The world has experienced its hottest day on record, according to meteorologists.
The average global temperature reached 17.01C (62.62F) on Monday, according to the US National Centres for Environmental Prediction.
The figure surpasses the previous record of 16.92C (62.46F) - set back in August 2016.
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.
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.
2050 is less than 3 decades away. I am sure I will be dead by then, but someone born this millennium should absolutely be alive still. What is infuriating is how little importance many younger people put on this issue.
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.
Except the impact of climate change isn’t at all like a car crash. In a car crash everything stays fine until it suddenly goes to shit. Which I think is one of the issues why people have such a hard time dealing with it.
Maybe we should think about it more like a sinking ship. We already got wet feet, which isn’t great but only the start and we really need to start shutting some bulk heads to keep the water from pouring in. And get some Wellies to deal with the water already in. But those won’t help if it keeps on rising.
On geological time scales, this is very much like your car crash analogy.
Unfortunately, most people don’t seem to be capable of understanding time at that scale.
Because we’re humans, not rocks. What do you expect?
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.
If it doesn’t hit in my lifetime it will be soon after, which is one the reasons I choose to not have kids.
It’s hitting now.
You constantly hear people say “oh, well we are in a warming cycle, so yeah, of course the Earth is going to get warmer”.
These are people on the Right who have moved past the point of denying the problem of Climate Change and shifted their argument to admitting it is happening, but not admitting that it is man-made.
In some ways, they are right - the Earth’s climate IS indeed shifting away from an Ice Age and moving toward a warming period, but what we humans have done is essentially thrown gasoline onto the already burning fire. We are accelerating the problem.And it’s that acceleration that’s the real problem. If this sort of warming happened over twenty or thirty thousand years, the ecosystem would have a chance to adapt and maybe humanity along with it. A couple hundred years? Nah mate, ecological collapse is going to happen and it’ll probably take us with it.
Yah and we were actually headed to a 100,000 year cooling cycle. So even their supposed science is wrong lol.
It’s the way we tend to think of things as black and white. Someone decided to set some disaster increase threshold for the climate crisis events and called it a day. When it has always been about an increase in frequency and intensity of natural disasters and more, both of which we are already seeing.
We were warned. We were told it was a tipping point situation and things would seem ok until they aren’t.
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.
Sorry, the Winchester had to close due to Covid and anyway, we have a water shortage so no beer.
If by sort itself out you mean the planet wiping us out in a few generations, yeah
Seriously the green rhetoric needs to change. The planet is going to be fine. Humans aren’t.
Just bury our heads in the sand, then our torsos, then while you are at it, might as well just start living underground.
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.
This apocalypse is brough to you by unchecked, insatiably greedy capitalists and capitalism.
Most environmental solutions are also being created in capitalist societies, and the richest countries (which by coincidence are capitalist) are the ones that are decreasing their emissions by a considerable amount.
Connecting capitalism to environmental changes is just communist propaganda, dunno if you did it willingly or not but that’s about it.
Way to minimise the last 40-50 years of capitalists actively working to stop any real progress on climate change. Sure progress is being made now after they figured out it was getting bad and there was money to be made in green tech. That doesn’t excuse the decades of lobbying and and actual propaganda put out by capital interests that we are all paying for now.
That you are spouting off about “communist propaganda” tells me you either grew up in the 80’s and really bought the red scare line or you bought the far right propaganda telling you to be scared of ‘CHI-NAH’ (to quote the orange traitor).
You couldn’t far wronger in this question lol
“You couldn’t far wronger in this question lol”
Sure. I couldn’t “far wronger”.
What a thoughtful and fact filled reply that furthers conversation.Try making a point or defending your position if you want to be taken at all seriously.
As it stands why should anyone think you might be correct in your statements and not just dismiss you out of hand as a moron who is far wronger?First, in the 80s I wasn’t even born and if the fact I don’t fall for every bull**** communist propaganda that I read in the internet makes you upset, boho I’m so sorry.
Blaming the environmental changes on capitalism it’s like calling “The Radium Girls” dumb. During the latest decades they didn’t know very well about the damages they were causing but if you check history, as soon as there was scientific evidence that something was causing harm, laws were passed in capitalist countries to remove it promptly. Look at the lead in petrol debacle, CBDs, the CFCs.
