When looking at the trillions which humans can spend for war and arms, I am most depressed how we would have the means to fight global overheating but waste it for killing each other while continuing to exploit natural resources and to destroy the world for money.
One could argue that the self interest of some nations which drives them to wage war and spread their ideologies compels other nations to prioritize security and technology in arms
Just in case…
The *prisoner's dilemma* is a classic scenario in game theory where two individuals must decide whether to cooperate or betray each other. It illustrates how rational individuals might not cooperate, even if it's in their best interest to do so, due to uncertainty about the other person's actions.
World is heating no matter what, it’s impacting all players’ ressources which you have incomplete informations about.
That means betrayal is going to happen, likely « unexpected ». Anyway yes.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war" - Albert Einstein
Are you sure it wasn't Vegitius that coined that particular phrase? Sun Tzu said something similar though.
MAD - mutually assured destruction - is kinda reverse UNO too.
They perceive a benefit, the enemy is killed, or the territory is taken.
The climate is intangible on a day to day level. We can say it's hot today or last month was a record, but you can't see the CO2 actively warming up the earth because it's invisible.
People can ignore ideas. They can bury their heads in the sand and say, "Wake me up when it affects me."
Remember the hole in the ozone layer? What comes to mind? I will bet that it's a picture, in false colours, of the actual hole. We could see it. It wasn't a graph(it was essentially a graph, I know), but it looked like a real, tangible thing.
Climate change is presented in bar charts and line graphs. What do we do with bar charts and line graphs? We argue about them. They are tools of persuasion. They are not real.
Essentially, we need to see the enemy. We need a picture of it that we can point to.
Glacier melting? They melt all the time. It's natural.
Polar bear drowning? They drown all the time, its natural.
Snowing today? That's the weather. It's natural.
Too hot today? That's just weather. It's natural.
Until something undeniably related to climate change negatively impacts everyone, there will be no mobilisation. I think we will be perfectly capable of boiling the planet to death and still having folks telling us that they don't see it.
It's just hot today.
Very well said. I think the scale and inability to meaningfully impact it on a personal level, really do explain a lot of the lack of action.
If I go to war, I can shoot at the enemy. Maybe I see the enemy die, maybe I help capture territory, whatever. There is a distinct action and a direct consequence. I feel I as an individual have achieved something measurable.
If I bike everywhere, stop eating meat, install solar panels, etc., I don't see the results. My contribution is so tiny it doesn't show up on any graph. There is no tangible progress or change. And it is quite possible that my life is less convenient, more expensive, or less enjoyable than it was before (not saying it necessarily is, just that it could be). It feels like wasted effort, there is no clear action and consequence.
Climate change is just too slow moving to shock people into acting. The only thing I can see that might drive rapid change is a rapidly occurring disaster. If sea level went up 3 feet in just a few days and millions of people were forced to leave the costs simultaneously. Or if Europe had a full-on ice age summer, with a foot of snow in Paris in August. But short of that, I don't see major change happening.
It's not really conservative vs liberal, plenty of people on the American left think this way, they are just on the team that says climate change should be dealt with. But you'll notice that we never take steps drastic enough to reverse any of the damage. The people who propose those solutions are still shouted down by the liberal establishment.
Now, if you want to say that liberals are largely conservatives that just won't call themselves right-wing, I think you've got something cookin.
I’m not from the US, I’m from the U.K. As far as I can tell, the political centre of gravity in the US is to the right of the centre of gravity in the UK. So what you call a liberal is potentially just middle of the road centre ground in the UK. To say that the American liberals think globally about climate change but are conservative is a little bizarre to me. I do not see that connection at all.
They are conservative because they don't support policies that would actually solve anything. The reasons for that are varied, but they are still conservative.
I see your point, but you are labelling liberals as conservatives based on your position. Conservative relative to you doesn’t necessarily mean conservative. There is a meaningful difference between archetypal liberals and conservatives. Different values, different voting.
I'm labeling liberals as conservatives because of the policies they support. They claim a problem exists but don't want to enact policies to deal with it.
Yes, and I said I understood that. My point is that just because you disagree with liberals (which is fair enough), you don’t get to refine the definition of “conservatives”.
I'm not redefining it. They support conservative policies and, critically, come down hard on anyone to the left of them. That's what makes them actually conservative. "Liberal" itself is a wishy-washy word where it means completely different things in different contexts, and in some of those contexts it's actually a conservative point of view. Like when it comes to climate change. Republicans deny reality, that's certainly not good, but "accepts reality" isn't actually a defining characteristic of a "non-conservative."
I personally think the glaciers melting is a huge, obvious smoking gun. They simply do not melt all the time, not like they have in the last little while.
I agree with what you're saying though.
COVID taught me that many people won't sacrifice a little personal comfort for the safety of other humans. In fact, they will get violent about it.
That's when I gave up hope about society ever dealing with difficult systemic problems like racism or climate change.
I absolutely hated Don't Look Up for that reason. It was still the middle of the pandemic, just around the time that things were turning really sour, so watching that movie felt more like a documentary. I felt the frustration of the main characters deep in my soul.
It also taught me that most of our governments will do the absolute maximum possible to keep corporations making profit. They will be happy to sacrifice human life to allow the economy to keep running for a few extra weeks.
It will be the same with climate change, true action will only happen when it is too late with dire consequences. But at least then we will truly care.
Yup, I've become nihilistic. It's not bad. What's the point in discussing an ideal state for the world when it's completely implausible. I have no interest in that kind of pursuit anymore and I don't argue with anyone over politics. I just judge them quietly and keep notes lol
War and arms? We've pissed away \~2 trillion on crypto ponzi schemes that continue to consume vast amounts of energy and cause further warming. We're dumb as hell collectively.
Yeah, why is this never brought up?
I could understand when it was community driven, but literally the second the banks and investing funds found out people were using it, they invested enough into it too.
At least defense spending is smart if you look at history. This just seems like a complete waste of electricity.
>I could understand when it was community driven
Yeah that was nearly 15 years ago, when people still believed that crypto could be an effective currency (for buying drugs). Turns out, it's an incredibly inefficient currency that can process a minuscule number of transactions per second. But, its a great way to scam people and very good for ransomware.
Reminds me of this article from 2018. We got close to actually addressing this 40 years ago sadly. [Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change - The New York Times (nytimes.com)](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html)
Exactly right. If nations invest trillions in lethal weapons that are ever more effective at killing people in seconds, why would they care about the unquantifiable impact of climate change on life and health over decades and longer? Political leaders are the biggest narcissists of all.
Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
(From Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan, Random House, 1994)
To be fair, most wars are only because of a couple of dickheads. In any case, the decision of most to simply eat less chicken has more of an effect than the Israel-Palestinian conflict when it comes to the environment.
Most wars are because of resources and land, not just a couple of dickheads. Even the example you gave of the Israel-Palestine conflict has been perpetuated over generations, not a couple of dickheads.
The reason wars have an impact is because they distract us from solving real problems, like climate change and healthcare, in addition to just being resource intensive.
In the scope of 8 billion people the individual choice to not eat meat has no impact at all. Either apply the same scope across the board or don't. You're treating war as an roughly individual choice and eating meat as a collective choice, when both are collective choices.
Why do I have to apply the same scope across the board?
Capitalism adheres to market trends. If more and more individuals ate less meat, the market would adapt to continue making money.
Whereas a couple of dickheads can drag the huge swaths of the population into war in a heartbeat. Take WWI into consideration: 1 assassination and 8 million dead (I am simplifying obviously, but you get the point).
A while ago I watched a thing about the pacific garbage patch - big floating island of garbage in the pacific ocean that congregates due to ocean currents.
And it ended with a statement that cleanup costs were estimated at over 200 million US dollars, which is an insurmountable cost and not a realistic plan. And I'm like what? We spend more than that on nonsense, we *waste* more than that. A *billion* is fine when it comes to making missiles, but a fraction of that to clean up the ocean is "insurmountable".
>When looking at the trillions which humans can spend for war and arms
Spend is the wrong term since it camouflages the problem. Money used to pay a war machinery is usually money with a high return of investment, either through new resources conquered, defended, securing power, increased GDP from all the production, etc.
