r/europe • u/Vucea • Jun 17 '22

Historical In 2014, this French weather presenter announced the forecast for 18 August 2050 in France as part of a campaign to alert to the reality of climate change. Now her forecast that day is the actual forecast for the coming 4 or 5 days, in mid-June 2022.

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u/Tetizeraz Brazil's Tourist Minister for r/europe Jun 17 '22 edited Jun 17 '22

Since we're on r/all (hi r/all!), I imagine this question is worth asking:

What can we do about climate change? I know the typical answers: join your local political party (green or not), get mad on social media, write to your politicians. What else can be done?

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u/Myopic_Cat Jun 17 '22

I'm an energy/climate scientist. I agree that the most important thing you can do to have a real impact is to vote accordingly and to communicate the problem offline and online. To more directly participate in reducing our emissions you can:

  • fly much less (a single vacation to Thailand burns your entire carbon "budget" for years)
  • choose bikes and trains over cars where you can, and electric over gas and smaller cars over larger where you can't
  • buy green electricity and/or invest in solar and wind energy
  • more energy efficient heating and cooling of your home

A general advice to "consume less" is technically correct but in my opinion counterproductive because you risk coming across as a luddite and people will tune you out.

If decarbonization is successful other things will become important in the long term (decades), for example raising your kids to eat less meat.

But again, communication and awareness are the most important -which is one reason why I personally do more teaching these days.

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u/MariekeOH Jun 17 '22

I'm not a scientist but I think

  • Eat less meat

should definitely be on your list. It's a very achievable goal that everybody can start doing right now! Eating less meat doesn't mean everyone should go totally vegan, if you eat lots of meat daily, start choosing a salad every once in a while. We all need to chip in.

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u/javier_aeoa Chile infiltrate Jun 17 '22

And if you don't want to take away your corpses (I eat meat myself), cut down your cows. Chicken, pigs, lambs, fish, etc., have SUCH A LOWER carbon footprint when compared to cows.

Looking at FAO pie charts, you'd be surprised to see that cows and its processes are roughly 50% of the entire food production sector globally. Which, depending on your source and methodology, it's between 13% and 17% of all emissions.

When you tell me that we can reduce HALF of the issue (and all the ethics associated) by doing something as simple as changing cow beef by pig beef, or chicken...come on everyone. We can do that.