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this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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An apt line from the article: "It’s natural to feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenge presented by climate change, but Ripple and his colleagues offer several solutions to avoid the worst possible outcomes."
I'm reminded of Mr. Rogers talking about how to stay optimistic and not fall into despair in the face of tragedy -- look to the helpers. No matter the crisis, there's always people helping out and showcasing the best of humanity.
15,000 scientists warned us -- 15,000 people are analyzing this issue to try and mitigate and solve it. On top of that you've got plenty of green energy companies across solar, wind, nuclear, hydrogen, geothermal, etc. People are doing their damnedest to fight against climate change no matter the odds, and that should fill you with inspiration and encouragement.
This is like saying people on the Titanic are doing their damnedest to fight the iceberg that's approaching right ahead and that should fill you with inspiration and encouragement.
We're not even stopping new drilling or driving cars with better MPG than decades ago; forget net zero carbon emissions. We're still pushing more CO2 into the air every year.
To come back to my analogy the passengers may want to swerve from the iceberg, but the captain is mad, drunk, and stubborn and wants to teach the iceberg a lesson.
Except it's all of humanity and not a fucking captain. It's a canoe and we all have paddles of varying effectiveness.
It's not unfounded optimism because at least some people are trying to paddle away from the fucking iceberg.
Shutting down any and all attempts at being optimistic make people shut down and then ACTUALLY do nothing, rather than the minimal they already do because they feel bombarded by hopelessness and go "what's the point?".
So fucking point to the scientists, point to the companies going green, point to EVs and a grassroots movement towards walkability and public transport that's always growing.
Stop with the "unfounded optimism" bullshit unless you actually think future generations deserve to suffer for their ancestors' mistakes.
Keep paddling, and don't look at the people controlling the steering wheel and engine room.
We're already hitting the iceberg. We're probably going to keep hitting it the next few decades, at best. I believe analysis still says however it won't be extinction level, partially because of the efforts made to this point already. This is the article I'm thinking of:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/climate/global-warming-ipcc-earth.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
The article also goes on to say that the +4C forecast is looking increasingly unlikely, and we're track to 2.1 - 2.9 C this century. That's because of what we've already done to curb emissions. The work people have done so far has made us likely avoid the worst. And the work we continue to do now, whether that's voting for pro climate politicians or turning a wrench at a hydrogen plant or researching a new generation of solar panels -- it will help us make the future worse.
This whole thing isn't colliding with an iceberg and sinking. A better analogy would be a snowstorm that we're trying to get through. Some places will be completely buried, but there's still people out there digging through the snow to try and minimize the accumulation as much as they can. There's people working hard to keep homes warm. There's people cooking meals for everyone.
We shouldn't be so despondent about the places that will be completely covered and destroyed by snow, that we don't fix and save what we can!
Yes, but we should also be demanding the oil CEOs be put to death as if this really is hopeless. If you have money, your trial is already unfairly biased, why should you get anything less than a kangaroo court for something like this, ArAmCo?
So we're kids screaming in the backseat while drunk dad swerves and pervs. Not much we can do, despite our efforts.
Swerves and pervs is a hilarious turn of phrase, well done
That's not true.
See the bullet points in the executive summary of the study linked from this article. They are all illuminating, but I've extracted three just for ease of reading:
Average CO2 emissions per kilometre (gCO2/km) from new internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles are no longer falling at the UK and London levels; and they are rising in urban areas where large sports utility vehicles (SUVs) are most popular, such as Kensington & Chelsea.
The annual reduction in the average CO2 emissions of new cars sold in the UK is now exclusively attributable to the rapidly growing market share of electric vehicles (EVs), and EV sales are expected to be the main source of future CO2 reductions from now on.
The recent trend towards larger, heavier, more powerful cars such as SUVs means that on average, a car that was bought new in 2013 is likely to have lower CO2 emissions than a new ICE car bought in 2023.
(Edit to add: I've tried my damnedest to format those bullet points, but I cannot get them to separate nicely, please just ignore those asterisks.)
Fine points, thank you for sharing.
However those points were talking about CO2 emission levels, where I was responding to a comment about MPG.
My comment was comparing apples to apples same vehicles from the same make/model from back in the day versus now.
Federal laws have changed over the years requiring better MPG for vehicles, and that's where my comment was coming from, that auto manufacturers had to improve the MPG.
