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Nationalise all polluting industries, decouple them from the profit motive and public investment, decarbonise as much as possible
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Shift production so that it's as sustainable, localised, and decommodified as possible. Meet the needs of the people and empower them to fulfill those things
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Massive investment in mass transit, bike infrastructure, and subsidies for non-car transportation.
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Protect and expand existing natural areas, overfund the agencies dedicated to preserving them
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Invest in rural communities to encourage a more even population distribution
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Focus on high density urban development with biodiverse parks and urban forests. Every city should be a garden city.
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Shift the military's priority from warfare to climate resiliency. Turn it into a job corps that builds sustainable infrastructure
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Completely subsidise education in fields that promote climate resiliency and recovery from natural disasters, encourage climate change awareness at the primary/secondary school levels.
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Shoot every billionaire in the stomach and leave them outside the city limits
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Encourage artistic movements like art nouveau to promote a cultural reverence for nature, artisanal labour, and home craftsmanship. Encourage homesteading and gardening to create a more robust and local food supply.
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Shoot every billionaire in the stomach and leave them outside the city limits
Make this #1 and I'll give my life to this project
People get all squeamish when you say the word 'rationing', but rationing
This. Imagine Americans being told that they’re only allowed to watch Netflix and browse the internet for 4-6 hours per day. They’d rather burn the whole planet down than to have their treats taken away.
They aren't called Treatlers for nothing.
Under rationing in the UK, most people ate better
Edit, because I just realized this is kinda ambiguous — working class people under the rationing system ate more
Those aren't hugely energy intensive activities though. You'd save more energy by banning dryers and regulating air conditioning/heating down to normal levels for non-US countries. You could probably bring American energy consumption down to near the average just by limiting the size of cars.
You could probably bring American energy consumption down to near the average just by ~~limiting the size of cars.~~ shooting a couple of billionaires
Yeah I'm not a FALC bro at all, but we can actually have nice things — there's so much low hanging fruit to go after before normal people even begin to feel the pinch.
Step 0 - Purge 99% of US cops, politicians, and kulaks
Step 0.5 - Laugh at the memes about it
Continue with happybadger's plan
Everybody who's ever chartered a private flight gets the wall.
No more road expansions.
Everybody takes the train.
No more fossil fuels.
Take all wealth over 2 mil and use it to build public transport and renewables.
Red meat is like a once a week thing.
Companies that use engineered obsolescence get privatized.
And maybe less necessary but massively expanding public spaces so people actually had a place to go and socialize rather than all using the internet 10 hours a day.
And it would have had to happen 15 to 20 years ago.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
All the electric power could be nigh-carbon-neutral on the big scale if you just did nuclear power, that's a quarter off.
Transportation is basically just cars, planes, unelectrified train lines and not much else.
Agriculture is basically mostly down to animal products and stupid shit like growing wheat in arizona or whatever
If you were climate stalin, a 5 year plan would be enough of a timespan to knock down US Emissions by about like half.
What would be the consequences of just banning air travel? Do people really need to do it?
I mean people do have loved ones across distances. They also love driving cars, eating meat and many of them hate nuclear power
The point I'm trying to make here isn't necessarily that'd be easy to do, but that it would be simple to do.
Basically what China is doing right now but with even more investment in rail. China is doing really well with high speed rail but still is spending far too much money on roads.
I would start with China's infrastructure strategy, but add on top:
-Decimate the road budget and spend it all on trams and trolleybuses. Ban the sale of new cars.
-Ban the use of semi-trucks and build electric freight rail to all industries.
-Build more rural rail lines, all electrified, to serve the community, and use timed transfers to allow for lower frequencies (what the Swiss do)
-Shut down all fossil fuel plants as soon as possible
-twice daily or more freight service to all industries to make up for lost truck capacity
Uhhh now that I look at it this is kind of what Switzerland is already doing. The main difference is that the Swiss are reliant on extractive markets in other countries and are in no way socialist. Nonetheless, the Swiss rail network is excellent and well worth emulating in many facets.
Two massive projects have to happen in parallel:
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Replace or retrofit everything single device and industrial process that uses any type of fossil fuel as an input and replace it. That means every single IC motor, every single gas powered heating element, every single chemical process that uses fossil fuels as an input - every single one of those in the world needs to be replaced.
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Start spamming out nuclear power plants, cover every single roof in solar panels, and build tons of new transmission lines. We could eventually decommission nuclear plants (I'm sympathetic to the proliferation and waste concerns), but we need them as a stop-gap solution.
Bringing up Stalin in this context is useful actually, because it demonstrates that this scale of thing is possible to do, and has in fact happened in history.
Plans for waste are greatly exaggerated and haven't there been new scientific advancements that help make them more recyclable?
Kind of sort of. The main thing with nuclear is it can take 15 years to build a plant. It was the answer 2 decades ago. At this point we need something NOW and with increasing efficiencies of batteries and solar I personally think we'd be better off leap frogging the majority of nuclear projects.
We can do both. We are limited in input materials for solar and wind, and those materials don't overlap much with what nuclear power plants need.
Nuclear waste storage is nonexistent for political reasons, not technical ones. It's much cheaper to dump it in Africa than to hollow out Mt. Yucca.