Also, even today there’s really not a good way of replacing “dirty” technologies like jet engines. Of course, the communist countries aren’t doing sh*t to solve the issue either, they’re even making it worse.
Exxon has known the damage they were causing since at least the 80s and have spent absurd amounts of money alongside their competitors lobbying governments and paying scientists to keep the status quo. We had at least some evidence that burning fossil fuels was going to cause global warming at the turn of the 20th century.
What you’re saying isn’t entirely false, but it sure is bending over backwards to be nice to the capitalist societies that caused this problem. Also there aren’t any communist countries causing this problem, China is every bit as capitalist as the US in how their economy functions these days, they’re communist in name only. You’ve been influenced by capitalist propaganda friend.
laws were passed in capitalist countries to remove it promptly
Promptly on what timescale? Geological?
It’s always too little too late. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Reality speaks for itself.
Holy shit you are delusional if you believe any of that. A simple google search on climate science coverup by fossil fuel companies (like Exxon, Shell, and BP) in the 70’s is just a single example and it would take you almost no effort to learn. That you haven’t even done the very LEAST you could to not be embarrassingly wrong, should serve to let anyone reading anything you comment on to simply dismiss your ramblings as misleading at best.
You need to take a look in the mirror and ask yourself if maybe you got this wrong since myself and MANY others have pointed out the various things you are just factually incorrect on.
I’m not holding out hope though, I am willing to bet you will just double down in your fantasy instead of facing reality. Feel free to prove me wrong, little would please me more.
There’s actually a news article from the March 1912 edition of Popular Mechanics warning about how ‘the furnaces of the world’ are ‘burning about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year’, and how ‘when this is burned, united with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly.’ They conclude that adding 7 billion tons of CO2 per year ‘make(s) the air a more effective blanket for the earth and raise its temperature’ and that ‘the effect may be considerable in a few centuries’. Their only mistake was underestimating how much CO2 future generations would put in the atmosphere. They estimated a few centuries for 7 billion tons of CO2. I’m wondering what they’d make of 43 billion tons.
Capitalists ignored the clear warnings from scientists about pumping CO2 into the atmosphere for over a century because it wasn’t economical for them to do something about it. It was always somebody else’s problem. Until it wasn’t. Where do you live? New York, that has recently had some of the worst air quality in history thanks to Canadian wildfires? Or Denver, where it was our turn in April and May? Or when we got the horrible DECEMBER wildfire that burned into Boulder? Man, wildfires in fucking December. NOW it’s fashionable for Capitalists to at least pretend to care about the environment, but shit, if there could be a dollar made burning down the last forest, you fucking better believe that capitalists will gleefully play a Captain Planet villain while they do just that.
Edit: A fun link: https://bigthink.com/the-present/1912-climate-change-prediction/
Most environmental solutions are also being created in capitalist societies, and the richest countries (which by coincidence are capitalist) are the ones that are decreasing their emissions by a considerable amount.
Only because those capitalists societies are offloading the work that generates those emissions on to poorer countries because it’s cheaper to do it there.
Yes, the German method. We lower our emissions not by using nuclear power, but by moving our coal outside of EEA and buying it back at 5x the price!
We will be able to decrease emissions, never get them to 0. Hence maybe some CO2 extraction will be needed.
Only because those capitalists societies are offloading the work that generates those emissions on to poorer countries because it’s cheaper to do it there.
It’s cheaper and most importantly they allow it. These countries want growth, they want to attract investment, have work for the people. It’s a win-win relationship otherwise these countries wouldn’t allow it.
I take no offense to being called a communist, even though I’m a socialist. I have a great deal of pity for the sycophants of capitalism, though, cheering their own exploitation and oppression as their masters terraform the planet to be hostile towards human life in the name of quarterly profit expectations.
Your family will be burning from the global oligarch’s fine work, and you’ll be blaming the invisible communists and socialists that countries like the US used military means to decimate through global destabilization the world over to further capitalist interests. The capitalists won, are fully in charge, and have captured their own regulatory bodies in most of the world. This is the world of capitalists own making. They run the show, we are living in what the capitalists would consider their utopia, where they live like modern Pharoahs as most of the species subsists to further enrich them.
We crossed that threshold years ago, man made climate alteration is a runaway train of multigenerational suffering at best, and possibly the end of human civilization for ages at worst. Have fun cursing the dirty commies when you’re thirsty with no recourse 🤣
Ah yes, socialism, the ideology that kills countries but blame on the Americans.
