Climate Nearing “Point of No Return”

[Hawki]

The transition in sources of power is perfectly possible through a combination of renewables as the primary focus, with nuclear providing that which renewables cannot in the short term.

I'm not sure if you're saying this, but to be clear, nuclear and renewables really don't mix. Like, really, REALLY don't mix.

There's people who can explain this better than I can, but basically, renewables are dispatchable in their output/delivery, nuclear isn't. Nuclear is designed to have constant baseload power, renewables work well in filling gaps. Nuclear plants aren't designed to have their output constantly fluctuate. Heck, coal-fired power stations aren't, and it's part of the reason why gas is preferable to coal because it is dispatchable. We've had a lot of problems in Oz because not only are our coal-fired stations ageing, but they really aren't suited to jack in and out in response to renewables.

So, TL, DR, nuclear is great, renewables are great, but they aren't great together on the same grid.

We know this is realistically practical because some countries are already well on the way, and have shifted huge proportions of their national energy production over just a small number of years.

To an extent, but that's really underestimating the scale of the energy transition required. Globally, renewables are still around 11% of electricity, that drops below 10% if you consider industry and transport.

To be clear, this isn't an argument against doing so - there's plenty of reasons to do so - but it's not going to be a small feat.

It would be ideal to shift our attitudes to consumption in all areas-- housing, travel, food etc. But there's no reason at all this would need to be both simultaneous, and also at great speed in all areas. But as I outlined above, we currently drastically overconsume in travel and farming, and big drivers here are 1) low quality intensive farming; and 2) luxury, frequent tourism, chartered flights and international business 'facilitation'.

I can't argue against point 2, point 1...depends on what you mean by "low quality intensive farming." For instance, big ag tends to get a bad rap, but acre for acre, it's more efficient than small acre farming. The debate over organic vs. synthetic farming is another example of this. But for instance, the most effective farming per capita per acre is, IIRC, in Scandinavia, because of the ability to grow lots of crops on small tracts of land. There's a lot wrong with fertilizer overuse, but intensive ag has spared a lot of the world's surface from being further converted into agriculture.

I'm definitely not saying these solutions are easy. But they're definitely available-- climatologists agree and point to them all the time-- and the primary barrier is political will and industry intransigence rather than practicality.

It's certainly possible, and I hope it is, but I've read plenty of articles that say it isn't. For instance, "bright green environmentalism" would generally say "yes they can," "deep green environmentalism" would say "no they can't."

There's certainly a lot of political barriers - oil companies have every incentive to delay the transition, companies like Exxon have muddied the waters for about five decades - but there's practical ones as well.[/quote]

 

[Hawki]

Climate change? Nah taking over Ukraine is more important #humans

Which, ironically, kinda sped up the green transition in Europe, so...yay?

 

[Thaluikhain]

I'm not sure if you're saying this, but to be clear, nuclear and renewables really don't mix. Like, really, REALLY don't mix.

There's people who can explain this better than I can, but basically, renewables are dispatchable in their output/delivery, nuclear isn't. Nuclear is designed to have constant baseload power, renewables work well in filling gaps. Nuclear plants aren't designed to have their output constantly fluctuate. Heck, coal-fired power stations aren't, and it's part of the reason why gas is preferable to coal because it is dispatchable. We've had a lot of problems in Oz because not only are our coal-fired stations ageing, but they really aren't suited to jack in and out in response to renewables.

So, TL, DR, nuclear is great, renewables are great, but they aren't great together on the same grid.

Er...depends what you mean. It's not easy to stop and start burning large amounts of coal to change the amount of steam you are generating, but it is easy to divert steam away from turbines to reduce how much power you are generating.

As for renewables generating an inconsistent amount of power, I'm sure there would be industrial processes which don't need constant power that could be scaled don when there's less being produced, however there's little interest in that so far.

I can't argue against point 2, point 1...depends on what you mean by "low quality intensive farming." For instance, big ag tends to get a bad rap, but acre for acre, it's more efficient than small acre farming. The debate over organic vs. synthetic farming is another example of this. But for instance, the most effective farming per capita per acre is, IIRC, in Scandinavia, because of the ability to grow lots of crops on small tracts of land. There's a lot wrong with fertilizer overuse, but intensive ag has spared a lot of the world's surface from being further converted into agriculture.

