I suggest you get to work on implementing your solution, then. It’s very easy, after all. Let me know how it goes.
I suggest you get to work on implementing your solution, then. It’s very easy, after all. Let me know how it goes.
We could
Who’s “we”? You’re referring to some kind of collective humanity, but so such collective exists in the real world. There is no grand effort to work together to solve common problems.
You’re ignoring the fact that sailing ships cannot compete with fossil power. Any problem becomes easy if you’re willing to ignore reality.
We could easily
I think you and I have different definitions of that word.
drastic action is necessary which will result in large inconveniences and disruption for billions of people, but nobody wants that, and no politician will get elected selling that.
Correct.
Fair.
The point was not to imply that shipping is not a large source of CO2, but:
I do believe you are grossly incorrect
What makes you think that? None of the sources you provide disagree with what I wrote.
The biggest CO2 polluters are […] cargo ships.
No, this is a misunderstanding. Cargo ships are a major source of sulphur pollution, not carbon. Cargo ships use the cheapest fuel they can. Cheap fuel is rich in sulphur. They can do this because there are no emission regulations on the open sea. A commonly cited figure is that a single cargo ship releases more sulphur than all the cars in North America.
This figure is then misinterpreted by people who failed basic chemistry to mean that cargo ships are a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. In reality, the opposite is true; cargo ships are one of the most efficient ways to move stuff over large distances. Only electric trains are better, and only if the source of the electricity is not fossil.
What you however skipped in your reply is the fact that the richest 8 people limiting their emissions has the same effect as the 792 people beneath that limiting their emissions.
I skipped it because I agree. There’s nothing to debate on that point.
However, the point of my first reply was to highlight that this perspective is often exaggerated to paint the global middle class (the top 10% richest people on the planet, i.e. most people in western Europe and the anglosphere) as innocent victims when in fact they are also to blame. This is what I replied to:
The narrative that the average joe is to blame for this shit is so infuriating to me.
This sentiment is oft-repeated on this kind of post, and the implication that “average joe” is not responsible is not only wrong, but actively harmful.
Also you’re last sentence is quite hostile, BP definitely came up with it to avoid their responsibility and pivot it to other people. The idea might not be ‘bad’ per se, but if you do it so to avoid your own responsibility, it is definitely bad practice (which, again, is why each of us should try to limit our carbon emissions)
Of course. By the same token, individuals trying to avoid their own responsibility by parroting “big oil invented the idea of a carbon footprint” is definitely bad practice.
Myself and 50,000 other people could start walking everywhere and it very likely wouldn’t come close to offsetting the emissions of Amazon’s fleet of trucks.
Not if you keep ordering shit from amazon it won’t. It will prevent 50,000 people’s worth of transportation emissions, though.
Don’t sell yourself short. You’re more responsible for the situation than you want to admit.
there’s a very small group of individuals called billionaires that contribute 1000x more than you or I ever could.
Wrong. The top 0.1% pollute 10x as much (per capita) as the top 10% (excluding the top 0.1%). Source
BP invented the idea of the individual carbon footprint.
If the strongest argument against an idea is “the wrong people came up with it”, the idea is probably pretty good.
What is a gif keyboard? What’s wrong with copy and pasting from ~/Pictures/memes/?
(Yes, I realize my old is showing)
Do you not understand what the word “restrict” means?
Everything.
Every programming language is an abstraction layer between the programmer and the machine that will run the code. But abstraction isn’t free. Generally speaking, the higher the abstraction, the less efficient the program.
C++ optionally provides a much higher level of abstraction than pure C, which makes C++ much nicer to work with. But the trade off is that the program will struggle to run in resource constrained environments, where a program written in C would run just fine.
And to be clear, when I say “low-end hardware”, I’m not talking about the atom-based netbook from 2008 you picked up for $15 at a yard sale. It will run C++ based programs just fine. I’m talking about 8- or 16-bit microcontrollers running at <100 MHz with a couple of hundred kB of RAM. Such machines are still common in many embedded applications, and they do not handle C++ applications gracefully.
I mean yeah, if you restrict yourself to the C part of C++ it can do everything C can. But then you’re not getting any of the advantages of C++.
Once you start using things like classes and templates heavily, your program will quickly outgrow low-end hardware.
Absolutely. And that sucks. But I derive a certain catharsis from knowing that at least some of the people responsible will suffer along with them.
obviously 150,000,000 middle class people have more of an impact than 1,000,000 very wealthy people.
And that is a problem from a social perspective. But from a climate perspective, focusing on the wealthy is nothing more than an attempt to shift blame.
our society has been set up so it’s very difficult to live without a car and a ton of semi-disposable manufactured items.
Society has not been set up like that by accident. This, too, is the fault of the middle class, for being lazy fucks who would rather drive their car everywhere than look for alternative modes of transport; for eating meat two or even three meals a day, every day; for choosing to live in their mcmansions in car dependant suburban sprawls instead of denser housing; etc. etc.
People emerging from poverty in countries like India and China have shown plenty of enthusiasm to live in the same wasteful way as the middle class in the west
They are part of the problem, of course.
also not sure what your point is.
The point is that over the next several decades, a lot of people will get what they fucking deserve 👍
The issue is people who consume/pollute 10x as much as others per person.
Indeed, but 10x doesn’t cut it. The middle class pollutes about 100x more than the lower class per capita. But they’ll get what’s coming to them.
Billionaires ain’t no buddies of mine. They will be able to buy their way free of the worst of the climate disaster, and that sucks.
But the middle class, at least, will have to pay their dues. And that does not suck.
“Faster than expected.”
Once or twice.
Look, I don’t think we really disagree with each other. I think it would be great if we switched to sail-based shipping. But for that to be viable the masses would have to be OK with the results of that, as you laid out above.
I’m not hopeful that will happen, not until supply chains start breaking under the strain of climate change its consequences. By then, it may be too late to switch.