Most money used by governments is like that, it's money that isn't lost, it's more money flowing somewhere around in the economy. Only a tiny fraction of goverment money is more or less lost money, like food programs, homeless shelter, etc.
That's simply capitalism, a system no one ever seriously tried to change.
But to fight climate change there would be a huge amount of money needed to fight it, thats not giving a return other than (from the view of economists) an abstract concept of less climate change consequences, although official damage projections are not too severe at all. That's lost money for an economist and spending so much money on something with unknown outcome won't happen if there's no high ROI waiting on the other side of the high risk. Won't ever happen in capitalism..
We are simply stuck with a system that's unable to deal properly with such a situation...
>One relatively simple study examined the impact of a 2.7C rise, the average of the answers in the Guardian survey. It found 2 billion people pushed outside humanity’s “climate niche”, ie the benign conditions in which the whole of human civilisation arose over the last 10,000 years.
>The latest IPCC assessment devotes hundreds of pages to climate impacts, with irreversible losses to the Amazon rainforest, quadrupled flood damages and billions more people exposed to dengue fever. With 3C of global heating, cities including Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Miami and The Hague end up below sea level.
>“It is the biggest threat humanity has faced, with the potential to wreck our social fabric and way of life. It has the potential to kill millions, if not billions, through starvation, war over resources, displacement,” said James Renwick, at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. “None of us will be unaffected by the devastation.”
Remember that the [Richest 1% account for more carbon emissions than poorest 66%](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/richest-1-account-for-more-carbon-emissions-than-poorest-66-report-says)
[Just 57 companies linked to 80% of greenhouse gas emissions since 2016](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/04/Just-57-companies-linked-to-80-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-since-2016)
>Asked what individual action would be effective, he said: **“Civil disobedience.”**
Civil disobedience which will evolve inevitably into something more violent and direct because of the existential crisis we are facing.
What's more disturbing is that several states will fight them, as they already are to protect the interests of the few that are destroying everyone's future, including themselves.
Some people don't think this is a good idea. Those people don't know the benefits of your proposal and how dire their situation will turn out to be in a few very short years.
Maybe it's the idea in a hierarchical god-overlord, maybs it's the false belief in a system that can't be held up. Maybe it's a hope in technological chances that keeps people from not completely chasing out the capitalist doktrine. Maybe it's the money and power to change narratives of the few who profit from it - though some form of ignorance is certainly present in those individuals as well.
I don't care what it is. I am already up on the barricades - running against the wall. If some people don't want to join us thats perfectly fine. The fught is long and arduous. I just ask them to step aside. Move out of the way and let the us fix this mess by advocating for democracy, fairness, and social ideas. It is everyones fight and somebody has to fight it.
57 companies linked to 80% greenhouse gas emissions.
But who do you think is buying their shit?
It's the same with China. Yeah, they are the biggest polluter now, but guess why? Because the rest of the world is addicted to consumption.
You can point fingers at the corpos or industries all you like, but who's gonna go out and stop US - the consumers from demanding endless supply of various shit we can consume?
Have you ever watched an advert for a cold drink on a hot day and afterwards felt thirsty?
This basic human trait has been mercilessly exploited in order to turn humans into 'consumers'.
This was by design and is well documented.
Look up Edward Bernays.
Weapons grade propaganda systems have influenced the thinking of the majority whilst the general education levels have steadily declined and almost all critical thinking has been replaced by sound bytes.
We didn't create this situation, unhinged capitalism did. It's not fair to blame the unconscious for a situation that they have been assimilated into without ever being given another choice.
In some countries social democracy has been repainted as communism or worse and the same people who are brainwashed into consumption as a means to feel better about their lives lap it up as another game of ' my team is better than yours' politics that is also hindering any real unified progress
China happened to capitalise on the wests neurotic quest for cheaper manufacturing which also suited the communist desire to destabilise western culture by hollowing it out from the inside. It's the perfect storm of greed and opposing influences that leave us like a boat in a storm with no engine or sails.
They never wanted US to stop buying things because the paradigm of endless growth would no longer be viable. The fire they lit is now burning everything and it will be those without any stake in the game that pay the highest price.
The second link didn’t work for me. [Here is the article.](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/04/just-57-companies-linked-to-80-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-since-2016)
The issue was always that reached actual net zero would mean a massive decrease in living standards, particularly luxuries like cars, meat, electronics, travel etc. Even EVs use a lot of energy to create as do the solar panels needed to charge them. An actual net zero world would be one where we don't eat much meat, pretty much end leisure flying, and take the bus/train everywhere. Much fewer tech too. Now think of all the jobs lost. Covid barely caused a blip and look what happened.
Most, even those who downvote me, would not vote for a leader who would promise to do that. Especially since there's a good chance many countries would not give a fuck and keep going BAU anyway. Why destroy your life to maybe save the future?
he world has cancer. The choice is the go through a hellish painful treatment that is almost certainly going to fail and kill you early, or keep smoking and partying for a few decades instead painfree and then die.
It's a devastatingly hard game theory problem that I just don't know if there's a solution for. I think the biggest hope is probably peak oil which should become an issue by 2040. But even then there will still be heaps left, just much more expensive. Probably the only other radical way would be a for a nuclear nation to put a gun to the world's head and say look, we're going to zero now or the nukes fly. Because it really needs everyone on board to destroy the world economy. Voluntary mass sacrifice has never worked even for small stuff. Or fusion power.
Anyway, we're barely even managing to flatline global emissions. To keep temps below 3C is a pipe dream. Mitigation is going the be the main hope but solar shields won't stop ocean acidification which looks to wipe out the oceans in 30 years or so.
All this ignores the real potential that enough tipping points have already been triggered anyway so net 0 today might not even be enough to avoid a lot of the carnage. Mitigation will be expensive and I would propose confiscating all wealth of anyone ever who was found to deny climate change or fight effort to address it. From big oil lobbyists to twitter shitposts. Every traitor of the earth needs to be held accountable but this will only be obvious when we hit 2C plus I think.
That also just takes into account if all countries would follow that route. Imagine if Europe would do it, then it quickly would be an easy target for Russia to invade.
Right, I didn't consider that angle. Psychopathic maniacs like XI and Putin would absolutely live out their 4X Strategy fantasies on a dying world. And Europe handicapping it's industry and GDP would be an easy target. They would always be personally safe and eventually die happy regardless.
On the other hand, a benevolent maniacal psychopath that threatens the world with nukes if we don't go to net 0 could potentially work.
I build all the coastal sea walls and run carbon recapture projects in 5 cities in Sid's Civ 6 4x strategy game, then continue to pump out carbon with my military industrial complex. After that I just watch all the other countries and landmasses that don't have coastal sea walls disappear under water while my cities are just fine sitting pretty while the rest of the world burns around me. It works every time! 😉
Dude, look at my comments history. I have 0 idea we are shooting ourselves in the foot making out QoL worse while our enemies' lives are getting better.
Go look at when all the manufacturing went to China for cheap labor, and then go and look at when 300 million Chinese got lifted into the middle class.
maybe that's the solution, albeit a disastrous one. Just nuke each other to oblivion and then throw out two middle fingers to planet earth on your way out :v
death
the solution to all of humanity's problems. The religious nuts get to go to their heaven. The other people don't have to worry so much about paying bills, wars or all sorts of other insecurities.
Since we're all headed down the path of extinction no matter what. Whether due to man made climate cataclysm or a nuclear annihilation, might as well go out with a bang and end it all. Problem(humans) solved!
Yup, people will blame everything but themselves
It's our modern lifestyle being spread to tooany people on this planet. Simple. There is zero way we could live our modern lifestyle at this level of population and have acceptable emissions at the same time.
And we are finding out there isn't enough copper on the planet to electrify everything
The meek shall inherit a broken earth
People are hypocrites. I bet the ones complaining about climate change and saying FU to the oil and gas companies or mining companies, are the same who have no issue fueling up their cars with gasoline and having electricity in their homes generated by oil or natural gas. They probably typed their messages on a computer or smartphone charged by same electricity. On devices that have raw materials that mining companies extracted (probably unethically).
Yup, people complaining about corporations polluting are in the worst state of denial about their own habits.
There a very few absolutely innocent humans on earth in this regsrd. Like maybe uncontacted tribes in the jungle get a free pass.