Can we stop growing water intensive crops in areas subject to drought? That'd be great.

 

[Silvanus]

I'm not sure if you're saying this, but to be clear, nuclear and renewables really don't mix. Like, really, REALLY don't mix.

There's people who can explain this better than I can, but basically, renewables are dispatchable in their output/delivery, nuclear isn't. Nuclear is designed to have constant baseload power, renewables work well in filling gaps. Nuclear plants aren't designed to have their output constantly fluctuate. Heck, coal-fired power stations aren't, and it's part of the reason why gas is preferable to coal because it is dispatchable. We've had a lot of problems in Oz because not only are our coal-fired stations ageing, but they really aren't suited to jack in and out in response to renewables.

So, TL, DR, nuclear is great, renewables are great, but they aren't great together on the same grid.

Countless countries use both. My own country (the UK) derives ~40%+ from renewables, and ~15% from nuclear, and aims to increase both proportions. Same grid, no barrier to increasing it, and successfully lowering fossil fuel usage (albeit not quickly enough).

Every issue you've outlined can be circumvented through proper planning.

To an extent, but that's really underestimating the scale of the energy transition required. Globally, renewables are still around 11% of electricity, that drops below 10% if you consider industry and transport.

To be clear, this isn't an argument against doing so - there's plenty of reasons to do so - but it's not going to be a small feat.

This is primarily because very little political will to do so exists in quite a few countries. Enormous exporters of fossil fuel being the major culprits (Saudi Arabia, Russia etc), and the fossil fuel-addicted energy countries with massive lobbying presence in wealthy importers (such as the US).

I can't argue against point 2, point 1...depends on what you mean by "low quality intensive farming." For instance, big ag tends to get a bad rap, but acre for acre, it's more efficient than small acre farming. The debate over organic vs. synthetic farming is another example of this. But for instance, the most effective farming per capita per acre is, IIRC, in Scandinavia, because of the ability to grow lots of crops on small tracts of land. There's a lot wrong with fertilizer overuse, but intensive ag has spared a lot of the world's surface from being further converted into agriculture.

In short: high density and high biomass, lower cost farming, in order to provide for the fast food industry and keep overheads low.

You could argue those lower overheads mean lower prices for consumers. But of course, most of that saving gets funnelled to shareholders anyway. You could maintain the lower cost to consumers at a cut to shareholder profit instead-- if the political will was there.

It's certainly possible, and I hope it is, but I've read plenty of articles that say it isn't. For instance, "bright green environmentalism" would generally say "yes they can," "deep green environmentalism" would say "no they can't."

The 'deep green' movement is naive and self-defeating, the ecological equivalent of those revolutionaries in the political sphere who intentionally obstruct progress just to push people into more desperate circumstances because they think it'll forment uprising. An unrepresentative, very small, and effectively regressive fringe.

 

[Ag3ma]

I'm not sure if you're saying this, but to be clear, nuclear and renewables really don't mix. Like, really, REALLY don't mix.

There's people who can explain this better than I can, but basically, renewables are dispatchable in their output/delivery, nuclear isn't. Nuclear is designed to have constant baseload power, renewables work well in filling gaps. Nuclear plants aren't designed to have their output constantly fluctuate. Heck, coal-fired power stations aren't, and it's part of the reason why gas is preferable to coal because it is dispatchable. We've had a lot of problems in Oz because not only are our coal-fired stations ageing, but they really aren't suited to jack in and out in response to renewables.

So, TL, DR, nuclear is great, renewables are great, but they aren't great together on the same grid.

This is sort of wrong.

Firstly, dispatchability is the ability of a controller to adjust output as required. Renewables are not dispatchable: the output is dependent on wind / sun etc. Nuclear is dispatchable, although was traditionally seen as not (or at least, not within short timescales to adjust to rapid changes in need).

Secondly, your info is partly true and also kind of out of date. In the old days, once the reactor is started, the reactor chamber operated in narrow ranges. However, over the last few decades a lot of work has gone into giving them much wider operating ranges - whether at the level of reactor output or the conversion to electricity. The French have designed nuclear power stations that can operate over a wide range and capable of moving between min and max in under an hour: this offers plenty of flexibility. However, obviously many older power stations that have not been adapted will lack this flexibility.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Can we stop growing water intensive crops in areas subject to drought? That'd be great.

