1 - Not really. I'm past that point, into the 'acceptance' part. 2 - Went vegetarian just before Covid hit. Don't own a car since last summer - mostly because I'm lucky enough to have a route to my work. Never going back to car dependency, public transit is very nice. Eyeing my gaming rig next, but it'd be a major change for me. 3 - I'm in the American Midwest, so besides moving a bit further north, nah not really. 4 - Hell no. World leaders couldn't figure out how to not kill their own people during a pandemic. The number of leaders actively shouting that nothing was wrong during Covid is something that I'll never forget. We'll get there when we get there, and not a milli-degree sooner. 5 - Technology is only as useful as the social will to use it. We could knock climate change dead tomorrow by junking all the cars and building a bunch of streetcars - something invented in the late 1800s. Could fancy schmancy carbon capture be useful? Sure. Will it? Enh. 6 - We'll be incredibly damn lucky if the well-off countries don't literally start shooting climate refugees. Would redistributing resources to provide for those less fortunate be a good idea? Sure. Try pushing that idea to anyone who's not already a leftist.
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Do you suffer from anxiety about climate change and its effects?
I moved to Maryland in 2010. In the 13 years I've been here, I have definitely noticed effects of climate change. Snow has become rare in the winter. There are more 100F days in the summer. And there are fewer insects, with the exception of carpenter bees, which you usually only saw on the Virginia side of the Potomac.
That's just in my backyard. Elsewhere, Lake Mead and the Great Salt Lake are literally drying up. The jet stream that has a major impact on our weather might just disappear some day in the near future. Also, the entire country of Australia caught on fire a while back.
What gives me anxiety is how damned fast these changes happened. It wasn't a shift that happened over the span of a generation, it's only been a dozen years. I can't help but wonder, how are things going to look in another 12-13 years at this rate?
Have you ever made significant individual lifestyle choices because of climate change?
Individual lifestyle changes aren't going to be enough. 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global carbon emissions. And a significant chunk of those emissions come from oil companies. We need to be more aggressive in banning new sales of petroleum-burning vehicles and invest in other forms of zero-emission, mass transit. I take the Metro whenever I go into DC, but it doesn't do much good when the Beltway is constantly packed with SUVs and trucks.
What do you think of proposed technologies like carbon capture? Do you think they’re useful, or a technocratic waste of time? Can they be viably used at large scale on any reasonable timeframe?
No idea if they're viable, but I do know we're running out of time, and any possible solution is worth exploring. Even if we do significantly cut global carbon emissions at this point, damage has already been done. I think that it will be necessary to develop technology to reverse that damage, one way or another.