this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
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The thing is...it doesn't have to end. Leave the remaining fossil fuels in the ground, end deforestation, stop raising huge herds of ruminants and end use of a few really nasty trace gases, and temperatures will stabilize.
Do it before things get really bad, and we end up with a decent life for a lot of people.
For the sake of discussion let's assume that's all true. Do you have any reason to believe that even one part of the solution you outlined will be implemented in anything resembling a timely fashion?
The trace gases for sure; the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol has been ratified by the key countries which manufactured them, and their use in new equipment ended about a year ago.
Fossil fuel use phase-out is getting started. It very roughly looks like this:
It's unclear if fossil fuel phase-out will happen at a pace fast enough to limit the warming to 2°C above what it was in the late 1800s.
Deforestation is proceeding at a slower pace in some parts of the world due to local political change. Not everywhere though, and there's a lot of work still.
Cutting the ruminant herd...not even started yet.
What I do know is that every person out there has the power to put their thumb on the scale of politics and policy and industry just a tiny bit to make it happen. And it's worth trying.
It's definitely worth trying. The issue I see is simply that not enough people believe that to be true. I don't think that's going to change either. The people who aren't concerned now aren't going to change their tune until the 11th hour and even then the attitude will shift from "it's not happening" to "it's too late to fix now".
Only thing you can do there is to encourage the people around you and show them what trying is like
The people around you can't make a dent in this crisis. The ones that need convincing are the CEO's of the most greedy companies in the world.
Sure they can: by controlling government. You can't change the mind of some wealthy CEO, but you can make it easy for people to avoid becoming their customers, and then make what they've been doing a crime.
You have been banned from c/Conservative.
The majority of damage hasn’t even been done yet and that damage won’t be done by our future emissions but by our historic emissions.
The global warming you are seeing today was caused by emissions from the 70s, not todays emissions. We still have 50 years of warming to go to catch up to now and by the time we get there we will have doubled our emissions.
We are already fucked we just haven’t caught up yet.