Can? Yes. Will? Fuck no.

 

[Gergar12]

I actually have a contrarian opinion in regard to climate change. You better hope you die before climate change is either fixed or kills lots of the planet.

There is evolving biomedical research that suggests radical life extension is possible, which basically means even if we solve climate change, we will not all be living in European-like cities with communities, etc. We will be working in quantum computers with AR glasses in cubicles for the rest of our long, but miserable lives with pills that make us peak performers well into our 100s. Have fun. And basically, people will get even more risk averse than today since you only have one life, and you wouldn't want to risk your long life for a revolution.

Have fun, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

There is not this massive consensus that there is some climate emergency right now or in the near future. There is a consensus that human activity is causing the globe to get warmer but that does not equal there is a climate emergency. To think that we know all this complicated stuff is just great hubris by humans. The following video about freaking muscle cramps popped on my feed today and we don't even know what causes a muscle cramp of all things. And you think we know exactly how the climate works and our models are super accurate? Did ya'll notice notice how horribly inaccurate covid models were? Lastly, let's do nuclear power!!!


---

To stop it, people would need to accept drastically lower life standard, they will never ever do that. Covid/lockdown asked something that was maybe 1/20 as hard as seriously tackling climate change and a good chunk of the population lost their mind about that.

I think a lot of people also don't realize that it would affect all aspect of societies and would require really harsh choice. Like healthcare would need to be severely curtailed, a lot of people living in rural area would have their service cut off, personal car wouldn't really be available anymore, meat would become a luxury item and so on. People are not willing to accept any of that.

Huh, how is people not willing to do something that people need to do to be healthy some negative? People not giving up needs is not the same as people not giving up wants. Also, there was nothing people could actually do to stop covid so it was basically pointless anyway. Again, people need meat to be healthy (it's far far more nutritious than vegetables/fruit), meat is not gonna be nor does it need to be some luxury item.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

I knew it! Fucking knew it wouldn't be long till their climate change denial. The prophecy is complete! Congratulations on being the most predictable account here.

 

[Hawki]

There is not this massive consensus that there is some climate emergency right now or in the near future.

News to me.

There is a consensus that human activity is causing the globe to get warmer but that does not equal there is a climate emergency.

Highly debatable.

To think that we know all this complicated stuff is just great hubris by humans.

We don't know everything about everything, but everything we do know points to the facts that:

a) The planet is getting warmer

b) The warming is driven by human activities

c) There's more CO2 in the atmosphere right now than at any point for the last 800,000 years

d) Global average temperatures have risen about 1.2/1.3 degrees since the industrial revolution, and things get worse the greater the warming

e) Ice cover is diminishing, corals are bleaching, sea levels are rising, etc.

Yes, we don't know everything about everything (for instance, the science of tipping points is largely up in the air), but everything we do points to what I've said above and more.

And you think we know exactly how the climate works and our models are super accurate?

The models have been accurate, and if anything, have been too conservative in a lot of areas.

And before you say anything, less, not every projection has come true. For instance, until a few decades ago, we were on a modelled pathway to 4 degrees of warming by 2100, right now, the consensus is more like 3 degrees, and if we meet every goal of the Paris Accord (fat chance), we're looking at about 1.8 degrees. There's uncertainty in projections, yes, but all the projections point in the same direction, and the direction is bad.

Lastly, let's do nuclear power!!!

Do it where it already exists, I'm less sure about doing it where it doesn't.

The price of nuclear has only gone up, the price of renewables has gone down. Storage is the main Achilles heel, and even there, things are going down.

Also, there was nothing people could actually do to stop covid so it was basically pointless anyway.

Yes, there was nothing we could do against Covid. Except, y'know, wear masks, sanitize hands, vacinate...nothing at all...

Fun fact, Covid was one of the least severe pandemics in human history, and a lot of that is due to how much better we've got at responding to them.

Again, people need meat to be healthy (it's far far more nutritious than vegetables/fruit), meat is not gonna be nor does it need to be some luxury item.

That's debatable. But even then, meat has far more impact on the environment (especially beef) than vegetables. Even if we accept that meat is healthier than vegetables/fruit, that doesn't change the facts on the ground.

I knew it! Fucking knew it wouldn't be long till their climate change denial. The prophecy is complete! Congratulations on being the most predictable account here.