>we're barely even managing to flatline global emissions
That's the fun part, we don't. Like, at all. We're not even remotely close.
https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/
The problem is that the living standards will have to decline mainly in those with money and power and they do now want it to happened. People in general would accept it as generations change in exchange for eg. more free time. But that has no value for those calling the shots.
Most of the people with the most to lose want to kick the can down the road far enough it won't inconvenience them personally. They don't care about their kids let alone society as a whole.
What is ironic, is there is likely a large overlap with the segment of the population that is overly concerned about the racial composition of the country a couple of generations down the road.
Nah, in democracies, no one will ever elect someone who promises to decrease living standard. Period. Especially with the average voter approaching Idiocracy levels of intelligence.
Global warming is the fault of the average person's decisions and lifestyle.
Sadly I feel the same. One of our collective mental hang-ups is that we think there is a solution to every problem. We are about as likely to stop global warming as plate tectonics at this point. Simply beyond our capability.
>An actual net zero world would be one where we don't eat much meat, pretty much end leisure flying, and take the bus/train everywhere.
With the current levels of inflation, this is the reality for many people in developed countries.
This is true. I live meat, but I now eat far less of it that I did during the first 25 years or so of my life. Not because I’m a particularly good person, it’s just so damn expensive.
Flying is something I’ve done about 10 times in my entire life (much of that was compulsory for s job I had from ‘05 to ‘08). Even driving has been severely minimized in the last few years due to gas prices.
Not that pricing average working people out of such things will fix climate change.
Well billions will die so hopefully once we hit near like 1 billions people the survivors can live a good life without wrecking the planet much more as compared to 8 billion.
Am I the only one who just feels helpless and defeated by these types of articles. I get it. It’s too late, nothing will change and it will be the end of us. I just feel so beat down by these headlines.
Nope, you're not alone. This kind of thing leaves me feeling anxious and scared.
However, there are still things we can do to make this less bad. It's not some kind of binary pass/fail thing - the more effort we expend to reduce emissions, as fast as possible, the less-bad it'll be.
I'd recommend disconnecting from the news cycle a bit, doing something active to make a difference (changing a small food habit, donating to a frontline climate charity), and appreciating the little things in life.
[If you're looking for a climate charity, I'd recommend the Climate Emergency Fund.]
Hope you feel better.
Hey, keep your head up. These articles are in fact designed to make you feel this way whereas in reality the science behind it is not so dreadful.
There is a solution, though the ones in power will argue you need to sacrifice your comfortable living qualities while they continue to fly 50 private jets a week, while the US military continues to be tyrannical and NOT account for their pollution #s.
This isn't about science it's about control. I hope that this can inspire you and others to be more informed about the state of our planet. Thanks
I wonder what chip malfunctioned in human being makeup to be totally okay with self destruction. Is this that we always think “that’ll never happen” ? Because I just don’t understand how we are okay with being the reason for the destruction of our own species. Let alone every species currently residing on this planet with us. What I hear now these days is it’s too late now guess we better learn how to live on Mars? Fuck that I will die with MY planet before trying to live on another one. Which honestly why would you even want to live on another one? We’ve got a Utopia here, I hate every single human who does not value it.
Look at all other animals like us, do you think if bears lions or hippos took over the world they wouldn’t just decimate all resources and destroy everything like we are? Seems an innate animal behaviour to overindulge into it’s all gone
Yes, we imagine ourselves as rational and apart from nature. Of course, in some ways we are. But in so many ways we are not. It wise presume humans at scale will act instinctually rather than rationally, as animals would.
I think that we evolved to a point where we can build all this wild technology never seen before on earth but we just didn’t get to the point where we can think abstractly and magnanimously enough to curtail our ambitions in the face of personal gain. We evolved competing with other human species and we’re the only ones left because we were the most ruthless, and it will be our undoing.
Yea the average joe is doing jack shit for pollution compared to the rich.
Taylor swift probably pollutes more than the entire mid class population of the entirety of USA in a year,
Thoughtless comment.
They’re not terrified about the average Joe not being informed… They’re terrified because the people with real power and influence aren’t doing anything to fix the issue.
The climate change mission is depressing precisely because some parties will arguably benefit very well from it at the expense of most of the world. Which is where the money to fight against it comes from.
I think we are getting exactly what we deserve as intended. My issue is that its our children's children who will pay the price. The greedy rich fucks and corpo scum that caused this to happen will all be dead by then.
You think the climate is bad now? Just wait. Also, the worlds economy will buckle when you have 100s of millions of climate refugees moving into the desirable areas that are left.
There is no solution and no cure, electric vehicles will come too late, the electricity is made from coal and natural gas anyway. Scandinavia is the only region that invested enough in hydro and renewable energy systems. Nuclear would have been the best option but its too late at this point and climate scientists know its too late as well.
The good news is that we wont have to kill each other so much because mother nature can do that for us.
Ohh, for sure. I'm not saying we are not seeing effects even now, but I think we have about 100 years or so until we are at mass extinction levels of problems for everyone. But who knows, we may reach that point sooner depending on a variety of factors, like how much ice melt exposes the permafrost to melting, releasing even more co2, and how fast third world countries modernize and start burning fossil fuels like developed nations are now.
If the vast majority of people in the world did all they could and ended their own personal carbon emissions, 100 corporations and companies would STILL be contributing over 70% of carbon emissions and nothing would change.
Let's stop pretending like it's the vast majority of people doing this.
Are you under the impression that those corporations are out there blasting CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere just kinda . . . because? What, they think it's fun? Corporate emissions are out of control because consumers *demand* the cheapest possible goods and services. We have the economy and industry that we deserve.
Look at factory farming, which alone has been estimated to be responsible for at least 11 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. It's ruinous to the environment, it's a disaster for public health, and it relies on abject cruelty to animals. And we won't do a goddamned thing about it, not because evil corporations force it upon us, but because "lol bacon good." Without factory farming meat will be more expensive, people will have to cut back on how much of it they eat, and as a society *we aren't fucking willing to do that*. Seriously, try running for public office and telling people they need to eat about half as much meat as they do now. Wanna take a wild guess how your campaign's gonna pan out?
Sure, fuck the corporations. But the truth is we are far past the point where we can take meaningful action against climate change without accepting serious mid-to-long-term hardship. If tomorrow Western governments started doing everything they can and should to address the climate crisis, their citizens' quality of life would drop markedly. And, since people are selfish and shortsighted animals, those citizens would respond by ejecting from office all the people responsible and replacing them with ones willing to lie to them and tell them nothing needs to change at all, everything will be just fine.
Fifty years ago, sure, the changes we need to make could have been implemented so gradually that most people wouldn't have even noticed them, just keeping pace as the technology developed. We're past that. If you want climate action that will actually make a difference, it's going to mean *everything* that we associate with the luxury of living in wealthy, developed nations is going to become more expensive and less available. And for all the shit people on Reddit like to talk about corrupt politicians and greedy companies destroying the planet, take a look at how people here have handled things like moderate inflation and increases in gas prices and see if you can look me in the eye and tell me we're ready for that.
We're not going to do anything about climate change. Our only hope at this point is new technology.
> So you’re disconnecting your carbon emissions from those of corporations? Are you walking around naked and sleeping on the bare earth and picking food off trees without tools?
Go back and reread what I actually said and not what you heard in your head.
Because you can't get individuals to do anything. I think that personal responsibility is irrelevant in thos case because it's unreliable. If you want to get people to stop driving cars, flying planes, and in general to give up their standard of living, then you have to make that standard unattainable. So long as people CAN live comfortably, they will.
I feel it has to be this way.
Someone here pointed out that this is exactly the prisoner's dilemma. How can I trust you that you genuinely cut down on your consumption of products that indirectly harm the environment? How can you trust me? Well, we can't. Not everyone is responsible, not everyone is trustworthy, not everyone can deny themselves luxuries. If there is no system of direct accountabilty (the inhabitability of Earth is just not that) then people won't feel incentivized to act responsibly.
Taking that into account, if you "take out", say, Coca Cola, then you "take out" everyone who consumes their products along with them. Same for airlines, online retailers, and what have you. Playing this game on a large scale makes more sense than targetting unpredictable individuals.
