I used to think the more apparent and devastating outcomes of climate change were bound to hit long after I passed away, but now I'm not so sure. Local storms are becoming more and more serious with every passing year, each summer is less bearable than the last and the nearby forests are burning down for the 2nd summer in a row. We are definitely speedrunning this shit.
Most of the climate change predictions I've heard in my lifetime have talked about stuff that would happen by 2050 or 2100. It's always been bullshit, just a way of pushing out the consequences beyond a timeframe we can actually conceive of effectively. In reality this shit is already hitting us and accelerating hard.
2050 isn't really that far away. if you remember the year 2000, that's about how long.
I’ve always thought those predictions were listed as “conservative” so the average is a lot closer but main media outlets pick the fastest out point in the bell curve so it’s not so doomed.
It's amazing how the human race realize the shit it put itself in only when it is a fraction of a second from hitting the wall at high speed. It's like that every single time.
I used to think the more apparent and devastating outcomes of climate change were bound to hit long after I passed away, but now I'm not so sure.
Too many people thinking like that is exactly why we are where we are today. And why it will continue to get worse.
Those of us who actually care about the world our children and grandchildren will have to live in have been trying to get some large scale action for decades, and we're tired of beating our heads against a brick wall.
At least companies created incredible profits for a small number of shareholders for a short period of time. Totally worth it
That's a pretty weak take. Do you know how profitable it is to hire a short-gain CEO, pump his stock, sell before the inevitable crash and follow him to his next venture? Immensely so.
Think how great the world would be if everyone did that, jumping from sunken venture to sunken venture, burning through any and all good will, until the only thing that still has worth is the planet you're on, but even that is nothing because Mars is the next frontier you can sink our money into.
Think before you speak so poorly of those better than yourself
Don't worry, I'm sure if we all keep doing the same thing this will sort itself out.
How about we go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all of this to blow over.
We thank people who disregarded nuclear energy. We could've sliced global emissions by a lot if were not for you, but burning coal is far safer.
I thank the oligarchs and their willing consumption enthusiasts. This apocalypse is brought to you by unchecked, insatiably greedy capitalists and capitalism.
That's a false dichotomy. There are more power sources than coal and nuclear.
Also electricity generation is not the only source of emissions. Car traffic, cruise ships, aiplanes, all need to be reduced and can't just be replaced by nuclear power.
In theory, yes. In practice, nuclear plants that are shut off are almost always replaced with fossils, with the specific fossil fuel of choice often being coal.
Energy is not something where you can just pick one solution and run with it (at least, non-fossils, anyway). Nuclear is slow to ramp, so it usually takes care of baseline load. Renewables like wind and solar are situational, they mostly work throughout the day (yes, wind too, differential heating of earth's surface by the sun is what causes surface-level winds) and depend greatly on weather. Hydro is quite reliable but it's rarely available in the quantities needed. The cleanest grids on the planet use all of these, and throw in some fossils for load balancing, phasing them out with energy storage solutions as they become available.
You can't just shoot one of the pillars of this system of clean energy and then say you never tried to topple the system, just wanted to prop up the other pillars. Discussing shutting off nuclear plants without considering the alternative is pure lunacy, driven by fearmongering, and propped up by no small amounts of oil money for a reason.
Replacing nuclear with renewables is simply not the reality of the situation. Nuclear and renewables work together to replace fossils, and fill different roles. It's not one or the other, it's both and even together they're not yet enough.
So when you do consider the alternatives, moving from nuclear to the inevitable replacement, fossils, is still lunacy, just for other reasons: even if you care about nothing more than atmospheric radiation, coal puts more of it out per kWh generated, solely because of C-14 isotopes. Nuclear is shockingly clean, mostly due to its energy density, but also because it's not producing barrels of green goo, just small pills of spicy ceramics. And if your point is accidents, just how many oil spills have we had to endure? How many times was the frickin ocean set on fire? How many bloody and brutal wars were motivated by oil? Is that really what a safer energy source sounds like to you, just because there are two nuclear accidents the world knows about, and a thousand fossil accidents, of which the world lost count already?
