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.
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
And with ipv6!
This but for humans.
12 monkeys were right
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
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.
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.
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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.
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!
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 agree and I am not even preoccupied, but there simply hasn’t been any chance for me to make a dent in this. Hasn’t been for a long time, at least since 1900 (!!) where we basically already knew where everything was headed.
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?
Actually yes, but that has more to do with 20 years of crippling depression and chronic pain than the coming climate disasters.
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.
We deserve it. Let the insects have their turn.
Speak for yourself.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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Never kill yourself for something that’s somebody else’s fault.
(Looking for this image has definitely put me on a watchlist)
Now the body of one soul I adore wants to die
You have always told me you’d not live past 25
I say, stay long enough to repay all who caused strife
No Man’s Sky just got a cool update, so I think I’m gonna play that while I await my doom.
Preferably. Dieing and then panicking is a lot less effective.
Drop and roll.
Jokes aside, go outside, touch grass, plant some trees. Rinse and repeat
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.”
Drop everything and enjoy life while it lasts.
It may be shorter than you were planning on.
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.
group support?
:-(
that sounds hard to find
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.
It’s called: click bait
Or more nefariously, doomerism.
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.
You never thought that. You only ever think of yourself.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
I know. I’m in my early 40ies and have been trying all my life to convince people around me and do what I could. But with time, I learned about the fraud that is plastic recycling and how capitalism is really not interested at all into solving the issue. My city is fining people for putting recyclables in the trash, but the recycling centres are full and they themselves trash the recycling. What matters is short term profits and virtue signalling. What matters is to look green. Just buy electric cars and everything will be good, apparently. Buy green! But don’t stop buying!
Then a pandemic happened and people disappointed me en masse. We could see the changes in the environment and in ways we could live, but most people were “EaGeR To GeT BaCk To ThEiR RoUtInE”, even if it meant commuting 5 days a week to the office, just to “resume” the economy. What mattered was not other people, it was the economy. Even when they forced us to stay inside with curfews, people couldn’t go out to run/walk in the evening, they barred unvaccinated people from stores (I’m vaccinated 4 times but it’s still not okay), it was all for the economy and to save the system, not the people. And if you had a minor disagreement with this, you were a grandma killer for wanting to go cycling at night. Then we went back to our routines and nothing will ever change. People are whining because of paper straws and want the plastic back. And all this straw stupidity is not even important on the grand scheme of things. Most people don’t want to change anything. Most people will not vote for change. The system does not have any incentive to change.
I never owned a car and everyone around me is telling me how great they are and how I should definitely buy one because it’s useful and practical. I would have total absolution! Some people here are vociferously fighting against active and public transit, and the government is actually cutting public transit funding. People are yelling at me when I trash some plastic instead of putting it in the recycle bin, then they drive away in their car that generates literal tons of toxic fumes and greenhouse gases in the air, accusing me of not caring.
I gave up a few years ago. We will deserve most of it.
Don’t worry, the rich will eat well and survive, with their private security forces willing to kill others, while the poor will starve and die. We’ll have rations and curfews but it will all be for the good of the
peopleeconomy. Just like in the pandemic, It will be an effort of the poor, to save the rich. That’s what we want. You just have to become rich before it happens.Seconded. It’s so baffling to me that we have seemingly forgotten the purpose of the economy. It is supposed to be there to benefit our lives and instead it is costing us everything. Some slave away on their knees building streets and others waste the precious few laps around the sun staring at lights in a box. We have the technology to give everyone enough such that the average person would only have to work a few hours.
For a comparison in a very real sense:
Prior to the Neolithic revolution, which put an end to our nomadic past and turned our species into agriculturalists, it took more than 50 hours of labor (mostly gathering wood) to “buy” 1,000 lumen hours of light. By 1800, it took about 5.4 hours. By 1900, it took 0.22 hours. By 1992, 1,000 lumen hours required 0.00012 hours of human labor.
We’ve put the cart before the horse on an unfathomable scale. A good life for all (current humans and future) is within reach but the economic system that has created this bounty has grown out of control and serves nothing but itself anymore.
Skeezix’s Law: The purpose of the economy is to extract as much value from the populace as possible, but whatever means possible, in any way that offers an alibi.
In your grandfather’s day, choice, privacy, and leisure were humored by the economy. As the decades have passed, the economy has advanced to become a machine increasingly fine-tuned to extract value. As the world burns and resources run out, the economy attempts to adapt by strengthening its extraction methods further.
The average human sees 2000-5000 ads per day in one form or another.
It does provide some promise though because if we want to live good, peaceful, sustainable, educated lives, the technology is right there, but there is an external and only barely human force that is imposing a malignant culture on us all.
The bit about not being able to go outside is because people were using it as a pretext to explain why they weren’t at home… when really they were off socialising and increasing possible infection points.
It’s why they closed children’s playgrounds here in Australia, parents were using their children playing to gather around, then held empty coffee cups to explain why their masks were off. I’ve never seen so many people desperately swigging at water bottles in a supermarket in my life, or young men clutching at low dose asthma inhalers either. Somewhat amusingly, none of these behaviours have shown up since.