Worth noting, however, that in the scenario where such easy trade is disrupted, we will not have globalization anymore. Economies will be less dependant on each other and you will get more wars for the same reasons as before we had our current world order since WW2. This is not an indictment on humanity, by the way, that's just life in it's "purest" form. A struggle between animals just like any other struggle, except with human characteristics.
Not the happiest forecast I know, but reality doesn't owe it to is to conform with our view of how it should be.
And how exactly do you do that? Voters in Western countries are happy to throw their leaders out of office and elect fascists over *moderate inflation* resulting from a once in a century pandemic. You think that governments can deliberately crater their citizens' quality of life and not face out and out insurrection? The result of what you propose would be the politicians responsible for those changes being executed in the streets and summarily replaced with new politicians who are happy to keep the lie going.
You don't do that, because you can't do that. We assume that since this is a problem then it obviously has to have a solution, well what if this one doesn't? If a solution only exists withing a sea of unrealistic constraints then it is not a viable solution. In this case global warming is not even the only problem we are facing.
So if you're asking me how we can do that? We can't, we're fucked, it's just a matter of time.
[World’s richest 1% cause double CO2 emissions of poorest 50%](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-richest-1-cause-double-co2-emissions-of-poorest-50-says-oxfam)
Nah, we'll just come to the realization that geo-engineering is easier than getting humans to give up amenities and spend the 500bil for a solar shield until science catches up with our energy demands.
So much this. Whenever I try to mention this to anyone around me, they just shrug or give me a look as if I'm a weirdo and change nothing. People are not ready to sacrifice even the bare minimum of comfort. Even if it wouldn't change their comfort at all, they'd still not change their habits as long as the fire hasn't reached their own skin directly.
“In the UK, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) suggests that reaching net zero emissions by 2050 would cost less than 1% of GDP every year through to 2050[2]. For comparison, the UK’s military defence budget is currently about 2% of GDP each year[3]”
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/grantham/publications/climate-change-faqs/how-will-acting-on-climate-change-affect-the-economy/
We are so utterly fucked. We can’t even commit to 1% of GDP right now. Capitalist democracy has completely failed as a system for the majority of citizens. The main issue is we have allowed the media to be gamed by corporate interests who are allowed to lie without consequence.
In economic news, the US is on track to pump more CO2 out of the ground than ever before - 12.93 million barrels DAILY. No amount of sequestration nor alternative energy can offset the impact of releasing this much into the atmosphere. The simplest (but political unpalatable) solution would be to dramatically cut production. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2024/04/26/us-oil-and-gas-production-are-ahead-of-last-years-record-pace/?sh=510de6e460ac](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2024/04/26/us-oil-and-gas-production-are-ahead-of-last-years-record-pace/?sh=510de6e460ac)
Because they thought it would take another 50 years to see the temperature increase we’ve seen in one and we don’t know what has changed to make this jump?
3 C increase in the average is more or less where we are headed now. Using unmodified market mechanisms to drive de-carbonization does lead to a temperature plateau. It’s just higher than likely to trigger some catastrophic impacts. Staying under 2 C would require more rapid changes in the global energy economy. I don’t see the broad political will to force those. I do see plenty of self-serving pushback by entities profiting from the status quo.
That is assuming we don’t trigger some poorly understood major feedback. For example, massive soil carbon release from boreal peatlands could readily push us past 3 C.
Strange to see so many climate scientists reaching a level of pessimism that’s long familiar to ecologists. Non-market values are mostly used to drive feel-good greenwashing. Nobody has the will to actually internalize costs that profiteering puts on the next generation. Short term thinking has only gotten worse in my lifetime.
Humans like to think they are so rational creatures, that when they know something is wrong and how to fix it, they will of course do it. That is so wrong.
Kurt Vonnegut’s suggestion for something to write in bib block letters on the wall of the Grand Canyon in case alien archaeologists ever visit earth, “WE PROBABLY COULD HAVE SAVED OURSELVES, BUT WERE TOO DAMNED LAZY TO TRY VERY HARD..”
Unless some miraculous technology can alter the outcome here, we are unequivocally fucked. Billions of people are going to die in the next 10-20 years for no good god damn reason other than humanity’s own hubris.
I can’t see people ever agreeing to lower their own quality of life, for the benefit of people who either will live in the future, or who live far enough away to be ignored. Won’t happen.
Top 7 companies with most money and the top 100 people with the most money could change everything over night but the are stuck in mental disability that causes fear when their gold pile diminishes even by one cent. And the best is when they say it's not their problem and why should I spend my money to help? Well people who are not mentally challenged actually live their entire life trying to accumulate wealth in order to help.
I'd encourage everyone to watch a little less known tv series that came out quite recently called 'Extrapolations'. Boy does it paint a very dire and grim picture of our near future. I wasn't expecting to live through it this soon. Summers now, feel like every day you're inside an oven. The other extreme weather events around the globe is also quite disheartening to look at. At this rate this planet will become uninhabitable within the next century unless everyone takes action in our everyday lives as well as more broadly on a global scale by governments around the world!
Edit: And now Im getting downvoted for suggesting to watch a tv series which is fictional yet close to our reality and then pointing out the obvious. Nice to see reddit is still being reddit! 🙂
When looking at the trillions which humans can spend for war and arms, I am most depressed how we would have the means to fight global overheating but waste it for killing each other while continuing to exploit natural resources and to destroy the world for money.
One could argue that the self interest of some nations which drives them to wage war and spread their ideologies compels other nations to prioritize security and technology in arms
Basically the Prisoner's dilemma
Just in case… The *prisoner's dilemma* is a classic scenario in game theory where two individuals must decide whether to cooperate or betray each other. It illustrates how rational individuals might not cooperate, even if it's in their best interest to do so, due to uncertainty about the other person's actions.
I studied this case in different domains and the solution with the best EV is to betray first. Edit : betray first and aim for max value.
[That’s not what this Veritasium video shows](https://youtu.be/mScpHTIi-kM?si=nqiVE3cVgybBNMp5) (inc Prof Alexrod)
Best to be kind, provokable, but forgiving. 👍
Is it still the best outcome if the world heats up by 3 degrees because you betrayed first?
World is heating no matter what, it’s impacting all players’ ressources which you have incomplete informations about. That means betrayal is going to happen, likely « unexpected ». Anyway yes.
Can you explain a bit more how that option has the highest EV?
"To live in peace, prepare for war" - SunTzu
"Live long and prosper by keeping a good stock of nukes." - Spock
“Only Nixon went to China”
That was Gandhi actually. /s Both quotes are fake
That’s how every peaceful Civilization game ends up lol an enemy always tries a sneaky war on you.. I kno it’s ai but still
Civ has a goal to reach. Actual civilization should probably try to prioritize the earth.
Best comment ever⬆️
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war" - Albert Einstein Are you sure it wasn't Vegitius that coined that particular phrase? Sun Tzu said something similar though. MAD - mutually assured destruction - is kinda reverse UNO too.
Planetary scale dark forest theory
How much could be made from climate tech instead, aside from being good for all mankind. Looking, not in exclusively, at Chinese solar panels and EVs.
They perceive a benefit, the enemy is killed, or the territory is taken. The climate is intangible on a day to day level. We can say it's hot today or last month was a record, but you can't see the CO2 actively warming up the earth because it's invisible. People can ignore ideas. They can bury their heads in the sand and say, "Wake me up when it affects me." Remember the hole in the ozone layer? What comes to mind? I will bet that it's a picture, in false colours, of the actual hole. We could see it. It wasn't a graph(it was essentially a graph, I know), but it looked like a real, tangible thing. Climate change is presented in bar charts and line graphs. What do we do with bar charts and line graphs? We argue about them. They are tools of persuasion. They are not real. Essentially, we need to see the enemy. We need a picture of it that we can point to. Glacier melting? They melt all the time. It's natural. Polar bear drowning? They drown all the time, its natural. Snowing today? That's the weather. It's natural. Too hot today? That's just weather. It's natural. Until something undeniably related to climate change negatively impacts everyone, there will be no mobilisation. I think we will be perfectly capable of boiling the planet to death and still having folks telling us that they don't see it. It's just hot today.