Thank the good old Green Party of Germany! Restarting all those coal plants and shutting down nuclear reactors!
God, that’s so depressing. I genuinely don’t understand how we - any of us, in any country - are supposed to be okay with these political mechanisms filled with incompetent, out-of-touch, self-interested codgers. I’m not willing to take action, but when our entire world is being picked apart by the public sector and sold for parts by the private sector, what are we to do?
Lobbies. The German “green” party if fully funded by Russia, which has a vested interest in keeping coal, but especially nat gas (which despite the CO2 emission is still labelled as “green”) being the primary source of energy.
While lobbies are extremely powerful, I don’t understand how I, personally, am supposed to support the lobbies that represent my interests. Donating to PACs? I’m just not wealthy enough to make it make sense.
I think its a bit too late for that. 40% of wealth is owned by the top 1%, and even if the remaining 99% own 60, most of that wealth is not available, but used for everyday necessities. So no, you cant outbid our out PAC billionaires anymore. Too much trickle up economy has been going on for too many years
We thank people who disregarded nuclear energy.
Do you really think governments actually gave a shit about some deluded hippies? Nah, they were just the scapegoats the politicians used to pretend they weren’t in bed with the fossil fuel lobbyists.
Why would you disparage beautiful, clean, coal like that?
Tell that to the people near Zaporizhzhia right now.
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.
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.
deleted by creator
But what about the feelings of the rich people? They might not like that!
And their quarterly profits!
Dude the lockdowns started WW3. This narrative that only the rich people benefit from the economy is nonsense.
WFH is available to those who work at desks. Thinking that’s the whole economy is blind.
So many logical jumps here.
“WW3” ? wtf…
“narrative” that wasn’t mentioned.
The “whole economy” that also was not mentioned.
Try responding to the comment as written, not the voices in your head and it might appear more coherent to others.
- WW3: Russia has invaded Ukraine. Multiple countries are providing arms to the two sides.
- narrative: The comment before mine contained that narrative. If you can’t see it there I can’t help you see it.
- whole economy: what the poster referred to as “working from home” was actually “lockdown”. It was lockdown that cleared the pollution from the air. For some people it was working from home; for others it was being forcibly removed from their job
Your echo chamber is showing in how much you read into things. Wow.
Life Pro Tip for ya: Try engaging with the words on the screen as written not the voices in your head and your feed.
Of course voting alone won’t do it. We need a lot more. Holding billionaires to account will go a long way as well.
I think its a statistical loss if we rely on denocracy. The stupid far outnumber the rational.
And the greedy outnumber us both. As long as these companies are lining politicians pockets, they will only act like they’re trying.
The “momentarily-embarrassed millionaires” don’t help, either.
I think you guys are onto something here! Democracy is not going to work because everyone outside your circle is either evil or stupid. And given you’re saving all of humanity from the thermoapocapypse, it is your mission to destroy democracy and seize control of power! (for the greater good of course not because you’re stupid and evil, because everyone else is stupid and evil and you’re doing it for their own good).
Relying on democracy without participating in democracy is the only way to fail democracy.
You may be underestimating how many stupid people there are.
You may be overestimating the degree to which judging people who disagree with you as stupid grants you license to disenfranchise them.
Sadly no, show me a political party that the us, china or India could realistically vote for that would substantially reduce emissions in the next 10 years
Now let’s see them actually do it, and hold the fascist scumbags trying to do a coup and commit genocide against trans people accountable in a court of law for that matter. ~Strawberry
It can and will. We need to get a bigger majority of political reps to really get everything rolling.
And how do we do that? And didn’t the dems already have a majority in congress before the mid-terms? I’m not sure if I’m remembering correctly, but if they did, why didn’t they shut down the anti-trans bills then? ~Strawberry
There’s a LOT of fascists, so it’s going to be a battle. I don’t know how anyone can stop the RW from trying to push through bigot legislation other than keeping enough good people in a position to block and building on it. No giving up!
I just wish we could actually get good things to happen, rather than just stop bad things from happening at best, and even then often only temporarily or partially. ~Strawberry
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.
Absolute rubbish. People believing that their vote will bring change ensures climate disaster. The system is rigged and if you agree to participate in the system you are part of the problem. Thinking voting can have any meaningful impact highlights that you are unaware of how serious the situation is.
