Here's my thing: I absolutely believe that clean energy and radical climate policies would work. However I have basically 0 hope that enough countries will implement these things to evade climate catastrophe.
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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Mitigation is a spectrum not a binary outcome. Anyone arguing to not try does not understand the problem or is being dishonest.
Countries already are. Slower than we'd like, but change is happening. Big changes start small, but gain momentum. Look at the rollout of renewables and EVs. If you'd described where we are now to past me only 10 years ago, I wouldn't have believed you.
We need to roll out good public transit and get more people off the roads in general, too.
EVs are a good step in energy independence, but they're only mildly better ecologically than ICE vehicles (which should definitely be phased out). The whole ecological cost of maintaining road infrastructure is also not getting helped by heavier vehicles, so we need less of them on the road.
Agreed. I think better battery tech will allow for lighter EVs, but even so at the very least we need vehicle manufacturers to expand their EV range beyond massive SUVs and Sedans, to include more reasonably sized hatch backs etc.
You're right; however. Public transport is shocking where I live, and is in dire need of improvement.
It's gotta be a peer pressure thing, diplomatically, to work. The countries taking the biggest steps need to be loud about it so the ones dragging their feet (hi from the US) get their pride hurt if they don't take action. The ozone hole fix worked that way too (though of course that didn't have major political powers denying it was a problem).
I agree. Additionally, I don't believe that, without controlled depopulation (restrictive birth control, not killing people), we can achieve climate stability and solve other issues like increasing pollution of the entire environment. I believe that the population should have stopped growing in the 90s (at about 4 billion), of course, this number is a hunch, not knowledge.
We have reached a point far beyond sustainability; we are on artificial life support. Without this support, even getting dressed would be a challenge, given the lack of a natural and clean source of textile materials. Nearly all clothes are made of plastic or contain some plastic additives. As we wash these clothes in our machines, we inadvertently consume plastic particles in our food and drink.
Speaking of machines, the devices produced today have an increasingly shorter lifespan. Simultaneously, the recycling of these devices is problematic, as our waste is often massively exported to third-world countries.
Another concern is the escalating scarcity of drinking water, among various other challenges. The list goes on and on. Anyone expecting the Earth to accommodate an unlimited number of people is plain insane or doesn't understand the complexity of the issue.
We must act now on all the fields, even those unpopular ones (like population control).
Those who are against population control, please take a look at this initiative: https://populationmatters.org/ and its patrons (like Sir David Attenborough and Jane Goodall).
The amount of Doomers on Lemmy and Reddit is depressingly large as well. It's du jour to act like any talk of climate positivity is naive, change is impossible and collapse is inevitable. Just look at the popularity of whole subs dedicated to Collapse and Doomer material. It's exhausting trying to challenge the position of some of these users, yet we must try. Hope is an important part of tackling the climate challenges we're facing, and the glamorisation of defeatism isn't going to help foster that.
Mindless optimism isn't the answer either. We need real change immediately, the window to slam on the brakes as a species is already behind us arguably. The only answer is to be both realistic AND ambitious.
No one said anything about mindless optimism. You are correct, change is needed and fast, but relentless pessimism achieves nothing except foster defeat. I'm advocating for a realistic approach to how we look at climate change mitigation. Part of being realistic is understanding that things may not be as hopeless as parts of the Internet would like you to believe.
I'm not saying we need to write everything off as hopeless, I'm saying we need to recognize that a lot of current efforts amount to greenwashing and ARE hopeless or even pointless (carbon credits for one are a good scam that comes to mind). The best work is being done by people chaining themselves to trees and sabotaging oil pipelines, not those writing policy with pockets full of cash... and this honestly comes off as apologetic for the latter and more than a little naive to me.
Then I think we're talking at cross purposes. Believe me, I understand the scale of the task and I understand that performative action can be just as damaging as doing nothing at all. However my point is that by only and exclusively focusing on the negative you risk giving the impression that any action is pointless. Those people that you mention chaining themselves to trees etc do so because they believe that it is the only way to achieve the change that is required, but they do believe that change is possible, otherwise why bother? Marinate those same people in a exclusive culture of "we're all doomed, change is pointless because it's too late and it's naive to think otherwise" and soon enough you won't have anyone chaining themselves to anything because you've managed to convince them, wrongly, that it's a waste of time.
