451
2024: Hottest year to date, and first year over 1.5ºC
(climateandcapitalism.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2024
451 points (99.1% liked)
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
6041 readers
453 users here now
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
This is a genuinely nice sentiment, but it is worth noting that the world is way more populated than most past generations, and while any hope for us will fall largely on the squares of future generations, their job would be so much easier if there were a lot less of them.
Some developed countries seem to have this notion that declining birth rates will be the end of them and while that can be somewhat true for how economic systems are set up, the world was objectively a lot more sustainable before the boomers generation, population wise
Economic sustainability has almost nothing to do with population size. The vast amount of unsustainability comes from wasteful consumerism. Furniture that lasts years instead of centuries, clothes that last months instead of decades, holidays 10,000 km away instead of 1 km away, single-use plastics for every single thing, etc.
People that live within an ecosystem have net negative emissions if they care to put in the effort. Every person that exists can live and work to make things better, so how can it be a disadvantage to have more of them?
There is a point when every bit of nature has a steward tending to its development/survival/recovery closely enough that another person won't be a net ecological benefit, but with a global population density of one person per two hectares we're not there yet.
This may be true but it also assumes idealism that everyone will be open to being a good steward of the planet. The way I think about it, lower population is sort of a buffer against an inevitable portion of the population who, no matter how direct and obvious the impact of climate change is, can't be convinced to help society. And unfortunately, at the time of having kids you can do everything you can to teach them to be interested in helping the planet but they still might not, and that would come with a huge amount of guilt in my case.