And deflecting to other industries is also quite disingenuous. Especially if your scapegoat is transportation, since that's an industry that's increasingly getting electrified in an effort to make it cleaner at the same logistical capacity, and therefore will depend more and more on the very same electrical grid which you're trying to detract from.
Thank the good old Green Party of Germany! Restarting all those coal plants and shutting down nuclear reactors!
Every person living in a democracy can make a difference with their VOTE. Only vote for people who have plans and intentions of bringing change. Vote at all levels, and vote whenever you get an opportunity. Ask what candidates in municipal elections think about the climate emergency. Organize. Talk to doubters. We can do this.
If voting worked, we would have solved this issue decades ago. You can vote for whomever you want, but at the end, no matter what they promise, they always end up doing nothing at all, because they are elected by using big oil donations.
Only a self-organized revolution can stop this madness, people in some nations are already blocking oil tankers and oil rigs. We can't win by only voting, you can vote for a day every few years, but we need to fight this everyday. Take turns blocking streets so no oil driven trucks and cars pass, only this will make an effect.
The idea that nonviolent protest works has been the most harmful idea in history
I mean nonviolent protests DO work.
Non-disruptive DOES NOT work though.
MLK Jr didn't peacefully sit in a park. They ran boycotts, sit ins, shut down streets, trespassed into white only areas, and drove businesses insane.
If MLK Jr was your enemy you were going to have a miserable time when he rolled into town.
Ghandi had people illegally burn documents and basically smuggled salt against all regulations.
MLK had the Black Panthers and Nation of Islam as looming threats. Gandhi is also the one who said "pacifism without violence is not pacifism, it is helplessness." A violent counterpart to a non-violent movement helps by being the stick to the non-violent carrot.
Both. We need both. Voting matters. Grassroots organization matters. Now is absolutely not the time to give up on democracy. It is also absolutely not the time to give up on mass organizing at the grassroots. Both, we need both.
Honestly voting now is to little too late. The Overton window isn't anywhere near the point of allowing actually meaningful change and the 4-5 year cycle of voting is too slow. If we really want to solve anything, the change should be systemic. Still, voting is important.
We need some harsh mandates. Look at what Work From Home did for wildlife and emmisions in a short amount of time.
We need that style of change. Big, bold, and life altering.
But what about the feelings of the rich people? They might not like that!
I think its a statistical loss if we rely on denocracy. The stupid far outnumber the rational.
in other news my ultra conservative parents installed solar panels on their house, and for over a month now, they've been generating more electricity than they can use, feeding back into the system their surplus. when real world results are such, we can start using these incidents as examples of why it's not only the morally correct thing to do (combat climate change and save our species), but also the economically savvy thing to do.
who knows what will be the final straw that breaks their stubbornness.
Shit my ultra conservative parents literally left Arizona because it just kept getting hotter every season. Yet they continue to deny climate change is manmade and a real threat to the global ecology.
Gotta love the pentecostals "it's all just the end times!" Oh yeah, like it was when Paul wrote his letters, and like it was in the 1840's when the millerites did their "math," and like in the other dozen predictions since then that have all not come to pass.
I don't know how many thousands of years can be the "last days" but something tells me it's just whenever an individual who believes in it is currently living.
You mean they had a financial incentive to partake?
Your example just shows how economics incentives are designed to work, but that money does come from somewhere.
I'd love to get solar but it's not economically viable to encur 20k expenses that will need over twenty years to pay off when that money can be used elsewhere
If someone gave me a Tesla I'd love it but I really don't have the cash to get a car right now and even if I did the price of teslas and most electrics are so high it's just not an option.
People think he solution here is to remove cheaper options but that won't work it will just keep people holding on to beaters far longer.
