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[CW: Climate change] I do not want to be a doomer but...
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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2026
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Anarchism
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If anyone reading this hasn't yet done so, one thing I recommend to everyone is that to the extent that it's possible you should give up everything that involves burning fossil fuels.
I'm still indirectly responsible for some diesel use for example when I ride the bus, and when I buy rice that was transported thousands of miles before it got to me. When you've eliminated the easy stuff from your personal life such as driving and air travel it's those difficult problems that remain which are the ones that need will working on in order to help people prepare for the worst of the catastrophe.
So I think local politics and co-operative food production are places to look if you want to do something.
People like to complain about container ships, but they're ridiculously efficient at transporting cargo, because they transport so much in one go. If you use a container ship to transport only rice, you could probably transport something like 200 million kilograms.
Road transport produces something like 70% of emissions generated by freight transport globally. Sea is only 20%.
That means it's often less polluting to buy something made on the other side of the world, than from a few hundred miles away, depending on how close you live to the sea/port or a railway station.
Meh. The benefits of scale drive down prices, but one of the ways they do that is also by lowering fuel consumption. If you're producing everything on small farms, it's likely you'll use more fuel and create more emissions, than larger farms which can produce at scale and are hyper-efficient. For example, bigger farms use drones and nutrient maps, which allow them to be very targetted in where they sow seeds and spread fertiliser, which means they use much less fertiliser, which means less fuel used.
Farming efficiently also really isn't something for amateurs. Plenty of large scale farmers have engineering degrees for that very reason, or employ people who do.
While there are several points on which I might disagree, I'll confine myself to pointing out that in response to the phrase "co-operative food production" you unthinkingly assumed that it implies small-scale, amateurish, and inefficient. You may wish to let your imagination get a little more exercise.
Hey maybe I misunderstood your comment, but your comment seemed to suggest it's something we layman should look into if we wanted to do something, but if so you might as well suggest people look into car manufacturing.
The problem with farming is that it has become one of the most advanced sectors out there. It's drones, autonomous tractors, AI, micro-targeting, lasers, ground penetrating radar, it's three story floating factories that produce finished goods in harbour. It's far far above the skill level of most of us here, especially if you want to produce the volumes required without high emissions, even more so as the climate changes and soil degradation continues unabated on a global scale.
We're hurtling towards famines across the globe and all the unrest that causes. Billions are already vulnerable. It is possible we will simply not be able to produce enough food, sooner rather than later.
We're so fucked. I need to go to sleep.
Come to think of it there is something to be said for small-scale, amateurish, and inefficient operations. It's not practical for a small group of people to replace the industrial machinery of car manufacturing, but we can learn to build, maintain, and repair bicycles — relying on substantially less in the way of manufactured parts from China than would be required for other transportation systems.
Similarly we can't easily replace the entire system of industrial agriculture that's playing its part in wrecking the world, but we can get together with some neighbours to plant and maintain an orchard of fruit trees that will keep on producing stuff for people to eat no matter what happens to international trade and global shipping routes. Why shouldn't we? The idea is not to save the entire world from itself, the idea is to build up the local community, get people more connected to the land and to each other, and with any luck have some nice fruit to eat.
A million such little local experiments, each one seemingly insignificant on the global scale, conducted under whatever hellish conditions the future brings by people desperate to come up with some better way to live — it might add up to something. It is, in any case, something to do.
Small scale co-op bicycle manufacture and repair is eminently feasible. Especially if it's a simple single speed.
The problem with farming is that the world is arguably over-populated, so you need mass scale high tech farming to feed all those people, especially with global soil degradation approaching catastrophic levels and climate change reducing yields.
Small scale farms will never be enough. Also, it would likely actually be more polluting, because you'd end up tilling (which contributes significantly to emissions) or fertilising less productive soil, and need more passes, when you have places where the soil needs relatively little tilling and fertilising. It makes sense to use the most productive soil, in the most efficient way possible, which means large scale and super high tech.
It's really not for the amateurs. Co-op orchards, jam and juice manufacture? Sure. But it'll never be enough. That's best left to the experts.
Again, I'm not out to save the entire world. If anyone thinks they can do that, good luck to them. I'd prefer to work on solving smaller problems than that. Everyone going vegetarian would help at a global scale but making that happen is not something you can feasibly do. Going vegetarian yourself won't fix world hunger or anything, but it's something you can do.
Perfect is the enemy of good.