme. Even if gear is abandoned due to bad weather, it will be recovered as soon as possible if the price is right. But this is only idea 4 of 7.
Application of technology specifically robotics to managed grazing, the oldest form of agriculture, has extraordinary potential to enhance environmental restoration.
While the techno-optimism expressed here is in someways charming, the political nativity expressed is deliberate and concerning. You can’t actually restore ecosystems once they rip past a point of no return. Like when it’s functional species at each trophic level go extinct, or when the climate the ecosystem needs has been disrupted (yeah kids, disruption cuts both ways and isn’t always a joy to behold, especially for natural systems it almost never is a good thing). Also it’s a complete and utter lie that pollution is a “problem of lack of prosperity”. The vast majority of the worlds GHG emissions came from a handful of rich countries and now come from rich and developing counties that make the consumer goods and prosecution goods and services (services like processing dirty minerals for clean energy technology) that rich countries consume. It’s a complete lie that most of the worlds ocean pollution comes out of a few big rivers in poor nations. We know from numerous broad research projects now that over half the worlds ocean plastics are from the fishing industry, which is mostly industrial fishing using the most technologically advanced and “disruptive” combination to locate breading hot spots in the oceans using advanced donor, log the position using satellite based GPS and return over and over to these locations hammer the populations. So. It only downs industrial fishing create more than half the ocean plastics (net, long lines and bouys etc) the reason 90% of the preindustrial population levels large ocean fish simply don’t exist anymore. And 80-90% of fish sticks are extinct or not commercially viable or closed today. This has nothing to do with a “lack of prosperity” and everything to do with commercial fishing industries making their owners extreme wealth at the cost of drawing down natural capital in the process. It’s a lack of regulation and international cooperation. It’s overpopulation, it’s greed and it’s prosperity beyond imagination for industrial fishers. Tuna boat owners in Australia with long lines are some of the richest individuals in Australia rich list every year. The political nativity and clear thinking fails in this series of videos to me as someone studying ecological economics and the economics of sustainability and who’s promoted renewables and modelled renewable energy grids for a decade is pretty concerning. It’s very “North American” (and I apologise to Canadians for lumping you in. ). Never question capitalism. Never question regulators capture and failure. Never question a broken political system in the USA where money talks loudest and longest. Never question limits to growth, technology can always save us. The climate tipping points already baked into the system thanks to hysteresis and ecological and Linate system tipping points are very serious. For decades the George bushes of your world told us tech would save us while he personally profited and his friends and family profited from oil and gas industry. The age of consequences has begun. Technology is part of the solution space, but it’s onto one art. You need a willing population and political-economy and international governance mechanisms to solve these wicked problems. And tech is actually the easy part, even though it’s incredibly difficult to improve cutting edge batteries, turbines, PV panels or whatever, we know how to engineer. Convincing people not I eat livestock would effectively stop ~80% of emissions (due rote huge areas available for rewinding and drawdown and elimination of over halve the anthropogenic methane emissions). Effecting that change is not a technology problem. Even with precision fermentation engineering. It’s a social and political and cultural problem primarily. What do we value most? Or table habitats or the worlds climate and ecosystems? To this point in time table habits are winning and near production continues to decline. To the point the Amazon basin is now a net emissions source not a GHG sink. It’s also close to tipping from rainforests to dry savannah.
You are correct. So let us sit down on the floor and starve to death since that is about all we can do. Oooorrrr... If the world is fucked either way, might as well try and save as much as we can. Rebuilding and restoring does not necessarily mean making it the way it were and life tends to find a way even with mass extinctions. I just hope enough will be left. I remain optimistic.
