solutions that dont disrupt the 99%'s way of life

This is not possible. Barring some miracle technologies being developed, we would have to radically change our standards of living and give up our modern convenient lives to make meaningful changes.

Stop burning fossil fuels. There is no way that doesn’t include that.

Genuinely there needs to be a fee that companies must pay for the pollution they create, with it written into law that they can’t palm the cost off on their customers.

We need to move shipping away from the ‘barely more refined than crude oil’ fuels they use

We need to ensure protection of the oceans by making it so that outflowing waste from industry never reaches the watercourse in the first place.

Single use plastics need to be removed from the supply chain (alternatively changed at the production level so they’re made from plant cellulose or a material that doesn’t break down into PFOAS or microplastics)

We also need to block petrochemical companies from lobbying or interfering with politics, and prevent them from funding smear campaigns against renewable energy sources

Engineer a virus to send back in time to slow down CO2 emissions

wait a minute…

Proviso of this is that, globally, politicians grow a spine, along with a sense of morality, and long term planning. It would also require them to deal with the money hoarding issues with the hyper rich.

• The first step is a massive push for renewables. They should be representing 200-500% of grid demand regularly. If nuclear can get up to speed and be part of this, great, but we can’t wait on it.

• That excess power should be soaked up by large scale, portable, energy storage. Green hydrogen is the current best option, but synthetic fossil fuels could also take up the slack. Depending on the area, desalination could also be combined into this.

• We seriously decarbonise the transport networks. For vans and smaller, electric vehicles win. BYD have demonstrated that low cost electric cars are viable. For larger vehicles, where electric becomes inefficient, hydrogen is viable. This is where a lot of the excess hydrogen will be going.

• Carbon credits with teeth. Rather than relying on a planned economy mindset, we can make capitalism work for us. We need a global fixed carbon emission limit. This limit should trend towards net zero on a preset timetable. Credits are bid on, akin to stock market trades. Companies must have credits by the end of the year/period. The fine for not having credits should be a multiple of the closing credits price (10x?). The fine for falsification should be multiples of that, erring towards corporate execution levels.

This will force easy savings out of the market quickly. It will then force compulsory emitters to factor in Carbon costs.

• Combined with the carbon credits will be negative credits. If a group takes a ton of CO² out of the air, long term, they gain a new credit. They can sell this to emitters. This will provide the CO² emissions industry requires, while meeting net zero.

An example of this might be large scale bio capture on the open ocean. Grow seaweed etc on pontoons, and turn it into a solid. This can then be locked up (old coal mines?) taking carbon out permanently.

• Geo engineering. There are multiple methods of reducing incident sunlight on the earth. Everything from powders in the upper atmosphere, to mylar solar shades at the Lagrange point. They will be short term fixes, but will buy us time.

None of these require massive reductions in quality of life. They do require changes in how we do things. It’s also worth noting that I’ve not covered the numerous problems to be solved e.g. power grid upgrades to account for renewables. None of these should be insurmountable however, just engineering, or political/policing challenges.

An no, I’ve no fucking idea how to get politicians to grow a spine and do what’s required for our long term comfort/survival. Fixing the planet? That’s just a (really big) engineering problem. Fixing human nature? …Fuck knows.

The idea of personal action vs. corporate/government action is a false choice. The government can force the corpos to stop burning the planet, but that will mean significant lifestyle changes for everybody.

It also means getting our shit together about immigration/ migration/ refugees. And not just in the US, but globally. A humanitarian catastrophe is assured otherwise.

I’m not optimistic.

