Talk:Climate change mitigation

Usage of the term "we"?
I noticed that the article uses the term "we" quite often now, about 19 times. I believe some of the "we"'s were added by User:Jonathanlynn in an effort to convert passive voice to active voice. I just wonder if "we" is really suitable for encyclopedic articles? Who is "we"? Is it too casual? Should it not be "citizens", "people", "decision makers" etc. Example sentences that are now in the article (bolding added by me) "We can conserve energy by reducing wastage and losses. We can improve efficiency by upgrading technology, and improving operations and maintenance.", "How we produce, transport and process a fuel has a significant impact on lifecycle emissions", "As we integrate larger amounts of solar and wind energy into the grid, we must change energy system to ensure that the supply of electricity matches demand." What does everyone and Jonathanlyann think about this? EMsmile (talk) 21:48, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Agreed. In most writing, active voice is considered preferable. But here, passive voice is acceptable, and it is preferable if it is more objective. — RCraig09 (talk) 22:35, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * This is tricky, as all the tools for measuring readability penalise use of the passive voice. Of course, these tools may not be the last word, and they may not apply in every case, but presumably they are based on research that shows greater difficulty in understanding text in the passive. Unfortunately English cannot use an active construction with the subject "one" to avoid the passive, as French does with "on" and German with "man" etc. It sounds stilted and unnatural in English. "we" is a more colloquial alternative here in English. (For what it's worth, in current colloquial French "on" is starting to replace "nous" to mean "we" as well...) We could replace the mentioned examples with passive constructions, but it will certainly reduce the readability score, and probably the actual readability. Jonathanlynn (talk) 10:14, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for these inputs. I am against passive voice (if we can avoid it). Would it work to replace "we" with specific nouns such as "citizens", "consumers", "politicians", "decision-makers" and so forth (choosing in each case which noun would be the most correct)? And is there any Wikipedia policy about the usage or non-usage of "we"? I haven't found one yet. EMsmile (talk) 10:49, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * While not strictly policy, MOS:WE states that "we" is acceptable in scientific writing, but also notes passive voice may be preferable. I enjoy the readability of the article, though it does seem that some of the substitutions suggested by can be used to preserve active voice. I don't feel too strongly about the use of we in general, but there are some cases that could be weaselly or otherwise vague. For example, in "As we integrate larger amounts of solar and wind energy into the grid...", might this generalized "we" imply perhaps erroneously that all grids globally (wherever the reader may be reading from) are integrating larger amounts of solar/wind energy? – TheAustinMan (Talk ⬩ Edits) 16:46, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I've now changed all the "we" sentences to other wording, without changing to passive voice. This might have lowered the reading ease scores a little bit (because in some instances I now used multi-syllable nouns) but I think it's better. Interestingly, there are 7 instances of "we" remaining but they are all in the titles of the references. EMsmile (talk) 09:37, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Wildfire prevention
