The necessary technologies

The only technology that should be on that list, since using it would enable all the others to thrive: UwU hungry guillotine

It hungers for the blood of the investors
- This kind of comment always makes me a little anxious, lol. Technically, I'm one of the investors due to the stock shares in my 401k.
  Everyone loves to rail against the billionaires, but in the event of a revolution, I'm afraid that I'd be up against the wall as a mere "thousandaire".
Sure, and then what? If we keep the systems around that created this situation in the first place, we'll end up back where we started, just with new rich people.
Just to pick out the example of veganism: If all rich people are dead, but the masses still want cheap meat every single day, they WILL definitely reinvent factory farming, with all it's horrible environmental and ethical consequences.

Veganism isn't better for the environment than significantly reducing the total amount of consumed meat. Animals play an important, difficult-to-replace role in making agriculture sustainable. Animals can be herded on land that's difficult to farm on, animals can consume parts of farmed plants that humans cannot, and animals produce products that humans cannot replicate without significantly more work.

Edit: I see a bunch of vegans who aren't really engaging with the argument. To be clear, anyone who makes statements about how things are right now to try to disprove this is probably arguing in bad faith. I'm not responding to comments anymore because, while it's entirely possible that I'm wrong, y'all aren't making any good points.

Furthermore, I'm not anti-vegan, but now I'm tempted to be. So many people I've engaged with have displayed all of the worst vegan stereotypes I've heard about. I've always assumed it was chuds making shit up, but no I just hadn't met any of the terminally online creeps in the vegan community yet OMFG.

Yes, we need to significantly reduce the amount of consumed meat (maybe not insects, if we consider them meat). A step towards more vegan and vegetarian food would definitely be necessary. Yes, not everyone needs to be vegan. But we need to consume way more vegan and vegetarian food.
- Insects are meat. Why are you so keen on eating bugs?
I don't really care. Abusing (using) animals for food and work is cruel anyway, if me not doing that because I think it's wrong is good for the environment, great! If it's not, fine, but it's not why I do it.
- That's the thing. Ethics and impact on the environment can be two different things. If you decide to go that way, you're fine. Do it. However we need animals for stated reasons. We have to eat less meat/generally consume less animal products.
- I disagree that raising and keeping animals because we want their products or labor is cruel, and I especially disagree that referring to that as abuse is useful.
  What standard of cruelty and ethical framework are you using to come to your conclusion?
  Edit: as stated in my other comment, I don't believe that it's cruel in principle; I'm not denying that the industry has cruel practices.
Veganism is good for climate, biodiversity, health and animal welfare. We really don't need to eat animals or animal products to have good meal and live a happy life. The good thing is that humans are omnivores, with a free choice of what to eat. Please choose wisely, not only for your own mental and physical health, but also for others, living now as well as in years to come.
- Not everyone can eat a pure vegan diet. We are omnivores. We don't get to pick, we must eat it all to stay healthy.
We don't need animals to consume plants we can't, because plant food is soooo goddamn more efficient on every metric. We can drastically reduce land, water and energy usage AND still feed way more people with plant foods. We simply do not need to eat animals.
Any form of "sustainable" animal farming I've read up on end up being still less resource efficient than plant foods, AND obviously massively reduced output. So we're truly talking about vegan vs. an ounce of meat a week. That's not a difference worth defending, considering the other obvious ethical issues.
Finally, why do you feel that it's important to argue for "99%" veganism? Do you genuinely believe people don't understand that less is better, but none is best? Do you apply the same argument to other ethical issues, like feminism? Being 99% feminist is a big improvement, but constantly arguing for it in favor of feminism (aka 100%) would obviously look ridiculous. Finally, don't you realize the humongous difference between "we should abuse animals for our pleasure less" vs. "we shouldn't do that"? A whole class of racism disappears if we get rid of the association between "animal" and "lesser moral consideration".
- why do you feel that it's important to argue for "99%" veganism
  This argument relies on false assumptions about my ethics and an incorrect representation of my position. First: I don't want to reduce meat consumption/production by any specific ammount; I am currently unconvinced that removing domestic animals from food production entirely is maximally efficient, but think it's clear that the current ammount of meat is unsustainable and thus must be reduced by some ammount that is currently unknown to me. Furthermore, I don't believe that all living things qualify as "people" for moral considerations. Since I do not believe all living things are people unless proven otherwise, why should I consider all animals as people unless proven otherwise? There are certain animals that I consider to be people and thus give moral consideration equal to humans such as certain species of corvid, dolphins, elephants, and octopi which have demonstrated traits that make me believe they should qualify. In order to convince me, you need to either provide me an alternative definition of a person and demonstrate why it's superior or to show me that all animals fit into my definition of person.
  Edit: forgot to mention your other argument, but simply put it's also off the mark. While I agree that eating plants directly is more efficient, that doesn't address the thesis of my argument. So long as there exists circumstances such that we produce plant matter (as a waste product) that an animal can consume and humans do not in quantities sufficient to feed a stock of animals of some size including those animals in food production and feeding them the plant matter is more efficient than throwing away that plant matter. Your argument needs to be more robust.
- Have fun eating grass, drinking nonpotable water and eating roots and stalks and rotting vegetables...you militant vegans are hilarious.
Lookup veganic farming, and veganic permaculture. The idea that animal ag has any place in combating global warming is demonstrably false, and was nothing more than a greenwashed hijacking of the other various regenerative agricultural movements. There is no room in neither a just world, or a sustainable one, for the exploitation and consumption of animals.
https://www.surgeactivism.org/allansavory
Most of the vegan food we grow is fed to animals, so we can eat them. Feeding and housing animals for food consumption purposes requires 83% of our total farmland, but produces only 18% of our calorific intake.
If the world went vegan, we'd only use 25% of the farm land we currently do, meaning we don't need to use that "difficult to farm" land.
Unfortunately there is literally no valid argument against veganism. If there were, I wouldn't be vegan.
Sir you forget that in China there are pig condos

