In several European countries, plastic is sorted to be used in incinerators for local heat production.
Sure, it doesn’t count as renewable nor carbon-free energy, but it gets rid of the waste and makes double use of the oil extracted.
Agreed.
Our modern social apparatus: education, health, police, justice… contributes about 1.4 teqCO2/person/year. Just our breathing, for a single person, emits about 350kg of CO2/year. This carbon we breath out is accounted for from our food. But you have to understand that it is the absolute minimum a living human being can emit.
Now, that leaves about 250kg eqCO2/person/year for everything else: housing, heating, leisure, traveling, clothing… if we think we need to stay under 2t eqCO2. This completely impossible.
Whereas if we were half as many, like 50 years ago, 4t/person/year still enables us to live a modern life.
While there is some truth in this, humans and AI do not make the same type of mistakes with hands.
Humans will rebuild the topological structure of the hand: 5 fingers protruding from a base, and get the proportions wrong…while the topology is credible.
AI will rebuild the image of a hand from the 2d appearance of a hand: a variable number of flesh colored, parallel stripes, and improvise from that.
While both can get it wrong, the errors are not similar.
Python is actually a good example of this: see the mess that the transition from 2.6 to 3 generated.
Not really. We also have deductive capabilities (aka “system 2”) that enable us to ensure some level of proof over our statements.
And bankrupt and dispossess the lender if a disaster happens to their newly acquired home?
Renewables will inevitably become cheaper than fossil fuels, as the resource dwindles. The problem is how to make energy abundant enough to satisfy our current needs and those of the rest of the world, who expects to reach our standards of living?
(A: it’s not possible, nuclear can help, but only for a while, perhaps enough time for the demographic transition to complete)
In general, the price of a good in a competitive market is directly tied to its energy cost (either manual or machine labor), which is itself tied to its carbon footprint. If something is more expensive, it is very likely that its production emitted more GHG, or that you’re getting scammed.
As an exemple, beef is more expensive than chicken, which is itself more expensive than vegetables.
That’s why the best personal action to save on GHG emissions is still to become poorer/reduce your material comfort. Compensate with richer interactions with others and a sense of community.
Also, eating industrial food over organic:
First because, per calorie produced, organic farming emits 12 to 40% more green house gases.
(Depending on the study).
Second, because you’ll be less healthy and die sooner.
Stupidly click baity title. The only corporation that does not pollute is the one that doesn’t produce anything. Sure, regulations such as carbon taxes are necessary to contain negative externalities, but if there’s a demand for cheap products there will be a lowest bidder that will take all market share.
Lowering our consumption is unfortunately the way to make those companies pollute less.
The same type of program is being introduced at European universities.
In my doctoral school, this is a five hours course, presented as a MOOC. Not too sure it really is useful.
The educated public generally feels concerned about the subject, and such a generic course feels boring to its intended audience.
My go to answer is to say that I don’t have a mobile phone. Actually, I have one, but it’s only for personal contacts, not for institutions. When a clerk asks me for my phone number, I answer: sure, give me your phone number, I’ll text you my contact.
Same for administrations and my employer: my boss has my phone numbers but not HR in my company.
The only institution that has my phone number is my bank, and i’m seriously considering using an alternate authentication method for 2FA at my bank.
If enough of us do that, it won’t happen.
And unfortunately, the rebound effect nullifies iits ecological impact.
It says it has a “high res monitor”. For having learned to program graphics on this machine, we had to count the pixels to be able to fit our drawings in the screen: 512x342, that’s not a lot of screen real estate. The 640x480 PC screen was a luxury.
I do keep this monthly reminder that all my moves are tracked. I find it’s better to be kept aware of this than to play it like an ostrich.
This said, in Europe at least, opting out of this service should force google to drop your data, and retain it only in aggregate forms that do not allow reidentifying you.
The Helsinki declaration https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Helsinki
Is the reference for health sciences these days.