https://www.earth.com/news/earth-systems-critical-all-life-on-verge-total-collapse-paris-agreement/
As global temps keep rising because of humans, Earth is getting closer to critical tipping points that will permanently disrupt its systems.
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/12214870
Meh. I respectfully disagree. This is the system we designed. It's working exactly as intended. What we need is a sea change. The system is broken and that's evident everywhere. The path we are on doesn't work. The only way to course correct is for everyone to get on the same page and as is witnessed during the yearly COP meetings clearly the rich nations don't fully care about the poor countries. Things are changing but dreadfully slow.
We, as in the people living now, did not design it, we are stuck with the designs of forefathers upon forefathers that had a few centuries to bake in profit above people. Before the American government, the British government did it. Other governments mimic the Big Guys. Governments are designed by the rich and powerful to minimize the power of the individual, especially in America. Keep the citizens too busy, too overworked, too sick, too poor, too homeless, too much lead in the water, too many PFAS, too much fracking pollution in the air. They just pay lip service to freedom and keep education levels low enough so people are either unaware or infinitely feeling helpless.
Look at the water shortages looming in western US. The Department of Reclamation run by a bunch of Mormons that thought it was their God-given right to terraform the US made some overly optimistic measurements at the beginning of the 20th century and ran amok building dams and changing water routes all across the west. That led to building entire cities in places that should not have cities (Phoenix, AZ; Los Angeles, CA; Las Vegas, NV, etc.) and now those cities are "too big to fail" slurping up all the water they can from places very far away. LA has an entire nuclear facility powering water pumps to push water over a mountain range to feed some of it. The agricultural West and midwest (Midwest: NE, KS, etc.) all relied on these river sources as well as giant underground aquifers. The water was always finite, but the US government sold it cheap to push farming and agriculture into the west and away from the south where water was more plentiful. Now it's running out.
This isn't even getting into the problems faced by the poorer nations you mentioned above, resources will become spread so thin, looming water wars and other conflicts on the horizon that will start out so civil at their beginning. Those nations at the equator will be on their own to survive, with mass-migration towards the poles being the only real solution for those that survive.
We (now-humans) are stuck having to mitigate the worst of the damage for humanity and many species to continue to survive, and attempt to roll back all these arrogant asinine greedy decisions in the hope that the near-future will be at least semi-habitable.
Earth will be fine, it'll rebuild and reset and grow some new beings. Trying to guilt people for things they didn't do and have little control over is not a good motivator when faced with major extinction.
if we exceed the 1.5°C warming target set by the Paris Agreement.
Pretty sure previous studies have already confirmed we're already blowing past 2°C even if we stopped producing CO2 today.
Not to be too doomer about it but we're already too late to prevent centuries of damage. What we can do now is try and keep the ecosystem from becoming completely uninhabitable.
I'm just hoping to be able to travel a little bit and see the world before there's nothing left.
Not to be pedantic, but the target is a ten year trailing average. It’s a crime that we’ve likely hit it for a year or two already, and that shows how urgent the problem is but we’ve still got 5 years or so
Even worse carbon emissions haven’t yet peaked, much less started dropping, and way less quickly than they need to drop
That's not really how that works. The 2°C increase is a prediction of how average temperatures will increase based on already existing carbon in the atmosphere.
If we stop emitting today, the average temperature will still increase beyond 2°C and stay there unless there's another force actively removing the CO2 from the atmosphere.
This isn't "if we stop emitting today, we'll peak at 2°C increase and then it'll go back down" the 2°C prediction is a permanent increase to the average temperature.
The damage is done. Millions will likely die regardless of how much carbon we put out from this point forward. The fight now is to decrease the people that will die beyond that number.
Those extra years don't mean anything though. It's the target that matters. Just because 10 years was predicted doesn't mean we can do whatever we want in this 10 years as long as it fixed right before that mark.
If you still have hope that humanity will stop destroying (the human habitability of) our only habitat in the name of short-term private profit for humanity's most prolific sociopaths, at least share the kind of drugs you're on.
"LINE MUST GO UP!"
-Homo Sapien, ~200,000 BCE - ~2100 AD
Accelerationists gotta accelerate, I guess. For the longest time it baffled me as to why anyone with intelligence would knowing act to destroy the planet and, with it, society. Then I learned about this shit called accelerationism and it all starts to make sense.