We have the technologies. The list goes on and on and on. We just need to employ them instead of waiting further for magical fixes.

Posting and liking memes is great, but real change comes from actions. If you are as concerned as we are about climate change, please consider joining or supporting climate activists near you.

We don't need new technologies to overcome the issue of global warming itself; we need them to overcome the issue of human nature. People (in the population level sense, not individually) are not good at long term thinking. Solving global warming with current technologies will require a change in lifestyle from just about everyone. It's the kind of change that will have no perceivable reward to most people. That's why a lot of those solutions like biking, veganism, etc, will never catch on.
- We have seen, that people and societies are extremely adaptable to changes in lifestyle. The transformation of the Netherlands to a cycling -friendly country for example. Car free city centers. People were very opposed to them before. But once the changes were made, people were happy with them and adapted to the new options. There's also negative examples where people adapted to new negative lifestyles such as car centric cities. Or smog, pollution, garbage landfills, or rivers that one is not allowed to swim in due to pollution. People are surprisingly adaptable to new conditions. We just have to do it.
- I am vegan btw but the amount of people who say apathetic shit like 'one person can't make a difference, it's all the corporations fault, wah' is honestly depressing. We get the society we ask for and until people start asking for something different nothing changes.
- I think biking has a much higher chance; improved fitness and health, and improved mental health from increased activity and time outdoors are tangible benefits people would notice in a not too short amount of time.
Trains are based. Fight me car stans
Citations 4 u:
(1) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/07/climate-crisis-miracle-technology-wind-water-solar
(2) https://effectiveactivist.com/
- Thanks!
I mean, some breakthroughs with large battery tech would be nice to really take advantage of solar and wind.
- We're pretty much there on flow batteries and a few others. The nice thing about grid storage is that kwh per kg is far less important than it is for EVs. That opens up a ton of other options.
  Pretty much just need mass production at this point.

Only way to stop climate change is to STOP CONSUMING SO MUCH

Best way to stop consuming is to stop having children
- mhh. nope.
  Best way to reduce consumption is preventing rich people from obscene over consumption. Do you know how many average children could grow up and life a lifetime on the emissions of Tylor Swifts private jet tours? (Arbitrary example, because it has lots of attention right now. Goes for the lifestyle of most rich and super rich people)
- IDK how I feel about this argument.
  Some people don't care about having kids, others have an innate desire to do so, a biological contact that yearns for fulfilment.
  Maybe it's a lame appeal to emotion but one of the defining characteristics of life is the ability to reproduce.
  If you're not into kids, it's pretty easy to say "people should stop having kids", but that assertion is a bit of a kick in the guts to those that feel that drive.
  It's a bit of a moot point for people in developed countries anyway. As in we can all congratulate ourselves on being enlightened enough to realise that we're overpopulated, but there's billions of people having as many children as possible to support them in their retirement.
  Unachievable though it may be, I think global universal education, healthcare, and UBI is the solution to over population.
I argue it's better to stop producing so much.
Don't blame consumers for consuming what's placed in front of them. Blame the producers for producing collectively more shit than the entire population will ever need or want.
- I blame them both. Neither can do it without the other.
- Err….they definitely aren’t producing more than people want, or at least not enough to matter since they are making loads of money producing things….
I blame advertising. We should pass laws that every second ad needs to be designed to reduce the amount of shit people buy and cancel out whatever other ads are playing

Sure, on board, but we the people would still need to then build a new world with different systems valuing different things. Most of those things are on that list.
Without the individual changing, we'd just end up swapping rich people.
Alright that's funny XD

"No not that! I want to do EXACTLY as I did before but YOU do something about it. Can't you like build a technology to suck the CO2 out of the atmosphere or something?"

