Enjoy it while it lasts.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
163 comments
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Yeah. At least when nuclear war was the existential threat hanging over humanity you had the comfort that it would all be over in an instant. Now we get to watch a slow unraveling of civilization over decades while things continue to get worse. Fun times.
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It'd be over in an instant for the lucky ones.
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Fuck, I didn’t think I’d ever be nostalgic for the constant threat of being nuked, but here we are.
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Spoiler alert: The civilization disrupting aspects of climate change are still decades out and the rich countries will probably be fine.
They'll be fine because they can afford the infrastructure projects and increased costs of energy and food.
Now Africa, South America, the poorer Asian countries, tiny Pacific Island nations... Oh boy. I would not want to be a citizen there in 20 or 30 years.
Eventually sea level rise will become a really big fucking problem, like for every single coastal city in the world, even the rich ones. Luckily none of us will be around to see that unless some sort of miraculous life extension technology becomes available.
On the one hand I don't like mentioning this because it gives the right wing ammunition to ignore climate change. But on the other hand some people have such existential dread about it that it's damaging their mental health, they are really overestimating how damaging it will be in their lifetime in their rich country they live in.
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Are we supposed to be comforted about the timeline being decades? That's generations alive today.
Scientists are also finding their estimates getting outpaced alarmingly often right now.
The Russia Ukraine war has disrupted civilisation quite significantly with 6 million refugees. We could see over 1 BILLION climate refugees by 2050. 1000 MILLION people having to leave their homes.
We are on course for significant disruption to food supply before 1.5C warming. Doesn't matter how rich your country is, with global food supplies low and that maybe people on the move, civilisation as we know it will change significantly. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/12/global-heating-likely-to-hit-world-food-supply-faster-than-expected-says-united-nations-desertification-expert
To be clear: I am not a doomerist. Don't dwell on this and do nothing. Get angry! This is being done to you. This was not inevitable, it was the decisions of the most powerful and richest people in the world. Get out there and take action, the movement needs you.
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Luckily none of us will be around to see that unless some sort of miraculous life extension technology becomes available.
I dunno mate... antarctica is collapsing much faster than anyone anticipated. Brazil's winter was a scorcher.
Canada's on fire. Tropical storms are hitting LA. sadlol... I suspect we might be around to see even worse.
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I mean, I feel like this year in particular illustrates quite well that there are already very real impacts of climate change in rich countries, with Canada, Greece, Hawaii etc. burning. Which makes it worth to delay climate change as much as possible, even if we can't or don't want to stop it at livable levels.
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You can't have this both ways.
When a magat in the Senate brings in a snowball and says that global warming isn't happening because it's snowing...
"That's weather not climate!"
When there's a wildfire somewhere...
"That's global warming!"
We can definitively say that this year is the hottest year on record, but we can't attribute individual forest fires or tornadoes or hurricanes to climate change.
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Problem is also that there have always been catastrophes... Earthquakes, wildfires, tsunamis, hurricanes, etc.
Maybe in the past they should have also been attributed to climate change, but I don't think the average human being can draw the distinction yet
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Rule 1 of life: be skeptical when someone presents their opinion as facts.
Looking at Western European countries like Germany, the Netherlands and the UK to an extent, the road to net-zero is disrupting. Probably because necessary steps have been delayed until the last moment. Large numbers of refugees have a destabilising effect on democracy as well.
Some steps that are necessary for net-zero are expensive investments (like heat pumps) that are causing conflicts in society. Going ahead with it as well as delaying is sure to be met with very loud resistance. Don't think that Germany can miss it's climate goals without some serious protests, perhaps worse than they've ever seen.
At the same time, I wonder how well UK households are going to deal with even higher food prices as the percentage of failed harvests increases. There isn't a lot of buffer space here.
It's not so much whether rich countries have enough money to deal with climate change, but rather how well democracy will fare when it's under duress.
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If we're going to electrify everything we need nuclear power plants.
