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I saw this tweet by Palmer Luckey the other day:
"The real secret of of global warming is that the climate can be whatever humanity wants it to be. Two dozen nations could each single-handedly send us all into an ice age."
He's right. It wouldn't be that hard to prevent climate change via geoengineering. In fact we did some geoengineering by mistake last year. New regulations limited the amount of sulfur that oceangoing ships could emit. This caused an increase in the global temperature.
So, if climate change is such a threat, why don't we do something about it?
Because, let's be honest, our current climate change mitigation strategies are doomed to fail and will only make us poor.
Even if the United States and Europe cut 100% of carbon emissions tomorrow, the climate is going to get hotter. China already emits about 3 times as much carbon as the United States. In the developing world, new coal plants are being built every day. 2024 will set a record for coal production, and 2025 will be greater still. And there is hundreds of years of coal left to be consumed.
Getting people to downsize their SUV to a Prius isn't going to fix the problem. Renewables are not the answer either, being both unreliable and requiring constant upgrades. We are using huge amounts of resources to build solar and wind capacity, but the lifetime of these projects is just a couple of decades. So we need more metals and more concrete, which will result in more emissions, not to mention the associated ecological destruction from strip mines.
Did you know that 8% of global carbon emissions come from the production of concrete, the same amount produced by all private passenger automobiles? Fantasies about electric cars solving global warming are just that.
To fully fix global warming, we need to reduce global carbon emissions by at least 90%, more likely 99%. Carbon in the atmosphere has been increasing since before 1800 AD.
So why are we spending trillions trying to nibble at the edges when we could spend billions and achieve much better results. We can cool the climate to an acceptable level while we wait for the carbon removal technology that is the only way to fully solve the problem.
Because the point of 'climate advocacy' isn't controlling the weather. It's demanding every left wing idea under the sun get enacted, and spending trillions to do it. See also: nuclear energy.
I don't think you're completely wrong here, but I feel like pointing out that climate change is actually happening and taking place. It is a real and serious problem, and if you have lived in a coastal area long enough to see the changes they're not really deniable anymore. There really is something happening and it really is causing big problems for the environment and the future. The idea that we can simply make one intervention and "fix" the climate without any second-order consequences strikes me as a bit short-sighted to boot.
That doesn't mean there aren't an army of scammers and grifters out to use that problem for their own advantage - Goldman Sachs is not being selfless when they advocate for a complicated carbon credit scheme which would let them make millions of dollars for no work at all. Plenty of prominent climate "activists" have the carbon footprint of entire cities in the third world (private air travel being one of the biggest contributors) and do nothing except make the position they're advocating less credible. But the fact that people are using the situation to grift and profiteer doesn't mean the problem isn't real. A snake-oil salesman selling you a miracle cure isn't providing an actual treatment for your condition, but the fact that a snake oil salesman is trying to sell to you isn't an argument against your condition existing.
My point was less that 'climate change is not real' or 'climate change is not a problem' and more 'the number of climate activists who are aiming principally at counteracting or reducing the effects of climate change is quite literally zero. The number of them who are primarily concerned with some other agenda is 100% not due to rounding but in a totally literal sense. The watermelon meme is generally accurate-ish and environmentalists are usually just generic left wing activists greenwashing their agenda'.
If you disagree with me, name some counterexamples. Elon Musk is not really an activist for environmental issues, so don't start there.
I've never met a climate activist (or, just a person who sanctimoniously talks about climate change) that seems emotionally invested in the ecosystem the way I personally am. They find natural areas scary and gross and there might be rural white right-wingers there, ew.
I think environmentalism starts with picking up trash and keeping natural functional ecosystems intact. Every river, stream, creek, and brook in the Midwest has had its water sources fucked by roads.
Nah, say what you will there are a lot of stinky left hippie eco activists with dreadlocks who genuinely do spend a lot of time camping in nature, foraging for wild mushrooms, living in weird communes with other leftists in the middle of nowhere, tending to some patch of forest etc.
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