Just want to join your downvotes by backing you up and saying you are right. Belief in the system and that voting is the answer is downright absurd at this point.
Unfortunately, voting doesn’t help. Besides there being basically no parties with any real strong climate policies, when you vote a decent sounding one in, they just go back on their promises anyway.
And even IF we vote in a party that truly brings about radical and positive climate change policies, that’s just our one country, a drop in the ocean. The rest of the planet would still drag us down with them, even in that wildly positive scenario.
I don’t mean to be a doomsayer, I just don’t see a way out, I wish I did. Voting certainly doesn’t solve our problems, climate change or otherwise. The rich ruling class will do whatever they want, regardless.
You’re incorrect. Giving up isn’t an option.
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.
Just a heads up, most home solar installations are designed to pay for themselves in 7 to 9 years. But it does depend on net metering in your area, and whether you install a battery pack.
Figured I’d ask here since this thread seems to be getting informative. The number of door to door sales people for solar that come by my area really make solar feel like a scam. How should one go about finding a proper deal on getting solar without having to work with sleazy sales practices?
Why I say it feels scammy: the area I’m in has a lot of older middle class (not upper middle class or anything) residents. From talking to some solar reps, this is their target. There are much wealthier neighborhoods a town or so over but the salespeople I’ve spoken to say the business would rather sell financed installations to collect incentives and that it’s easy to convince people they’ll save money in the long run. But in this community, we’re generally fine financially as long as nothing big hits. When they gave me the numbers, it fell into the category of a big upfront payment due to down payments and high annual costs that would only slightly be offset by electricity savings. I don’t recall the term, but it was not something we could budget for. The paperwork is all showing the future savings and the savings on electricity, until you look into the details. There are two houses that I’ve seem go for it nearby.
A lot of those door-to-door guys are indeed scams. Or if not outright scams, just incompetent.
It’s hard to find good installers that aren’t completely booked for a year or more.
Depending on your needs and skill level, a decent-sized solar setup isn’t hard to DIY. You don’t necessarily need to start with a huge system, you can set up a smaller system to run an AC system or some load like that. Then if you want scale up as you learn more.
Also, solar doesn’t have to be photovoltaic, solar thermal is great for hot water.
Interesting, this sounds like enough to start a Google quest to learn more and maybe experiment. Thanks!
Check out DIY Solar Power with Will Prowse on YouTube for lots of great info! He also has a web shop with many of the products he thinks are good quality.
If they live in the Midwest you could even point to the drop in solar production from the smoke as an immediate negative economic effect
For me it was a 20 year ROI and I would have had to ask my neighbors to take trees down. I don’t think I’ll be here for that long. And when the average joe is getting poorer and poorer it’s harder to afford. This is the problem.
Hey don’t worry though, that average joe’s poorness has nothing to do with all the money printed in the last few years.
That’s only one relatively minor factor among many. Anyone who points to it without also mentioning the much more significant impacts of things like global supply chain disruptions and the war in Ukraine is either ignorant, or is trying to spin a particular narrative while being intellectually dishonest about their priors.
What priors? Prior criminal offenses? I don’t know what you’re saying I’m being intellectually dishonest about?
Yeah the supply chain disruptions have been horrible too. The war in Ukraine is a predictable effect of economic collapse so it’s kind of part of that same mix, but it also accelerates the decline in economic stability.
Both arms of the lockdown fucked up poor people: the actual stopping of the economy as if it were a machine that could just be re-started again was ridiculously stupid, and the solution of printing money to make up for the stopped economy was double stupid. As a result, poor people are much poorer due to inflation. They claim it’s some single digit inflation, but everybody knows the things they buy have doubled in price.
So we basically cut everyone’s income in half. Oh, except for people who own large amounts of productive capital. Those people’s incomes get to come back up as total activity increases again. Plus, the newly printed money was dumped into stocks, so stockholders got a little offset.
But people who don’t have a lot of wealth, who are living paycheck to paycheck, got fucked by the lockdowns. Deeply, horribly fucked.
And maybe that pain is transmitted pain from covid, maybe we avoided a bunch of covid deaths so the overall suffering is lower than it would have been. But I think people underestimate the suffering that can come from all the lower class people on Earth getting poorer than they were before.
And I think that people’s insistence that it’s the rich who primarily get hurt when the economy falters, is abhorrent.
