End Corporate Climate Retreat
This is a response to Sabine Hossenfelder’s video about giving up on climate goals.
Look, we all know we’ve passed the climate extreme tipping point. (That actually happened back in the late 1990’s.) And yes, watching corporations abandon their climate commitments while scrambling to squeeze out the last profits is frustrating. But here’s the thing – we’re not actually out of options. We’re just looking in the wrong places for solutions.
Here’s what we already know works: Buildings from before the AC era were actually better constructed – they naturally stay comfortable without expensive heating and cooling systems, and they don’t develop the mold problems we see in today’s rushed construction. We need to return to those proven building principles. And while we’re at it, we need to rebuild our towns to be walkable, human-scaled places where people can live without being forced to drive everywhere. Real farms should feed communities, not serve as corporate investment vehicles that push family farmers off their land.
The climate crisis is serious, but we already have most of the answers – they’re just not the fancy, expensive ones that corporations are trying to sell us. We need to stop pretending we need some magical new technology and start using the practical wisdom we already have. Every degree we prevent still matters, and the tools to do that are literally in our hands – we just need to use them.
- Use local building materials.
- Adopt city regs that allow wattle and daub, cobb, terracotta and thatch.
- Look closer at earthship-style homes
- Adopt Strong Towns measures
- Endorse slow organic growth like Tokyo or Amsterdam
- Make cities walkable, bikeable, with mass transit that’s preferable to personal cars.
- Abolish corporate control of city requirements and endorse people-controlled cities that favor the needs of people.
