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Vex1om t1_izstf55 wrote

Reply to comment by DragoonXNucleon in [OC] Yearly Average Temperature in the UK, 1884 - 2021 by PieChartPirate

>We have to drastically cut and that means giving things up.

You're not wrong, but I'm not sure you understand how tightly society is tied to fossil fuels. Severe cuts that would actually move the needle wouldn't just be people putting on a sweater in winter and giving up air conditioning in the summer. It would literally mean that billions of people would have to give up eating as we try to grow crops without the use of fossil fuels-based fertilizers.

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GMN123 t1_izt2xr4 wrote

Getting off fossil fuels is not going to happen because anyone chose to. It'll be because better, cheaper alternatives come along. Like with electric cars, they aren't a compromise, they're an improvement.

We might be a little way off those improvements in others areas, but they'll come. When we develop fusion or a cheap mass storage option for renewables we'll not burn gas or coal for power or heating much longer.

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bitofrock t1_izt35ga wrote

We could stop using huge amounts of oil to create the huge amounts of food required to feed cattle that become our beef meat. And pets. Dear God, why are we buying carnivores as pets? We can do so much that would help and all we'll miss out on are cheap beef burgers. I can handle that.

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Vex1om t1_j00blob wrote

>We could stop using huge amounts of oil to create the huge amounts of food required to feed cattle that become our beef meat.

Technically, this would improve food yields relative to fertilizer utilization, but it does nothing to deal with fossil fuels for farm equipment, transport, processing, refrigeration, etc - and you would STILL need massive amounts of fertilizer to feed the existing population. The carrying capacity of the earth without advanced fertilizers is probably in the neighborhood of 3 to 4 billion people.

It's also politically untenable, of course. I think that you will find that the majority of the population is simply not willing to give up meat in their diets. A solution that nobody is able to implement isn't really much of a solution.

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