We ARE in a hostage situation like someone commented, except we're on a bus, speeding toward a cliff, and the rich elite refuse to take their foot off the pedal. They think they're going to come out of societal collapse alive and poised to shape whatever comes next however they want. It's literally the game of Monopoly with that fucking speed die version...
Jokes on them, the earth can stay a boiling lava pit for longer than they can stay in their bunkers.
Also, good luck trying to have people service and maintain your bunker system as you dictate their lives without any of them just trying to kill you.
It would be so much easier to just admit they have to work with the poors to keep the earth alive so everyone can live than just wipe out humanity and think they can outlast it
Right? Shortsightedness is a problem everywhere. And their calculations are not gonna work out for them. Sure, raise the price of goods and services today, who's gonna buy them if no one has any money cause they're syphoning off and propelling us to the bottom. I'm convinced the ultra wealthy stopped mentally growing at age 7-10.
Take that Ken Griffith guy, the one who had to get bailed out by other ultra wealthy a-holes in 2020 during the GameStop meme-time. He just spent like $44 million on a stegosaurus skeleton that the company was going to try to sell for like $3-$7 million. Dudes atrocious with money and predictions it seems. He's like a wealthier Tim Poole.
rich
It's not about the rich. No one cares, except for a small handful of people. The vast majority of people want to fly away on vacation, own a large home, have a crappy grass lawn, eat meat everyday. They see environmentalism as some sort of odd lifestyle. If you make a law that says they can't use gas lawn mowers, they'll scream and go bat shit insane, call you the devil. They are relentless in wanting to pave over anything living.
me when i destroy the planet to get just 1 more green piece of paper that means jack shit in the grand scheme of things
genuinely think money is an addiction to these big oil fucks
It's a way of keeping score. They don't care where the money comes from any more, just that they have more than some other guy.
People who care about people generally don't get rich, because they are kind and helpful people and will spend money on others.
It's not only the top 1% that are doing this. Well, yes they do, but they are all fueled by ignorance of people that keep them in power. There is nothing wrong with having ridiculous amounts of money, there is something very wrong when those amounts of money get you immunity to law and regulation. Because that destroys the point of regulation anyway - and they are supposed to keep everyone safe.
I have had this conversation with parents and grandparents, if we ignore the ecology for a bit and just look at the numbers and speed we are consuming oil. According to (they cite their sources) worldometers.info we have 39 years left before we consume/pump all oil. There is a possibility that even my grandparents could outlive oil, but there is a high possibility that my parents will outlive oil at the current rate - let alone me and our generation.
The thing is that we NEED oil. We need it for so many things like plastics, medication, but also transportation. Ships, planes all currently need oil to move as there is no way to power them all alternatively YET. So my question was why spend the oil on cars, the one thing that we know how to and CAN power using electricity. The response from grandparents was that they would never buy an electric car. This mindset then fuels people across generations, and it is so dangerous. When you include the consequences for earth if we would spend all the oil at this rate, it gets even more frightening. We won't need oil at that point, we wouldn't exist anyway.
"Sorry, I'm freeing Palestine this election by posting on Instagram about it and not voting"
yeah it's not the "fuck everyone else let's subsidize billionaires and crude oil some more" party that has anything to do with it; it's definitely the "i think genocide is bad" crowd.
I think that you can think genocide is bad and when given a choice between two viable candidates pick the one that is less likely to double down on genocide. But hey, that's just someone who has seen third parties in the US never quite achieve what they say they're doing EVERY election.
never argued for third party candidates; you can check my history. but blaming this bullshit on people who do rather than the party that actively and proudly wants it is also a bit single minded.
it's one thing to argue not voting or voting third party is the same as voting for republicans (which i always argue that it is) but seeing news like this shouldn't make your first thought "this is because of third party voters".
no, it's republicans first. and democrats second, by the way. depressing voter turnout is something they have done for as long as I've been aware of us politics, probably more. it's their job to turn non-voters into democratic voters, not the republicans' job.
yet time and time again their best argument has always been "look at these cunts, we promise we'll be at least 10% better". that's dumb. they banked on this message with Hillary and everyone paid for it.
this is one of those rare instances where they haven't been as patronizing and dismissive of their base. they've actually listened, and convinced biden to drop out, and harris picked the VP candidate favored by the voters rather than making cynically strategic plays. i hope they win and learn a lesson from this.