BUT WEZ DONT NOW ALZ DA FATZ!

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Yes, there was nothing we could do against Covid. Except, y'know, wear masks, sanitize hands, vacinate...nothing at all...

No no no, see, if something doesn't fix 100% of the problem 100% of the time, it's not worth doing at all. Perfection is the logical and accepted enemy of good

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

We've been crossing "points of no return" for decades with regards to climate change. It's a phrase that I don't think should be used.

Since at least 2006 (when An Inconvenient Truth was released and the general public started paying attention to global warming) we've had scientists and media throw around words like "tipping point" and "point of no return" and then nothing significant happens. The world doesn't end. Sure, natural disasters slowly get worse over time, but that fact that we cross these thresholds and life just continues on as normal is what convinces dumb people that climate change is a hoax and just fear mongering by "radical leftists" who want to take away their lifted trucks.

These kinds of phrases don't do anything to help convince people that climate change is real, it makes them less likely to listen, just like you're unlikely to care about the guy at the freeway off-ramp yelling about then end being nigh and needing to repent.

 

[Kwak]

These kinds of phrases don't do anything to help convince people that climate change is real, it makes them less likely to listen, just like you're unlikely to care about the guy at the freeway off-ramp yelling about then end being nigh and needing to repent.

So what - it's still a technical fact.
Appealing to the fucking stupid herd mentality of humans is a different skillset altogether which has nothing to do with acknowledging hard facts. Climate scientists aren't ad executives.
Maybe it's that particular scum's time to shine.
Well, except that there is no multi-billion dollar account associated with promoting the preservation of literal fucking life on fucking planet earth.

 

[Baffle]

We've been crossing "points of no return" for decades with regards to climate change. It's a phrase that I don't think should be used.

Since at least 2006 (when An Inconvenient Truth was released and the general public started paying attention to global warming) we've had scientists and media throw around words like "tipping point" and "point of no return" and then nothing significant happens. The world doesn't end. Sure, natural disasters slowly get worse over time, but that fact that we cross these thresholds and life just continues on as normal is what convinces dumb people that climate change is a hoax and just fear mongering by "radical leftists" who want to take away their lifted trucks.

These kinds of phrases don't do anything to help convince people that climate change is real, it makes them less likely to listen, just like you're unlikely to care about the guy at the freeway off-ramp yelling about then end being nigh and needing to repent.

I kind of agree, but also it's not really a complicated idea that there can be multiple points of no return as we get further and further away from where we want to be (let's say, it's overwriting the ideal save game before you should've stocked up before the big boss fight, so now the furthest back you can start is immediately before the big boss fight, and you've run out of potions).

But some ideas are just too big to comprehend. I often stare directly into the sun, amazed that something so far away is the only reason we're here at all.

 

[Kwak]

I kind of agree, but also it's not really a complicated idea that there can be multiple points of no return as we get further and further away from where we want to be (let's say, it's overwriting the ideal save game before you should've stocked up before the big boss fight, so now the furthest back you can start is immediately before the big boss fight, and you've run out of potions).

But some ideas are just too big to comprehend. I often stare directly into the sun, amazed that something so far away is the only reason we're here at all.

How's your vision these days?

 

[Baffle]

How's your vision these days?

Bits round the edges are fine.

 

[meiam]

Bollocks. Climatologists and researchers are quite clear about where the biggest changes can be made, and a lot of them don't require drastic lowering of living standards. Transitioning onto renewables and nuclear is more than possible without widespread pain. So is preventing the methane leakages through better maintenance.

Shifting away from overconsumption of meat might be frustrating for some, but there's absolutely no reason it would need to become a "luxury". We currently hugely overfarm and overconsume it for no better reason than people like the taste and want battery-farmed slurry available for fast food.

As for transport-- a huge proportion of plane journeys are simply completely unnecessary. Constant chartered flights and luxury, short-term flights to facilitate business, or tourism for the wealthy who fly more than once every year for pleasure. Completely unnecessary, no great sacrifice for the average person.

The idea that tackling climate change necessitates drastic suffering for ordinary people is a myth peddled by those who have a vested (financial) interest in people giving up. Y'know what actually results in widespread suffering? The higher frequency of natural disasters as a direct result of climate change. Extinction rates and habitat loss as a direct result of climate change. Loss of habitable land for people who live in vulnerable island nations, as a direct result of climate change.

