Okay. I just want to slam on the brakes here, just a little… Just a little slam.
There’s a LOT of personal blame going around in these comments. As if everyone who ever had burned any fossil fuels ever is somehow personally responsible for everything that’s currently happening.
Here’s some news, we’ve been burning shit for more than a millennia. People, in and of themselves, don’t require so much heat and energy to create a problem. At least not individually. As a whole, small problem. Individually, microscopic problem at most.
Everyone seems to have fallen into this trap of everyone being personally responsible for the climate change. The vast majority of the issue is companies. Everyone wants to point at trucks and delivery vehicles and whatnot as major contributors when they do talk about contributions from companies, and you’re still way off base. It’s not even the air traffic that’s the problem. It’s the fucking boats. Nobody thinks about it, because nobody sees it. Either the boats are off at sea, or they’re docked in some yard, away from your vision. 90% of the time, they’re sailing. When they’re sailing, they’re operating the motors 24/7. Each ship, when operating, will consume more fuel in an hour than any one person would use in a year.
Since it’s mostly unregulated international waters, who are they reporting any of that shit to? So they don’t.
Yes. Climate change is real. Yes, we, personally, should be doing what we can to curb it. The fact is, if all of us did everything possible (switching to all renewable power, using EVs and all renewable powered appliances, etc) it would barely make a dent. All of the “personal responsibility” arguments are just a smokescreen from the big, very guilty corporations, to victim blame the public into turning on eachother so they can continue to destroy the environment unchecked. Based on these comments, they’re succeeding.
I’m not saying to not be mad. Be mad, get angry. Just be mad at the right people here. I’m not evil because I drive my 1.5L 4cyl sedan to the grocery once a week, and have a natural gas water heater. Sure, I should change that, and I’m sure I will be changing that when I can, but I’m not the problem. The greenhouse gasses I emit over my lifetime won’t offset the emissions of transport ships in a single year.
Just… Be mad at the right people. Stop making people feel bad for being given bad options because the automotive industry actively and knowingly rejected electric vehicles due to how deep they were with the oil industry. So people had to buy internal combustion vehicles because there literally was no other option at the time. I’ve had my car since 2014. In 2014, the model S (the only model at the time), was $70k USD to start. I didn’t have $70k USD to spend on a car (I still don’t). I spent less than one-quarter of that price on my vehicle, and I was barely able to afford it over a 5 year finance. Yet, based on these comments, I should be ashamed that I can’t afford a BEV? Or that I live too far from everything that I can’t ride a bike or something?
Come on people. You know who is really at fault here. Let’s just be angry at the right people.
Drop everything and do what exactly
LSD, K, and maybe some MDMA. At least thats what i would like to do.
You can have all the Ketamine. Please pass some LSD and MDMA this way
Block ambulances and throw stuff at paintings.
ME? I KNOW WHO I AM
I AM DUDE
For a start you could get active in local politics and support zoning reform. Car dependent infrastructure is a huge contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and I am not just talking about car exhaust.
If we want to solve climate change we need to change our way of life, and that means ditching as many cars as possible.
I don’t disagree with you, having walkable infrastructure would be great.
It just doesn’t really seem achievable in any meaningful way.
A few hundred km from here a gargantuan hydrogen facility is being built - using solar to cracking hydrogen from sea water. It will take decades to build, and is a big undertaking.
I offer the above as an example of something difficult but reasonably achievable.
Lobbying local government to favour walkable infrastructure just doesn’t seem like a viable pathway to meaningful change in a reasonable time horizon.
Yes I should take 15 minutes every election cycle to vote for the right person. Beyond that though my input wouldn’t be very valuable.
The Netherlands went from car dependent nightmare to cycle capital of the world in a generation. Meaningful change takes time but it is possible in our life times and it isn’t going to happen on it’s own.
Voting is good, talk to your friends. Be that annoying person who won’t shut the fuck up about how annoying cars are, change peoples minds or at least plant the idea in their brain that we can exist without cars.
Apathy solves nothing.
The netherlands still have a terrible CO2 bilance, which shows that we have to think much bigger than that.
On the local space have a focus on the climate impact preperation. This might very well safe many lifes in your city/town/village. For the climate change reduction think national and international.
Lets ditch politicians first…
what? it’s too late for that.
we are all actually going to die. changing a zoning rule? you think that’s going to help?
if there’s an avalanche that is seconds away from enveloping you in snow and killing you, do you suggest walking a few steps to the side? it won’t do anything. the math is too much at this point to change with recycling a can or planting a tree. the only thing that will get the world to finally believe in math is massive amounts of death
make peace with death, it’s coming for us all
I’m pretty sure the only way to solve this is by an extension of politics though another means. Are you ready?
