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this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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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