For better or worse (definitely worse), we’re going to stroll right into the horrors that global warming is going to give us. We won’t start making necessary changes until it’s way way past any tipping points.
The people that care have no power. The people in power are driven by capitalist profit motives.
If you’re a sci-fi nerd like me we can hope aliens or a true AGI will take over and save us lol. Short of that I have no confidence, mad max dystopia by 2100 or sooner.
It doesn’t take aliens or a true AGI; it takes stopping fossil fuel use, ending deforestation, and phasing out a few trace chemicals. Do that, and we end the rising temperatures
Making that happen is a matter of seizing power from those who profit from the current system of extraction and burning.
Oh I totally agree with you, but
a matter of seizing power from those who profit from the current system of extraction and burning.
This is the problem. To say this wouldn’t be easy is a huge, gargantuan understatement.
The power and control is so far reaching and deep into the foundation of our society, I can’t help being cynical. By using politics and propaganda techniques huge portions of the population have been convinced that global warming either isn’t real, isn’t important, or is actually a good thing. And this is only one hurdle to overcome along with many others.
The question is how do we seize power back.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
I’m a bit dubious that revolutions can be effective nowadays against a well organised oppressive state with present tools (propaganda, police, surveillance, corruption). All revolutions have failed over the last few decades (Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Tunisia then Arab Spring, etc.).
The answer varies a lot between countries. In ones where elections determine who holds power, they’re a viable path to achieving change.
Well yeah but…
Even if tomorrow we start really working on getting the CO2 levels down (protip: we won’t), humanity will be spending half their world energy budget for the next 50-100 years at least to get CO2 levels back to what they should be (pre industrialized levels). Even if we go for something more semi reasonable, say pre 1980 levels, we’ll still be spending half our entire world energy budget on this for like a decade. This ain’t an easy problem
No not easy. It’s way cheaper to avoid making it worse than it is to try and put things back the way they were.
The next generations after us are facing shit storms. This all boils down to thermodynamics. We took energy at the cost of generating CO2. Taking that CO2 back, aggregating, filtering, converting, storing… Add in losses (be generous and take 50% conversion rates), we will need multiple times all the energy we took over the last two centuries to take all that CO2 out.
When I said decades of spending half our energy budget, I was very VERY generous. Reality is that we might have to be doing that for centuries, maybe.
The great filter is upon you.
I hate when they seem to think that everyone doesn’t care, but only the billionaires and a few corporations are causing the majority of the climate change.
Why does everyone have to give up eating meat, so that companies like SpaceX can dump more Methane than cows burp in a a year because they save money on Methane fuel?
Why does everyone have to buy new super expensive electric cars without any increases in minimum wages in 15 years?
Why do we all have to live in mega cities with mass transit and walking everywhere, but I’m disabled and walking everywhere will send me back into a wheelchair.
It bugs me that everything in the climate change news puts it on everyone, instead of calling all of the major polluters to account and their politicians who keep pushing the gas petal for money.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’m pretty sure most of the regular people just can’t afford to make the needed changes because the economy is so top-heavy that no corporation is willing to increase their labor costs because of greed.
But, maybe it’s just me.
Unfortunately we have to do both. We need big industry to reduce but we also need a massive change in our behaviors. Industry must be forced to make these changes because they are purely profit driven and don’t take into account 2nd order costs of their actions. People can make choices to improve their personal impact on the environment, and every little bit counts.
For example, if everyone who can uses more public and active transportation, then that leaves more capacity for those who can’t. Making less cars is better than making more EVs. Personal transport is a significant source of pollution even if it’s not close to the biggest.
but I’m disabled and walking everywhere will send me back into a wheelchair.
…if you were disabled, a city built towards accessibility would be ideal.
perhaps I’m not understanding what you mean by the above.
That’s the thing that scares me the most, actually. That in order to ensure humanity’s survival, all we need to do is cure the dark greed in every man’s heart.
Otherwise, we’ll just end up with carbon credit style solutions that ensure we transfer ownership of emissions at a heavily discounted rate, rather than making less emissions.
The problem isn’t curing greed, it is using an economic and governmental system that enables the people to be intentional about production and consumption. Capitalism isn’t it, it explicitly relies on markets which is an opaque tool which makes it difficult to live intentionally. Markets tell you to just “trust” that the price reflects the impact of that product or commodity.
The problem is greed. The solution is punishing it. Severely.
You want to have your cake and eat it too. You pay those corporations to pollute in the process of getting you the things you refuse to live without. You vote for those politicians to enable your consumerism and then blame corruption for the policies they pass to give you what you want. You claim that regular people can’t afford the needed changes, yet you insist on eating meat and using cars to get around as if those are free. You claim to want corporations to increase their operating costs to be more sustainable, but you complain about your purchasing power decreasing. You blame corporations for greed, but you insist on a personal electric car because you would rather spend >$50k than learn the difference between walkability and only being traversible on foot.
Not all corporate emissions are for private consumption, but most of them are. Not the whole decrease in personal purchasing power is from decolonization and switching to more sustainable production processes, but a decent chunk of it is. You will have to sacrifice products if you want any hope of a better world.
If there is one ray of hope I can offer you, it is that you seem to have too little faith in the quality of life in a degrowth economy. Modern walkable cities are more pleasant to traverse for more disabled people than car-centric ones, with mobility scooters and public transit chauffeurs. Alternatives to meat are delicious if prepared by a competent cook, and it’s easier to get a competent cook to make a fancier meal for you if you share meals with flatmates. Without SpaceX-raised satellites your internet and television connection might be worse, but as you share a meal your human connections can be stronger.
Corporations have spent the past 150+ years permeating every form of media about how necessary it is for you to consume and consume and consume. You don’t need their products nearly as much as you think you do, at least in the long term if we work together.
we truly fucked ourselves huh
We’re at the point where we’ve stepped into a minefield, where each step forward risks losing major ecosystems. We need to take immediate steps to stop walking further into it.
Nope. I live in Canada and I like heat.
Hope you like wide spread crop failure, rising food prices and climate migrates.
You like forest fires? You monster.
“Only you can prevent wildfires”…by consuming less…and boycotting polluters.