I’m not sure I’m ready no, but this is a problem that can and has been solved through less dramatic means.
I would like to hear some encouraging examples for the has part of “can and has”. (Bearing in mind the chart from this post)
It seems to me that market forces are in charge of us, and I don’t believe we’re going to escape the death spiral we’re in. I would of course love to be wrong.
Molotovs?
TBH this is the answer. If govs are willing to sell themselves and all legislature to the highest bidder, then it’s time for mass protests, strikes, and molotovs.
that could have changed the trajectory 50 years ago
if people had been scientifically literate and recognized the problem
it’s too late now
this will happen when the pain of reality (regular temperatures in the 100s) overcomes the stupidity of religion, but there won’t be any going back
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The world is burning, start more fires!
Great idea.
It’s already on fire. Might as well make sure the right places burn.
Saving the environment? In this economy?
I mean, I get the desperation. But drop everything and…do what?
Calling for a massive strike is one thing. But just “drop everything” with no follow up is a weird reaction. It sounds way too much like, “drop everything and panic.” Not “sacrifice everything to try to save what we can of the livable world.”
It’s called: click bait
Or more nefariously, doomerism.
Drop everything and enjoy life while it lasts.
It may be shorter than you were planning on.
Well, the only thing that could reasonably help us would be to demolish the 1% and the corrupt politicians who support them. And yes, that would include an armed uprising.
Not that that I see that happening unless it gets much worse. We still have (some) bread and games left to pacify the masses.
Well, if everybody dropped everything then emissions would go to 0 soooo nothing I guess
I wanted to rewatch the Frasier seasons. Hope I have time.
You’ll have time, but not fossil fuel electricity for your TV. \s
You have time, but watching it still counts as part of “everything” so you are going to have to drop it.
I thought Frasier was exempt from everything.
either travel until your last penny or buy a house in a very very remote location and stockpile enough food for a year or two. Continuing your life as usual and recycling your tin cans is the definition of insanity.
If your bucket list is “travel the world” then sure. If your bucket list is “enjoy a lot of chill times with my friends and family” then I don’t really know what you expect to change.
I mean think of how many people know someone who died young and live with the very real knowledge that they could die at any moment, what do you expect them to change knowing that climate change might make life hard at some point in the next 2 - 100 years? Does that meaningfully change someone’s life when they already know that they could be killed in a car accident the next day?
Do you think preparing for collapse now in a remote location is really the sensible thing to do? I sometimes wonder myself how fast it will happen. I think the planet will be uninhabitable within 300 years and chaos will ensue within 30 but i’m not sure the chaos will be without warning unless we hit an environmental tipping point and there’s sudden major temperature change (like earth becoming 20 degrees warmer or cooler within a week), which could happen.
A house in a remote location is insanely naïve. Rambo isn’t real life, if you want a snowball’s chance in hell of making it in that kind of a scenario you need to have group support. When the sea people came you didn’t want to be in major metros on the coast, but you also didn’t want to the the guy alone who became the lonely corpse in the countryside. There’s a happy medium where you have the best chances of survival. This is just delusional apocalypse porn.
The vast majority of people who think they can survive an apocalypse with a backpack of tactical axes and MRE’s are delusional cosplayers. Even the people already out in the wilderness with gardens and animals and stockpiles of guns are woefully naive to how hard it would actually be to survive if the walmart they go to every week closes down.
All that said, there is absolutely good that could come from investing in some cheap land further north. Not to become some kind of wild survivalist but to do exactly what you said, be a part of smaller communities that can band together and share resources. The hardships coming are not going to be like The Walking Dead, this shit is going to take years or even decades to ramp up, but that’s still lightning fast on a climate scale, meaning there will be storms on top of storms, inundated cities and coastlands, refugees swamping places that can’t handle it, and a lot of really hard times with a failing economy and shortages of everything from food to power to fresh water. We will slowly see a pretty major social shift in the first-world as people are displaced and the wealth divide becomes extreme, there will be shanty-towns on American and EU soil that rival the poorest countries. But yes, it will take a long time and there’s going to be an absolute mess of politics and economics and social upheaval through the entire time.
And there’s no fixing it. This is the hardest part to sink into people. That it’s not a “rough patch” that this temperature increase is effectively permanent. No human is going to see the Earth cool back down unless someone does a major, rapid, and successful, geoengineering project. All things that are still more fantasy than remotely reality at this point.
The PBS show Frontier House disabused me of any notion that it would be anything but insanely difficult to survive after societal collapse. Three families had to live as if they were in the 19th century in a valley in (I think) Montana over a summer to prepare for winter.