You are asking two how to questions “combat climate change” and “reduce emissions”

To realistically combat climate change:

• Admit that we need to try geoengineering (we are already doing this with all the CO₂ and CH₄ going into the atmosphere)
• Weather it is SO₂ injection or cloud seeding to artificially increase the albido; we need to reduce incident solar radiation to give us a few more decades to actually reduce emissions

To reduce emissions:

• Tackle the biggest emissions first.
• Electrification of the passenger fleet; that means batteries. Keep fuel cells for heavy transport (maybe)
• Encourage electric biking. And other micro-mobility. Along with better public transport.
• Normalise a historical style diet, meat is a treat only once or twice a week.
• Reduce concrete construction; keep it for the important things like the foundations.
• Reduce the practice of packaging everything in plastic; again keep it for the important things only like electrical insulation.
• Massive ramp up of solar and wind around the world.
• Where we use fossil fuels, ask is this important enough to use FF here?

Carbon taxes:

• Tax CO₂e (carbon dioxide equivalent) at a reasonable rate to encourage all of the reduction measures.
• At less than $65NZD/T the cost is too low to encourage significant movement on the issues.
• Have a ratcheting scheme in the CO₂ market, i.e. add $5-8/yr/T for CO₂e; in 10 years the price will be between $110-140/T. At the 10yr mark, make the ratchet $10-15/yr/T.
• Add a carbon tariff; basically make it more expensive to buy from countries that are not pulling their weight.
• Be careful not to double tax, this is important for buy in from the public. i.e. the carbon tax on fuel should be exempt from sales tax, taxing a tax is a great way to alienate people.

attack the capitalist system.

But it’s time to disrupt 99% of life.

Survey humanity, produce an agreed on level of technology and lifestyle.

We probably need to limit ourselves to housing, food, internet, and safety/defense for everyone and not much else - then slow all industries based on HOW people want to live.

So getting rid of things like, plastic toys, gizmos, extravagances. Phones wouldn’t be updated as often. People would only be able to update their tech if they could meaningfully show it was necessary.

Lots of technology companies would be folded. Lots of industries would be nationalised and folded. International tourism would be greatly restricted. All the stuff we don’t need basically.

People would be mostly employed in the basics: Housing, food, internet. Too far beyond that and you’d have to rely on local people/groups/makers/repair companies.

So massive degrowth, nationalization, and restrictions/regulations to the market.

Most of all, corporations would no longer count as people. In fact society should have to rely on person to person contracting. I don’t really think corporations should exist becuase they become Zombies/Golems that do a lot of destructive things.

Basically degrowth, and restructuring society around degrowth.

Compost the rich

companies and countries have largely abandoned it already, the most polluting ones dint do anything to reduce it at all. consumers are the smaller emitters of it.

these companies have actively funded groups to dissuade “carbon usage” so they dont have to reduce thier own emissions.

I’m vegan, have no intention of ever buying a car and plan on never having children. That’s probably as much individual action as anyone can ask for. Anything after that is up to corporations and governments, so we should make sure they are incentivized to do the right thing 👍

I think the first step is to get a good spotter and then exhale on the pull.

I’m going off the top of my head here:

Okay so you know the concept of evaporative cooling for the new AI data centres? It’s hugely wasteful, and definitely not the only way to accomplish the goal, but it’s cheaper. I feel like if we actually figured out all the bullshit of that calibre and just outlawed it, we’d make a significant start towards improvement and only marginally impact the bank statements of a few ultra rich billionaires.

Stop allowing people to dump exhaust and waste untreated into the air and otherwise in the environment, full stop. Full illegal, if you violate it the entire company is dissolved. That’ll suck for shipping, manufacturing, fuck it. We need to actually stop this to achieve some kind of meaningful change. Go back to sails and windmills if we need to, we achieved global industry and shipping before the internal combustion engine existed, we can do it again.

Phase out fossil fuels. It’ll suck a bit, fuck it. Increase reliance on public transport and population density. Make it so you don’t need individual transport to accomplish basic necessities for the vast majority of people.

Ramp up public collaborative research into batteries, power storage, carbon capture, climate science. At this point we’re playing catch up, we need everything we can to try to rectify this shit storm like yesterday.

Yeet billionaires into space is a decent start.