this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
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Climate
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
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How many billions dead people is that worth to you?
Conservative estimates are at 250k dead due to climate change each year starting 2030 and that is going to happen even if we go to zero emissions right now. The more we emit, the worse it is going to get. So far the war is at less then 10,000 deaths total. Obviously it is impossible to predict, but it could well net save lifes if you include climate deaths.
Obviously this should have been done without the war.
The carrying capacity of this planet without fossil fuels is less than half a billion people. You do not want a fast exit from fossil fuels.
We're already running out of middle destillates right now, so there's your exit willy-nilly.
The world population was at about a billion in 1804 and we do have better technologies today, which should increase the carrying capacity quite a lot. Also a lot of countries have falling populations already and fertility rates are below replacement on all continents but Africa today.
Can you name a few better technologies, which don't depend on fossil fuels (renewable energy sources do, as do fertilizers, industrial agriculture, transport and others).
I don't know whether you're right about inevitable dependencies, but surely reducing fossil fuel use to the essentials would still be a huge and worthwhile improvement? It feels like your argument is needlessly suggesting an all-or-nothing approach.
My argument is that we're not abandoning fossil fuels, but rather that fossil fuels are abandoning us. We have no degrees of freedom, no agency in the matter. And that void won't be substituted by anything else but classical biofuels and a small fraction of legacy wind, hydro and geothermal. Running a small population at roughly Edo period Japan technology level.