@@wertigon your answer illustrates why techno-optimism (and the lies it spreads) remain popular. Some people, perhaps given your sarcasm such as yourself, think in binaries, and cannot understand complexity. I never said we’re all doomed, though i do think some collapse to civilisation is inevitable at this point. But we always have choices, as individuals and more importantly as cities, regions, nations and an international community as to what we will do to reduce emissions as rapidly as possible. We aren’t even trying yet. Yes renewables are great and have excellent learning curves, and I;ve been modelling 90% and 100% renewable energy grids for a decade to convince law makers it is possible and worth striving for. If the world went vegan overnight for example, we’d have a huge amount of the land surface available for rewinding to draw down some of our historical CO2 emissions, less methane (perhaps half the anthropogenic methane emitted today are from livestock) and we dont need synthetic meats from fermentation vats, its energy and plant-input intense and not required for human health. Vegans are the healthiest populations of humans in any country. Heck even aUK study involving millions of pets found that vegan dogs are the healthiest population by dietary habit! And dogs are physiologically evolved to eat a lot of meat, humans are not evolved that way at all. (Which is why more and more elite athletes choose vegan diets, ever since Carl Lewis attribute his success at hi8s thrif Olympics (LA) to his improved recovery times and metabolic health being vegan). But there’s no techno-optimism required for that. iI’;lol tell you what techno-optimism is at the psychological level. Its a resistance to the idea that my lifestyle may be contributing to the Anthropocean and the end of civilisation as we know it and most ecosystems on Earth. Its a wet-dream of denial. Its a cuddly promise that technology will save us from ourselves and our greed and indifference to the climate challenge, as tech has always saved us from ourselves in other areas right? Like war, hunger, drought, western/rich country disease epidemics like HD, cancers, diabetes related illness, obesity related illnesses… tech doesn’t save us always, sometimes it just changes the nature of the suffering.
@@bashful228 The world is not absolute or binary, no. You do not have two genders, a crook is not necessarily a bad person, and water *can* be dry, wet, or anything in between. This issue, however... Either we are doomed, at which point, there is no point struggling. Quit your job, do meth, seduce and screw as many as you want. Make the most of the life you got left and enjoy it while you can, because the mass extinction is inevitable and with it, our species primary source of food. Oooooorrrr... We can try our damn best to fix it. Reverse course as much as possible while still possible. Develop new ways to grow food, to harness energy, and make the world a better place. Is it possible? Beats waiting around for food to grow scarce and watching my kids die of cancer while doing nothing, atleast. Man did not think going to the moon was possible in the fifties, yet in the seventies it not only became possible, but common. So no, not impossible. Just requires a certain mindset. So keep hugging your body and wailing about it being too late. I am going to build a better future for my children. :) Changing our way of life though? Not possible unless we impose harsh dictatorship rules. When has a policy of austerity *ever* changed anything on a nation wide level?
Maurice Oldis: Please be advised that I cannot reply to your comment because I can't find it here. I don't know what kind of shenanigans RUclips is pulling now, but I need to see your reply, AND my original comment. Otherwise, it will just have to slide.
If you live in a democracy: vote for those that want to change. If you are wealthy, divest from companies that never go beyond greenwashing, invest in those that actually do something. If you can, eat less meat, drink less cow milk. If you own a house, insulate it proper. Make small changes, if that is all you can do.
Why is on the image of solutions no train and no bicycle. I think you are from North America where public transport doesn't exist (really), but even if cars are electric and self driving, you need to build a lot of roads, they still have tires, which is the biggest source of microplastics and in citizen you can not even build enough streets for the demand. A single train track can transport a thousand people every few minutes. A car lane maybe 50 if traffic is flowing. Bicycles also need way less space and if cities aren build wide spread with big, dangerous streets, it's a quick and safe way to move in a city. Also bicycles don't destroy the road so quickly as cars do, because they aren't that heavy, resulting in less emissions from repairing the bicycle roads.
Techno-optimists tend to also be pretty libertarian unfortunately. In fact the libertarian nature of techno-optimists leads them to the only possible solution to ecological collapse that doesn’t blow their heads up, the false promise that “tech will save us”. It really not true on so many levels, high consumption lifestyles are problematic, even without the existential risks of climate change there are so many other facts because as.a species we are pulling 1.7x the availablele resources from the ecosphere to feed our lifestyles. That means drawing down on the productive capacity of the Earth ecosphere every year. We are killing the golden goose to use an analogy.
@@bashful228 yes, we have to present a climate neutral lifestyle that is also a highly comfortable lifestyle. The developing countries wand to reach the way of life of the developed world. If we don't show that it is possible with renewable energy, they will do it with fossil fuels. So falling back to stone age is not an option. We have to find a way that our way of living become better and sustainable. That's a hard job and we need technology for that.