Totally agree with this edit summary by. Not ″hiding″ it in see also, I didn’t add it just because I’m no expert in climate change and I don’t want to mess things up :) Please add the details to the article, thanks! -- Dustfreeworld (talk) 17:18, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * We are basically all non-experts but that doesn't stop us from editing Wikipedia articles. ;-) A good starting point would be to look for how "wildfire" is mentioned in the IPCC Sixth AR WG 3 report. I see it more often framed as an effect of climate change but not so much as a mitigation thing, e.g. "With climate change, wildfires will probably become more frequent". (which is then more in the Working Group 2 report). Anyhow, there might be a mention in the WG 3 report on how wildfire prevention counts towards climate change mitigation, or in another publication. Once we find that, we can easily add it to the article. EMsmile (talk) 17:31, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Searching for "prevention" in above mentioned report I found only this so far "In some ecosystems, fire prevention might lead to accumulation of large fuel loads that enable wildfires". EMsmile (talk) 17:31, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the search and the info. The “fuel loads” seems to be talking about this:
 * https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/fires-destroy-forests/
 * “... fire-scarred trees. By cutting a cross-section of a tree stump, Parks points out how trees can carry scars from long-ago fires that were set every 10 to 30 years by the ... tribe that lived here. And yet those trees survived. You can see curls in the wood that show where the tree was scarred and started to regrow around that scar. Those scars, research shows, are evidence that Indigenous Americans successfully controlled wildfires by regularly setting smaller fires to reduce the buildup of fuel. After the U.S. removed the tribe from the land and began the practice of excluding fire from the forest, many trees didn't see a fire for a century or more … bears no fire scars for 100 years ... All around it, fuel built up unabated during those years, feeding future fires that today burn hotter and are more lethal, Parks says”
 * IMO it’s more related to “vanishing of prescribed burning” (small controlled fires) than “wildfire prevention” (uncontrolled large fires), which are probably two different concepts (that are easily mixed up) …
 * And then we have:
 * https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-04033-y Surge in extreme forest fires fuels global emissions
 * https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2022.925480 Forest fire emissions: A contribution to global climate change
 * But as things are still somewhat unclear, I think just a brief mention (one or two sentences) like you said would be more than enough. Or maybe we would just leave it for now and I’m happy as long as the wikilink is present in the article :) -- Dustfreeworld (talk) 10:40, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Adapting the same wording as used at climate change?
Now that we have found suitable wording for the mitigation content at climate change (in the last paragraph of the lead of that article), should we also massage the same kind of wording into the lead and main text of this article? Pinging User:Efbrazil as they steered that discussion so well. EMsmile (talk) 15:15, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! How can I turn down such a nice request? Like a moth to a flame, here's a few thoughts on the first paragraph:
 * The existing paragraph is overlong and stilted
 * 3/4ths of climate change is fossil fuel use, so that's where we should be putting most of our emphasis
 * The remaining 1/4 is mostly land use. Land use is a complicated issue, as it is part of the fast carbon cycle, not the slow carbon cycle, so it's good to bring into the discussion but we shouldn't over emphasize it (more forests is not a solution, they'll eventually rot or burn)
 * CO2 removal is a fringe technology, arguably on par with climate engineering (SRM). While it's a necessary part of aggressive pathways, it's also highly speculative and not the key thing to focus on here.
 * We need to make it clear that actions to date are insufficient to avoid dangerous levels of climate change, which is not done in the current last sentence