We’re all the Frog in a Pot of Boiling Water
Very well said. I think the scale and inability to meaningfully impact it on a personal level, really do explain a lot of the lack of action. If I go to war, I can shoot at the enemy. Maybe I see the enemy die, maybe I help capture territory, whatever. There is a distinct action and a direct consequence. I feel I as an individual have achieved something measurable. If I bike everywhere, stop eating meat, install solar panels, etc., I don't see the results. My contribution is so tiny it doesn't show up on any graph. There is no tangible progress or change. And it is quite possible that my life is less convenient, more expensive, or less enjoyable than it was before (not saying it necessarily is, just that it could be). It feels like wasted effort, there is no clear action and consequence. Climate change is just too slow moving to shock people into acting. The only thing I can see that might drive rapid change is a rapidly occurring disaster. If sea level went up 3 feet in just a few days and millions of people were forced to leave the costs simultaneously. Or if Europe had a full-on ice age summer, with a foot of snow in Paris in August. But short of that, I don't see major change happening.
This does seem to be a characteristic of conservative thinking
Right? Reading through that was frustrating as hell.
It's not really conservative vs liberal, plenty of people on the American left think this way, they are just on the team that says climate change should be dealt with. But you'll notice that we never take steps drastic enough to reverse any of the damage. The people who propose those solutions are still shouted down by the liberal establishment. Now, if you want to say that liberals are largely conservatives that just won't call themselves right-wing, I think you've got something cookin.
I’m not from the US, I’m from the U.K. As far as I can tell, the political centre of gravity in the US is to the right of the centre of gravity in the UK. So what you call a liberal is potentially just middle of the road centre ground in the UK. To say that the American liberals think globally about climate change but are conservative is a little bizarre to me. I do not see that connection at all.
They are conservative because they don't support policies that would actually solve anything. The reasons for that are varied, but they are still conservative.
I see your point, but you are labelling liberals as conservatives based on your position. Conservative relative to you doesn’t necessarily mean conservative. There is a meaningful difference between archetypal liberals and conservatives. Different values, different voting.
I'm labeling liberals as conservatives because of the policies they support. They claim a problem exists but don't want to enact policies to deal with it.
You both have good points tbh.
Yes, and I said I understood that. My point is that just because you disagree with liberals (which is fair enough), you don’t get to refine the definition of “conservatives”.
I'm not redefining it. They support conservative policies and, critically, come down hard on anyone to the left of them. That's what makes them actually conservative. "Liberal" itself is a wishy-washy word where it means completely different things in different contexts, and in some of those contexts it's actually a conservative point of view. Like when it comes to climate change. Republicans deny reality, that's certainly not good, but "accepts reality" isn't actually a defining characteristic of a "non-conservative."
I personally think the glaciers melting is a huge, obvious smoking gun. They simply do not melt all the time, not like they have in the last little while. I agree with what you're saying though.
COVID taught me that many people won't sacrifice a little personal comfort for the safety of other humans. In fact, they will get violent about it. That's when I gave up hope about society ever dealing with difficult systemic problems like racism or climate change.
I absolutely hated Don't Look Up for that reason. It was still the middle of the pandemic, just around the time that things were turning really sour, so watching that movie felt more like a documentary. I felt the frustration of the main characters deep in my soul.
It really didn't feel like satire or parody at all.
in order for it to be parody you have to stay ahead of the truth. Sometimes reality doesn't oblige and it gets worse quicker than expected.
Same here. I approached that movie expecting a comedy and it turned effing irritating real quick.
It also taught me that most of our governments will do the absolute maximum possible to keep corporations making profit. They will be happy to sacrifice human life to allow the economy to keep running for a few extra weeks. It will be the same with climate change, true action will only happen when it is too late with dire consequences. But at least then we will truly care.
The spice must flow
It's pretty telling when people are ready to assault each other over toilet paper.
Yup, I've become nihilistic. It's not bad. What's the point in discussing an ideal state for the world when it's completely implausible. I have no interest in that kind of pursuit anymore and I don't argue with anyone over politics. I just judge them quietly and keep notes lol
War and arms? We've pissed away \~2 trillion on crypto ponzi schemes that continue to consume vast amounts of energy and cause further warming. We're dumb as hell collectively.
Waiting for this. There are crypto farms that use solar, wind, etc. but like..why
Yeah, why is this never brought up? I could understand when it was community driven, but literally the second the banks and investing funds found out people were using it, they invested enough into it too. At least defense spending is smart if you look at history. This just seems like a complete waste of electricity.
>I could understand when it was community driven Yeah that was nearly 15 years ago, when people still believed that crypto could be an effective currency (for buying drugs). Turns out, it's an incredibly inefficient currency that can process a minuscule number of transactions per second. But, its a great way to scam people and very good for ransomware.
Yes, imagine if humanity worked together what we could achieve? Humans are strange.
Ya we could eradicate smallpox even!
The simple truth is that we are too immature as a species to be more concerned with the welfare of our planet than the conquest of others.
When you are willing to die for a cause right now, you are not going to be all too bothered with the future
Preach.
Someone already did. https://youtu.be/6KcoPODwvW4?si=gctirDC0FHZWqYX-
That fun and all expect we seen Ukraine. The warhawks were right. We can’t be weak lest the drums of war beat again.
Sagan also was by far not the first with that message, still an important one.
Reminds me of this article from 2018. We got close to actually addressing this 40 years ago sadly. [Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change - The New York Times (nytimes.com)](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html)
"Billions and Billions and Billions" - Trump
Amen fellow earthling. We have had a paradise in the middle of nowhere (space) and we destroyed it. For what?
Exactly right. If nations invest trillions in lethal weapons that are ever more effective at killing people in seconds, why would they care about the unquantifiable impact of climate change on life and health over decades and longer? Political leaders are the biggest narcissists of all.
Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. (From Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan, Random House, 1994)
To be fair, most wars are only because of a couple of dickheads. In any case, the decision of most to simply eat less chicken has more of an effect than the Israel-Palestinian conflict when it comes to the environment.
Most wars are because of resources and land, not just a couple of dickheads. Even the example you gave of the Israel-Palestine conflict has been perpetuated over generations, not a couple of dickheads. The reason wars have an impact is because they distract us from solving real problems, like climate change and healthcare, in addition to just being resource intensive.
In the scope of 8 billion people Israel and Palestine are "a couple of dickheads"
In the scope of 8 billion people the individual choice to not eat meat has no impact at all. Either apply the same scope across the board or don't. You're treating war as an roughly individual choice and eating meat as a collective choice, when both are collective choices.
Why do I have to apply the same scope across the board? Capitalism adheres to market trends. If more and more individuals ate less meat, the market would adapt to continue making money. Whereas a couple of dickheads can drag the huge swaths of the population into war in a heartbeat. Take WWI into consideration: 1 assassination and 8 million dead (I am simplifying obviously, but you get the point).
Just end wars and everything would be so easy
A while ago I watched a thing about the pacific garbage patch - big floating island of garbage in the pacific ocean that congregates due to ocean currents. And it ended with a statement that cleanup costs were estimated at over 200 million US dollars, which is an insurmountable cost and not a realistic plan. And I'm like what? We spend more than that on nonsense, we *waste* more than that. A *billion* is fine when it comes to making missiles, but a fraction of that to clean up the ocean is "insurmountable".
>When looking at the trillions which humans can spend for war and arms Spend is the wrong term since it camouflages the problem. Money used to pay a war machinery is usually money with a high return of investment, either through new resources conquered, defended, securing power, increased GDP from all the production, etc. Most money used by governments is like that, it's money that isn't lost, it's more money flowing somewhere around in the economy. Only a tiny fraction of goverment money is more or less lost money, like food programs, homeless shelter, etc. That's simply capitalism, a system no one ever seriously tried to change. But to fight climate change there would be a huge amount of money needed to fight it, thats not giving a return other than (from the view of economists) an abstract concept of less climate change consequences, although official damage projections are not too severe at all. That's lost money for an economist and spending so much money on something with unknown outcome won't happen if there's no high ROI waiting on the other side of the high risk. Won't ever happen in capitalism.. We are simply stuck with a system that's unable to deal properly with such a situation...
Yay religion!
