Good, now get me off this planet.

Not how economics work.

Agreed geoengineering is bad science/engineering IMO. You can’t know what the long term effects would be until after its been deployed. The safest bet would be to just ditch fossil fuels but that’s not as sexy.

The land barons of CA are no joke. They are a problem that we are going to have to deal with one way or another.

As a born/raised/living Californian I can attest to the fact that its not California that is the problem. But as my ancestors would say it’s “El Pinche Gringo’s” that tend to be the problem.

IMO its a “meh”. Oil production is currently at an energy neutral state(amount of energy needed to extract is equal to the energy provided), in a decade or so its going to hit energy negative(energy needed to extract is more then energy provided). What should be happening is slow/begin halting extraction and storing all of that oil in the ground just in case we might need that energy surplus at some point in the future but that hurts quarterly profit returns so the oil executive solution to it is “suck it dry, not my problem”.

Because he is not an actual progressive. Hes just a spoiled rich kid who like to pretend to be a progressive.

People know whats going on and the reactions are numerous to count. Nihilism/apathy tend to win out not because we don’t have solutions already on the table to solve it but because those solutions are not consumer based and easy. We are not going to solve this via a magic bullet, fusion power isn’t going to solve the underlying problem of consumerism/neo-liberal capitalist economics.

We are not powerless to make the change, thinking that way only empowers those who have no problem with killing the planet for profit. There are millions of people all over the world actively working on changing the economic conversation away from GDP growth and consumerism to something else, however they don’t get the broadcast airtime in the US. There is degrowth, postgrowth, environmental socialism, doughnut economics, etc all with different ways/ideas to build an economy without consuming the planet in the process.

Honestly the best action an individual can take is join a group or organization that is actively trying to shift the conversation. Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future are just a small sample of the millions of organizations and groups who are actively trying to build a better future, find a local group where you live and join in-person. The work is going to be long and hard but the hardest part requires individuals to put their own ego in check and do the work not for their own personal benefit but for the benefit of the collective and generations to come. We are powerful together, but divided and stewing in our own misery and loathing about the hand we have been collectively dealt doesn’t solve anything. If anything it makes it worse. What works is getting involved with your local community, talking to people, building networks of support and collective activism. The more we do that the better shot we have at staving off the worse possible future.

IMO I think the “doom and gloom” messaging has backfired into apathy and nihilism. Yes we should be honest with the seriousness and severity of the situation but I think it’s more important to provide and message hope. Also provide solutions, alternative economic systems, simpler and happier lifestyles, and especially pathways to off-ramp from the consume till we die society that we currently live in.

I like the writers observation that using environmentally safe products but then consuming more of them still lands us back to the same problem of not enough resources to provide such consumptive lifestyles. I disagree with the point that Doughnut Economics is just greenwashing because it’s not explicitly “degrowth”. Doughnut Economics is about Degrowth, it just makes the point that no matter how much you shrink the economy there are some basic services you need to provide for everyone. Doughnut Theory calls them the social foundations and you can’t go bellow that. How the book addresses shrinking the economy but still providing enough for the social foundations is by “decentralization” of power, finance and ownership.

Oh yeah at this time vertical farming is not suitable for staple crops. However because fruits/veggies lose a majority of their nutritional content when being transported growing them indoors closer to population centers makes more sense. Also would like to mention that the energy and carbon cost to an indoor farm are currently high right now however lots of work is being done to reduce those costs. Not saying it will ever be 0 but we can get closer. Like 3D printing hydroponic towers using recovered and repurposed plastic, integrating them into aquaculture systems to do aquaponics to provide a protein and high quality fertilizer source, placing them in skyscrapers with open walls to take better advantage of natural sunlight, etc. The current strategy of using climate control systems and LED lights is not the way forward IMO but hell it’s a start in a field of agriculture that hasn’t been touched in decades.

There is also the fact that they consume a lot less water. In regions where solar and wind energy are a surplus but fresh water is scarce, indoor farming makes more sense.

I have been studying Doughnut Theory. IMO its all about metrics/measurement and Doughnut Theory gives a robust way to measure the actual health of an economy/society. You got your social foundations which you have to ensure everyone gets, and you have your ecological ceilings which are your limits on natural resource use/extraction. So the challenge is how do you build business, finance and law to do that.

https://anarchosolarpunk.substack.com/

I mean water amount on the Colorado river is one problem of the Colorado Compact. There is a whole lot of other problems that make the whole compact nonviable in the 21st century that are going to need to be worked out in some sort of Western States congress.

They have a lot of farm land that they buy alfalfa from but water rights are a bit different. Water rights are based on the “doctrine of prior appropriation” which means the water from the river goes to the body that is able to claim first “beneficial” use for that water, beneficial as defined as economically beneficial. Los Angeles and many Imperial Valley farmers primarily used that to build massive water infrastructure projects to divert massive amounts of water from the Colorado for projected growth. Those rights to that water are locked, however because of the crises on the Colorado river system the entire Colorado River compact is coming into question which has the doctrine of prior appropriation as a foundation to the water legal system in the west.

Just for some additional context the Colorado River Compact is essentially the West’s version of the constitution. Its a water treaty governing commerce and political power in the West. Keep in mind the American West is a desert and the only real thing of true value in a desert is freshwater. There is an old west saying “whiskeys for drinking, waters for fighting over”, and people did fight over water out here.

Its always fun watching the media machine work in real time. COP was a joke to begin with, it was a joke at the end. Nothing in that statement has any real measurements on how/when they are going to stop fossil fuel use and that’s because they legitimately don’t have one. The profit margins, the societal infrastructure that is built on fossil fuel use make them not want to touch it. They are addicted to constant non-stop GDP growth and nothing gets them there faster then using fossil fuels.

I have hope. My state Doughnut economics group just got funding to publish and distribute our state doughnut portrait and we are looking to expand to local towns/municipalities. The EU also had a degrowth conference to talk about economic/ecological overshoot. It looks dire now but momentum is building for some sort of shift, what that is and how it plays out is still anyone’s guess. All I am saying is don’t give up hope, fight as if your life depended on it because frankly it does.

Its only popular because the cold war happened and there was a widespread campaign in the US to ingrain neo-liberal economic thinking into the general public. Its no different then people in Europe in the dark ages not being able to see anything besides the divine right of kings as the form of rule. At some point though something comes along forcing us to question it all and thats when the flood gates open. For Europe it was the black plague, for us it was the 08 financial crises.

It is being discussed but in the context of Economics. Neo-liberal economic theory presupposes an economy that is infinitely growing and infinitely consuming. That is running head-on to the fact that there are natural limits to our consumption. Politicians, financial/business leaders and mainstream economists have skirted by talking about serious issues when it comes to health, society and equality by saying “growth will even it all out”. Now growth hasn’t even things out its just made inequality worse, our planets biosphere is collapsing and our leaders have no answers, why? Because they have been brainwashed by sudo-science and fairy tales of infinite growth and wealth.

People are discussing solutions to this within the context of Degrowth, ecological economics and doughnut economics. However those theories are not popular to the mainstream because it accepts limits and advocates for things like wealth redistribution and limits on wealth, and the extremely rich/powerful don’t like that.