Yeah, fair enough! Thanks for taking the time to share your perspective and help me see other thinking on the issue.
Ok, so I am all about working to resolve climate change, very active in the movement even.
But gosh golly gee, can we talk about that particular websites UI for a moment? I do not need a roll ad every 3 seconds. And I really do not need to know that one weird trick on how to get rats to like me.
Again, all for the climate. I’m saying this as I just walked 45 minutes to go grab my lunch. Totally on board with more buses and trains. Big advocate of a Citizens Climate Lobby. Doing my part, hope you do too.
Keep the rats the f away from me!
The more data processing your computer does, and the more information served from elsewhere, the worse the use of electricity, and therefore the carbon footprint.
It's all a little extra press on the scales in order to ensure things end just that little bit quicker.
Companies and billionaires when the only thing they care about are multicoloured laminated pieces of paper that basically mean nothing once someone's wealth is high enough:
One can only hope actual intelligence rises from the ashes of the failed experiment of humanity.
I know right? The faster shit gets really really bad, the faster people will (hopefully) start building homemade guillotines.
Personally I'd prefer any way that doesn't shovel the less abled and less privileged into the Accelerationism Machine as fuel.
We have to hope things get better, because no matter how bad things get, they can always get worse. People will see things getting worse as evidence that it hasn't gotten worse enough. The idea that there is some point where it can get bad enough to spur positive change is false. The positive change that has happened in society originates from people wanting things to get better.
We have to convince people to want things to get better, by showing them it can be better. Too many people are worried about losing the little they have. People have to see we can all be living more complete lives without harming the planet.
We don't have any evidence to suggest it will get better. I'm also not really sure what you mean by "more complete lives." That's gotta be subjective, right? I don't think I'm an accelerationist though, I think I'm just against human life period.
We don’t have any evidence to suggest it will get better.
We know how to make things better. We need to get off fossil fuels and capitalism. Hoping it will get worse won't work. It will just get worse. People have made things better before. We are living in the success of optimistic activists who believed they could make the world a better place. We need to do the same.
I’m also not really sure what you mean by “more complete lives.”
How about making more money. Eating food and breathing air that doesn't kill us. Working for ourselves and not billionaires. Having third spaces where people can be a part of a community, instead of being isolated.
I’m just against human life period.
This is literally the root of the flawed ideologies of our time. I implore you to reconsider. We are all in this together.
Not with that attitude. We know how to implement socialism while maintaining a market economy and how to improve our democracy to achieve majority rule. All of it is logistically doable and well understood. What we need is the political will to do it.
Well since there's nothing I can do then I guess it's time to kick back and wait for the end of humanity. We had a good run.
You can and you should (and you probably already do).
Kick back and know that you're doing something, whatever it is.
Nicely said.
And even if we could do a bit more, why should we make more sacrifices, when big corporations are accountable for much of the environment's issues?
Why would a couple of fossile destroyers change their very lucrative business-model if millions of first world citizens are just as cheap, greedy and irresponsible as well? I'm pretty sure a lot of us would act very much like them, if we were put in their places. It's so easy to point fingers at the billionaires. As long as they don't change, why should I?! To be a better person, that's why! Fuck those psychopaths, stop consuming!
"live a shittier, lower quality life for no reason because you're fucked anyways" why though? An environment sounds great, but it's obviously not in the cards for us. Why purposely have a worse life? HedonismBot could teach us a thing or two tbh, if we're gonna burn the earth to a crisp anyways might as well have fun, no?
So you want to keep being destructive because more powerful people keep being destructive? Putting my pleasure above everything and everyone else doesn't make me happy, I'm not like that.
My neighbor is blasting Tool and singing along, poorly. Let's go ahead and collapse this already. I'm tired.
I can honestly say that I believe, checks notes, that tinfoil hats will help you with this issue!
Really wish there was a way to block this kind of stuff from all my feeds. I already know this, and there is nothing I can do to stop it from happening, so I really don't want to see it.
Right, that worked back in the day but it doesn't work now because Republicans, conservatives, and people who own those people don't care about saving the planet and don't care about real actual science anymore. They will flatbout refuse to listen to facts, reason, and logic, so it's impossible to have actual real conversations with them. If that stuff still worked, then we would already be working on trying to reverse what is happening, and we would be passing laws and issuing fines in the billions to companies like Exxon and BP.