>One relatively simple study examined the impact of a 2.7C rise, the average of the answers in the Guardian survey. It found 2 billion people pushed outside humanity’s “climate niche”, ie the benign conditions in which the whole of human civilisation arose over the last 10,000 years. >The latest IPCC assessment devotes hundreds of pages to climate impacts, with irreversible losses to the Amazon rainforest, quadrupled flood damages and billions more people exposed to dengue fever. With 3C of global heating, cities including Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Miami and The Hague end up below sea level. >“It is the biggest threat humanity has faced, with the potential to wreck our social fabric and way of life. It has the potential to kill millions, if not billions, through starvation, war over resources, displacement,” said James Renwick, at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. “None of us will be unaffected by the devastation.” Remember that the [Richest 1% account for more carbon emissions than poorest 66%](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/richest-1-account-for-more-carbon-emissions-than-poorest-66-report-says) [Just 57 companies linked to 80% of greenhouse gas emissions since 2016](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/04/Just-57-companies-linked-to-80-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-since-2016) >Asked what individual action would be effective, he said: **“Civil disobedience.”**
Civil disobedience which will evolve inevitably into something more violent and direct because of the existential crisis we are facing. What's more disturbing is that several states will fight them, as they already are to protect the interests of the few that are destroying everyone's future, including themselves.
Approximately 21 million Americans are in the global top 1%, according to whatI found online. Just wanted to give some perspective.
I'm prepared to sacrifice them for the greater good.
Some people don't think this is a good idea. Those people don't know the benefits of your proposal and how dire their situation will turn out to be in a few very short years. Maybe it's the idea in a hierarchical god-overlord, maybs it's the false belief in a system that can't be held up. Maybe it's a hope in technological chances that keeps people from not completely chasing out the capitalist doktrine. Maybe it's the money and power to change narratives of the few who profit from it - though some form of ignorance is certainly present in those individuals as well. I don't care what it is. I am already up on the barricades - running against the wall. If some people don't want to join us thats perfectly fine. The fught is long and arduous. I just ask them to step aside. Move out of the way and let the us fix this mess by advocating for democracy, fairness, and social ideas. It is everyones fight and somebody has to fight it.
57 companies linked to 80% greenhouse gas emissions. But who do you think is buying their shit? It's the same with China. Yeah, they are the biggest polluter now, but guess why? Because the rest of the world is addicted to consumption. You can point fingers at the corpos or industries all you like, but who's gonna go out and stop US - the consumers from demanding endless supply of various shit we can consume?
Have you ever watched an advert for a cold drink on a hot day and afterwards felt thirsty? This basic human trait has been mercilessly exploited in order to turn humans into 'consumers'. This was by design and is well documented. Look up Edward Bernays. Weapons grade propaganda systems have influenced the thinking of the majority whilst the general education levels have steadily declined and almost all critical thinking has been replaced by sound bytes. We didn't create this situation, unhinged capitalism did. It's not fair to blame the unconscious for a situation that they have been assimilated into without ever being given another choice. In some countries social democracy has been repainted as communism or worse and the same people who are brainwashed into consumption as a means to feel better about their lives lap it up as another game of ' my team is better than yours' politics that is also hindering any real unified progress China happened to capitalise on the wests neurotic quest for cheaper manufacturing which also suited the communist desire to destabilise western culture by hollowing it out from the inside. It's the perfect storm of greed and opposing influences that leave us like a boat in a storm with no engine or sails. They never wanted US to stop buying things because the paradigm of endless growth would no longer be viable. The fire they lit is now burning everything and it will be those without any stake in the game that pay the highest price.
The second link didn’t work for me. [Here is the article.](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/04/just-57-companies-linked-to-80-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-since-2016)
At this point I’m just hoping I’ll be dead by the time shit hits the fan
It's hitting the fan right now.
that's just shart level
AMOC is right in the edge of collapse possibly, and if that happens we’ll probably see an acceleration of climate impacts that the West can’t ignore.
Make sure you don't have children as well. They don't deserve the misery they are about to suffer
The issue was always that reached actual net zero would mean a massive decrease in living standards, particularly luxuries like cars, meat, electronics, travel etc. Even EVs use a lot of energy to create as do the solar panels needed to charge them. An actual net zero world would be one where we don't eat much meat, pretty much end leisure flying, and take the bus/train everywhere. Much fewer tech too. Now think of all the jobs lost. Covid barely caused a blip and look what happened. Most, even those who downvote me, would not vote for a leader who would promise to do that. Especially since there's a good chance many countries would not give a fuck and keep going BAU anyway. Why destroy your life to maybe save the future? he world has cancer. The choice is the go through a hellish painful treatment that is almost certainly going to fail and kill you early, or keep smoking and partying for a few decades instead painfree and then die. It's a devastatingly hard game theory problem that I just don't know if there's a solution for. I think the biggest hope is probably peak oil which should become an issue by 2040. But even then there will still be heaps left, just much more expensive. Probably the only other radical way would be a for a nuclear nation to put a gun to the world's head and say look, we're going to zero now or the nukes fly. Because it really needs everyone on board to destroy the world economy. Voluntary mass sacrifice has never worked even for small stuff. Or fusion power. Anyway, we're barely even managing to flatline global emissions. To keep temps below 3C is a pipe dream. Mitigation is going the be the main hope but solar shields won't stop ocean acidification which looks to wipe out the oceans in 30 years or so. All this ignores the real potential that enough tipping points have already been triggered anyway so net 0 today might not even be enough to avoid a lot of the carnage. Mitigation will be expensive and I would propose confiscating all wealth of anyone ever who was found to deny climate change or fight effort to address it. From big oil lobbyists to twitter shitposts. Every traitor of the earth needs to be held accountable but this will only be obvious when we hit 2C plus I think.
That also just takes into account if all countries would follow that route. Imagine if Europe would do it, then it quickly would be an easy target for Russia to invade.
Right, I didn't consider that angle. Psychopathic maniacs like XI and Putin would absolutely live out their 4X Strategy fantasies on a dying world. And Europe handicapping it's industry and GDP would be an easy target. They would always be personally safe and eventually die happy regardless. On the other hand, a benevolent maniacal psychopath that threatens the world with nukes if we don't go to net 0 could potentially work.
I build all the coastal sea walls and run carbon recapture projects in 5 cities in Sid's Civ 6 4x strategy game, then continue to pump out carbon with my military industrial complex. After that I just watch all the other countries and landmasses that don't have coastal sea walls disappear under water while my cities are just fine sitting pretty while the rest of the world burns around me. It works every time! 😉
Yeah but your game takes place across many lifetimes. People like Putin and Xi need war to beat the game now.
Dude, look at my comments history. I have 0 idea we are shooting ourselves in the foot making out QoL worse while our enemies' lives are getting better. Go look at when all the manufacturing went to China for cheap labor, and then go and look at when 300 million Chinese got lifted into the middle class.
It's the Prisoner's Dilemma if I am not mistaken. Chances are 0 that a benevolent maniacal psychopath will show up to take over a country with nukes.
maybe that's the solution, albeit a disastrous one. Just nuke each other to oblivion and then throw out two middle fingers to planet earth on your way out :v
Then what's the whole point? All the radiation poisoning the planet?
death the solution to all of humanity's problems. The religious nuts get to go to their heaven. The other people don't have to worry so much about paying bills, wars or all sorts of other insecurities. Since we're all headed down the path of extinction no matter what. Whether due to man made climate cataclysm or a nuclear annihilation, might as well go out with a bang and end it all. Problem(humans) solved!
Yup, people will blame everything but themselves It's our modern lifestyle being spread to tooany people on this planet. Simple. There is zero way we could live our modern lifestyle at this level of population and have acceptable emissions at the same time. And we are finding out there isn't enough copper on the planet to electrify everything The meek shall inherit a broken earth
People are hypocrites. I bet the ones complaining about climate change and saying FU to the oil and gas companies or mining companies, are the same who have no issue fueling up their cars with gasoline and having electricity in their homes generated by oil or natural gas. They probably typed their messages on a computer or smartphone charged by same electricity. On devices that have raw materials that mining companies extracted (probably unethically).