@@Duconi I get that. did you know that over 50% of consumption in rich countries like USA comes from the top 1% consuming the heck out of this planet. And neoliberalism is in place so that elites can lives lifestyles that even kings and queens cannot dream of. The system favours over-consumption at ever level but mostly at the top.
@@Duconi But why shouldn't Urbanism be part of the solution? Look at Cities like Amsterdam and how nice living is in a City based on public transportation and cycling. It makes people healthier and the City less noisy and more livable.
@@thiesclausen4868 that's exactly my argument. I argued for urbanism. Cars are big and need a lot of space. We don't have enough space in the cities for cars. But we have enough space for public transportation and bicycle infrastructure. So we need more public transportation in the cities. Also multi family homes are easier to heat and need less energy per person. Having the short ways in the city makes ways to buy groceries shorter. You can do it on your way back from work. Cities like Amsterdam are superior in many ways. Also US suburbs are horrible for children. Big streets where cars drive fast, bad connection by foot between houses, the parents have to drive them everywhere. While in Europe children walk alone to school with 8yo. They learn to be independent and responsible early on but are also safe because of the city and suburb design. An suburb in Amsterdam would look like a city to an US citizen, because of the design with some multi family homes in between and shops and restaurants, etc. The difference between city and suburb in Europe is more the density. So I don't argue against cities, I argue against cars. Cars can make sense in some areas, but for cities (where most people live and should live), cars aren't helpful.
In 1959, C P Snow famously made the claim that the intellectual world had developed two cultures-those in science and technology, and those who were not, the "literary intellectuals." His claim was that the two groups were doing poorly at communicating, and this was causing a lot of harm. I still think he's as right as ever. But it occurs to me that there is a smaller schism, between SCIENTISTS and TECHNOLOGISTS, and THIS might be EASIER to remedy. As I write this, I think of the IPCC forecasts for 2100, and in particular the "BAU" scenarios. Those are NONSENSE. They're based on assumptions of rising fossil fuel use for the rest of the Century. There is NO plausible scenario where that can happen. Whatever your assumptions, wildly optimistic or absurdly pessimistic, that is NOT going to happen. And I don't think this baloney would be on the menu if climate scientists understood technology clearly.
5:20 "bigoted"? Really? You created the "there" and then went "there." Who exactly are you talking to? Felt like virtue signaling and really had no place in this video. But aside from that, I love the series so far. Thank you.
If you want to inspire hope in "clean technologies", you need to be more specific in how they work. Too often, green-washing companies have promised clean tech that actually hides the dirty truth behind layers of obfuscation. Nothing you have said so far sounds any different. Can solar power be sustained despite its' current dependence on expiring rare metals?
I think you may be confusing solar power with lithium batteries. Solar panels are mostly silicon, the second most abundant mineral on Earth, used for both the glass and the semiconductor layers. The other major mineral component is aluminum, used for framing. There are small amounts of copper and silver in the wiring, and trace amounts of other materials in the semiconductor - boron is the only really rare one. A solar panel is little more than a fancy windowpane that can generate electricity. Lithium batteries are much more controversial materials-wise. Lithium is not particularly rare - the problem right now is mostly scaling up mining to meet demand. But the most common lithium battery designs also use cobalt and nickel. Cobalt in particular is a very limited resource. That said, they are not necessary, just convenient. Cobalt-free lithium batteries are already in use by Tesla and others, and I expect will become the standard very soon. For grid storage and other non-mobile applications where size and discharge rates aren’t so critical, batteries using extremely common materials like sodium, bromine, and iron are in rapid development. Market forces have a way of dealing with these problems. (As one analyst said, if you want to make something dirt cheap, make it out of dirt.) Perhaps more importantly, any rare (and thus highly valuable) materials used can and will be recovered by recycling. Once the world has built enough batteries, solar panels, etc, we’ll mostly be just recycling the materials. Unlike complex hydrocarbon fuel molecules, these minerals aren’t irreversibly consumed by their use. When a battery becomes inefficient, recycle it, and get all the key materials back to make another one. So yes, it seems to me that we can definitely sustain solar power (and batteries) despite any dependencies on rare minerals.