Think about it. If we had the hole in the ozone right now instead of in the 80s there is absolutely no fucking way they would have passed the laws to fix it and the same goes for all the acid rain we had. If you think that stuff works, then please sell me whatever copium you have cuz christ could I use some.
Agreed. If we aren't fighting conservatism, we aren't fighting climate change.
Conservatives are the army of the billionaires. Global heating will continue until conservatism is defeated. There is simply no way around this.
Yes, there are some underlying issues which seem rooted in conservatisvism or rather its expression in modern politics.
But activism is not only about informing, it's about pressuring the ruling class. And the more people support it, the better it works.
The ruling class was against civil rights, women's rights, freeing slaves, Mahatma Ghandi, and so on. They were not convinced by facts, reason, or science. The people who are convinced by these need to show politicians that they are willing to stand up and protest if they don't listen.
Repression against climate activism is (in my view) at an all-time high with movements even labeled as terrorists and a certain part of the populace agreeing with injuring or even killing members of climate activist groups. Not something I'd want to put myself into. :/
Yes, it's hard. But I'd rather endure oppression than giving up.
However, there's a lot you can do to support without repression. You can provide social media support, help with designing banners and stuff, take and edit pictures and videos, provide food, or also legal support, just as some examples.
Also, the more people join protests, the harder it is for the state to oppress them.
This is wild, the exact same discussion with the exact opposite upvotes would happen in the progressivepolitics community.
But to the point about "not being able to do anything" that's just not true. Is it singularly enough to reverse or accelerate climate change? No, but that's not the question is it. Anything is anything. Can you do anything? Yes.
The answer is Yes. So please do. You're walking instead of driving? Eating less meat? Good. There you go - no need to crawl into a hole and die, you're doing something. It's not nothing. It's good.
Even with appliances or vehicles: if you’re going to buy one anyway, you can choose increased efficiency and you’ve done something, no matter how small.
And that still won't do shit when a company like ExxonMobil produces more pollution in a single year than thousands of people will in an entire lifetime. Don't sit here and act like anything I do will make a difference just because it makes you feel better.
It will cause at least one less gram to be emitted. You said nothing, but what you can do isn't nothing. It's just not much. But this is the survival of all life on earth we're talking about.
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, it's not going to get better. It's not.
We have millions of people who care, and even if every single one of us produced a carbon neutral footprint(which isn't possible for everyone) it still wouldn't stop what's coming at this point. It would slow it down but not stop it because 100 companies are responsible for 71% of all greenhouse gasses, and only 25 companies and state owned orgs are responsible for over 50% of the global industrial emissions. Without stopping them, you are throwing an icecube on a forest fire.
Hell, the top 1% of co2 producers produce 1000 times more than the bottom 1% which is you and me.
So buy one more day for us to have a revolution and end the pollution. If you have 1/100000000000000 the power of an oil CEO, and you still use that power polluting the environment for your own convenience, then what makes you better than them? That you would theoretically have done less damage if only your actions mattered a little more?
If you want a revolution, then you need to get their hands bloody, and people are not willing to do that. I don't blame them I'm not willing to either.
Well I am. I'm participating in mutual aid and direct action orgs with the aim of assembling an apparatus for distributing weapons and committing insurrection against the government. Also I don't drive a car or eat meat. My behaviours are designed to stop climate change at every level of action. You won't engage in individual action, and you won't engage in collective action, so what's your big idea? Giving up? No thanks.
one less gram to be emitted
lmao, one gram of CO2 out of the 3.74 × 10^16 grams of CO2 emitted annually worldwide.
This is like digging through couch cushions hoping to find enough money to fund the construction of a space station.
Those things are helpful and nice, but they aren't even close to enough. As long as conservatives hold any power, billionaires and corporations will continue to cook the planet. To combat global heating, we must combat conservatism.
Buy a gun. Participate in direct action and protests. Help organise mutual aid structures. Spread class consciousness. Assassinate a conservative politician. Storm the capital.
I didn't list these things earlier because they require a bigger commitment than being carfree or vegan. I wanted to start with the easy stuff.
Ignore everything this hippie just said, arm yourself, and go bomb an Oil Pipeline.
There's no Lorax out there to speak for the natural world. Find your own voice today.
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