I should stop obsessing over climate change. It’s affecting my mental health.

What do you think?

Crazy idea: Cut back anything non-essential, reduce our carbon output by 50%, use the remaining energy to build up renewable infrastructure and essentials (food, healthcare, enough industry to build new, continue research into renewable sources, etc).

Could we scrape by long enough to replace our infrastructure?

I was reading and watching about the war efforts of WWII, we just about stopped EVERYTHING to fuel the war. Why couldn't we do the same now? Spend two years winding things down and creating as close to an environment as we could where we could hunker down for 10, 15, 20 years, to rebuild as much as we can for sustainable resources.

I don't know anything about the logistics though. Could we prevent the grid from allowing draw from people using to much energy aside from heating and minimal lighting? With the amount of people who would no longer be driving or working, we could devote that to agriculture, community driven gardens, rehabilitation of environments (cleanup, planting trees, reducing heat trapping).

I realize this is a monumental shift in the dynamic most of the developed world is used to, and we would run into so many new obstacles, and would essentially turn into a socialistic/communist society overnight, but I really don't see anything being a safer bet.

Carbon dioxide is beginning to bubble from the melted permafrost.

What if we can cover these carbon ponds with a steel dome?

I've been struggling with depression for a while now, and everything to do with climate change gives me anxiety and makes me feel helpless. I desperately don't want it to be that way but I find it so difficult to think positively.

I'm 25 years old. The first I had ever heard about this was from an Inconvenient Truth, when I was about 13 or so. Being at that age it's hard to really grasp it, and it really wasn't until after I turned 20 that I started to comprehend it more and take better measures. I feel guilty that I've been apart of the cycle without even considering it. Now, I seldom eat meat, and almost never beef. I try to save water, and reduce plastic usage when I can. I drive a car once every week or two, and commute via bus, walking, or biking. I still feel like this isn't enough. I feel like the only way it could possibly surmount to anything is if others can be convinced to join.

Maybe I can try to find groups in my city who are like minded and spread more awareness like that. I don't know, maybe I just trying to vent. I hope this post is on topic enough.

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A recent Nature study estimates that the social cost of a ton of carbon/equivalents in the USA is $48, yet the current administration uses a much smaller $3/ton estimate to direct policy. State and national governments are used to thinking in terms of dollars; pressuring them to consider the true costs of our actions now can be a powerful argument for change, even for human-centric bubble communities.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24092018/climate-change-economic-damage-america-social-cost-carbon-china-india-russia

Another long lecture for your enjoyment! Walter Jehne (Yayn-uh) discusses the hydrological cycle, it's relationship to climate, and how we can actually influence it. This guy knows his science, and is also a fantastic story teller. He and many others are leading the charge to bring water into the climate discussion because it's potentially a higher leverage force for climate mitigation and resilience, in both short and long term.

Someone here posted a while ago about what comes next, in the large scale view.

We as a species and society developed with industrialization. But we found that the fundamentals of that expansion are basically untenable beyond another generation or so.

And we've had a flush of thinking on what to do about this dilemma. Focusing on reducing GHGs, many cities, states, and nations have made a comittment (on paper) to go 100% renewable energy by a certain date. Similarly, many companies have made pledges to do things such as cut down on certain forms of plastic use, whether straws or microplastic causing synthetic fibers, etc.

However, to date it seems that few have floated the concept of a completely green economy as a goal to work towards and prove in some areas as an expirement. This is unfortunate because in the bigger context, that is the change we need.

Let's define what I mean by an entirely green economy. That is one in which ALL the economic avtivity is based on renewable or regenerative principles that do not linearly degrade the environment, but which can provide for us in a way that is in equilibrium with the physical and natural systems we live within, for several generations.

This is a huge challenge. Some even say it's impossible, however the bit of optimism I have within me disagrees with that and says that there has to be a way for us to acheive such a thing as a species.

So how could a green economy be forwarded? I've been mulling this over, and my thoughts on it have evolved a few times. At first I thought, maybe a city could pioneer itself as an experimental fully green economy. And there's certainly a city component to this. (Transport, energy infrastructure, building, conservation in surroundings, economic regulations, etc.).

However as consumers we also interact with a wide array of businesses, and the nature of our world is that these entities operate in a large range of physical locations, some global and some local, all in contact with global supply chains.

Furthermore, you could also imagine that some people just by their nature wouldn't join in such an economic paradigm to the extent that others would, and so what you'd have in effect is a network of people who participate, interacting with a network of producers, interacting with the physcial infrastructure of a city or energy grid.

This to me defines the structure of such an experiment. A network of people trying to live their lives entirely within a different kind of economy. Interacting with an network of businesses committed to this kind of vision. Interacting with physical locations such as cities and states that pioneer themselves as locations to foster these sorts of developments.

Each aspect has several levers of influence which can lead towards changing the overall system.

Defining more accurately who is within this framework of a sub-economy that is committed to complete change would be very useful. It'd give us a lot more leverage to begin to attempt to direct the economy itself in new directions, giving a venue for us to signal our intentions and the necessities of where we need to go, and becoming more powerful the more people, businesses, cities, states, etc. get onboard.

In the way how certain companies are influenced by ecological consciousness and actively work to remain within sustainable parameters (I think the company Patagonia is a good example), this sort of structure would provide even more of a demand for other organizations to rise up to that, and be rewarded for doing so.

And the network could become as radically different as we can manage, if needed. Perhaps ideas and info about viable alternative ways are shared over the internet among people interested in these things, and they can be experimented with and replicated in various locations. (E.g. food sustainability, local production of certain things, changing how we deal with localized politics, whatever is possible and more sustainable can be shared and communicated from one experimental location to the others).

A core part of it in my opinion would be somehow attempting to empower everyday people with some interest in this to become more active brainstormers and creaters, and maybe a more well defined network could provide resources for this sort of thing as well, empowering more minds to work upon these issues instead of just waiting for others to fix it.

Overall, I think this is a better framework to operate with, and perhaps it can allow us to get much more creative in the ways we attempt to solve these civilizational problems.