The change needed are clear, technologically feasible and easy, but they're simply impossible politically. Any government that would seriously tackle them would be expelled almost immediately.

But lets start with the practical, currently only a small portion of the world energy (including transport) come from renewable, and vast majority of that is hydro, which cannot be deployed widely. The current industrial capacity to make new renewable isn't very high, at current rate it would take over a century to entirely replace fossil fuel energy (remember that as more renewable come into existence, more of the industrial capacity will be needed to simply replace older one that break down). Therefore to quickly build up the necessary renewable would require building up an entire industry almost from scratch and then build up the actual renewable capacity. That in itself will take a tremendous amount of energy (ie CO2 emission) and time. In other word, even if we use a magic wand to magically make the entire world decided to seriously tackle climate change, it would still take decades of high CO2 emission to get there. Those decades will see even more climate disaster, and with every disaster people will demand that politician focus on repairing the damage and mitigating future disaster (people will never ever move away from high risk area, look at Venice if you want a clear example).

So this optimistic future would require the world to continue to provide for our current need, except in addition to that would need to completely rebuild the entire energy infrastructure and spend more and more on climate disaster. Where is all that extra capacity going to come from? Most developed country (ie one with the necessary skill and infrastructure) have low level of unemployment, especially among educated workforce and high level of dept. They simply don't have the capacity to build the necessary infrastructure without cutting elsewhere, those cut will require other things to stop being produce, those other things are consume by people currently because they want to. Cutting those things will therefore be really unpopular.

Again, look at covid and how much discontent there was after just a few months of lockdown, and imagine if you had to tell people that they would need to deal with more limitation over a much longer period of time (at least a decades, if not two). Do you seriously think the general population will just go "Oh okay, no problem"? Look most advanced country politic, the right are usually about 50% of the vote, do you really think if the left came out and said "A huge proportion of plane journeys are simply completely unnecessary, so we're banning personal plane transport" that's not going to immediately get the right into power? Now add "We currently hugely overfarm and overconsume it for no better reason than people like the taste and want battery-farmed slurry available for fast food, so were forcing people to eat less meat and slurry". Then add a bunch of other limitation to that. It's political suicide, plain and simple.

But fine, lets again use the magic wand to make it so everyone is okay with all this. It's an incredibly optimistic 2035 and all energy come from renewable, all car are electric, plane are almost non existent and meat eating is an once a week things. But the climate is still getting worse, climate slowly reach its equilibrium point, CO2 increase the amount of heat trapped, this increase water vapor in the air, which in turn increase the amount of heat trapped and so on. This cycle takes over a decade to stabilize, even if we stopped all CO2 production tomorrow, things would still get worse well into the 2030s. Add to that two massive carbon bomb, the permafrost and the bottom of the ocean, both contain massive amount of methane/CO2 and has they warm up they release more of it. So now you have a population that has been told that if they limit themselves a little bit it would be possible to defeat climate change, but they're told "actually that was only the first, and easiest, part. Now we need to build an entirely new industry from scratch to remove the excess CO2 from the atmosphere. No money for new investment in anything but this new industry is available" on top of that, large swath of the under developed world is now more or less inhabitable due to change of climate (look at this summer in India, imagine that except worse and every summer and sometime winter), the number of refugees trying to come to the developed world numbers in the hundreds of millions if not over a billion. Do you really think people it would be possible to sustain current life? And do you really think people will just accept that rather than vote for the first person to yell that its not necessary and that people should focus on other area?

 

[Silvanus]

The change needed are clear, technologically feasible and easy, but they're simply impossible politically. Any government that would seriously tackle them would be expelled almost immediately.

What is politically feasible can shift quite drastically in a short timeframe. The current measures already taken would've been considered politically impossible 1 or 2 decades ago.

But yes, it's the political sphere that remains intransigent, not the practical sphere.

But lets start with the practical, currently only a small portion of the world energy (including transport) come from renewable, and vast majority of that is hydro, which cannot be deployed widely. The current industrial capacity to make new renewable isn't very high, at current rate it would take over a century to entirely replace fossil fuel energy (remember that as more renewable come into existence, more of the industrial capacity will be needed to simply replace older one that break down). Therefore to quickly build up the necessary renewable would require building up an entire industry almost from scratch and then build up the actual renewable capacity. That in itself will take a tremendous amount of energy (ie CO2 emission) and time. In other word, even if we use a magic wand to magically make the entire world decided to seriously tackle climate change, it would still take decades of high CO2 emission to get there. Those decades will see even more climate disaster, and with every disaster people will demand that politician focus on repairing the damage and mitigating future disaster (people will never ever move away from high risk area, look at Venice if you want a clear example).