Can we trail like monkeys to pick up trash?

There was lemmy in the 60s? /s
But I do agree if we find some way to deal with the nuclear waste nuclear energy would be perfect. I'm really hopeful for fusion research lately.
- Nuclear waste is a largely solved issue. The volume of very radioactive waste is quite small, and safely contained with a variety of solutions.
- TBH, nuclear waste is a political problem, not an engineering one. Finns figured it out, no reason other countries couldn't.
  Fusion of course is better (though some small amount of radioactive waste will still be produced due to neutron activation of the materials used in the equipment), but it seems like it's been 10 years away for the past 60 years. And we really shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good—we need to phase out fossil fuels yesterday and fission is good enough for answering the needs of the industry; solar and wind is good enough for distributed residential power and also a good choice for poorer countries who lack the knowhow or even stability for safe operation of nuclear.
Clean Fukushima corium first.
- Pretty telling that the main counterpoint is referencing the second biggest nuclear disaster in history that made a staggering zero deaths.

"We need new technologies that can be controlled by a megacorporation to make a select few rich, not things that individuals can do or use that can break the hold of existing monopolies"

And thus the shilling for nuclear power began.
- Thanks for that thought, I was confused who is arguing so much for nuclear that is not solving anything and is too expensive.
  Shilling makes a lot of sense, but never came to me.
  And downvotes without explanation, even here. I guess normal people are also under influence.
- Is nuclear a bad option? Only downsides I've heard are basically optics problems. Barring facilities that catastrophically failed on top of horrid safety policy negligence, they seem perfectly suited for baseline power production.

nuclear power should definitely be one of those technologies listed

The Problem with nuclear Power is, that there isn't a guarantee for reasonable pricing. There simply isn't any experience on how much it really costs to build new power plants.
If you want to take a deeper look into the topic: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/05/what-does-nuclear-power-really-cost/
Can you defend it on economic grounds, rather than outdated talking points used against Greenpeace in the 90s?
- You mean like the economically grounded notion of having a survivable environment?

Yeah we already have the technology needed, we have to implement them.

And much of the tech is actually very old. Electric trains are like a century old. So for a lot of things, we have to re-implement technology we foolishly removed.

Oil was just a bad technology path. Gotta get back on the right path.

The technology path is fine, the adoption isn't.
Path: plastics are miracle materials. Lots of great uses for it.
Adoption: mass producing single use throwaway shit everything.
- Long term plastic aren't as big of an issue as one time use plastics are. Wax paper and aluminum containers can both replace consumable bottles for instance.

I already have a second hand and telling people to grow a second hand just feels ableist to those who can't. /j

You forgot, Work from Home.

and reforestation.
- I feel that’s nested under veganism since consuming that way would leave far more land to be wild/reforested.

20 years ago a few key technologies were still missing, like grid storage battery technology. But there are multiple promising ways now. Unfortunately lack of massive funding for research and development and patents means we'll have to wait another 20 years to produce them really cheaply on the free market. Otherwise it would be unfair to the poor inventor! /s

Aren't flywheel energy storages (invented by James Watt and improved over time) not suitable energy storages for electrical grids?
- No, flywheel is not cheap enough and too complicated. Pumped hydro is cheapest, but only available at very few location. Lithium batteries are a waste or misappropriation (lithium should be recycled for mobile use) and there aren't enough.
  The two battery types that seem to work are liquid metal batteries that are made out of dirt cheap and abundant materials (although there might be problems there still), and flow batteries. Kite power also seems to provide more energy for less material costs (no huge foundations and towers needed).
- The main grid storage tech I've heard about recently relies on decade-old Nissan Leaf EV batteries that can be purchased second hand pretty cheaply (in comparison to brand new cells). Pretty neat way to repurpose them IMO.
  https://cleantechnica.com/2021/10/25/old-nissan-leaf-batteries-being-used-for-grid-scale-storage-in-california/
  It's profitable, so I'm assuming it should be reasonably affordable for utility companies or local municipalities to build and own grid storage facilities in the near future