Nuke plants and electrify everything. Absolutely everything needs to be electrified, treat production needs to stop tomorrow, the global north needs to institute massive degrowth that won't feel like degrowth to anybody but the owners of vacation homes, and we need a fuck ton of nuke plants. We can worry about removing carbon from the atmosphere after we've electrified everything, and can pour our new massive power surplus into super power intensive carbon removal machines that make no money.
There's not enough uranium for enough nuclear plants (though China and India have those thorium reactors)
There are only two thorium reactors in the world (one in China and one in India) and they are both highly experimental. There isn't enough ground based uranium (most uranium is in the ocean and technology to develop oceanic uranium mining is promising) for 100% nuclear power, but there is enough for a lot more. The reason why nuclear power isn't more widespread isn't a technical one, but rather it costs more than fossil fuels and nuclear power is contrary to the interests of the bourgeoisie.
There's not enough uranium at the ideal enrichment levels that's profitable to extract. If we aren't concerned with getting the most profit possible mining the stuff, we have a few hundred years of supply without needing to recycle (which is easy).
Implement a system of eco-credits that accrue over time and allow people to buy luxury items when the credits fill up. Like okay, you waited X number of years, you can afford a small boat or whatever your hobby is.
Ban meat, except as byproducts from things like prairie restoration projects. Let people go nuts on that wild buffalo steak or whatever once a year on Christmas or something as a treat, if they want.
Implement a system of eco-credits that accrue over time and allow people to buy luxury items when the credits fill up. Like okay, you waited X number of years, you can afford a small boat or whatever your hobby is.
Alternatively, library socialism. I want municipally-owned power tools and vehicles that people can check out as needed or use in municipal workshops/co-ops. I shouldn't have a consumer incentive to buy anything I'm going to use a couple times per year or buy the shittiest version because I can't afford one that will last. If a consumer good can be repaired, I should never feel like the path of least resistance is throwing it away with no obligation to preserve it. The poorest person in that city should be able to use the same boat the wealthiest person can with equal opportunity to better themselves with it.
my hot take is that on top of everything else people have been mentioning, we are going to have to do some form of intentional geoengineering. I understand that this is a big risk, but it feels like we're starting to get to the territory where we have to take risks, even if they might cause famines that kill millions etc. because if we don't the consequences would be far worse. fitting for a "climate stalin" scenario too, considering the strategy the USSR had to use to industrialize under Stalin
I agree, and the “throw a bunch of iron shavings in the ocean” option seems relatively low risk from what I understand?
i'm sure every project is inherently risky just because we dont have models accurate enough to actually know how risky something is, but it does seem like a better idea to me than simulating massive volcanic eruptions with sulfur dioxide lol, which is what I normally see get brought up as the first option
as far as what i think is the best option, im not well informed but i remember stumbling upon this wikipedia article some months back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_daytime_radiative_cooling , ive never seen anyone mention it before though so i assume it's got some big drawbacks or something like that. but like this part:
Some estimates propose that dedicating 1–2% of the Earth's surface area to PDRC would stabilize surface temperatures
seems very promising to me? i remember doing the math and even by the current (presumably higher) prices listed on wikipedia, it would only take a couple trillion of dollars or something like that? it was only like 2 or 3 years of the US defense budget iirc, although I suppose this doesnt account for labor costs
- Ban personal car ownership unless you have a good reason to own one
- Ban air travel unless you have an extremely good reason to fly and no viable alternatives
- Massive investments in rail and other transit infrastructure
- Heavily disincentivise needless imports and stimulate much more local supply chains
- Massive investments in nuclear and sustainable energy
- Strict energy efficiency, repairability and longevity standards for consumer products
- A programme of insulation and similar improvements for all buildings
- Make the wasteful lifestyles of the rich impossible by liquidating the rich as a class and seizing their excessive assets
- Oligarchs, fascists and the like gets shot
That last one has to be first. Fossil fuels aren't being burned by themselves and unless you get rid of these people they will come back and do the same shit or worse.
I agree with this. If you don't liquidate them as a class, then you're constantly at risk of bourgeois restoration. They will do whatever it takes to undermine progress.
Obviously he’d nationalize the energy and transport sectors as well as heavy industry. Then: rapid cessation of fossil fuels for energy production, immediate installation of vast arrays of renewable and nuclear power plants, rapid public transit deployment, outlaw ICE cars, massive reforestation drives, redirect public research grants towards carbon capture, construct mitigating infrastructure to reduce damage from the existing impacts of climate change. And if he has the time, execute those responsible for doing this to the earth (oil executives, former presidents, etc) just for justice’s sake.
Bulldoze wealthy suburbs and replace them with commie blocks serviced by adequate public transport and services. Replace a lot of centralised power generation with distributed renewables. Put more research into wood molding and plant a billion trees (not monocropping though) so that as much carbon can be locked in buildings, infrastructure, and furniture as possible. Merc billionaires until they voluntarily give up their wealth.
Edit: something about meat consumption
Join a party with Climate Lenin
The changes wouldn't even be that draconian. Just like, kill all the cows and install trolly systems in every major city. That really would have thr US meet it's parris accord numbers
comrade bird flu reporting for duty
