Only if I thought that there was something my representative could do that would solve the problem. The reason I'm in existential despair is that the distance between what I think would need to be done to solve the problem and what can plausibly be done given the realities of our world is vast. Even if we cut emissions to zero tomorrow (which is obviously not going to happen) that would not solve the current problem. I think that if you look at things realistically, we have already passed the point of no return.

So what I am doing is searching for someone who can persuade me that I'm wrong and that there is a plausible path forward that does not involve societal collapse in the near future (by which I mean the next 100 years or so). When I find that person I'm going to put a lot of effort into trying to help them succeed. But so far I have not found them.

I'm also putting some effort into building a legacy (by which I mean a societal legacy, not a personal one) that our descendants could use to rebuild civilization once the planet settles into a new equilibrium. That will probably be at least a few thousand years from now, so this too is a real challenge.

I'm sorry that you are going through existential despair over the climate/energy problem. Existential despair sucks, regardless of cause.

I'm not sure that I'm the best person to persuade you that you are wrong, but I can at least share my perspective. I also don't see writing your representative as being all that helpful. On the other hand, as a physicist who's been working on and thinking about energy issues my entire life, I think that the sheer amount of available negentropy that we are ignoring makes it inevitable that someone will find a solution. There are other renewable energy sources out there other than wind, solar, geothermal, etc which are not even being talked about. One of these is evaporative convection energy (basically what powers hurricanes). It's literally an engine that runs on global warming; the more you use it the more it cools the Earth. There are other ideas as well out there, that one's just the one I'm working on. Someone's going to get it.

Some people get depressed because 'we as a society can't work together to solve this problem'. I don't look at things that way. I see it more like when a customer or standard specifies that you have to use a particular library in your code that is maybe not your favorite. You can gripe and moan and try to get them to change it, but in the end that's the spec. And society's spec for a solution is an energy technology that 1) doesn't make CO2/global warming 2) is cheaper enough than existing fossil tech that it will displace it and 3) actually works. Most existing solutions don't meet 2 and most drawing board solutions don't meet 3. But its far from an impossible spec.

Trying to change someone's weltanshauung is too big for a single post, but if you are interested in a different viewpoint, my email's in profile. Either way, I hope that hope finds you again.

Thanks.

> I think that the sheer amount of available negentropy that we are ignoring makes it inevitable that someone will find a solution

The problem is that negentropy is not the limiting factor. Obviously solutions exist for long-term sustainable energy sources. We even know what they are: Solar. Wind. Batteries. The limiting factor is not knowledge nor negentropy, it's socio-political. We (i.e. pretty much the whole planet) have to implement a solution before the climate changes to the point where there are large-scale planet-wide crop failures. That is the part I am not optimistic about. I don't think our current socio-political structure can handle a global famine, and it also doesn't seem to be capable of allocating the economic sacrifice needed to avoid one.

The thing that scares me most is that the rate of change in the climate is much much faster than I ever expected it to be. Twelve years ago my wife and I moved from LA to SF thinking that would be enough to escape the worst effects. But just in those twelve years I've seen dramatic changes in the climate here. We've gone from reliably wet winters to unprecedented drought and heat in just over a decade. That scares the holy bejesus out of me because if you extrapolate that rate of change into the future we're looking at a very real possibility of global famine before I die, and I'm not that young.

The other thing that scares me is the melting permafrost and concomitant release of methane. That is a genie that will not go easily back into its bottle. (That is the reason I say that even cutting emissions to zero tomorrow will not solve the problem. The permafrost melting seems irreversible to me at this point.)

If nothing could be done, then why are you stressed, you'll just have to go with it.

Because I think there is a significant chance that civilization will collapse within my lifetime, and that is not going to be fun.

Well, worrying about it won't change much.

you sound like another me in the world