Veganism is not technology. Also meat tastes delicious for most of the regular population. Proceeds to nom a chicken

Meat tastes delicious to vegans too! It's just that it's unconsciouble to purposely destroy the planet just for the taste!
There has been some research to make products that are compatible with veganism e.g. lab-grown meat. The latest technological discovery in the news was 'meaty rice'
Disclaimer: I also eat meat since I don't trust my intestines to fully rely on plant-based nutrients. I do, however, think there is merit to how the industrialization of farming has been destroying the environment, especially with the excess of methane from cattle.
- We should be focusing on making orbital platforms where to keep the cattle so they don't pollute rather than not focusing on non space stuff. Smh.
Meat used to taste delicious.
I was raised pescatarian and started eating a little bit of meat in university, it was pretty good. I could definitely understand the hype, meat was pretty delicious. But for me personally, I just don't get the craving for it. Eventually I just ended up going back to a near vegan diet because it's what I like to cook, and it's so cheap. I'm not vegan, but 99% of what I've cooked at home in the last 10 years is.
However, I was craving charcoal chicken for like two weeks straight, so the other day my friends and I rode down to the place everyone goes to. We made a proper day of it with our bikes and picnic blankets. The chicken was cooked perfectly, really moist and falling off the bone. The seasoning on the skin was delicious, I can see why that place is so popular.
But the chicken had no flavour of its own.
Taste wise, it could have been anything cooked with the seasoning rub over the charcoal spit. A block of tofu would have had the same flavour.
Texture is the only unique experience, and I'm sure there will be a brand of meat replacement out there that has nailed the texture (but not nailed the taste) so it really isn't long now until there are viable alternatives. I haven't really tried many meat replacement products because I'm allergic to potato and e160c and those two ingredients are in a surprising number of vegan packaged proteins.
I was disappointed with my chicken. I thought maybe I'd over sold it in my mind, as my friends confirmed that yup, this is good chicken, I'm being picky. But when I said "it's just not as good as I remember from uni" and then my friends did a full 180° and agreed that yes, in the last 10 years since I've had chicken like this, meat quality has gone downhill, and chicken isn't good anymore, but what we were eating was good chicken, and that they all still like chicken, even though it's disgusting by direct comparison.
Now I'm curious how different the quality is between home raised chickens vs store bought chicken meat. Because it's got to be insane, even if both birds are the same species of heart attacks on legs.
- My brother raised chickens and we went to his place for a dinner with one of the chickens he raised. It was probably the best chicken I have ever had. The store chicken barely holds a candle.
  Now this was probably over 10 years ago, and I know the farm chickens have "improved" but the improvements are more... for production. Not for quality and taste.

To be fair, a lot of the new technologies people talk about regarding this are some of these things, but improved. For instance, better batteries or solar cells, recent improvement to which has already had a pretty notable impact (for instance, better solar panels making solar energy cheaper, which makes even entities concerned only with profit more likely to adopt it.)

Usually it's just an excuse to do nothing, hoping for a magical technology that saves us from all our problems
- Thorium reactors are the Hyperloop of energy generation!

There is only one true solution, and that is abolishing the explotation of the planiate and the workers for private profit. Capitalism will kill us all

Lake Karachay has been described as the "most polluted spot on Earth"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_of_Lake_Karachay
Formerly the fourth-largest lake in the world with an area of 68,000 km2 (26,300 sq mi), the Aral Sea began shrinking in the 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet irrigation projects.
After the visit to Muynak in 2011, former United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the shrinking of the Aral Sea "one of the planet's worst environmental disasters".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea
I'm not saying the Soviets hated lakes, but it's weird that they fucked up two of them.
- China is the only Major Industrialised nation who is activly shrinking their carbon foot print.
  I am not going to make any claims that the USSR was perfect, however it was certanly infintly better than what the US was provinding. However the Irrogation plans where to feed individuals and there it is more likely than not that the USSR if it still existed today would have worked on fixing said issue.
  As for Lake Karachay, Unfortunatly the organization who made the claim about the lake went bunk about 7 years ago, so I am having issues seeing who their funding sources are, The founder did create a follow up organization who by effect is based in DC and the founder seems to have deep conections to the United States government it does not suprise me that one of the biggest polutions of the Soviet Nuclear program is brought up, but nothing of the US nuclear program is mentioned, IE Bakini Atol.
  I also feel inclined to mention that most of the net polution is happening due to the lack of capitalists to want to do anything but maximise short term profits, and scream when anyone does anything to slow that growth, and that the nation doeing the most to decrease emmissions is the PRC.