You don’t have to argue with your parents. It seems like the advancement of technology is naturally taking care of the issue.
Words of wisdom. The most efficient solution will speak for itself. People don’t like wasting time, effort, or money.
Liberals talk shit while “ultra conservatives” quietly solve the problem using their own resources? What world is this?
Removed by mod
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.
It seems pathetic to me that people are so obsessed with self-centered “survival” at any cost. I don’t want to live in a bunker or a ruined world, and I couldn’t possibly care less about “my lineage” or genetic material or whatever.
So you care about human survival but not about your own survival?!
well, that’s not precisely what I meant, but sure. I would much rather not see humanity reduced to apocalyptic conditions at all. But if that was to happen, I’d not want to live in a bunker or in space and I’d feel bad for people who did. I also mean that I’m not concerned with “I and my offspring must survive into the future” the way some people are. I don’t have any kids… that might change things.
Love that they are spending billions on bunkers to “ride it out”, when the moment they need to use the bunker, there is nothing to ride out, we are not coming back to the surface in the next few lifetimes if ever.
those who go to those bunkers might have a chance to survive and essentially be what will be left of humans if it gets so bad surface becomes completely hostile for life. If its those fucking shits that are partly responsible for all this, they will make humanity into mockery of what its now. But its also likely they just made “luxury bunkers” that are nice to live in but that cant actually support people as long as its needed.
Those bunkers are luxury tombs and little else.
Yup, I’m sure their grandchildren will get all the warm fuzzies growing up in a confined bunker with picture book after picture book of the blue skies, green landscapes, and animals that their grandparents helped destroy.
That explains a lot with billionaire space race.
The COVID pandemic makes me their plan is to turn New Zealand into a bunker nation and leave us all to die.
Like, just the billionaires on an island? Who will do all the labor required to maintain their lifestyle? Because they sure as he’ll aren’t. To paraphrase Pratchett, it takes a hundred people standing in the mud to keep one person with their head in the clouds.
Who is this Pratchett character? Sounds like a righteous bloke lol
Terry Pratchett, author best known for the Discworld series of novels.
There’s an island full of laborers already in New Zealand. The COVID response showed that they were willing to protect people already living there, so their response to climate change will be the same.
I think that if they manage to fuck over the whole world, there is no amount of money and bunkers that can save them from the angry mob
Watch the show Silo. They’ll find a way. The books are good too.
There is no such thing as a semtex-proof bunker.
Eh, ring of fire will get them
Probably.
Billionaires seem to think nature is irrelevant. See: Elon Musk and his Mars fetish lol
This exactly. One of the reasons I left NZ was a fear of earthquakes. My dozen Christchurch rellies all living in the least damaged house, with a bucket in the garage as their toilet, just confirmed for me that I’d made the right choice.
Too bad the security they will hire to keep their bunkers safe will quickly figure out that the money they are being paid isn’t worth anything any more… they will probably point us over to the air vents when we show up with the cement trucks.
The ones responsible will be gone by the time the worst effects will be felt. Sins of the father?
Not the descendants that accepted and kept their family’s blood money without a second thought. The moment you, as an autonomous adult, choose to accept the power and wealth reaped through human misery, you accept the legacy of blood that came with it.
Anyone can walk away from blood money, or use ALL that blood money solely to provide restitution to the populations exploitated to obtain it. It doesn’t happen though, because human beings as a rule are the fucking worst. Most people, the fuckees, fantasize about becoming the oligarch fuckers, instead of dreaming of ending their oppression and restructuring society to prohibit amoral levels of wealth/power accumulation. Most humans, given power/wealth, would use their own suffering as an excuse to propagate more suffering.
Very true. I have an example in my family: my father-in-law owns a lot of land. That land, not so long ago, belonged to some native tribes that were all killed to have said land stolen. My wife said that, when her father dies and she inherits the land/money, she’s gonna donate most of it (maybe all, depending on our financial situation), because she doesn’t want the blood money.
Every time I (proudly) tell this to someone, they look at me like I’m crazy.
Playing devil’s advocate here: do you live in the US or UK?
The US, not proud of it at all though, and would leave if I had an in pretty much anywhere in Europe or Canada.
And this is true
Removed by mod
“When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons, what the hell am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!”
The future could be a Mad Max-esque hellscape so while the people of the future may not look back on us fondly, they will look back on us enviously.
deleted by creator
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.