The federal government should be dumping tens of billions of dollars into modular nuclear plants that can be built in a factory and then shipped places.
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The RNC debate was a pretty big red alert. One of the more popular candidates literally said "climate change is a hoax" and got applause. And most of them would at least admit it was real but immediately talked about removing 'government restrictions' unfairly placed on corporations and climate change is an excuse to burn money for the current party.
Pretty cool.....
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expect they've found a way to 'profit' off the collapse already. might be one of the reasons they're doing nothing to stop it
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And when the last land is a desert, the last river dry, the last field poisoned, the last tree cut down, will they realise that one cannot eat money.
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The wealthy and the powerful will be the last to suffer the negative effects of climate change.
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Deflection towards hydrogen mining. Shell UK got absolutely grilled over it, showing that it was nowhere close to carbon neutral.
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You people think it will be a night and day collapse? Get real. The rich will continue to get richer and you'll toil away in relative comfort as you do now.
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It will seem far away until the day that your home is burning down or under water. And that day is coming.
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Even if your particular house is in a safe location, you're still fucked from all the other houses being flooded and burned down because that means disastrous effects on global supply chains including food and a massive refugee crisis the likes of which the world has literally never seen.
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You people think it will be a night and day collapse? Get real.
You know that's the thing, nobody really knows. It's all predictions based on necessarily flawed models. And they range from relatively mild changes until the turn of the century on the one hand, over methane released from thawing permafrost leading to a steep acceleration of warming in the middle, to having crossed an irreversible tipping point decades ago that will lead to an algae bloom in the oceans which will render the atmosphere unbreathable on the other hand. We can only hope it's on the former end of the spectrum, but I wouldn't bet on it personally.
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The interesting part are those who still don’t write letters to their congressmen and still vote for climate deniers. I just can’t.
It would be insanely easy to solve: Not one of the billionaires out there would recognize if they only had 999 mil left and neither would anybody else. That‘s a cool 10 trillion to pay towards climate change. You‘re welcome.
That money was earned using earth, so to saving earth it goes back (because no earth, no money and our billionaire overlords suprisingly havent saved us yet.)
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Even if we stop pumping carbon in the air tomorrow it will still take centuries until the atmosphere is back to normal, barring any carbon capture.
That would, however, stop it from getting any worse, which is kind of a big deal because it's getting worse at a frightening rate.
Making all out cars electrical is also cute. It’s a nice thought if it weren’t that all that electricity still mostly comes from CO2 emitting sources so including conversion losses electrical cars may actually send more CO2 in the atmosphere.
You severely overestimate the energy efficiency of gasoline engines. A big reason to get rid of them is not only the fuel they burn, but how much of it they waste.
We need nuclear power plants like there is no tomorrow in all countries, even the “bad” ones.
You severely underestimate the resources required to build those. It costs some $20 billion to build one nuclear power plant. There's a reason everybody's focusing on solar and wind.
Small modular reactors may be cheaper, but they also generate huge amounts of radioactive waste. Radioactive waste isn't a serious problem now, but it will be if we start powering everything with SMRs.
Atom cracking will not save us. Not unless there's some kind of breakthrough.
We will likely end up with some form of atmospheric engineering where we’re going to meas with the atmosphere, seeding clouds, or pumping other chemicals in there that negate the effects of CO2. I’m unsure what the results of that will be though
- It works.
- Big Oil chants “spray, baby, spray!”
- It works too well. Global freeze occurs. Everybody dies. Game over.
Either way, you and I will NOT see the end of this, that is for our children’s children
Have you stepped outside at any point in the last several years? Global warming is no longer a looming future threat for someone else to deal with. It's here and now.
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This guy gets it!
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I'm surprised this got so many upvotes, a lot of it is factually incorrect! For instance many grids worldwide are over 50% renewables. You can scrub carbon with a net carbon loss if you use solar powered to do it.