Brilliant keep up the great work
Should be a must see video in schools, institutions, universities, etc...
Why? he’s lying to make you feel good. This is akin to Bjorn Lomborg’s subtle lies.
Excellent sound logic.
Fantastic
👌
Dear Adam, thank you for the positive look on a viable progress towards a better future.
Thank you
Thanks Adam for the great video!
Thank you! Great content and information…just got the book “Brighter”…please keep spreading the word by keeping the content coming!
Thank you.
Fantastic series thanks
Thanks for the vid
Your criticism of the scientific community is spot on (although perhaps understandable). Love your work!
Optimism is one thing, action is another. I'm glad people are optimistic. I just hope that there are specific steps of action that we can all take that actually improve things, on a global scale. I know it's not that we can't, we certainly have the knowledge and the technology is coming fast enough. The question in my mind is whether we will. Here's hoping that this new world being described is one that we are pulled into whether we like it or not.
The economics will drive most of this, especially the energy and transport sectors where green solutions are absolutely going to be the cheapest as well as the best.
@@garethrobinson2275 its not as rosy as these techno-optimists like to think and their false p[promises are a cause for not putting the high emitting nations (everywhere except for Bhutan) on a Climate Emergency footing and RATIONING emissions.Its an excuse for wealthy people (that’s most in USA for example, in spite of the huge wealth and income inequality) to not change their lifestyles or vote for emergency climate responses. We are now up to our necks in climate collapse, this kind of false optimism, hopium as it’s referred to sometimes does as much harm as good in my opinion.
Our most quickly scalable innovations are coming from the private sector, because they have to prove to shareholders their innovations will be profitable. Example: Tesla
That’s not true. Most innovation and major technological breakthroughs start in publicly funded universities first. Sometimes it requires regulatory frameworks to create the stating phase of adoption furnaces. . Even Tesla rely on and partner with universities not just for innovation but for training staff. If you wanna talk cars seat belts, catalytic converters , ABS and heaps of other improvements were innovated in the private sector but not adopted until governments insisted via regulation that they be adopted. Car makers complained but had to do it.
ICE car makers have shareholders too. How come they actively resisted the EV revolution for decades? Shareholder value and a culture that puts profits above the planet. Tesla, even before musk arrived there, had a different vision. That’s what’s significant about Tesla not the fact that they are river or have shareholders. They didn’t even have shareholders in the sense of publicly traded shares in the early days.
I’ve lived in these communities where people throw water bottles into rivers and the sea without a moment of reflection and that’s just laziness and lack of education not a “lack of prosperity thing”. Rich people do it - not just poor people. I’ve seen it with my own eyes as well dressed middle class and rich Indians throw plastic bottles into the sea. Almost with bravado. And they have tens of thousands people in urban areas collecting and recycling everything in India DUE to extreme poverty, it’s a way to scratch out a living for the very small resale value on plastic, foil and paper packaging.
Rich people in USA needed lecturing about litter and industrial waste so why not anybody else. Municipal waste collection didn’t magically stop people littering it was “lecturing” and environmental advocacy. They kind Mr Dorr mocks at every opportunity and way to go with mocking a Greta, Mr Dorr. I can’t think of any single person who’s done more to raise the profile of the climate change existential risks we face at a global scale and motivate a generation of young people to rise up about the total lack of adequate solutions deployed for decades now. In case you miss it, emissions are still rising.
There's a channel called Adam Something. He often publishes videos about urban stuff and bashes electric cars stating, those aren't the solution. He says public transportation is. While not wrong about the latter, he is very narrow minded in my opinion. Still, he has over a million subscribers. Why not this channel? Why aren't these optimistic views are more popular?
Just wondering out loud here: Fishermen often just dump nets in the ocean since it's the easiest way to dispose of them. I wonder if the problem of discarded fishing nets (50% of ocean plastic) could be largely solved by getting the producers to fund a deposit return scheme. Even if gear is abandoned due to bad weather, it will be recovered as soon as possible if the price is right. But this is only idea 4 of 7.
