In response to climate change and environmental breakdown, degrowth has become one of the key concepts in political ecology and related disciplines. Degrowth provides a critique of the ideology of growth measured as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a core objective for capitalist economies. It argues that degrowth is possible, desirable and necessary to halt further ecological destruction and to build socially just and ecologically sustainable societies.
Personally, I think we should plan for hot world and try to reduce emissions. I have very little faith in decarbonization efforts.
I have connections to inner energy company circles that work in renewables. When they get drunk, they openly admit to green washing. Unless governments seriously address this with sanctions and legal actions, it will never happen.
It’s like clogging your toilet. Unclogging it sucks, but it’s your fault. I don’t see this being fixed without serious uncomfortable painful corrective action. Governments don’t seem interested in that.
That’s more or less how I think about this. We need to face the fact that we’re some amount of fucked regardless, and start planning for how we’re going to survive that without society turning into a reenactment of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
A while ago, I did a rough calculation that we could create floating islands from tying plastic bottles together. My calculation accounted for enough dirt for trees (several meters of dirt) and enough land to grow vegetables and such.
Accounting for food and housing needs, it was like 10k people from Europe’s plastic bottle waste for a year.
Personally, I think something like Netherlands dikes would work in many places.
Not sure how to deal with the heat though. Unfortunately heat is thermodynamically useless without a sink. Space is a bad sink. Deep ocean maybe.