IraHayes wrote: ↑Sat Jul 08, 2023 12:38 pm

Random Dude wrote: ↑Sat Jul 08, 2023 11:42 am That being said though, I'll be buggered if I see a way out of it, short of a massive change of cultures, lifestyles, financial systems, etc and that's never going to happen until mother nature smacks up back into the stone age.

This is how everyone feels right now. No one has the answer. Not even those we elected or that are in positions of power.
One way out, as postulated by Bjorn Lomborg, is education. Somewhere, out there, is a child who lacks the education to do anything though. And, if we could elevate the poorest in the world they would actually start caring about the environment. But to do that we would need cheap, abundant and reliable energy. Simply put, the richest countries are the lowest polluters and they care the most about the environment.

Then, the problem will go down in the annals of history, much the same as, "The Great Manure Crisis of 1894". No one "solved" that crisis btw... we just transitioned to other forms of transport.

I think the situation is complicated, very complicated. Some genius could come up with a clean source of energy tomorrow that would, in theory, solve all our problems but then he'd need to get past the oil companies, the barrage of high-priced lawyers they have, the underhand business practices they employ, and the politicians they have bought through donations and bribes.

"Simply put, the richest countries are the lowest polluters and they care the most about the environment."

Dunno about that. Currently, it's the biggest global economies that are the biggest polluters. They got rich making stuff to sell to the rest of the world at the expense of the environment. In a lot of cases they're building their polluting factories in poorer countries - basically outsourcing their pollution. There are plenty of cases of poor farmers, fishing villages etc who complain about the foreign factories poisoning their soil and water, but they're usually powerless to do anything about it.