Yes, I agree. I suspect the person you were replying to made a comment born of general frustration with car trends. Apples to apples, sure motors are more efficient. But the fact is my car from 2009 uses 4-15 l/100 km and my mother in-law's fucking VW Tiguan from last year uses 9-11 l/100 km. It's absurd, this single woman driving a genuinely huge SUV. Her kids are grown up and gone her husband is gone. She cannot use that much vehicle.
Sometimes she complains about how difficult it is to park. My partner will humor her a bit, but I cannot refrain from pointing out that she could have bought (leased actually, but that's another problem) a hatchback.
Aaaallll that to say, yes, you're right, technically. And if we look at the current fleet, I think you're right. But there is a worrying trend of worsening fuel consumption among a segment of the market that is growing, fast, so the previous commenter is also right from anotger perspective.
I'm not overwhelmed by any of that. I'm overwhelmed by the greed and financial burden of the rich and land owners.
There should really be a restriction on land ownership so it isn't just the stock market
Give Georgism a look.
People are not doing their damnedest. And it should fill you with anger.
Some people are doing something, most are not. As evidenced by the fact that we're still well in the path towards catastrophe.
Unfounded optimism can be toxic, because it gives you what you want (to not feel bad), and removes an emotional urgency towards action (feeling bad). It also blinds you to the reality of having to make sacrifices when needed, or more generally, being realistic with planning and decision-making.
It's also easy to remain uneasy knowing that there is almost nothing we can do as individuals to change anything. It's like a handful of people driving the ship and none of them give a fuck about anything that isn't short-term.
There isn't a lot, no, but little things add up. Getting your electricity from renewable sources for instance, even Texas has wind energy companies.
I used to work in petrochemicals, and what you're describing is actually the exact same case there. Everyone I met cared about sustainability and wanted to see work to that end, but the executives didn't take it seriously.
Until, one of the major product lines was threatened by other companies saying they weren't going to buy anymore by a target year, to satisfy their customers. Large companies have made pledges to stop using single use plastics for instance, and that's because the consumers have made it clear this is something important.
As another example, we have a lot of electric vehicles being built. We may not have as much influence as we'd like, but collectively, we are pushing things in the right direction. Is it enough? No -- but it's a reminder that what we do can have a big impact. It's important to not lose hope.
This is the crux of the problem. A few people in power, who think only of themselves.
Normally a form of government that chooses your leadership should alleviate this problem in the long term, but there seems to be a disconnect between the voting process and who actually gets into the office, and who's well-being those in office look out for, the population, or those few in power.
Some people are. It isn't enough by any means, but it's still managed to avoid the worst case scenarios. The +4C predictions are now less likely partially because of the work we've already done to reduce emissions.
(https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/climate/global-warming-ipcc-earth.html?smid=nytcore-android-share)
What's very important, and mentioned in the article, is that a difference of 0.1 degrees is very significant. Every bit we do to reduce emissions makes the situation less dire.
This isn't a catastrophe like running into an iceberg or a meteor hitting. It's continuous and slow. I likened it to a snowstorm in another comment, and the current renewables industry and push for green energy are people out there shoveling the snow as it falls, to minimize accumulation.
Even though the snow is already beginning to pile up, we can still shovel it away. That's what my optimism is for -- mitigating this as much as we can so that as many people as possible will be alive when we see the sun again. Keeping the power on, shoveling the roads, making warm meals for people -- every little bit helps.
I don't want people to despair so much at the areas that will be completely covered and destroyed, that they don't fix and save what we can.
I agree with most of what you're saying. I don't want people to despair to the point inaction, but I also don't want people to be complacent with the status quo.
Personally, I see too much complacency.
Agreed. Inaction is our biggest enemy. Everything we do matters here. The response to good climate news shouldn't be "oh we don't need to do anything and we'll be fine", and the response to bad climate news shouldn't be "well we're fucked no point in doing anything".
I think in the West, we're only going to see quality of life degrade. But elsewhere, climate change is going to kill people. Every little bit we do helps people in poorer countries survive this.
Humanity cannot survive with the level of anger that you wish to endeavor, we will tear each other apart before any solution comes to the foreground.
We need optimism (and cooperation) to survive.
I wonder exactly at what point in this unsurvivable train wreck it'll make sense to stop singing Kumbaya and take out the pitchforks. We're already on the way to probably killing millions of additional people from natural disasters, we've already killed billions of organisms and fucked our ecosystem.