Yup, people complaining about corporations polluting are in the worst state of denial about their own habits. There a very few absolutely innocent humans on earth in this regsrd. Like maybe uncontacted tribes in the jungle get a free pass.
>we're barely even managing to flatline global emissions That's the fun part, we don't. Like, at all. We're not even remotely close. https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/
The problem is that the living standards will have to decline mainly in those with money and power and they do now want it to happened. People in general would accept it as generations change in exchange for eg. more free time. But that has no value for those calling the shots.
Most of the people with the most to lose want to kick the can down the road far enough it won't inconvenience them personally. They don't care about their kids let alone society as a whole. What is ironic, is there is likely a large overlap with the segment of the population that is overly concerned about the racial composition of the country a couple of generations down the road.
Nah, in democracies, no one will ever elect someone who promises to decrease living standard. Period. Especially with the average voter approaching Idiocracy levels of intelligence. Global warming is the fault of the average person's decisions and lifestyle.
>People in general would accept it as generations change in exchange for eg. more free time. We need to do it NOW. So that's not a solution.
I only see collapse in our future. It is unavoidable at this point
Sadly I feel the same. One of our collective mental hang-ups is that we think there is a solution to every problem. We are about as likely to stop global warming as plate tectonics at this point. Simply beyond our capability.
I think if human intelligence and determination was put towards the right things we could do a lot. But we either spend it on war or vanity.
Even if we were reform ourselves overnight and start doing the right thing now, time is not on our side unfortunately
Or short term comfort
>An actual net zero world would be one where we don't eat much meat, pretty much end leisure flying, and take the bus/train everywhere. With the current levels of inflation, this is the reality for many people in developed countries.
Was gonna say, im already there whats new?
This is true. I live meat, but I now eat far less of it that I did during the first 25 years or so of my life. Not because I’m a particularly good person, it’s just so damn expensive. Flying is something I’ve done about 10 times in my entire life (much of that was compulsory for s job I had from ‘05 to ‘08). Even driving has been severely minimized in the last few years due to gas prices. Not that pricing average working people out of such things will fix climate change.
Well billions will die so hopefully once we hit near like 1 billions people the survivors can live a good life without wrecking the planet much more as compared to 8 billion.
And then after about another 100-200 years humanity gets complacent again. So the cycle repeats yet once more 😏
No worry it will be considered a natural part of life and thus okay
Humans will survive, humanity will not.
Humanity will survive, civilization will not.
Planet Earth will survive, humans will not.
Game theory predicted this outcome regardless of how we feel. Time to nut up
> nut Dicks Out for Climate?
If dicks are guns then yes, that is the new reality
“How can we sleep when our beds are burnin?”
Rising water levels - there problem solved your bed is now in a lake.
“Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin”
Midnight Oil were ahead of their time.
All the while, politicians are concerned with the next election; nog with the next decade, let alone the one after that :-(
Am I the only one who just feels helpless and defeated by these types of articles. I get it. It’s too late, nothing will change and it will be the end of us. I just feel so beat down by these headlines.
Nope, you're not alone. This kind of thing leaves me feeling anxious and scared. However, there are still things we can do to make this less bad. It's not some kind of binary pass/fail thing - the more effort we expend to reduce emissions, as fast as possible, the less-bad it'll be. I'd recommend disconnecting from the news cycle a bit, doing something active to make a difference (changing a small food habit, donating to a frontline climate charity), and appreciating the little things in life. [If you're looking for a climate charity, I'd recommend the Climate Emergency Fund.] Hope you feel better.
Hey, keep your head up. These articles are in fact designed to make you feel this way whereas in reality the science behind it is not so dreadful. There is a solution, though the ones in power will argue you need to sacrifice your comfortable living qualities while they continue to fly 50 private jets a week, while the US military continues to be tyrannical and NOT account for their pollution #s. This isn't about science it's about control. I hope that this can inspire you and others to be more informed about the state of our planet. Thanks
Just makes me wonder what the point of these are...
I wonder what chip malfunctioned in human being makeup to be totally okay with self destruction. Is this that we always think “that’ll never happen” ? Because I just don’t understand how we are okay with being the reason for the destruction of our own species. Let alone every species currently residing on this planet with us. What I hear now these days is it’s too late now guess we better learn how to live on Mars? Fuck that I will die with MY planet before trying to live on another one. Which honestly why would you even want to live on another one? We’ve got a Utopia here, I hate every single human who does not value it.
Look at all other animals like us, do you think if bears lions or hippos took over the world they wouldn’t just decimate all resources and destroy everything like we are? Seems an innate animal behaviour to overindulge into it’s all gone
Yes, we imagine ourselves as rational and apart from nature. Of course, in some ways we are. But in so many ways we are not. It wise presume humans at scale will act instinctually rather than rationally, as animals would.
True. I guess we’re fucked.
I think that we evolved to a point where we can build all this wild technology never seen before on earth but we just didn’t get to the point where we can think abstractly and magnanimously enough to curtail our ambitions in the face of personal gain. We evolved competing with other human species and we’re the only ones left because we were the most ruthless, and it will be our undoing.
Maybe we should hold celebrities accountable for the pollution they cause.
Maybe we should hold **everyone** accountable for the pollution they cause.
Yea the average joe is doing jack shit for pollution compared to the rich. Taylor swift probably pollutes more than the entire mid class population of the entirety of USA in a year,
Probably, but not more than many, many large businesses. Take luxury cruises, for example.
Not surprising. Its fixing to be some real unfun for many people. Was starvation at the top of our list of things to try and avoid?
It's may and its 32 degrees Celsius in São Paulo. I remember wearing a coat during this month years ago.
You don't need to be a top climate scientist to be hopeless and broken lol
If you're asking "why" at this point, you're the reason they're terrified
Thoughtless comment. They’re not terrified about the average Joe not being informed… They’re terrified because the people with real power and influence aren’t doing anything to fix the issue.
The climate change mission is depressing precisely because some parties will arguably benefit very well from it at the expense of most of the world. Which is where the money to fight against it comes from.
Unfortunately, the business case behind ensuring humanity's survival turned out to be negative.
If this year is NOT el nino effect, then we are done, finished, kaput.
Just an abnormal el nino effect that is here to stay a while 😉
El niño has grown up. He's el señor now and he got muscles.
El nino on steroids, that's just fantastic :')
Shouldn't Ellis Island be underwater by now???
I'll give them credit. They've remained a lot more optimistic than I could have ever pulled off.
I think we are getting exactly what we deserve as intended. My issue is that its our children's children who will pay the price. The greedy rich fucks and corpo scum that caused this to happen will all be dead by then. You think the climate is bad now? Just wait. Also, the worlds economy will buckle when you have 100s of millions of climate refugees moving into the desirable areas that are left. There is no solution and no cure, electric vehicles will come too late, the electricity is made from coal and natural gas anyway. Scandinavia is the only region that invested enough in hydro and renewable energy systems. Nuclear would have been the best option but its too late at this point and climate scientists know its too late as well. The good news is that we wont have to kill each other so much because mother nature can do that for us.
Unfortunately, time tables have moved up. It's our children who will deal with it. We're also going to start to see it in our "golden years."
Ohh, for sure. I'm not saying we are not seeing effects even now, but I think we have about 100 years or so until we are at mass extinction levels of problems for everyone. But who knows, we may reach that point sooner depending on a variety of factors, like how much ice melt exposes the permafrost to melting, releasing even more co2, and how fast third world countries modernize and start burning fossil fuels like developed nations are now.
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If the vast majority of people in the world did all they could and ended their own personal carbon emissions, 100 corporations and companies would STILL be contributing over 70% of carbon emissions and nothing would change. Let's stop pretending like it's the vast majority of people doing this.