None of them would have done it. Not even the couple who busted their ass and wouldn’t have had children to feed.
I loved that show! Yep, I live pretty remote with guns and livestock and prepper stuff, but I still rely on stores, the grid and of course heathcare. I hold no illusions about how much I would suffer if society went down. Maybe I’ll live a month or two longer than someone totally unprepared but not much more.
If you’re at all capable, purchase property up north. You can get acres of undeveloped land for a few thousand dollars. If you can, have an ongoing project to get some basic services set up on the land like a secure shed to cover a well and a solar kit. Get an RV or a van and just know that if shit falls apart you can drive out there and at least have water and power. Wireless or satellite internet would be a good idea.
The coming disasters are going to take a number of years to ramp up, it will probably happen slowly enough that people will almost literally be the toad boiling to death as the heat slowly rises. It could be a few years, it could be a few decades. Whatever happens, it will happen and it will get worse. We’re going to see the most drastic change to our world that anyone has ever seen and a lot of people are going to suffer and it’s going to happen at the same pace which we read about school shootings, annoyance and impatience.
Most of us won’t be able to afford land and even if we do move to cooler, less unstable areas, we still may have to deal with food shortages, economic crashes, and social instability. It’s not going to be like The Road, we’re not going into a sudden world of cannibals and post-apocalyptic fashion choices, it’s going to be a long slog through more and more discomfort, storms that don’t let up on coastal cities, political drama as people try to move or get federal help, refugees swamping places that can’t handle the numbers, authoritarians trying to seize power, crime and looting in the aftermath of storms, cities slowly becoming abandoned as the flood waters never get a chance to recede, as happened in some parts of New Orleans as long ago as Katrina.
In societal collapse scenarios do you really think that property rights will be respected?
No, but again, I’m not talking about a hollywood drama here, this is real life, “collapse” is a thing that exists on a spectrum and can change radically depending on what the political powers do. Nations may restructure, there even may be fighting, but short of an actual nuclear holocaust it’s not likely that we’re going to see a scorched-earth wasteland.
Everyone on both sides of this are really hyped to the extremes, but there is no telling how the next several decades may pan out, it’s not a bad idea to have some ideas that may benefit you, if you think you have better ideas for how to prepare, do share. If you are worried and hopeless and think nothing we do matters, that’s obviously not a great mindset to have, we have lifetimes ahead of us and people who are going to make it through, we have a responsibility still to try to do the best we can with what we have.
edit: love that balanced and nuanced takes are making people seeth. Look, just believe whatever you want. The Earth doesn’t care and what’s going to happen will happen. If you rather believe it’s going to be exactly, 100% identical to the Fallout universe and you wanna imagine walking the wasteland, you do you, king.
I will add another case of emergency food to my garage, finally get that Costco membership and buy some gold, and grab a bit more ammunition. Do some more research about buying land off the grid.
I bet this is also somehow the immigrants’ fault. /s
(Looking at you, right-wing voters in EU. ò.ó )
I have a coworker who hates undocumented immigrants because she thinks they’re all unvaccinated and spreaders of disease. This would be an unremarkable bit of stupidity except that she’s also anti-vax.
How does that even go together? Being anti-vax and at the same time condemning people for not being vaccinated?
That’s pretty much why I mentioned it. It’s absolutely batshit crazy.
Fringe fascists in Europe have already been co-opting the green message for the last 10 years.
Because that’s what fascism does: take a popular idea and worm it’s way inside.
With the textbook example being “national socialism”.
Nah, there are 2 ways of thinking about this topic, which the right wing idiots in Germany use (at the same time): 1. there’s no climate change, because look: cold weather right now and 2. This change occurs naturally, nothing to do with us but planets and stuff.
Perception of Germans: mad scientists
Germans: burn the coal
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They exhale CO2…
“Trees suck up all the oxygen.”
-Aunt Vera
I don’t think even they believe that. They’re just scared and don’t want to share their long plundered wealth
While I get the sentiment and believe action is necessary, this is the wrong way to approach it. Panic is not the way we will solve this crisis.
There’s a way out, and if we get through we’ll be in a better place than we’ve ever been. We need to mass invest in green technology. Solar, wind, nuclear, throw everything at it and see what sticks. Solar is already on the right track to save us, but it’s better if it goes even faster and have a few back up plans.
Panic is not the way we will solve this crisis.
In this case panic is preferable to completely ignoring the problem as is currently humanity’s strategy.