There's a psychological aspect to fighting climate change that I think people forget. You need motivation and determination and I belive you get that by staying informed of both the bad and the good work that is being done. Celebrating the little wins so we can continue to push for the big ones. I hope that makes my point a bit clearer? Maybe these articles will do a better job of explaining what I mean, lol:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/26/we-cant-afford-to-be-climate-doomers
Well obviously hope and optimism and nuance are important here, I can't entirely disagree with that I'm just saying we need to support illegalist climate action uncritically (except in the case of complicated, shady organizations like PETA) and we can't expect those in power to act sensibly as a general rule.
Agreed! :) I'm not sure where you are in the world but, if you can, you might be interested in this:
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/chris-packham-is-it-time-to-break-the-law
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An argument I hadn't seen until recently was "Man-made climate change is real, it's an existential problem, and the only way to combat it is to burn as much fossil fuel as we can right now to boost the economy and increase our efforts to find a solution."
Because scientific endeavors work in real life exactly like Sid Meier's Civilization?
If only Gandhi were around to nuke those idiots.
To be fair, destroying the planet and foresaking future generations is easier than admitting you were wrong.
It's not a shift away from corporate bullshit: the same people that were arguing that changing something is bad because the climate isn't changing now are arguing that changing something is bad because it's too late and let's ride into the sunset giving trillions to oil companies.
so, we've moved from "ots not real" through past "maybe its real, but its not.human caused" all the way to "its real and we can't do anything about it"/"its too late to do anything about ot"
I doubt it's a natural evolution.
Climate change denial was the product of oil companies and worked on idiots. The "it's too late anyway" is likely also the work of oil companies and works on people who think they're smarter than the idiots.
We're past the point of averting the climate crisis. We're now at the point where any effort to mitigate climate change, to reduce emissions, is damage control. But there's little doubt of a global population correction, likely in my lifetime, and probably defining the latter half of my grandson's life.
The risk for human extinction due to ecology collapse is no longer insignificant. More likely we'll be reduced tens of thousands. Civilization is going to collapse, and all that we do today, culture wise, is unlikely to survive.
Others have thought about this more than I. A good deep dive is The World Is Not Ending by Sophie From Mars (on YouTube) who points out that we're more inclined to imagine the end of the world than we are the end of capitalism. She imagines two outcomes; one in which we embrace mutualism sooner and one in which we hold onto our capitalist values and grind industry until the last possible moment.
I think the general response of the international community to Greta Thunberg's call to action demonstrates pretty well what the climate response movement is up against: The aristocrats and plutocrats that control our industries and nations will not listen to anyone that doesn't drop on them with nine feet of rainfall and 115 MPH winds. And even then they haven't budged.
Now from my perspective, it's not a matter of willpower, but whether our species is capable of organizing a response to the climate crisis when it threatens established edifices of economic and political power. All signs say that we just have not worked out a sociological method to change minds who would rather die and see their own species go extinct before giving up their own wealth. It's a fox and grapes situation, and may well doom the human species.
The human animal has demonstrated itself unable to be able to choose reason when wealth and power are on the line, and then once we pry it from the cold dead fingers of our elites, we can't trust anyone else who has it momentarily not to abuse it. And that is the great filter that will kill us.
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I think if we found an organism that drives hundreds of other species to extinction a day, we'd do our damndest to eradicate it.
Unfortunately that organism is us. Human exceptionalism is gross. We deserve to go extinct.
It's sad that you think that way
No, the sad thing is that he is right. We could coexist with other species, but instead we choose to exploit the natural environment to its limits.
I was referring to the "we should go extinct" part, I agree that what we're doing to nature is horrible but I don't think collectively dying is the answer. Honestly it would speak wonders for human exceptionalism if we actually managed to get this under control.
Just curious what you think it says about us if we don’t manage to get it under control?
Our societies and technologies evolved faster than our instincts and minds could
Couldn't have said it better myself
I was referring to the same words...
I'm sad for the natural world that we are taking down with us. 70% of all species. 150 different species permanently erased every day.
Nobody listened when they kept telling us we were reaching Peak Oil back in the early '00s and now look at us. Completely out of oil. We need to listen to the climate scare ppl for suresies!!