If the economics make sense to change people will change but trying to shake people or force people to make economically disadvantage choices will never work long term
My wife got a used Prius for 13K or 17k a couple years ago, it'll be more expensive now I believe, but the thing is most people don't have 13k or 17k to spend on a car. If people can't scrape together 500 dollars from their savings in an emergency, they aren't going to be able to get a hybrid or electric car for a very long time, and all legislation that tries to push people in that direction benefits the rich, and penalizes the poor when they remove options the poor can afford.
Im just glad it's shaping up to be so apocalyptic that there'll be no safe haven for the owner class that caused it. Let them burn with the peasants they decimated for profit.
And that's why the billionaires are investing in spaceships... Seriously though, they are really buying "doomsday" properties to ride it out.
What the heck? I thought this was supposed to be fixed by all of us using paper straws and driving hybrids?
Well in reality there isn't much we can do as normal folk to reverse or slow down the impending doom of global warming.
It's all in the hands of the big corporations that we all know are the biggest contributors, to the whole debacle. They are not going to change a damn thing because is all about the extreme profiteering.
Yes and no, I think. Obviously one single person can't make a tangible difference all by themselves, but to stop the thought process there does a massive disservice to the importance of collective action. It doesn't take all that many people to affect change, both politically and culturally. Join CCL (US focus here), vote and advocate for carbon fee and dividend and other beneficial policies, buy less shit you don't need, ride a bike if you can, and if you have the means electrify your home/vehicle and support more ethical companies. Basically, don't blame BP if you're putting 20 gallons of their shit in your 4runner every week so you can commute to an office job with a permanent rooftop tent and a "save our winters" sticker on the back (yes I live in the front range). You're not responsible for all of humanity, but you are responsible for your own actions when you have the means to choose a less carbon intensive option.
This is just propaganda from the 90s/00s. The amount of carbon that any one middle class home generates is nothing compared to the private jet class and the corporate desolation of the environment. I hate capitalism. I hate consumerism. I hate cars. But don't act like the onus is on what basically amounts to a peasant class that already pays for almost everything and does nearly all of the work (the middle class). It's systemic greed, deregulation, and industrial rape of the world's resources by shit governments and corporations that have put us here. Stop making the middle class responsible for something they have no power to change even though most of us are anxious as fuck about it. If enough individuals can simultaneously change their carbon footprint to the point that it actually affects the coming consequences, then we should have just formed a general strike already to reverse capitalism caused climate change. But we didn't.
I think the straw thing is much more about trash than it is about combating climate change. Plastic getting into the eco system and building up in landfills is a big problem too, but it's a different and also important problem.
Lets build a giant air conditioner to keep the global warming out
Or, this will sound crazy but hear me out, we put a giant ice cube in the ocean.
Oh, like the one Daddy puts in his drink when he gets home from work!
... and then he gets mad.
Nah I think it is fine haha it is just summer really hot out don't worry about it /s
Whenever someone mentions the future a few decades from now as a time frame for doing things I usually just say ‘well in 2050 we’ll be killing each other for water and air conditioning so I don’t think it’s ( whatever they’re talking about ) going to matter so much’.
I just try to enjoy each year as the coldest year I'll get for the rest of my life.
We're gonna blow right past it.
Billions will die.
It's not even all about the climate though; it is human greed and cruelty that will kill the most: the haves butchering and purging the have-nots.
You are not a "have".
For all intents and purposes, NONE of us who would actually be here, on Lemmy, in this comment thread, able to be reading this, are a "have".
Unless your personal assistant's butler's niece's boyfriend is sharing this with you, you're probably just as fucked as he, she, and they are.
Unironically me this morning: "HOLY BLEEP IM ABOUT TO FREEZE TO DEATH HERE!"
Lemmy: "hi today is the hottest day on earth lmao"
Me: "what"
Unfortunately climate change makes things more turbulent and extreme on both ends of the spectrum.
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