We are a long way away from unsurvivable, no need for hysterics.
Also, violence is always an option when survival is at stake. However, it should be the last option, and not the first option.
Long is a relative term. We've managed to prolong the date to which civilization will "survive", but we're still talking about migrant crises and death of millions in this century, to color in some parameters of what this version of survival means. We're still on the path to self-destruction in single-digit generations.
We might be "ok" once the "hysterics" boil up to produce more regulation, if they do, the difference of "when" is how much irreversible damage are we going to create and how many ripple-effect issues are we willing to accept on behalf of many generations to come.
As Al Barlett said, "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. "
I mean, we've been there since the invention of the atomic bomb, and we're all still here to talk about it on Lemmy.
I'm truly not saying that things cannot go to shit in a heartbeat, but my point is that we always tend to dance close to the edge but not go over it, at some point we always instinctively pull back.
So when someone looks at an individual moment in time downturn as an inevitability to the end times, it's just something I feel the need to push back on, as we are a long way from game over.
Case in point.
Point with finger.
🤦
Here's a rather decent visualization from an unorthodox but surprisingly high-quality source:
https://xkcd.com/1732/
Pay very close attention to the time scale, very close.
Edit: another supporting argument link for the lazy https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/05/13/climate-migration-an-impending-global-challenge/
Looks like the moral of the story of that graph is to rehire Genghis Khan to lower the temperature again.
Edit: Just to remind you of the original point I was making, when replying to your original comment, as we're drifting far away from it at this point. ...
I'm not trying to dismiss climate change, quite the opposite, I believe it's happening and that we should do everything we can to fight it.
But to say its unsurvivable is just b.s. The species will carry on.
Yes, let's argue over which functional definition of "surviving" is most appropriate. We can create all kinds of global tragedies, mass deaths, endanger the very fabric of civilization by creating economic disaster, have a climate that's too hot to survive without technology in most places, etc etc. But sure, if a few spots with humans might make it, what's the big deeeal?
You say you're not trying to dismiss it, yet enough of your replies are massively downplaying the danger because "it hasn't happened yet, and look! we've done a thing or two" and this is precisely the issue today.
People don't and so far have not been able to understand the rate of change and the relative shortness of the time scale, as well as the range of many mass-scale tragedies that are possible which are not the worst outcome.
Comparing it to doom-saying about nuclear war is simply illogical. Nuclear warfare either will happen, or it won't. Climate change is already a reality, the control of which we've already been largely failing to attain, and due to a combination of mass misunderstanding of it, ineffective government, and economic overdependence of growth, there is no certainty we will in the time that we need to, to prevent more crises. We have a clear understanding of where we're headed and where we will end up from whichever course of action we take, and it ranges from not-great to toppling civilization, with deaths of billions and global economic breakdown somewhere in that range.
But yes, you can keep your point about survivability, some humans will probably make it, they'll wonder why we were this stupid. I'm sure they'll recognize the brilliance in needing to split hairs about the definition of surviving, if the record of this conversation makes it to that point and they have the ability or desire to retrieve it. Those of us who include basic characteristics of our modern quality of life in the identity of "us" as a society, and the hundreds-of-millions-to-billions that die might take issue with your definition, though. But sure, you can have that one. "We'll" "survive" it.
This describes every problem in all of human existence
As a private person, check you energy contract, I found a cheaper company producing only green energy. Just a tip and gentle reminder that you (all) can do the same and put pressure on the energy providers
Thank you.
Let me be clear. If we focused on de-desertification (rotating livestock between fields never should have stopped) and told the rich they can't have their fucking yachts and private jets, it would solve the crisis overnight. Fuck you.
(Edit: I probably shouldn't post right now. I am not having a good day.)
I think you both have good points, there's a lot we can do to tackle the problem, the question is what do we do today?
Not entirely a rhetorical question, either.
To jump to where my thinking goes, regulation seems to be the big hurdle, no?
The problem is that almost everything is manufactured by a corporation now, and in urban areas buying handmade isn't even an option. Try not trusting Fairphone at least a little bit when literally everyone else is even worse, and see how long you can live in a world where everything is an app. Smartphones have become the car of the internet, they remove the ability of a product or service to be accessible without a phone and some sort of service contract.