The most effective solution isn't to make people's lives harder, but to make their lives easier.
Manitoba, Quebec, and Norway all have large amounts of green energy through hydroelectric. Not everywhere can use hydroelectric, but as a first step anywhere that can use it should be using it (and a key point is that if we care about climate change then we need to accept the short term environmental cost of creating sustainable generating stations). In each jurisdiction (and many others), cheap carbon neutral energy starts off outcompeting carbon energy so fossil fuels aren't used for electricity generation. Then that cheap energy ends up supplanting fossil fuel use for home heating. In addition, industry will end up using the easy to use inexpensive electricity for what it does instead of burning fossil fuels -- a plant producing steam in Ontario (with somewhat higher electricity rates) will burn propane to produce steam for process use, but in Manitoba (with somewhat lower electricity rates) will use an electrical boiler.
For places that don't have the geography for hydroelectric, nuclear is a good option #2, as well as importing green energy from jurisdictions that have it.
So if we do that, we've already massively reduced carbon use in electricity generation, home heating, and industry.
So how about transportation, another major use of carbon?
The current strategy of EVs is unworkable on several fronts.
For personal transportation, we could have a larger immediate impact by making it easy to manufacture, easy to buy, easy to own, easy to use much smaller scale EVs. We could today make it easy to use city cars that cost less than $5,000, have limited range, and are good for daily commuting and can be charged on a standard wall receptacle with a normal breaker. It wouldn't get you to the next city and some people might still keep a second vehicle for long distance travel, but for many people such a vehicle would enable vehicle ownership where it wasn't possible before, and many people would likely consider such a vehicle for their daily use despite its limitations. These are something that can be manufactured locally if we make them easy to build and sell as well. Such vehicles will be less safe than a modern ICE vehicle in terms of stuff like crash tests but is climate change an existential threat or not? If it is, then something with such a large impact should be an acceptable trade-off, particularly since such vehicles would operate at lower speeds and not spend time on the highway.
For public transportation, this is a problem we've had solved for over 100 years. In my city we had electric buses that operated using overhead lines that worked in some of the most brutal weather conditions out there, as well as street cars that also function properly without batteries (batteries being massively environmentally damaging). They operated off of grid power. Let's just return to using these known good solutions. One major problem with public transit is that losers ruin it for everyone, so enforce a code of conduct on public transit and if you can't follow it you're kicked off (and the driver has the right to kick you out and they can easily get the police involved if need be) -- decent people should feel safe on public transit, and I'm also not opposed to making it free to use for people who are following the rules. Most countries have the capacity to build such streetcars themselves once we get rid of all the impractical advanced technologies being used ostensibly solely to let such vehicles be made proprietary.
Finally, there should be massive import taxes on any country that doesn't have the same level of environmental and labor protection as a given western country. Burn the picture of Dorian Gray so we need to live with the consequences of our choices.
All these solutions combined should make people's lives better, while also massively reducing the use of fossil fuels in electricity production, home heating, industry, and transportation.
sj_zero 2 months ago
I think one key difference between the current paradigm and my proposals is that we can do everything I suggest with current technology levels. We don't need major grid upgrades to add the equivalent of one normal breaker circuit to people's homes for small EVs for example.
Another major part is it'll make people's lives generally better which should be a key goal of sustainability. Currently we keep asking for more sacrifices and ironically that makes sustainability unsustainable because eventually people are going to push back because they keep being asked to give more and more when many people are struggling as it is.
I tend to think "green jobs" are a lie by politicians. Truly sustainable infrastructure such as hydro dams generally don't require a lot of jobs to keep running -- that's what makes it inexpensive in part, the water does most of the work. Instead, we can promote general jobs enabled by beneficial green investments. We can bring jobs back from places like China and manufacture things we need using green energy and locally sourced sustainable materials.
One other major thing is that recycling should be massively improved. If a city has a recycling plant, local industry should be able to buy recycled materials from it. If they can't then it isn't a recycling program and should be disbanded or repaired. It was a huge scandal a few years back that many "recycled" materials were just being dumped in Asia.