But spreading panic is counterprodictive
As a species, we are pretty damn far from panic.
if a group of people are in a burning building and about to die, panic would actually help them get out
in this case, however, it’s unlikely anyone is going to get out of this building, and it’s too late to change things, so perhaps you are right
we should just find ways to make peace with the destruction of much of life on earth
Excellent example of what I mean. In a burning building panic isn’t helpful and hinders the actual correct response, just like with climate change.
that’s not true. in a burning building, freaking out and getting the fuck out of the building is smart and why it’s instinctual
sitting around and debating the best way to proceed is stupid AF
that’s not true. in a burning building, freaking out and getting the fuck out of the building is smart and why it’s instinctual
Not at all, why do you think during fire drills you’re instructed to stay calm?
They say that when there are large number of people and a risk of people being trampled or when there are young students and teachers need to keep count to make sure everyone gets out.
At this point, the risk of every person on earth dying due to inaction or calmly discussing small ways to change is much higher than if everyone panics. People should have panicked 50 years ago when they looked at data.
But go ahead, have calm rational discussions about policy decisions that can reduce exponential growth of destructive forces by 30 percent. Because nothing stops exponential growth like mild decreases in the rate of change.
Nothing else has worked.
Is it on its way to save us though? Sure the global north might be able to escape the worst and maintain some semblance of normality but how does that work for the remaining 90% of the world? Those that can neither afford nor have the time to wait until the “green energy revolution” reaches them? Do we just accept they’ll never be able to reap the benefits of their own exploitation?
I know you don’t have the answers but these are questions we nees to grapple with that nobody seems to know how to answer…
A lot of places in the global south are already using solar and wind because it’s cheaper than trying to get on the oil competition, cheap Chinese solar is increasing this. What would really help is western governments investing in designing open source solutions that make staying off oil easier but apparently the only thing that matters to us is short term profits
No we don’t need to accept that, they can be better off by the end of this century than we are now.
platitudes will not save us from math
?
small gestures that make us feel good will not have a meaningful impact on the exponential changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere that will result in the destruction of the biosphere and are counter-productive because they create an illusion of safety and control, like like putting your seat belt on just before you slam into a wall while speeding at 300 mph.
better?
climate scientists have already lit themselves on fire trying to warn people and it didn’t actually do anything
people are too religious to believe in science
People are setting themselves on fire, throwing food at famous art or stopping traffic because it feels like a bad dream where you see the disaster coming and you’re trying to shake people to get them to understand that we have to DO something, and they just stare straight ahead like zombies.
These are people who are scared and frustrated because we’ve tried EVERYTHING and nobody actually cares. When I tried to impart this message on reddit, people were like “I get it but why can’t they just promote recycling or protest peacefully?” and then a 50-comment deep thread about whether or not the liquid soup can work its way through the screws on the plating that covers the artwork and what kind of lasting damage it might do.
Meanwhile, our destruction is literally around the corner. I don’t get it.
We deserve what’s coming.
Just don’t look up!
The Religion: $$$$
“Bow down before the one you serve, you’re going to get what you deserve”
He was talking about money!
The al-ighty-ollar?
I do, but like most other people, I’m preoccupied with short term crises since, well, I need to survive those in order to be ready for the long-term ones.
In my opinion though, we don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell. The elite will manage to hang just a bit longer, but eventually they’ll cook and burn with the rest of us, or in their bunkers.
Anyways, shit’s already fucked to the point that I’ve given up. Just sit back, relax and take whatever life gives ya.
This is exactly the messaging of the oil companies and others who oppose climate action now that it’s too hard to deny. They want us to think it’s hopeless and give up trying to change anything. It’s not too late. Green energy is growing exponentially and has been possibly the fastest technological adoption in history. Millions of people are working on the science and technology to solve these problems. We just need some more collective action at the local and national levels. Carbon taxes, funding for green initiatives, local agriculture, and support for alternative transportation like e-bikes or other PEVs to start
Did you miss the memo that current AI is already using more power than everything we’ve managed to save with green energy in the last decade? We ARE fucked, the only thing we’re still debating is the exact timespan. Which is asinine, the result will remain the same either way.
The only way I see to a path to salvation is a huge pandemic or world war, becausing nothing else will convince people. We’ve been trying (and failing) for decades.
The only way I see to a path to salvation is a huge pandemic or world war
Good news! The odds are looking pretty high for both of those!
Carbon taxes fix the problem of using energy for dumb things. Climate change isn’t caused by us using energy, it’s caused by the fact that carbon pollution is free.
Bingo. Power usage isn’t the central problem, it’s the sources of power.
If the power is renewable, who cares how much it uses? Things are far from hopeless.