There's also no reason that capturing the carbon would cost all the energy that was released by burning it (you don't have to make it into the same fuel molecule).
Honestly this sounds like climate change denier shit, "it's too late there's nothing we can do, buy more oil.".
On the positive side, I agree that nuclear is great!
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That’s a disturbing but interesting take. Thank you very much.
The funny thing is that you can sell stocks. I know that a billionaire does not have dagoberts vault at home (maybe some do).
But their net worth is calculated somehow and in selling all assets above 999 mil, you get exactly what I‘m talking about.
I get that this is a long undertaking but we are still on the way up. This needs to stop now so we do it now. Use the money to stop the gravest polluters first and by the time you run out of money, you‘re a lot better on the scale.
Btw the estimated cost to 2030 to stop climate change is 90 trillion. So this does part of it.
Just wanted to put that out there. It’s surely gonna be a big job since most of us lack vision.
Not like we could start working only on that since we need to make stuff nobody needs to impress people we dont like./s
Also, my personal favorite in idiotic ideas is telling citizens to just not buy and suv. Just outlaw the production you maggots! We saw with covid how well voluntary behavior helped.
Yes, I blame governments for not doing what needs to be done to save the fucking planet. A mass of humans is easy to manipulate if you’re rich and can not be given this much responsibility. We elect people for this.
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Well, I don't have a congressman, which would make that hard :-P
But yes, while I don't agree that our civilisation's issues could be easily solved by a one time very minor global redistribution of wealth, I do agree with your overall argument, for sure! 100%!
These issues will only be fixed with a complete societal personality change. We'd have to completely rethink who we are, what we want in life, what our priorities are, as a civilisation and individuals. In a way fundamental enough to completely change how we distribute wealth and power, how we interact with nature and each other, the lens through which we view everything.
I don't think those things will happen until there's a change in civilisation, as ours passes and the next one rises (which, while a turbulent time in history, will not be the end of the world, all civilisations come and go eventually, on the timescale of humanity), that's usually when such sweeping and complete fundamental changes in how we think and structure our entire society are allowed to flourish.
It's sad that we won't live to see it. Maybe in the mean time we could cheer ourselves up a bit, by eating the rich? nomnom
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I really like your way of thinking. Thanks for sharing it with me today. Made my day a little better.
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I often wonder, before society collapses, if the corporations who hid this shit for 45 years will ever face the consequences of their lies. Not really calling for pitchforks but, well, it's the ecosystem... it's our civilization they profited on destroying, and they did so gleefully and the profits were obscene. If there was ever a time to get the torches and pitchforks out.....?
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Hey, it’s not easy being …green.
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This is my first comment on Lemmy!
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Welcome!
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I’m home
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And it is almost as bad as reddit comments.
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Yeah at the end of the day, this is a failure of our government. It's so stuck on profits and processes, it can't save itself from certain death.
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I'm thinking of moving to a state that's colder where I can buy land that has water within the property.
I also think to do anything sizeable you need the resources a company can bring. Our problems are at scale. You need a scaled resource pool and reinvestment in that to work up to some of the issues. I like the idea of carbon extraction for example, but I don't see any resources invested in it from US companies.
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Carbon extraction isn't a viable solution until its whole area is running on green energy. With current technology, at least, running it on a green power source will make less of an impact than hooking that green power source up to replace some fossil fuels.
In other words, don't rely on heal spells until the battle's over. They'll never outpace incoming damage.
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You want to take out that CO2, you need to spend the same amount of energy to take it back.
Non sequitur. Nobody said we had to turn atmospheric carbon back into the same fuel it originally came out of.
Electrical trucks are not worth it because of battery weight.
This is only an issue for long-haul trucks, so, obvious solution: electric trains. No battery required.
Also, battery fires are a BITCH and are almost impossible to put out. All it takes is one electrical fire from a car in a tunnel that will kill a few hundred people to make people reconsider battery cars. Now imagine trucks.