No, it’s propaganda to absolve people from their collective responsibility and blame the nebulous capitalist and corporatism boogeymen while ignoring things they actually can accomplish, like voting for policies and regulations that will have an actual impact. The Soviet Union and China have emitted a shit ton of carbon, but I suppose that’s all capitalism’s fault too. Your post is a walking contradiction - people have no responsibility or agency and shouldn’t bother doing anything, yet are also supposed to general strike and fix everything. Your attitude is pro-status quo and therefore serves the entrenched interests you claim to be rallying against.
like voting for policies and regulations
Ahh yes, the “just vote harder” argument. Speaking of “pro-status quo” lmao. What is your next advice to those of us who already vote (which is the bare minimum, not some silver bullet that ends all of our problems)?
Climate crisis, corporate ownership of government, and governmental corruption are all reality because you didn’t vote enough, you stupid idiots! /s
Considering huge numbers of people don’t vote at all, and many others that do vote against their self interests and for their short term gain over environmental policies, we collectively have a lot of work to do on this front. I agree voting is the bare minimum but it bears repeating since we suck at it.
If you actually care about my “next advice”, you should be writing your reps, nationally and locally, on a regular basis, you should organize with groups like CCL, and you should get involved in local transportation and housing policy discussions. What’s your job/career? Can you enact any change there, or move to a job that has more opportunity? I could go on and on. Not attacking you personally, but most folks I’ve met with the doom and gloom, not my problem attitude don’t do fuck all.
You’re asking me what people can do and I’ve given multiple examples. What are your ideas? All I’m hearing is we should have done a general strike and killed capitalism, as if cheap natural gas is only a problem when a capitalist burns it for profit.
deleted by creator
Here’s the thing though: The collective carbon footprint of the middle class absolutely dwarfs that of the private jet class.
The middle class is responsible, the middle class will pay, and honestly I’m here for it.
The issue is people who consume/pollute 10x as much as others per person. People can try to reduce their footprint but it’s pretty lame when some rich person creates as much pollution in one unnecessary plane trip as my household would all year.
The issue is people who consume/pollute 10x as much as others per person.
Indeed, but 10x doesn’t cut it. The middle class pollutes about 100x more than the lower class per capita. But they’ll get what’s coming to them.
Okay, so my point was wealthy people dramatically exceed that figure, too. Your claim about total pollution isn’t that convincing since yes, obviously 150,000,000 middle class people have more of an impact than 1,000,000 very wealthy people. But per-capita, for sure the people taking private jets blow away the middle class. But is the average American wasteful? Sure. However also our society has been set up so it’s very difficult to live without a car and a ton of semi-disposable manufactured items. People emerging from poverty in countries like India and China have shown plenty of enthusiasm to live in the same wasteful way as the middle class in the west, so… also not sure what your point is. Those people don’t pollute as much because they can’t afford to, not because they’re morally superior.
Fret not, clown! The middle class will be dead and your billionaire buddies will be treating each other like loot drops because none of this is being reversed. Fucking pick me peasant lmao get the fuck out of here.
Billionaires ain’t no buddies of mine. They will be able to buy their way free of the worst of the climate disaster, and that sucks.
But the middle class, at least, will have to pay their dues. And that does not suck.
I’ve been trying to make changes to my consuming habits for a good number of years in pro of contributing (however small it might be) to the climate change fight. But, just as on wintermule says in the comments. It might be a lost fight for us mere individuals.
Just look at the data and then you’ll realise that corporatins have been screwing the planet for a long long time now.
This
If their consumers aren’t setting a good example then why should they? They don’t care as long as we don’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.
I will never understand how anyone bought into the paper straw bullshit keeping plastic out of the ocean. It’s just so fucking ludicrous. Sure, plastic straws sit in our land fills for 500 years, but they have leach fields and containment ponds and multiple layers of contamination control.
Meanwhile there are entire fleets of fishing vessels, streaming thousands of miles of plastic fishing net through the ocean, every single day.
But yeah, it’s the fucking McDonalds drinking straws that are the problem…
I see it as a first and necessary step. Remember the CFCs in deodorants and the effect of banning them?