Because that power could have been used by someone else who’s depending on coal instead. You cannot separate power sources when on the grid.
That’s why we’re working to get rid of fossil fuel power generation entirely.
The only way I see to a path to salvation is a huge pandemic or world war, becausing nothing else will convince people
We had a pandemic already and war in Ukraine is raging on - and both only served right wing extremists to rise and ignore climate problems even harder. We are fucked. I don’t give up hope but it’s tiny
Did you miss the memo that current AI is already using more power than everything we’ve managed to save with green energy in the last decade?
You got a source on that? Cause that sounds fake
Here’s one:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.02243v1
Below is an article on crypto mining, not AI, but I’d wager a guess and say you certainly can draw parallels from it:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023EF003871
Also, whatever the source of green/renewable energy is, it takes a couple years to offset the manufacturing of said energy source:
https://www.cooleffect.org/solar-carbon-footprint
So even if there’s no direct source on that 10 year claim, it probably isn’t too farfetched!
The article you linked doesn’t support your claims, is unpublished and reads like the homework of some undergrads.
Training AI models, while computationally expensive, cannot compare to crypto farms the size of warehouses everywhere around the world.
I keep saying, if Putin starts a nuclear war, we might save humanity. A nuclear winter will cool the planet. And with most of us dying of radiation poisoning, we won’t have the ability to start pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere. Yay!
I need some anon to write me a virus that will wipe out all datacenters in one go, something that will irrevocably fry all enterprise hardware beyond repair. Let’s start over, with decent trust busting and without the plastic this time.
(edit: I guess it’s not entirely clear but I’m expecting such a virus to hit the reset button on civilisation. Mass death, yes, but we won’t fuck the world beyond being liveable.)
The world will be fine
It will take a long time in our timespan, and we won’t be fine, but the world will. Just a minor blip in the history of this marble
The world will be fine.
People are fucked.
- George Carlin
This but for humans.
12 monkeys were right
And with ipv6!
Necessity is the mother of invention, and new technology is only going to continue to use more and more energy. Conservation is not the answer.
Should i kill myself before all that unravels?
No, there’s always a shimmer of hope and the non zero chance that we mean something for someone that could make a difference, or help make the difference ourselves. Even sometimes the tiniest good-hearted gesture will do it.
If solving the problem becomes impossible, the backup plan should be retribution, not complacency. That way they have an incentive to work with us.
I never had kids of my own, because I didn’t want any, but the last 15 years or so I’ve becoming increasingly grateful that I made that decision. It at least allows me to sit back and contemplate doom without worrying about what my kids’ life on this planet is going to be like after I’m gone.
I’ve always done the reducing, reusing, and recycling, because it’s the right thing to do. Cut waaaaay back on dairy and beef purchases, I eat a lot of plant protein and use plant milk now. But it’s all a drop in the bucket. Only the governments can actually fix this, and they won’t because they are owned. I just sit around hoping it won’t get TOO bad before I’m dead.
The fiduciary responsibility scene from the new Fallout show hit hard.
S1E6
“Morton played a rancher who owned half of Missouri.”
“And what happens when the cattle ranchers have more power than the sheriff?”
“The whole town burns down.”
“Right, the whole town burns down. Vault-Tec is a trillion dollar company that owns half of everything. And after ten years of war, the U.S. gov’t is broker than a joke. The cattle ranchers are in charge, Coop.”
I do what I can. It’s certainly not as much as I could be doing, but it’s what I have the mental and emotional capacity to handle. I don’t have a ton of hope either, and it’s a big reason I decided not to have children, but I wouldn’t say I’ve given up completely.
Humanity is just going to go through a culling. There will definitely be humans and there will definitely be habitable areas of the planet but there won’t be room for all 8 billion of us and depending on how much we actually do right now will determine how big the actual final number is
And honestly, would that be such a bad thing? 8 freaking billion of us is at least 7.5B too many.
People who say this imagine themselves and their families in the 0.5B but will end up in the 7.5B, suffering immeasurably in the process.
Nah I tried to get as close to the cities I think would be bombed so that I can go out in a puff of ozone
Nope, there’s nothing special about me or my family. We’re just insignificant eurotrash. Odds we’d be among the survivors are very low.
“Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.”
Yeah, fuck that Bircher Bullshit from “The Guidestones.”
And you’ll be first in line to be a member of the 7.5B that gets culled, right?
You can kill me right now if you want.
I dunno why the assumption is that everyone who makes the observation on overpopulation is so self-interested that they can’t imagine their own demise as part of it. We’ll all die in the approaching climate disaster, including you and me. The difference between now and later is small on a geological timescale.
