Many people claim AI can help us solve climate change, so I decided to ask Google Gemini.
It regurgitated the same points climate advocates have made for for over 40 years:
- Transition to Renewable Energy
- Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions
- Sustainable Agriculture and Land Use
- Climate-Resilient Cities and Infrastructure: Design cities to be more walkable, bikeable, and transit-oriented
- International Cooperation and Policy
So there we have it folks.
If you’ve been waiting for an LLM to give you the list of things we need to do to solve climate change, then you now have the answer as regurgitated by an AI.
Now let’s get on with it.
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #ChatGPT #ClkmateChange #ClimateCrisis #ChatGPT @fuck_cars
The question you should ask is “how do we get people to give a shit enough to be slightly inconvenienced in order to stop destroying humanity’s future?”.
It’s hard enough to convince people to eat plant based for a single day, or to offset a single car ride with their bike.
Yet we need the majority of people (and any corporations they run) to make a real effort, when they are too lazy, ignorant, uninterested, unmotivated, unwilling, too entitled, or narcissistic to take action.
Edit: fixed autocorrect chaos.
@Showroom7561 I respectfully disagree.
If the infrastructure is in place, then the sustainable option becomes the default easiest option, no personal choice or sacrifice needed.
For example: If your local grid is powered by renewables + storage, then no personal choice or sacrifice is needed. It’s the default that comes out of the socket.
It’s only if the grid is powered by gas and coal that personal choice and sacrifices (saving up for solar panels, using less electricity) are needed.
Another example: If you live within walking distance of a modern metro or a frequent bus with dedicated lanes, where services run more than once every 10 mins, then no personal choice or sacrifice is needed. It’s the default option because it’s often faster than getting stuck in traffic and finding parking.
It’s only where services run once every 15 minutes or less that sacrifice is needed.
Same goes for cycling when there’s a good city-wide network of protected bike lanes vs mixed traffic.
Or travelling domestically by train when there’s high speed rail vs no or slow, infrequent rail.
Or walking to the shops when they’re within walking distance of your house vs 30 mins walk away with no good footpaths.
Have the right Infrastructure in place, anf no sacrifice is needed.
Yes, of course i agree that having the right infrastructure in place can make the best choice the default.
However, we run into a problem.
Take your example, “If your local grid is powered by renewables + storage, then no personal choice or sacrifice is needed.”
In order for that to happen, a massive investment needs to be made, the right government (who supports the idea) needs to be in place, people need to be willing to pay more (for the implementation and cost of this greener tech), and the public needs enough reason to demand it.
In your other example, “Same goes for cycling when there’s a good city-wide network of protected bike lanes vs mixed traffic.”, we run into a similar set of issues, plus a twist:
Certain infrastructure, especially cycling infrastructure, doesn’t get built because there’s no demand. But there’s no (current) demand because such infrastructure doesn’t exist.
I’ve been to enough city planning meetings to know that this is a very real roadblock, and it’s hard to convince municipal planners to spend taxpayer dollars building cycling infrastructure without this demand already in place.
In that case, you do have to make an effort (and often a sacrifice) in order to be the demand that planners are looking for. But I’ll say that it’s often very difficult to convince someone to ride on (current) dangerous infrastructure to make a point.
The same could be said for public transit. And if you manage to convince your local government that there’s enough demand, it could be years or decades before the infrastructure is built.
I’ve looked at our region’s active transportation plans from years ago, and much of the planned bike lanes never happened, despite there still being a need. It’s incredibly frustrating.
But what about personal choices that can be made right now? Committing to a plant-based diet, making an effort to go plastic free, buying second hand when possible and not replacing things until they are broken, etc.
How do we convince individuals to make these personal choices, rather than have them wait for someone else to do something about climate change?
@Showroom7561 Again, with all due respect, climate change is fundamentally a systemic and structural problem.
It’s a collective problem.
The air pollution, hurricanes, droughts, floods, and heatwaves don’t just affect the people who burn fossil fuels. Or the people who profit off fossil fuels. Or the people who wastefully consume products with embodied carbon.
The rising floodwaters will not neatly flow around the home of Vicky the vegan while completely submerging SUV Steve’s house.
In economic terms, the hurricanes, bushfires, floods, droughts, and heatwaves are a massive externalised cost.
Collective problems need collective solutions. Systemic problems need systemic solutions.
I have nothing against sustainable individual choices.
But.
Individual consumer choices in the free market ain’t gonna fix this one. There needs to be policy change and infrastructure investment and public policy at the level of government.
Bad public policy — State investments in motorways and coal power plants, subsidies on fuel, helped create this mess.
The answer to bad public policy isn’t individual action. It’s good public policy.
There’s a reason the likes of BP have spent billions promoting individual consumer responses in the free market and carbon footprints.
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