Action should be taken on all fronts, and I would argue that big companies should be made to take action before squeezing households into it. The opposite is happening unfortunately. I feel guilt every time I do the dishes, while the clothing industry is overusing and polluting everyone’s water. That won’t stop me from making the effort, but we need to burn down some parliaments if we are ever to see big corps react.
Been looking for this big picture… has anyone seen it?
Oh it’s easy. They bought into it because straws are used in public so a paper straw becomes an opportunity to virtue signal.
Paper straws? lol Recycling Aluminum? whoa babyyyyy
No that just helps us from setting even more new records 40 years from now.
No no no, you don’t understand. Now you have to stop eating meat and they need your permission to block out the sun
See below for proof
Unironically, yes we really should eat much less meat and use more renewables sources of energy (like blocking out the sun with solar panels)
I always find it strange that the most immediate and effective change any individual can make is giving up or greatly reducing their animal product intake. Will it fix the world? No. But would it actually at least somewhat of a difference? Yes. Is it something you can do right now, today, without any real effort whatsoever? Yep.
But what is pretty much no one willing to do? Give up/reduce animal products in their lives.
It was the easiest change I ever made. 31 years ago. No meat. No dairy. No eggs.
Oh, and no car.
Guess that’s too hard for people and they’d rather die in a war over water.
People don’t make any sense.
I don’t totally understand this either, though recently maybe more I understand it better. Seems like people cannot live without those things. I know someone who started crying when she realized she couldn’t spend as much money as before (only to use the crying to get more money to buy things). Or my sister, who asks my parents for money all the time so she can maintain her chosen lifestyle. If she can’t do that then life becomes difficult. It boggles my mind that ‘difficult’ is not being able to vacation twice a year but whatever.
The stress that less-vulnerable people experienced during covid when the main thing they had to do was not expand their social life for a year or two was a good example of how people are. The anger at not being able to go to the bar every weekend was nuts to me.
Few people can live a monastic life and feel like they are fulfilled, and fewer if any will feel good about that kind of life if they are forced into it. So who and how are they making those choices? We aren’t taught to be frugal, we’re taught to spend, it’s our education towards living a “good life”.
I think if you got people to stop eating meat and driving 2 blocks to the grocery store they’d grow depressed, frustrated, productivity would drop, birth rates would drop, life expectancy would drop. People need that stuff to feel good about their lives, and if you want to take it away you either need a near perfect competitor or take it away by force.
People do these things to fight negative emotions. If you want people to change their ways being arrogant and not showing any empathy won’t help.
Anybody who is dependent on consumerism got to that point because society sells these things like tasty food, vacation, alcohol, tech gadgets, etc., as an easy fix for pain and other internal struggles. It’s not about teaching them to be frugal. Almost everybody has something they rely on to deal with their negative emotions, but it’s easier to see in others than in ourselves.
Oh I guess I wasn’t clear, but I absolutely see this in myself. That’s how I came to this conclusion recently because I’ve been cutting back so much and I realized that I can’t, I just can’t. I need a beer on the weekend, I need to enjoy a meal at a restaurant every once in a while, I love the convenience of using a car to get somewhere.
But I am for sure judgy of people who seem to make zero effort and take any intrusion on their lifestyle to be ‘too much’. I mean driving 2 blocks to the grocery store? Really. They are able bodied people.
What? Arrogant how? I feel like we’re saying the same thing here.
Sorry, I didn’t mean this on you specifically. Just that we can not tell people (as a society) to just live more frugal without addressing the overall problems that drive so many into consumerism. It’s a bit like how people treat drug addicts. I see the same in the recent climate debate. Instead of focusing on the root issue, it is reduced to judging other people’s morals or character.
I wanted them to start that project a decade ago… It’s going to be over the pole to mimic the ice cap effect.
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’.
and I’m just here trying to level up my fishing, ffs
In grinding gardening.
Would you like to bet some money on this prediction?
Nah but I’ll bet you a few litres of drinking water payable in 2050.
Ooh clever. What’s your prediction about how much those liters of water will cost? Do you think money will be gone by 2050, a vestige of a pre-apocalyptic era?
One can only hope money is gone by then , climate change or not. We have the resources as a planet and civilisation to take care of everyone and make sure everyone is housed and fed , yet we decide to let human beings fall by the wayside.
And you think the use of money is to blame for that?
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.
This is a bit unhinged but it is really quite correct.
It’s unhinged to be concerned about what’s going to happen when civil society breaks down due to climate change. It will happen eventually, we just don’t really know when.