You can kill me right now if you want.
Spare your self-contempt for somebody that cares.
You asked.
I did, unfortunately.
Actually, no! Once the really BIG human die-offs start, the hyperwealthy will ‘bunker up’ for a while and once the population shrinks back down, we won’t be putting out all that greenhouse gas anymore, and the earth will cool back down. They’ll keep a few cities in places like Norway or what have you around to keep providing food and fuel for their choppers and parties.
New Zealand and Hawaii. They’re already doing it.
I know several billionaires are already doing this in Hawaii. I feel like Hawaii is a bad choice. But I suppose if you have a giant yacht it’s not a problem.
But I feel like you’d want land with slaves under armed guard that till fields and raise livestock.
And shock collars to keep your security team “loyal.”
I was thinking you keep your security as part of the elite class, they would live basically as well as you and your other elites family / friend class. Maybe even with arranged marriages to ensure their offspring will be part of this same class, like royalty. You could build this into your society/culture. Maybe serving as a guard is like something every royal does for five or ten years.
The problem is it’s human nature to feel envy, and anger, towards people hoarding resources if you’re not one of those people. It’s all fun and games until the peasants revolt and take your wife and children hostage. And if you don’t share, they eventually will.
That’s why I was thinking you somehow make them a part of the hoarding class, disincentivizing them from mutiny, as they are also benefitting from those hoarded resources in the same way as you and your family. But yeah it’s a hard problem to solve for the hoarder.
We deserve it. Let the insects have their turn.
Speak for yourself.
Drop everything
… and? Panic? Die?
The people who tweeted this suck at Communication 101. You’ve gotta have a specific and clear call to action. Something like “Join this protest at XYZ” or “Demand your Congressman support ABC.”
You can’t just say “Drop everything. Forget about your job and your kid’s education.” That’s not an effective message.
Unless their point is we’re past the point of protests and political policies doing anything and we’re all gonna die. In which case, say that. “Drop everything and go die, cause we’re fucked.” You gotta be clear!
I think part of the post is the implication that there is no more call to action, only a downward spiral that no action could solve.
Doomerism is propaganda.
If we take it at face value, it would seem the audience they are targeting would not care to participate in xyz and would not care to ask the congressman to vote abc, probably because those things are not in their own financial interest. But that’s not actually who this is targeting. It’s targeting the rest of us, who are already aware of those people. But we can’t do anything about it.
Yeah there’s a good chunk of this country that would react to this kind of message by heading to the gun store to stock up. Not exactly helpful.
Never kill yourself for something that’s somebody else’s fault.
(Looking for this image has definitely put me on a watchlist)
Drop and roll.
Jokes aside, go outside, touch grass, plant some trees. Rinse and repeat
No Man’s Sky just got a cool update, so I think I’m gonna play that while I await my doom.
Already happening in some places. The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.
It’s going to be hilarious when Mexico conquers the Free State of Texas though
There’s a actually a super interesting explanation (and time will tell how accurate that explanation is) regulations from 2020 limited how much sulfur dioxide ships could emit and it turns out the sulfur dioxide was actually creating a slight cooling effect, so now we’re experiencing the full brunt of our existing emissions as the world climate rubber bands to where it would have been if ships weren’t spewing toxic sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. So presumably this recent trend will stabilize at some point and we’ll have our new normal
This is also why geoengineering is so extremely risky. If you ever stop for any reason the climate will rubberband to where it should have been rapidly
But doesn’t this mean that geoengineering is also effective at giving us extra time? We’d start using safer gases that have the same cooling effect while we try and go carbon negative worldwide
Geo-engineering is a rabbit hole we do not want to dive into. We have the ability and knowledge to fight climate change right now, the only thing we don’t have is the political willpower. Geo-engineering is a distraction, please don’t give it the time of day.
doesn’t this mean that geoengineering is also effective at giving us extra time?
I have zero faith in governments nor societal leaders actually maintaining any geoengineering efforts consistently which is what would be required. Any time geoengineering buys would be squandered by inaction. I do not expect any significant action to occur until it immediately threatens businesses and governments in ways that cannot be ignored by even the most head-in-the-sand deniers
If we geoengineer, it will be half-assed, and the moment the scope shrinks (as funding naturally grows and shrinks depending on who’s setting budgets for administrations) every bit of climate change effect that we held off will come crashing down far more rapidly than the slow crawl we’ve been experiencing for the past century or so
We’d start using safer gases that have the same cooling effect
If I, as a rando on the internet we’re to guess, the most cost effective tactic would be very large pumps firing ocean water into the air either to evaporate naturally or artificially evaporated to create more clouds. Clouds reflect sunlight and artificially creating more would slow ocean warning, and therefore slow global climate change. I’m certain the salt and other crap in the water would have difficult to predict downstream effects, at best creating more rain, at worst salting the rainforests
I don’t think the issue is whether it’s effective in isolation (clearly we can alter the environment), it’s the fact that it’s likely to be used as a shitty band aid to continue emitting carbon and it’s likely to have unforseen consequences. We need to stop burning fossil fuels, all of them, immediately.