Application of technology specifically robotics to managed grazing, the oldest form of agriculture, has extraordinary potential to enhance environmental restoration.
While the techno-optimism expressed here is in someways charming, the political nativity expressed is deliberate and concerning. You can’t actually restore ecosystems once they rip past a point of no return. Like when it’s functional species at each trophic level go extinct, or when the climate the ecosystem needs has been disrupted (yeah kids, disruption cuts both ways and isn’t always a joy to behold, especially for natural systems it almost never is a good thing). Also it’s a complete and utter lie that pollution is a “problem of lack of prosperity”. The vast majority of the worlds GHG emissions came from a handful of rich countries and now come from rich and developing counties that make the consumer goods and prosecution goods and services (services like processing dirty minerals for clean energy technology) that rich countries consume.
It’s a complete lie that most of the worlds ocean pollution comes out of a few big rivers in poor nations. We know from numerous broad research projects now that over half the worlds ocean plastics are from the fishing industry, which is mostly industrial fishing using the most technologically advanced and “disruptive” combination to locate breading hot spots in the oceans using advanced donor, log the position using satellite based GPS and return over and over to these locations hammer the populations. So. It only downs industrial fishing create more than half the ocean plastics (net, long lines and bouys etc) the reason 90% of the preindustrial population levels large ocean fish simply don’t exist anymore. And 80-90% of fish sticks are extinct or not commercially viable or closed today. This has nothing to do with a “lack of prosperity” and everything to do with commercial fishing industries making their owners extreme wealth at the cost of drawing down natural capital in the process. It’s a lack of regulation and international cooperation. It’s overpopulation, it’s greed and it’s prosperity beyond imagination for industrial fishers. Tuna boat owners in Australia with long lines are some of the richest individuals in Australia rich list every year.
The political nativity and clear thinking fails in this series of videos to me as someone studying ecological economics and the economics of sustainability and who’s promoted renewables and modelled renewable energy grids for a decade is pretty concerning. It’s very “North American” (and I apologise to Canadians for lumping you in. ). Never question capitalism. Never question regulators capture and failure. Never question a broken political system in the USA where money talks loudest and longest. Never question limits to growth, technology can always save us. The climate tipping points already baked into the system thanks to hysteresis and ecological and Linate system tipping points are very serious. For decades the George bushes of your world told us tech would save us while he personally profited and his friends and family profited from oil and gas industry. The age of consequences has begun. Technology is part of the solution space, but it’s onto one art. You need a willing population and political-economy and international governance mechanisms to solve these wicked problems. And tech is actually the easy part, even though it’s incredibly difficult to improve cutting edge batteries, turbines, PV panels or whatever, we know how to engineer. Convincing people not I eat livestock would effectively stop ~80% of emissions (due rote huge areas available for rewinding and drawdown and elimination of over halve the anthropogenic methane emissions). Effecting that change is not a technology problem. Even with precision fermentation engineering. It’s a social and political and cultural problem primarily. What do we value most? Or table habitats or the worlds climate and ecosystems? To this point in time table habits are winning and near production continues to decline. To the point the Amazon basin is now a net emissions source not a GHG sink. It’s also close to tipping from rainforests to dry savannah.
You are correct. So let us sit down on the floor and starve to death since that is about all we can do.
Oooorrrr... If the world is fucked either way, might as well try and save as much as we can.
Rebuilding and restoring does not necessarily mean making it the way it were and life tends to find a way even with mass extinctions. I just hope enough will be left. I remain optimistic.
@@wertigon your answer illustrates why techno-optimism (and the lies it spreads) remain popular. Some people, perhaps given your sarcasm such as yourself, think in binaries, and cannot understand complexity. I never said we’re all doomed, though i do think some collapse to civilisation is inevitable at this point. But we always have choices, as individuals and more importantly as cities, regions, nations and an international community as to what we will do to reduce emissions as rapidly as possible. We aren’t even trying yet. Yes renewables are great and have excellent learning curves, and I;ve been modelling 90% and 100% renewable energy grids for a decade to convince law makers it is possible and worth striving for. If the world went vegan overnight for example, we’d have a huge amount of the land surface available for rewinding to draw down some of our historical CO2 emissions, less methane (perhaps half the anthropogenic methane emitted today are from livestock) and we dont need synthetic meats from fermentation vats, its energy and plant-input intense and not required for human health. Vegans are the healthiest populations of humans in any country. Heck even aUK study involving millions of pets found that vegan dogs are the healthiest population by dietary habit! And dogs are physiologically evolved to eat a lot of meat, humans are not evolved that way at all. (Which is why more and more elite athletes choose vegan diets, ever since Carl Lewis attribute his success at hi8s thrif Olympics (LA) to his improved recovery times and metabolic health being vegan). But there’s no techno-optimism required for that.