And yet, countries have managed to significantly increase their renewable output in just a few years. These barriers can clearly be overcome.

So this optimistic future would require the world to continue to provide for our current need, except in addition to that would need to completely rebuild the entire energy infrastructure and spend more and more on climate disaster. Where is all that extra capacity going to come from? Most developed country (ie one with the necessary skill and infrastructure) have low level of unemployment, especially among educated workforce and high level of dept. They simply don't have the capacity to build the necessary infrastructure without cutting elsewhere, those cut will require other things to stop being produce, those other things are consume by people currently because they want to. Cutting those things will therefore be really unpopular.

Again, look at covid and how much discontent there was after just a few months of lockdown, and imagine if you had to tell people that they would need to deal with more limitation over a much longer period of time (at least a decades, if not two). Do you seriously think the general population will just go "Oh okay, no problem"? Look most advanced country politic, the right are usually about 50% of the vote, do you really think if the left came out and said "A huge proportion of plane journeys are simply completely unnecessary, so we're banning personal plane transport" that's not going to immediately get the right into power? Now add "We currently hugely overfarm and overconsume it for no better reason than people like the taste and want battery-farmed slurry available for fast food, so were forcing people to eat less meat and slurry". Then add a bunch of other limitation to that. It's political suicide, plain and simple.

But fine, lets again use the magic wand to make it so everyone is okay with all this. It's an incredibly optimistic 2035 and all energy come from renewable, all car are electric, plane are almost non existent and meat eating is an once a week things. But the climate is still getting worse, climate slowly reach its equilibrium point, CO2 increase the amount of heat trapped, this increase water vapor in the air, which in turn increase the amount of heat trapped and so on. This cycle takes over a decade to stabilize, even if we stopped all CO2 production tomorrow, things would still get worse well into the 2030s. Add to that two massive carbon bomb, the permafrost and the bottom of the ocean, both contain massive amount of methane/CO2 and has they warm up they release more of it. So now you have a population that has been told that if they limit themselves a little bit it would be possible to defeat climate change, but they're told "actually that was only the first, and easiest, part. Now we need to build an entirely new industry from scratch to remove the excess CO2 from the atmosphere. No money for new investment in anything but this new industry is available" on top of that, large swath of the under developed world is now more or less inhabitable due to change of climate (look at this summer in India, imagine that except worse and every summer and sometime winter), the number of refugees trying to come to the developed world numbers in the hundreds of millions if not over a billion. Do you really think people it would be possible to sustain current life? And do you really think people will just accept that rather than vote for the first person to yell that its not necessary and that people should focus on other area?

In short: there are difficulties with public acceptance and political will.

No shit. What's the lesson to take from that? It's not that we should therefore give up or slow down, because we're talking about an existential threat.

As much as you've talked about how impossible it all is, the fact is that the pace of change over the last decade-- albeit still much too slow-- has been faster than ever before. A jump to a huge proportion of my country's energy output being from renewables, for instance. And there hasn't been a corresponding collapse in living standards. And the costs haven't been unfeasible. This shift has actually been very easy to deal with, relatively speaking-- you're telling me that even wealthier countries cannot cope with this, without society falling apart? Gimme a break.

Costs can be borne. Climate levies on the wealthy are actually politically popular among voters. "Its impossible" is just the last in a long line of myths peddled by those who want us not to try. You can tell because climate scientists, the people who actually know what they're talking about, overwhelmingly agree that action is both possible and required.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Costs can be borne. Climate levies on the wealthy are actually politically popular among voters. "Its impossible" is just the last in a long line of myths peddled by those who want us not to try. You can tell because climate scientists, the people who actually know what they're talking about, overwhelmingly agree that action is both possible and required.

And even if the targets are impossible, if people try and all they achieve is a significantly less bad outcome, that's still not to be sniffed at.

 

[Silvanus]

And even if the targets are impossible, if people try and all they achieve is a significantly less bad outcome, that's still not to be sniffed at.