But doesn’t this mean that geoengineering is also effective at giving us extra time? We’d start using safer gases that have the same cooling effect while we try and go carbon negative worldwide
Personally, I think that’d actually have an overall negative effect. Governments and corporations desperately don’t want to do anything about climate change, and giving them more time with cooler temperatures will (my opinion) just allow the world to further delay doing anything about it, allowing them to bake in even worse temps if they ever had to stop geoengineering for whatever reason.
This is a really morbid take, but all these big heatwaves, radical weather, and rise in weather related deaths cannot be ignored, and that’s unfortunately damn useful. It makes it harder to be a climate denier/skeptic, makes people more angry when nothing is being done about curbing emissions (hopefully leading to more climate protests), and really forces society to place a skeptical eye at all the new fossil fuels being brought online around the world, all because they can personally feel it.
If it could be made to be business as usual, I think we’d see the “Gosh darn it guys, we reaaaallly should do something about all this. Eventually.” mentality just continue until it once again becomes too hot physically to ignore.
This is a pretty terrifying explanation.
It’s less terrifying than the initial graph since it at least suggests this is a temporary period of rapid ocean warning while the climate rapidly reaches where it should have been. I’m (overly-)hopeful that the brief period of rapid climate change will finally spur more meaningful action by governments, but probably not. It’s going to take an entire region of a western nation being unmistakably destroyed by climate change before that happens. Unless a powerhouse like China or potentially India decides to force the world into meaningful climate action
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This same urge for some kind of end to all existing problems via an apocalyptic scenario is also why OP made his post.
Lol
Oh well, poor alphas. As millenial we had horrible economy with a pandemics an 2 recessions, but this is going to be several levels worse.
But for a shining moment, we created a lot of value for shareholders.
That’s what matters❤️
Counting the COVID recession, the 2008 collapse, and the dot-com bubble I’m on my third once-in-a-lifetime recession just in my adult life.
Yeah I’ve understood since high school, what the fuck do you want me to do about it when I can barely keep myself and my family alive as is?
This particular author wants you to panic.
We are certainly facing many environmental crisis, there’s no doubt about that… But the data here seems limited. I assume we simply don’t have measurements older than 50 years to add to this graph?
Edit: Here is a better graph!
Still alarming, but the data only goes back so far… It feels like something everyone needs to pay attention to and take seriously, but perhaps turning down the Vault-Tec guy knocking at your door is still a reasonable action to take.
Seems like the authors doomerism is working. Look at some of the assholes in the comments. It feels like they get off of the negativity.
Is shit bad? Yeah. But giving up helps no one and is a punch in the face to all the people that are fighting tooth and nail every single day.
Fighting what? Who?
Fighting against conservatives, mainly.
That graph is 4 years out of date and still shows the same thing, if we don’t make radical changes, we’re fucked.
We’re fucked no matter what, but the degree of the fucking is in question still. 1.5 degrees is not great, 2.5 is really bad. 4 degrees is civilization-ending catastrophe.
And good news! We’ve probably averted 4 degrees through our actions over the last 20-40 years or so. Iirc we’re still on track for 2-3 degrees. We have more work to do.
There is very little we can do when the primary producers or pollution are oil companies and our leaders are not willing to hold them accountable.
Iguessilldie.jpg
Are you driving a car?
Ok, stopped going to work and am now fired. I guess I’ll starve to death in a few weeks. That should reduce my impact on the climate.
You can get involved in local politics and support zoning reform. Lookup strong towns, they probably have an initiative in your area.
Depending on where you live it may not be reasonable for you to ditch your car, but you can still change your mindset. You can buy an ebike and ride it whenever possible. You can advocate for bike infrastructure and zoning reform. Its a massive uphill battle but if you genuinely care about climate change you can add your voice to the cause.
Wow this makes a lot of assumptions about privilege and class/financial circumstances.
Not everyone lives in an area where bikes are feasible.
Do you try to minimize your reliance on driving a car or do you throw your hands up and claim that other people need to change, not you?
This agenda of personal responsibility is exactly what keeps us from holding the true guilty parties accountable. This is like saying the abuser isn’t the abuser, because you can go to therapy or leave any time. But we can’t leave any time.