If people could have shown any level of responsibility… but there we have it, don’t we? They can’t see beyond the end of their own nose, and this is why we are here, finding out.
When I arrived on earth the first thing that struck me was just how fickle, shortsighted, gullible, and inconsiderate the bulk of your species is. As this planet burns your noses are stuck in phones watching YouTube shorts.
We’ve decided to leave. You’re not worth conquering and certainly not worthy of joining the stellar empire. Expect no more crop circles or foo fighters.
Your people is a beast.
The rich will live long enough to preside over a dead planet. Having billions of dollars to buy an apple is useless when there are no apples to be had for any price. They’ll die like the rest of us, just way more alone. Assuming they aren’t burned out if their bunkers along the way by starving hordes with nothing to lose.
Yes but they’ll probably stockpile enough macbooks to last a long time.
It’s not quite true. It’s very unlikely the planet will become completely inhabitable to humans anytime soon. There’s going to be a tipping point of enough extinction to completely stop any more damage and return to a balanced ecosystem. Once that happens, it’s very likely the people with the most power will be the ones in the remaining habitable zones.
I think your assumption operates on the premise that some form of recognizable modern civilization will remain. I don’t think it will. Once mass deaths start for humans it will also cease the global flow of petroleum products, materials, and foods, either due to wars or just the structure being so damaged that it cannot function. Once you can’t get fuel, can’t mine things, can’t refine them, can’t transport them, can’t fix the machines that make fertilizers or tractor parts, can’t keep the computers running, the internet collapses…that’s it. Hell, that’s the good scenario, not the one where the ocean overheats /-acidifies , killing everything in it including much of the planets oxygen generating algae. Civilization is done. Almost all surface minerals are gone because we’ve already mined them, well, except coal…but that’s what helped get us here in the first place. We are literally back to a Stone Age or scavenging materials from the bones of civilization.
Mad Max or some similar post-apocalyptic desolation is a far more likely scenario than any situation where a holdout of modern civilization exists.
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Saving the environment? In this economy?
When did this place turn into r/collapse on Reddit?
June already bringing on intense heat waves in California and Mexico are probably driving the doomerism on the west coast.
Houston also got a nasty Derecho a few weeks back that wrecked downtown and shredded half the trees in my neighborhood.
I expect the next big hurricane is going to bring another wave of doomerism, as we all get another big dose of “Find Out”, while our Boomer elders continue to Fuck Around
Every single thing we are fighting for and does get through has prevented stuff from being even worse than they are now. Don’t ever give up.
What gets through? I simply don’t see it. Fossil fuel drilling in the US has hit an all-time high. Domestic car sizes are only getting bigger and we’re taxing or banning any small, cheap foreign EV imports. For every pipeline that gets stalled, three more are built. We don’t even bother reporting on spills anymore, despite their increasing frequency. We are epically fucked and we all know it.
Don’t ever give up.
Give up doing what? This isn’t Peter Pan. You can’t bring us under 1.5C by clapping.
Yeah 1.5 is fucked. But we can still limit it under 2.0 or 2.5. Yes it is fucking horrific. But 1.5 does not mean everyone suddenly drops dead.
Also, the world isnt the US. Improvements are happening on a smaller scale. Some countries getting almost all energy through solar and wind.
Green energy becoming cheaper than fossil fuel.
Is it enough? Fuck no. But im not letting you cunts hop in with corporations and push the pedal to the metal.
Stop ignoring all the positive things happening to fix the climate. You are putting other people off helping with your doomer shit.
But we can still limit it under 2.0 or 2.5.
Unless I’m talking to a CEO of a major bank or Fortune 100 fossil fuel firm, “we” cannot.
You talk to politicians. Politicians talk to (or coerce) CEOs.
We can’t trust companies to get us out of this, but government is (or should be) stronger than companies, and government is (or should be) working for US.
And CEOs pledge campaign contributions and lobbying efforts to delay regulations against their corporate interests
Government should be the counter balance to private interests, but in a capitalistic system they act in tandem.
Every day, the daily rate of CO2 output beats the previous day. We haven’t even remotely slowed down.
Yea but at least some CEOs are getting great salary packages!
The rate of co2 growth is no longer exponential. This is improvement. Yes, it’s still growing, but at a slower rate than it used to. We’re moving in the right direction, thought much too slowly.
Think of it like a big ship hurtling along.
Currently, we’re braking. Still moving forward but slower. We need to stop and reverse, and that’s the plan, but we need to do it faster.
You don’t think it could have been even worse by now? I do.
Will say though, I do wish to visit the timeline where Al Gore did not concede, and was president.
Yeah, but if it’s inevitable going to end up at worse… Now I have to deal with this shit AND take care of the fuckin boomers… Shoulda just let them tear the bandaid off quick and have to deal with it themselves… ~devil’s advocate
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
I read an article on the internet that says you’re wrong, and it’s chemtrails and 5G. And Big Pharma.