iI’;lol tell you what techno-optimism is at the psychological level. Its a resistance to the idea that my lifestyle may be contributing to the Anthropocean and the end of civilisation as we know it and most ecosystems on Earth. Its a wet-dream of denial. Its a cuddly promise that technology will save us from ourselves and our greed and indifference to the climate challenge, as tech has always saved us from ourselves in other areas right? Like war, hunger, drought, western/rich country disease epidemics like HD, cancers, diabetes related illness, obesity related illnesses… tech doesn’t save us always, sometimes it just changes the nature of the suffering.
@@bashful228 The world is not absolute or binary, no. You do not have two genders, a crook is not necessarily a bad person, and water *can* be dry, wet, or anything in between.
This issue, however... Either we are doomed, at which point, there is no point struggling. Quit your job, do meth, seduce and screw as many as you want. Make the most of the life you got left and enjoy it while you can, because the mass extinction is inevitable and with it, our species primary source of food.
Oooooorrrr... We can try our damn best to fix it. Reverse course as much as possible while still possible. Develop new ways to grow food, to harness energy, and make the world a better place.
Is it possible? Beats waiting around for food to grow scarce and watching my kids die of cancer while doing nothing, atleast. Man did not think going to the moon was possible in the fifties, yet in the seventies it not only became possible, but common. So no, not impossible. Just requires a certain mindset.
So keep hugging your body and wailing about it being too late. I am going to build a better future for my children. :)
Changing our way of life though? Not possible unless we impose harsh dictatorship rules. When has a policy of austerity *ever* changed anything on a nation wide level?
Maurice Oldis: Please be advised that I cannot reply to your comment because I can't find it here. I don't know what kind of shenanigans RUclips is pulling now, but I need to see your reply, AND my original comment. Otherwise, it will just have to slide.
If you live in a democracy: vote for those that want to change.
If you are wealthy, divest from companies that never go beyond greenwashing, invest in those that actually do something.
If you can, eat less meat, drink less cow milk.
If you own a house, insulate it proper.
Make small changes, if that is all you can do.
Please I’m having some issues with account so I access the full accounts balance
Why is on the image of solutions no train and no bicycle. I think you are from North America where public transport doesn't exist (really), but even if cars are electric and self driving, you need to build a lot of roads, they still have tires, which is the biggest source of microplastics and in citizen you can not even build enough streets for the demand. A single train track can transport a thousand people every few minutes. A car lane maybe 50 if traffic is flowing. Bicycles also need way less space and if cities aren build wide spread with big, dangerous streets, it's a quick and safe way to move in a city. Also bicycles don't destroy the road so quickly as cars do, because they aren't that heavy, resulting in less emissions from repairing the bicycle roads.
Techno-optimists tend to also be pretty libertarian unfortunately. In fact the libertarian nature of techno-optimists leads them to the only possible solution to ecological collapse that doesn’t blow their heads up, the false promise that “tech will save us”. It really not true on so many levels, high consumption lifestyles are problematic, even without the existential risks of climate change there are so many other facts because as.a species we are pulling 1.7x the availablele resources from the ecosphere to feed our lifestyles. That means drawing down on the productive capacity of the Earth ecosphere every year. We are killing the golden goose to use an analogy.
@@bashful228 yes, we have to present a climate neutral lifestyle that is also a highly comfortable lifestyle. The developing countries wand to reach the way of life of the developed world. If we don't show that it is possible with renewable energy, they will do it with fossil fuels. So falling back to stone age is not an option. We have to find a way that our way of living become better and sustainable. That's a hard job and we need technology for that.