Love,
A work from home vegan.
Advocating for zoning reform and reducing car dependency isn’t exactly the “agenda of personal responsibility”. We can make a difference in our communities and use that as a springboard to pressure politicians to make change.
It’s not one or the other, it’s both. Just because your reducing your climate impact is negligible doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and do it.
What is your objective, to hold people accountable or to save the planet? Saying that individuals are responsible for the majority of climate emissions is not about shifting blame. Oil companies and bad luck (society picked fossil fuels before we really understood climate change) are to blame, but now we have to switch to damage control mode and that falls on individuals (and the government and corporations, but in a democratic free market society those both wrap back around to individuals anyways). It’s just the hand that we have been dealt.
This agenda of personal responsibility is exactly what keeps us from holding the true guilty parties accountable.
I think it’s the opposite. It’s the agenda of “it’s someone else’s problem” is what’s holding us back. It’s almost a classic case of the prisoners dilemma where individuals (both people and corporations) make the decision that is less favorable for everyone overall because they are afraid of what happens if they make the best decision and no one else does.
We all have a responsibility, and if we individuals all start making better choices, then some corporations will cater to that, and it can snowball.
It’s not an either or scenario. It’s if we want to get there fast, which we need to, everyone rushing there right now is the best…while waiting around for others to solve the problem will not get us there fast enough.
Personal responsibility was an ad campaign created by the oil industry. Every American could reduce their carbon footprint by 90% and we still wouldn’t make a dent in the carbon large corporations create.
I still actively reduce my footprint, but no matter what I do, until we hold corporations accountable it doesn’t fucking matter.
Nah that isn’t true though. The biggest emitters are utilities and oil companies. Cut your fossil fuel usage and the rest follows from there.
You guys act like those corporations sell if there is no demand.
It’s not one or the other. It’s both. We all have to change, individuals and corporations. It’s the “well I don’t have to do anything” people that are a big part of the problem too.
I hate going out so I drive less than most people I know. It’s basically to work and back and I try to make any other stops for stores and such during that commute. Not sure what more I can do than that.
Are you an Italian actor portraying a stereotypical Native American with a single tear running down your face, being paid by big oil?
“has different opinion than me. Must be paid actor” -super genius
I was referring to the “crying Indian” ad.
As little as possible. I walk, take public transit or bike when safe and possible instead of driving a car. My partner and I only own 1 car as well since I need it so infrequently.
With that said, the fact that we have created such car dependent cities and towns are the direct result of oil and car companies. So they created an environment that requires people to use a car, so beyond the pollution they generate, they have forced us into a system where we have to create pollution to live. So they are still the ultimate root cause, but nice try
Great job on limiting your carbon emissions.
I think the argument of who is the “ultimate root cause” is kinda irrelevant at this stage as far as actually saving the planet goes. But when the “the vast majority of carbon emissions come from 10 companies” or whatever factoid gets brought up, usually the context is that individual contributions are meaningless. And that totally isn’t true. It would be like smokers saying the tobacco industry is the ultimate root cause for their smoking addiction due to their false propaganda and advertising. Okay, that may well be true… but it’s still their responsibility to quit.
Smoking is a single habit that a large percentage of people have no problem never being tempted to do.
Unsustainable practices pervade societ in a way that requires real education and lifestyle changes to avoid. It’s not enough to “just stop polluting,” you first need to learn how to. The fact that beef is unsustainable, that other meats are still far less sustainable than a plant-based diet, that some plant-based foods are still unsustainable. Where to get the sustainable plant-based food without them being packaged in disposable plastic – and at prices you can afford, at the job you work at where commuting doesn’t require a private vehicle. Learning that basically everything sold online from overseas is unsustainable, especially most of the stuff that advertises itself as sustainable. Learning to be content with what you have, unless it’s a gas-powered dryer because wouldn’t a heat pump clothes dryer be better? But really you should air dry your clothes!
Unsustainability isn’t a single habit like smoking, it’s entire lifestyle and thought patterns and ignorance and you have to learn about it all and change deeply ingrained habits. That’s why blaming the individual is so unproductive. Governments should have responded to the danger of climate change a long time ago but chose not to, even actively accelerating it for profit. The failure lies there.
Again- this isn’t about blaming the individual. I agree individuals are largely not to blame (the exception being people that know they are living an extremely unsustainable lifestyle that harms the planet and they just don’t care).
My point is that, even having been dealt a bad hand, individuals still have the power to make a real difference by making environmentally conscious decisions. Therefore the narrative that corporations are to blame and therefore individual contributions don’t matter is not true.