And solar. And wind mills. And what they did to General Lee. And Aunt Jemima.
Do your research, sheeple!
Do you understand?
No.
Yea, the graph showing us up 4 standard deviations isn’t easy to understand implications. But I imagine on a person level, it’s something like “if you live somewhere hot and humid, you better make sure you can afford to run and repair your AC”. On a global level, mammals have existed for 200,000,000 years, yet in 200 years we’ve toyed with global extinction for shareholder profits.
Meh, humans will survive, literally, unless Antarctica heats over 200 degrees from now, we can survive somewhere on the planet. We won’t prosper, there will be billions of deaths and an unimaginable about of loss, but short of planned deliberate nuclear war or large asteroid, we’ll survive a little.
Cool, nothing to worry about then!
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?
Sorry but fuck you doomerist cunts. No, we are not gonna have an easy time AT ALL. But giving up plays right into hands of corporations and governments destroying our planet. Every single improvement we are able to push through will limit suffering.
If we do nothing and completely give up, we will never know what suffering we could have prevented. I know it is not easy and things are not looking good. If we had not fought for some of the improvements we were able to push through, things would have been even worse than they are right now. Every. Single. Thing. Helps.
Don’t even let these evil fucking cunts win no matter how hard they kick and scream and destroy stuff.
Nah, I call bullshit. You can try every little thing you want. In the end in won’t matter. We are fucked and you just can’t accept it. We either massively change things now or our efforts won’t matter. People already complain about small changes and what we need means a massive lifestyle change for billions. It ain’t happening. Get your head out of your own ass please.
How about you go fuck yourself and jerk off to doomer porn?
In world war 2, did people think “ah fuck defeating the nazis. They already killed millions of people. We should just five up”?
If your kitchen is on fire, do you just say fuck it? And let the rest of the house burn too?
What is it with you cunts giving up on every single setback?
You sound like you would let yourself drown because “oh fuck it my pants are already wet.”.
Get YOUR head out of the asses of the people destroying the planet. You’re literally on their side with the constant calls for giving up.
Fuck. You.
Okay, so what do I do?
Vote? Been doing that. Doesn’t seem to be helping.
Recycle? Okay, let’s have two trucks pick up garbage every week.
Eat less meat? Been doing that. But I’m a drop in the ocean.
Drive less? Been doing that. But it’s made completely inconsequential because of private jet owners.
Short of killing large numbers of people in the first world we won’t be able to even slow it down.
So what do I do that can actually have an impact?
They are spinning around throwing punches in all directions and mostly just hitting the air. We are nowhere near actually getting a punch across the jaw of any of the people that it actually matters for.
I get it. It’s maddening to have no obvious villain but be surrounded by “bad” people. We do need people to flail and cling to life but they are more just trying to appease their own mind than anything.
Vote? Been doing that. Doesn’t seem to be helping.
Vote, of course. But also donate and campaign. The only way out of this mess is political. Volunteer. Protest. Rally others.
There are political parties, big, mainstream ones that frequently win elections, who want to bring us to carbon neutrality and even beyond, to undo the damage of past generations. Give them more power. They’re stemming the tide but with enough power they could reverse it.
You actually have a positive impact. But you’re also having a negative impact by spreading the mentality of “nothing will change”, both to yourself and to other people you’re voicing it to. It makes yourself and everyone you voice it to less likely to take action like you did.
Don’t get me wrong, I also realistically believe we will run into massive problems. But the only sensible thing to do is just keep trying everything possible personally, it’s the right thing to do.
So lie to myself and others? Because “nothing will change” has been my lived experience my entire life. Should I just ignore the helplessness and hopelessness and put on a happy face?
I voted for sanders, continue to try and vote for a at least halfway decent candidate, i moved into an rv that i retrofitted to be fully solar powered. 3.6Kw of panels, 15kwh of battery, haven’t had to touch the grid since installing it, 15 stages of water filtration i can just use rainwater if need be for my freshwater (verified with lab tests for water safety) i have my own land and grow as much of my own veggies and herbs as i can. I drive literally one of the least polluting cars in the world (smart fortwo gets an avg of 44MPG is not even a hybrid) and I still try to drive it as little as possible, i use all stainless steel throughout my kitchen (cookware, storage, utensils, plates, bowels, cups) , so everything lasts forever and has no microplastics or pfas.
I genuinely don’t know what more i could possibly do to reduce my footprint, I went out of my way to live as efficiently as possible and it’s done literally nothing whatsoever for the situation. And people bitch moan complain about even the smallest change to their life. I can’t even convince people to at least try induction over gas stoves. It’s got so much better temperature control than gas, and since it’s literally turning the pan into the heating element it’s like 92% efficient whereas gas is horrendously inefficient since a large amount of heat just barfs out into the room instead of getting to your food. And I’m literally offering people to just fucking have one of mine so it’s not like it’s a cost issue.
So fuck you, we are doomed and you can’t convince me otherwise
What if we, and I realize this is heretical to day: try big things and promote lifestyle changes in advance being coerced towards worse ones