Love that 2 days later the headline is still true 😂, but also it’s sad
Heat index of 112F where I am at. FML.
At 5am it was already 70F. I live in Pennsylvania. That shit is wild.
It was 90 in my house when I went to bed last night at 11pm (no AC)
So if this milestone is a death sentence, does that mean it’s time to give up?
These temperatures will kill people. They will cause crop failures. The death, hunger, and hardship will cause people to leave their homes to come to more habitable regions.
But there will still be habitable regions for generations still to come. A lot has been lost, and more will be before we fix what we broke, but plenty can still be saved as long as we don’t just give up
So would you say morale is a really important factor in our global warming response?
Maybe these scientists should stop talking about hopelessness and death sentences and start talking about challenges and hardship.
I disagree.
People need to be angry. We’re being murdered and we must defend ourselves.
So you have all the moral justification of a person fighting for his life here? That’s a pretty significant level of moral authority to wield.
Yes.
I won’t die quietly.
I mean, pretty much anything goes then right? Like, if I crush a puppy’s skull with my foot it’s a horrible thing to do. But if that was the only way I could avoid dying people would understand.
So basically being in fear of your life means “I get to do anything to anyone and it’s justifiable”
Well, no, I’m not that greedy for life. After a certain point it’s not worth it and I’ll just make it quick and painless. Life isn’t always preferable to death, I’d need to be able to live with myself afterwards!
So it’s inaccurate to say that it’s a death sentence?
I wonder if there’s any loss of trust that results from saying false things?
There are people alive today who will witness entire countries disappearing beneath the ocean, so it’s not wrong to describe the climate crisis as a death sentence of sorts.
It’s difficult to explain how dire things have already gotten and how much worse they will keep getting while still acknowledge that even worse outcomes can still be averted.
The death of some land I guess?
It’s difficult to explain how dire things have already gotten
I mean, being able to articulate your argument is a key point of determining whether it’s a position worth defending right?
I think you should get really concrete about what exactly’s going wrong and how it weighs against other things happening in the world. Like with COVID we’ve got numbers. With obesity and crack we’ve got numbers. With tsunamis we have numbers. And they’re pretty well-defined (despite some controversy in attributing deaths to covid).
What are the numbers with regard to climate change? I think it’s much harder to define a climate change death, or a climate change life disruption, than it is to define a heart attack death, or a crack addiction.
while still acknowledging that even worse outcomes can still be averted
I feel like that would be easier if we clearly defined it. Like “5 million people have lost their homes to rising sea levels, but if we slow it down we can prevent another 2 billion from losing theirs”.
It’s not that hard to conceive when you get it defined clearly.
You haven’t?
As long as I know how to love I know I’ll stay alive.
Hell no I haven’t lost hope. But I’ve heard from climate scientists on this who assure me that this isn’t a civilization killer.
Nuclear war could be, as could AI. But global warming isn’t a matter of the survival of the civilization. It’s a matter of completely survivable hardship.
We should give up hope that things are going to be fine and it’s all going to work out paintlessly.
That isn’t necessarily the same as giving up hope that we’ll survive and adapt.
How do we do that? How do we prevent further damage to the environment by fossil fuel companies and such? It doesn’t feel like that’s feasible… ~Strawberry
Fossil fuel companies are run by ordinary humans with names and addresses.
Just sayin
I mean, the term “death sentence” does imply a lack of survival.
Not everyone sentenced to death has been executed, so it implies survival is difficult rather than impossible.
That’s not really how the phrase is used colloquially. It means a person is gonna die.
It probably comes from earlier periods of history when if you heard someone pronounce a death sentence, your head was getting chopped off within a few minutes.
Okay, but this isn’t the 1400s
These days people recognize a death sentence as an injustice that can be stopped.
Really?
It’s an idiomatic saying.
Sure, but that’s the point - a death sentence isn’t certain death anymore, so saying this milestone is a death sentence is completely accurate.
Or do you think these scientists actually meant “we are all 100% going to die”?
You’ll start to get a taste of how hell really is.
if you haven’t, yet, please share your thoughts–we could use your optimism!
If you want some optimism, read How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place by Bjorn Lomburg.
It’s hard to be optimistic, or at least determined, about the future when the prospect is bleak. Climate change is getting worse and here we are just pretending it is business as always.