@@Duconi I get that. did you know that over 50% of consumption in rich countries like USA comes from the top 1% consuming the heck out of this planet. And neoliberalism is in place so that elites can lives lifestyles that even kings and queens cannot dream of. The system favours over-consumption at ever level but mostly at the top.
@@Duconi But why shouldn't Urbanism be part of the solution?
Look at Cities like Amsterdam and how nice living is in a City based on public transportation and cycling. It makes people healthier and the City less noisy and more livable.
@@thiesclausen4868 that's exactly my argument. I argued for urbanism. Cars are big and need a lot of space. We don't have enough space in the cities for cars. But we have enough space for public transportation and bicycle infrastructure. So we need more public transportation in the cities. Also multi family homes are easier to heat and need less energy per person. Having the short ways in the city makes ways to buy groceries shorter. You can do it on your way back from work. Cities like Amsterdam are superior in many ways.
Also US suburbs are horrible for children. Big streets where cars drive fast, bad connection by foot between houses, the parents have to drive them everywhere. While in Europe children walk alone to school with 8yo. They learn to be independent and responsible early on but are also safe because of the city and suburb design. An suburb in Amsterdam would look like a city to an US citizen, because of the design with some multi family homes in between and shops and restaurants, etc. The difference between city and suburb in Europe is more the density.
So I don't argue against cities, I argue against cars. Cars can make sense in some areas, but for cities (where most people live and should live), cars aren't helpful.
In 1959, C P Snow famously made the claim that the intellectual world had developed two cultures-those in science and technology, and those who were not, the "literary intellectuals." His claim was that the two groups were doing poorly at communicating, and this was causing a lot of harm. I still think he's as right as ever. But it occurs to me that there is a smaller schism, between SCIENTISTS and TECHNOLOGISTS, and THIS might be EASIER to remedy. As I write this, I think of the IPCC forecasts for 2100, and in particular the "BAU" scenarios. Those are NONSENSE. They're based on assumptions of rising fossil fuel use for the rest of the Century. There is NO plausible scenario where that can happen. Whatever your assumptions, wildly optimistic or absurdly pessimistic, that is NOT going to happen. And I don't think this baloney would be on the menu if climate scientists understood technology clearly.
5:20 "bigoted"? Really? You created the "there" and then went "there." Who exactly are you talking to? Felt like virtue signaling and really had no place in this video. But aside from that, I love the series so far. Thank you.
If you want to inspire hope in "clean technologies", you need to be more specific in how they work. Too often, green-washing companies have promised clean tech that actually hides the dirty truth behind layers of obfuscation. Nothing you have said so far sounds any different. Can solar power be sustained despite its' current dependence on expiring rare metals?
I think you may be confusing solar power with lithium batteries. Solar panels are mostly silicon, the second most abundant mineral on Earth, used for both the glass and the semiconductor layers. The other major mineral component is aluminum, used for framing. There are small amounts of copper and silver in the wiring, and trace amounts of other materials in the semiconductor - boron is the only really rare one. A solar panel is little more than a fancy windowpane that can generate electricity.
Lithium batteries are much more controversial materials-wise. Lithium is not particularly rare - the problem right now is mostly scaling up mining to meet demand. But the most common lithium battery designs also use cobalt and nickel. Cobalt in particular is a very limited resource. That said, they are not necessary, just convenient. Cobalt-free lithium batteries are already in use by Tesla and others, and I expect will become the standard very soon. For grid storage and other non-mobile applications where size and discharge rates aren’t so critical, batteries using extremely common materials like sodium, bromine, and iron are in rapid development. Market forces have a way of dealing with these problems. (As one analyst said, if you want to make something dirt cheap, make it out of dirt.)
Perhaps more importantly, any rare (and thus highly valuable) materials used can and will be recovered by recycling. Once the world has built enough batteries, solar panels, etc, we’ll mostly be just recycling the materials. Unlike complex hydrocarbon fuel molecules, these minerals aren’t irreversibly consumed by their use. When a battery becomes inefficient, recycle it, and get all the key materials back to make another one.
So yes, it seems to me that we can definitely sustain solar power (and batteries) despite any dependencies on rare minerals.