{"id":19460,"date":"2016-04-03T12:29:54","date_gmt":"2016-04-03T17:29:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19460"},"modified":"2016-04-03T12:29:54","modified_gmt":"2016-04-03T17:29:54","slug":"false-solutions-3-ways-to-evaluate-grand-climate-proposals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19460","title":{"rendered":"False Solutions? 3 Ways To Evaluate Grand Climate Proposals"},"content":{"rendered":"
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False Solutions? 3 Ways To Evaluate Grand Climate\u00a0Proposals<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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The climate news gets scarier by the day. February\u00a0obliterated all records<\/a>\u00a0as the warmest seasonally-adjusted month since measurements began. At this rate, we\u2019re on a path to blow through the 1.5\u00ba C temperature rise the nations of the world\u00a0set as a goal at COP21<\/a>, not in decades but in a few short years.<\/p>\n

\"World_temperature_anomalies_for_Februari_2016___Datagraver\"
February temperature was a terrifying 1.35 degrees above the 1950-1980 global average for the month. (Blue line: monthly; Red line: 12 month moving average.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We\u2019re going to be hearing a lot about grand solutions to our climate emergency in the coming years. Even if\u00a0we were to bring\u00a0net global carbon emissions to zero by mid-century, experts say,\u00a0we\u2019d need to suck\u00a0<\/a>a massive amount\u00a0of carbon from the atmosphere to keep temperatures within a range of 1.5\u00ba-2.0\u00ba C this century.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s\u00a0no shortage of proposals for how to do this. People are talking about changing how we do agriculture; capturing carbon from power plants; painting roofs white; fertilizing the ocean; and even spraying gold dust into the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

How should\u00a0we evaluate the proposals we\u2019ll be hearing about to determine which ones to\u00a0support and which ones will\u00a0only lead to worse disasters?\u00a0We need a way to distinguish authentic\u00a0pathways to a sustainable civilization from false solutions. I suggest three\u00a0ways to consider\u00a0any proposal you might come across.<\/p>\n

1. Does\u00a0it push political power up or down the pyramid?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Political power is like a pyramid. At the top are the political leaders and \u00a0the billionaires. In the middle are the minority fortunate enough to enjoy\u00a0privilege. Most\u00a0of the world\u2019s population exists towards the bottom.<\/p>\n

New technologies have a way of pushing political power either up or down that pyramid. Nuclear power, for example, requiring massive centralized investment\u00a0along with\u00a0\u00a0extreme security, is\u00a0notorious for pushing power to the top.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Political
New technologies can push political power either up or down the pyramid.\u00a0\u00a9Jeremy Lent, 2016.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

False Solutions? 3 Ways To Evaluate Grand Climate\u00a0Proposals The climate news gets scarier by the day. February\u00a0obliterated all records\u00a0as the warmest seasonally-adjusted month since measurements began. At this rate, we\u2019re on a path to blow through the 1.5\u00ba C temperature rise the nations of the world\u00a0set as a goal at COP21, not in decades but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[141,13249,10451,369,13248,13250,786],"class_list":["post-19460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-emergency","tag-cop21","tag-global-warming","tag-patterns-of-meaning","tag-political-pyramid","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19461,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19460\/revisions\/19461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}