Given that, here's an initial stab at a rewrite. I'm avoiding sources and wikilinks here to keep the focus on the text.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Efbrazil (talk • contribs)
 * Thanks a lot. This looks good. As this article is not so heavily guarded, I think we can make incremental changes in the live article without long talk page discussions preceding it. As for your proposed new first paragraph, I like it but I find the second sentence is not linked very well with neither the preceding nor the following sentence. I think we should link them better by using constructions such as "for this reason" or "because of xx, yyy is necessary" (but without generating long sentences). I don't like that the first sentence ends with "climate change", and the second sentence starts with "climate change". But the overall approach and re-focus is good. EMsmile (talk) 09:25, 3 April 2024 (UTC)


 * OK, I was bold and edited the page directly with your input here. I see what you mean about the second sentence needing better bridging, so I made changes there. If anyone objects and backs the text out we can take it up here again, but hopefully we can just edit things on the live page to get to where we want. Note I also updated sources for the lead paragraph, including cutting a few sources that seemed unnecessary. Efbrazil (talk) 17:05, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
 * That's great, thank you. I've also made some further edits. I've put details in the edit summaries. Feel free to build on this, modify or revert. I have re-checked with the readability tool and most sentences are good, just a couple that are still in red (we can probably live with that).
 * But the lead is still a bit on the short side (only 368 words; I think we could aim for 450 to 500 words for an article of this length). Am wondering if we should add a bit on how individual action can help with mitigation? The main text has a section on it, so I think we could summarise that in the lead, e.g. more plant-based diets.
 * Maybe we could also be inspired and copy some sentences from the mitigation section of the main climate change article, i.e. from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Reducing_and_recapturing_emissions
 * Interesting how that section is no longer called "mitigation" but "Reducing and recapturing emissions". Wondering if we also want to weave that language into our lead. Not too sure though if "recapturing emissions" is fully correct or abundantly clear though.EMsmile (talk) 21:48, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I took an edit pass on the second and third paragraphs, just trying to help it read better and put things in context. A key part was introducing the idea of the fast and slow carbon cycles. A major issue to debunk is the idea of "just plant trees" as a way to mitigate climate change. Efbrazil (talk) 00:15, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I think I'm done for today, feel free to go further or suggest what I should tackle next... Efbrazil (talk) 17:26, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Merged Co-benefits of climate change mitigation
I've just carried out the merger from Co-benefits of climate change mitigation. This has made the section on co-benefits a bit too long probably. I've already looked for ways of condensing. Please help with condensing this further (if you think it ought to be condensed). We are actually so lucky that CC mitigation has so many co-benefits. Imagine if it didn't, how much harder it would then be to push it through... EMsmile (talk) 08:33, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

How do we feel about overall length? More culling?
The overall length of the article is still on the long side: 60 kB (9271 words) "readable prose size". What do folks suggest regarding options for condensing and culling. Does anything jump at you that can be condensed or even taken out? - Or do we argue that 60 kB is not too long for this kind of article. For comparison, the climate change article is 54 kB. EMsmile (talk) 11:42, 16 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Personally as this is such a high level subject I would prefer more excerpts but only if the excerpted articles were rated good. So in practice that probably is not going to happen any time soon. Chidgk1 (talk) 17:13, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * General comment: I'm very wary of excerpting, since they often bring unintended and nonobvious consequences in unspecified locations. — RCraig09 (talk) 19:49, 16 May 2023 (UTC)


 * There's always room for updating and conciseness. I think that as public consciousness—along with related political controversy—continues to grow, mitigation will rise in importance, bringing an even greater need for updating and conciseness. As Effects of climate change has been promoted to Good Article status, the present article might be high on the community's to-do list. — RCraig09 (talk) 19:46, 16 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Agreed. I think condensing is needed but am unsure which sections in particular need to be condensed, given WP:DUE considerations. And it would be great if the wider Wikipedia editing community took an interest. We have come a long way with this article. The version from one year ago was quite shocking! 101 kB long and rambling and all over the place, impossible to read and understand. I think we should roughly aim for no longer than 50 kB (which means culling by about 15% compared to the current length).
 * Looking at the section sizes (see link at the top of the talk page), I have the following suggestions:


 * 1) The section "Preserving and enhancing carbon sinks" has perhaps become a bit too long (perhaps we should rely more on the sub-article carbon sequestration to provide people with details).
 * 2) Also "mitigation by sector" is probably too long (given that this is covered anyway at greenhouse gas emissions
 * 3) Is the section "policies" too long and detailed, given the myriad of sub-articles on this topic?
 * 4) Maybe we should drop the entire "example by country" section? Then again, US, China and EU are probably the three most important players (?). The section on the US is anyway only an excerpt, so it doesn't add to the overall word count. Still, perhaps remove all three examples? EMsmile (talk) 07:57, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I came back to this one year later and the article has become even longer in the meantime, currently at 63 kB! I think it would be good to get it down to say 58 kB. I had a look at the "section sizes" table at the top of the talk page to see which sections stood out as being overly long. I then condensed the content in:
 * Health and wellbeing
 * ‎Integrating variable renewable energy
 * National policies
 * Soils
 * What do you all think? I think it would make this article more useful for our readers if we looked carefully for paragraphs with excessive detail and moved those to sub-articles. Also we need to ensure that the overall balance and WP:DUE is just right. EMsmile (talk) 14:30, 17 June 2024 (UTC)