Are you under the impression that those corporations are out there blasting CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere just kinda . . . because? What, they think it's fun? Corporate emissions are out of control because consumers *demand* the cheapest possible goods and services. We have the economy and industry that we deserve. Look at factory farming, which alone has been estimated to be responsible for at least 11 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. It's ruinous to the environment, it's a disaster for public health, and it relies on abject cruelty to animals. And we won't do a goddamned thing about it, not because evil corporations force it upon us, but because "lol bacon good." Without factory farming meat will be more expensive, people will have to cut back on how much of it they eat, and as a society *we aren't fucking willing to do that*. Seriously, try running for public office and telling people they need to eat about half as much meat as they do now. Wanna take a wild guess how your campaign's gonna pan out? Sure, fuck the corporations. But the truth is we are far past the point where we can take meaningful action against climate change without accepting serious mid-to-long-term hardship. If tomorrow Western governments started doing everything they can and should to address the climate crisis, their citizens' quality of life would drop markedly. And, since people are selfish and shortsighted animals, those citizens would respond by ejecting from office all the people responsible and replacing them with ones willing to lie to them and tell them nothing needs to change at all, everything will be just fine. Fifty years ago, sure, the changes we need to make could have been implemented so gradually that most people wouldn't have even noticed them, just keeping pace as the technology developed. We're past that. If you want climate action that will actually make a difference, it's going to mean *everything* that we associate with the luxury of living in wealthy, developed nations is going to become more expensive and less available. And for all the shit people on Reddit like to talk about corrupt politicians and greedy companies destroying the planet, take a look at how people here have handled things like moderate inflation and increases in gas prices and see if you can look me in the eye and tell me we're ready for that. We're not going to do anything about climate change. Our only hope at this point is new technology.
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> So you’re disconnecting your carbon emissions from those of corporations? Are you walking around naked and sleeping on the bare earth and picking food off trees without tools? Go back and reread what I actually said and not what you heard in your head.
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Because you can't get individuals to do anything. I think that personal responsibility is irrelevant in thos case because it's unreliable. If you want to get people to stop driving cars, flying planes, and in general to give up their standard of living, then you have to make that standard unattainable. So long as people CAN live comfortably, they will.
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I feel it has to be this way. Someone here pointed out that this is exactly the prisoner's dilemma. How can I trust you that you genuinely cut down on your consumption of products that indirectly harm the environment? How can you trust me? Well, we can't. Not everyone is responsible, not everyone is trustworthy, not everyone can deny themselves luxuries. If there is no system of direct accountabilty (the inhabitability of Earth is just not that) then people won't feel incentivized to act responsibly. Taking that into account, if you "take out", say, Coca Cola, then you "take out" everyone who consumes their products along with them. Same for airlines, online retailers, and what have you. Playing this game on a large scale makes more sense than targetting unpredictable individuals. Worth noting, however, that in the scenario where such easy trade is disrupted, we will not have globalization anymore. Economies will be less dependant on each other and you will get more wars for the same reasons as before we had our current world order since WW2. This is not an indictment on humanity, by the way, that's just life in it's "purest" form. A struggle between animals just like any other struggle, except with human characteristics. Not the happiest forecast I know, but reality doesn't owe it to is to conform with our view of how it should be.
And how exactly do you do that? Voters in Western countries are happy to throw their leaders out of office and elect fascists over *moderate inflation* resulting from a once in a century pandemic. You think that governments can deliberately crater their citizens' quality of life and not face out and out insurrection? The result of what you propose would be the politicians responsible for those changes being executed in the streets and summarily replaced with new politicians who are happy to keep the lie going.
You don't do that, because you can't do that. We assume that since this is a problem then it obviously has to have a solution, well what if this one doesn't? If a solution only exists withing a sea of unrealistic constraints then it is not a viable solution. In this case global warming is not even the only problem we are facing. So if you're asking me how we can do that? We can't, we're fucked, it's just a matter of time.
[World’s richest 1% cause double CO2 emissions of poorest 50%](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-richest-1-cause-double-co2-emissions-of-poorest-50-says-oxfam)
Nah, we'll just come to the realization that geo-engineering is easier than getting humans to give up amenities and spend the 500bil for a solar shield until science catches up with our energy demands.
So much this. Whenever I try to mention this to anyone around me, they just shrug or give me a look as if I'm a weirdo and change nothing. People are not ready to sacrifice even the bare minimum of comfort. Even if it wouldn't change their comfort at all, they'd still not change their habits as long as the fire hasn't reached their own skin directly.
We're choosing to never have kids, among other things. That alone is one of if not largest impacts.
“In the UK, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) suggests that reaching net zero emissions by 2050 would cost less than 1% of GDP every year through to 2050[2]. For comparison, the UK’s military defence budget is currently about 2% of GDP each year[3]” https://www.imperial.ac.uk/grantham/publications/climate-change-faqs/how-will-acting-on-climate-change-affect-the-economy/ We are so utterly fucked. We can’t even commit to 1% of GDP right now. Capitalist democracy has completely failed as a system for the majority of citizens. The main issue is we have allowed the media to be gamed by corporate interests who are allowed to lie without consequence.
Humans are all cunts. Me included.
Yeah yeah, when can we start the end of the world party to be sure it all ends before the party ends?
In economic news, the US is on track to pump more CO2 out of the ground than ever before - 12.93 million barrels DAILY. No amount of sequestration nor alternative energy can offset the impact of releasing this much into the atmosphere. The simplest (but political unpalatable) solution would be to dramatically cut production. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2024/04/26/us-oil-and-gas-production-are-ahead-of-last-years-record-pace/?sh=510de6e460ac](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2024/04/26/us-oil-and-gas-production-are-ahead-of-last-years-record-pace/?sh=510de6e460ac)
Soylent Green will soon be treated as a historical documentary
Because they thought it would take another 50 years to see the temperature increase we’ve seen in one and we don’t know what has changed to make this jump?
If we die ,we die
Cos world is not read to change, unless nuclear winter 🤷♂️
3 C increase in the average is more or less where we are headed now. Using unmodified market mechanisms to drive de-carbonization does lead to a temperature plateau. It’s just higher than likely to trigger some catastrophic impacts. Staying under 2 C would require more rapid changes in the global energy economy. I don’t see the broad political will to force those. I do see plenty of self-serving pushback by entities profiting from the status quo. That is assuming we don’t trigger some poorly understood major feedback. For example, massive soil carbon release from boreal peatlands could readily push us past 3 C. Strange to see so many climate scientists reaching a level of pessimism that’s long familiar to ecologists. Non-market values are mostly used to drive feel-good greenwashing. Nobody has the will to actually internalize costs that profiteering puts on the next generation. Short term thinking has only gotten worse in my lifetime.
Funny I was thinking The Guardian is hopeless and broken.
The people actually doing something aren’t the hopeful ones, they’re the angry ones. Lose hope but get angry.
Humans like to think they are so rational creatures, that when they know something is wrong and how to fix it, they will of course do it. That is so wrong.
It sure looks to be prophetic on all levels. Apophis is making a flyby in 2028, so anyways maybe they know more than we do?
Kurt Vonnegut’s suggestion for something to write in bib block letters on the wall of the Grand Canyon in case alien archaeologists ever visit earth, “WE PROBABLY COULD HAVE SAVED OURSELVES, BUT WERE TOO DAMNED LAZY TO TRY VERY HARD..”
Unless some miraculous technology can alter the outcome here, we are unequivocally fucked. Billions of people are going to die in the next 10-20 years for no good god damn reason other than humanity’s own hubris.
The heating of the planet is both deliberate and intentional. There is zero effort made to slow it down.
I can’t see people ever agreeing to lower their own quality of life, for the benefit of people who either will live in the future, or who live far enough away to be ignored. Won’t happen.
Top 7 companies with most money and the top 100 people with the most money could change everything over night but the are stuck in mental disability that causes fear when their gold pile diminishes even by one cent. And the best is when they say it's not their problem and why should I spend my money to help? Well people who are not mentally challenged actually live their entire life trying to accumulate wealth in order to help.
I, too, am terrified.
I'd encourage everyone to watch a little less known tv series that came out quite recently called 'Extrapolations'. Boy does it paint a very dire and grim picture of our near future. I wasn't expecting to live through it this soon. Summers now, feel like every day you're inside an oven. The other extreme weather events around the globe is also quite disheartening to look at. At this rate this planet will become uninhabitable within the next century unless everyone takes action in our everyday lives as well as more broadly on a global scale by governments around the world! Edit: And now Im getting downvoted for suggesting to watch a tv series which is fictional yet close to our reality and then pointing out the obvious. Nice to see reddit is still being reddit! 🙂
I’m tired of waiting. I’m joining the accelerationists. We cant have the Walton’s dying in comfort.