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I'm sure you may have seen a lot of "how to inoculate yourself against climate disinformation" posts, but we're experiencing a huge amount of content paid for by Fossil Fuel Interest's to put pressure on the internet. And it's been really concentrated for a few months.
The funding is pushing for a cultural shift for people who are undecided in the climate conversation and are possibly more easily swayed. And it's important to remember, fossil fuel interests wouldn't pay for it if they didn't need it.
Most of the disinfo looks like "yeah climate change is real but we can't possibly do anything to fix it" or "these solutions simply don't work." about solutions that are tried and true. They look a lot like nuanced takes, but specifically are trying to motivate inaction.
So if you wake up today and ask "what can I do today that makes a difference?" is honestly post a lot to tip the scales regarding the presentation climate solutions. Silly or serious, for example posting about renewables getting you excited, community food forests that are feeding people, cool solutions to targeting methane, etc. Post about a climate book or show you liked, or whatever. Just make sure it's clear to an onlooker that there are people who believe climate change is anthropogenic, it was mostly caused by extractive practices and fossil fuel use, and that we can still demand rapid action to fix it. And all of this is true, because the science supports it.
What is weird to me is that the technical solutions are there. They are known, they are old. And they are opposed.
As an engineer I would like to help, but after being asked to sign a petition against nuclear power, against a solar power plant, against electric vehicles, and hearing environmentalists complain about wind turbines, stating batteries will never be a solution, inventing resources depletion problems (for non-fossil materials there is zero depletion problem) I am really wondering if we do want to solve the problems.
There are many scenarios towards a renewable future that are totally doable. From the "business as usual, just replace fossils with renewable electricity" to an ungrowth scenario, a whole spectrum in between and for all a nuclear option depending on your preferences, it is only a matter of political will.
Yours is just one of many versions of 'why I personally don't do anything': I'm all for change, but the others don't want!
Society will never be fully aligned on the solutions and you cannot expect everyone to agree with you, but you still can work for your preferred solutions in smaller groups?
I do many things but the impact is limited. I switched to heat pump and soon to EV but I can't change my country's electric mix by myself. Indeed, the others don't want. Because it would be easy if they would. I'll continue vote and support people who want to solve this and to be fair, we are getting there, just too slowly.
That's fine: I am working on other changes as an engineer, trying to make AI and robotics veer away from a dystopian timeline. There are other fights where I am more useful
I would love to hear about your work if you’re willing. I am so fascinated by the potential of robots in a solarpunk future.
Edited to add that I appreciate you knowing what fight is yours and what isn’t. It’s certainly a necessary skill for mental health and focus nowadays.
With pleasure!
I am working on 2 things:
Professionally (but switched to part time this year) I am helping a typical startup create an AI tool to help medical researchers. We are a lot on that niche but I am frankly afraid at how many companies do not seem to understand how crucial accuracy is in the medical field and just slap together models and vector DBs without understanding what they are doing. I think and hope there is potential to actually have an impact on life expectancy there so I will work on that project for as long as the company pays me for and probably would do something similar in open source if it kills the project.
Half professionally (technically doing it on free time but still getting minimum wage compensation for that) at a non-profit I am assembling and programming an automated fleet of 3 robots to explore the feasibility to automate the assembly of mechanical machines. We are receiving public funding to explore that in the field of "alternate vehicles". Here is a post I made on a show event organized by the effort (I recommend trying to translate the post in French if you are interested in the thing, it has more info in it). My goal is to automate small scale production of open hardware projects. There are tons of useful machines publishing their plans out there but few of them are duplicated. It often takes a week of work to make it happen and I aim at lowering that cost. Hopefully eventually all you will have to do is to buy components, put them on a shelf and let the machine assemble the project, only asking for help on very specific actions.
About fights my general philosophy is that one ought to focus on one big subject to fight for but remain an ally (or at least not an obstacle) in all the other fights they deem worthy. It can happen that people who can't devote all the time they would love to a cause rationalize it by belittling the cause (I guess it is a kind of cognitive dissonance. I wish I could help ecologists, feminists, antifa, antiracists, educators, social workers, medical practitioners, worldwide anarchists, but there is only so many time for these things. However when I stumble upon low hanging fruits that can help them or barriers that are easy for me to remove, I'll do. Also remember: giving time to a cause is good, but unless you can devote a good percentage of your free time to it, sending money is usually preferable and even $5 helps.
Those projects both sound exciting to work on! What a fun field to be in.
And yeah, we’ve got a similar philosophy regarding things to engage with. I’m having trouble implementing it though 😬