If you can install toilets, make it entirely and consistently accessible for humans with disabilities, solve people who refuse to shower or understand how headphones are supposed to work you can convince me only then public transit should be considered a usable alternate form of transportation.

So far as I’ve seen the only people who are boasting public transport as a workable alternative never have to spend more than 20 minutes on a single bus to get to where they are going and have full use of their legs.

That’s the part where we are screaming for improved public transportation. Please try to keep up.
Also, and I’m sure you’ve seen it as it’s a popular thing to say now; don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
- And Don’t let your fear of feedback and overt ableism be the only inspiration for ideas, lil snowflake.

"Veganism"

Let's reign that in just a bit to Vegetarian for now. Incremental steps.

You can totally incrementally step towards veganism. That doesn't mean that veganism isn't the correct end goal.
- I think Veganism is just silly though. To completely disregard animal husbandry, forgo chickens laying eggs, cows making milk, all the things animals produce just seems like purposefully hindering ourselves when we still haven't figured out how to feed everyone.
  Start by replacing meat so we don't needlessly slaughter animals, sure, got me there, but I can't understand veganism as a practical solution to anything. It'll help climate change, sure, but it won't significantly impact it enough to solve it and we have better alternatives to doing that.
Plus, they forgot nuclear. Oh, and thoughts and prayers
- The difference is nuclear is a good solution.

HEMP

Veganism is the true renewable resource.

Personally I think "second hand" is the technology of the future.
Cannibalism also
- What a fucked up thing to say

The biggest technology needed is actually excavators so we can dig ditches everywhere to soak up rain water and refill aquifers. Also building retaining walls, terraces and swales using permaculture style water management to reforest degraded grazing lands.

I think we need those excavators do dig our own graves, because this will probably not happen.
- Yeah this needed to have started decades ago like when they figured out the model for climate change in the 50s

Im looking forward to the ant pizza from CyberPunk 2077.

No, seriously, I think it might actually taste good if you do it right.

What is that, a pizza for ants?!
- 🐜🇮🇹🍕🤌

Degrow already!

None of these things are a solution – they're measures for extending our status quo and minimizing how fucked we are, but we're still guaranteed to be fucked.

Heat pumps really shouldn't be on this list. They're no magic bullet for heating. They require electricity to run. As it gets colder outside the heat pump loses efficiency until you're somewhere in the teens and you'd just be better off using straight electric heat strips in your air handler. Most electricity generation still creates carbon emissions. High efficiency gas furnaces create very low carbon emissions. I have an open-air natural gas fireplace insert that can run unvented (probably shouldn't, but it can) do to how well it combusts it's fuel leaving virtually no CO.

We seem to be having a lot of success with heat pumps here in Canada.
Yeah it's not going to work on the coldest of days. Yes you need to have a secondary source of heat for those days. Yes it uses electricity.
But there many days that you need heating which aren't the coldest of days. And a heat pump will save you lots of money on your heating bill. Electricity can be generated without fossil fuels. The percentage of electricity generated by fossil fuels is dropping.
- Also geothermal heat pumps are a thing. They're way more efficient than air source heat pumps on the most extreme days.

Veganism isn't inherently better for the environment. You're looking for sustainable agriculture. End goal would be a hydroponic grow tower, powered by renewables. Perfect growing conditions year round with little to no runoff. Doesn't work for all crops currently, and takes a ton of power to operate, though.

Veganism IS inherently better for the environment. If everyone went vegan right now, the agricultural industry would use only 25% of the land, and global emissions would reduce by 20-25%.
Not to mention the animals!
- Ah, I see I didn't say the silent part out loud. I didn't mention animals specifically because meat production is stupidly bad for the environment, so incorrectly assumed that was a given. I was specifically saying veganism isn't inherently better than a vegetarian diet, not eliminating technical animal by-product like honey. I suppose there isn't a term for "things that vegans won't eat because technically an animal by-product, but still not terribly bad for the environment, at least not any worst than growing other vegetables on an induatrial scale". Think things like cricket flour. Not vegan, but not ecologically bad either.

Good job not listing trees. You had one job OP.

I don't know what "second heat" is, but I want a hand pump...

It means buying used rather then buying new. Too much usable shit gets thrown out and nee shit gets made to replace it. That uses fossil fuels to do.
- He was making a "Don't dead open inside" bit where if you read the text wrong it says "second heat" and "hand pump" instead.
  "Second heat" sounds like runner's high for sex.