There are plenty of EVs on the road already. If that was as likely as you're trying to make it sound, it would have happened many times already.
Yeah, lithium-ion batteries are volatile, but they aren't that volatile. Solid-state batteries are even less so.
retards (yes, that is the acceptable word for people that have a good brain but refuse to use it)
I won't comment on whether it's acceptable, but it definitely isn't correct. The R word refers to people whose brains are impaired, not merely underused.
Call me cynical all you like but I see a humanity ending problem in front of us and it can be solved but share holders and the rich must be kept happy before that!
That's the real problem, not the technology. We can solve this problem. We don't even have to sacrifice our modern civilization and creature comforts to do it. But we won't, because some very lucrative businesses would become obsolete in the process, and their owners would sooner burn down the world and rule over the ashes than tolerate the loss of their wealth.
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Hey, so be careful if you're planning to move up north-up north.
The ground has started exploding in some areas that have permafrost, and some of the lakes are starting to release a lot of methane. Think Alaska and Siberia.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201130-climate-change-the-mystery-of-siberias-explosive-craters
The weather is probably going to be fucky in one way or another everywhere you go. I don't think there will be an area that you can move to to really escape climate change. Wildfires are kicking the butts of many communities that are further north, and the winter ice storms that happen are pretty deadly too. I can't imagine that those things will go away or improve anytime soon, since they are heavily thought to be linked to climate change.
Some of the great lakes are so polluted now that the governments of both the US and Canada have recommend a safe yearly maximum number of fish to consume. The limit for at least one of those species is literally zero, due to how much fish absorb from the water around them. These are "forever chemicals" that are being absorbed.
We still need to try to work on climate change, regardless of location. I hope that people don't think moving north will protect them from the effects of climate change, because it probably really won't.
I know that you probably already know that, but I would like more people to see this stuff. I've seen too many people saying that they think just moving up north will make them safe from climate change.
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Thanks for sharing some info. And no I didn't know that. I appreciate that it was a mild sharing of info. I'm from New England and I think even just getting back to home and leaving the intense heat of California would feel far more comfortable.
You'd be surprised what living on the other side of the mountain - in silicon valley - brings for heat. Santa Cruz feels nice normal and cool to me while the valley just gets so scorching it's almost untenable living here.
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I live in Michigan where we just had at least 7 tornadoes yesterday, and NOAA is basically saying get used to it, this is the new normal. I’ve been in this house for 20 years and I’ve never seen devastation like this. I’ll be without power for several more days because massive 200 year old oaks were snapped like toothpicks and my street is littered with downed power lines.
7 people have died, and when this happens in winter (which they’re saying it will), people will freeze to death in the aftermath. Things will get ugly soon.
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It's already happening, collapse on this scale is a slow process, and hard to observe from within.
The roman empire didn't collapse from start to end in a single lifetime, after all.
Nobody alive today will be around to see the "collapse" collapse, the extremely dire breakdown that comes as a sudden crisis in civilisation terms, but we will continue to see a lot of hardship from our dated and crumbling institutions and our society slowly losing its grasp on what it is, etc.
In the end, just like the romans, our civilisation's collapse doesn't mean apocalypse, it's not the end.
All civilisations rise and fall, and while ours is by far the grandest and strongest in many respects, it's also the weakest, relying entirely on extremely fragile global systems that, should they fail for even a single month, would throw the planet into chaos (electricity grids/Internet), hastening or even triggering that final sudden crisis, once three slow rot of a dying civilisation has already set in.
But until then, such events will be overcome. Not until that rot has truly set in, and a sudden crisis is upon us all, will things finally collapse as we know it.
So that's kinda good news for us, right? :-)
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Geepers, you mean you’ve been sitting here watching the weather, but ignoring
1.) Thousands of fires keeping smoke in the air
2.) Harsh winters developing where snow hardly used to fall
3.) Winters all but disappearing where it used to be deep snow annually
4.) The water cycle breaking and several landmark bodies of water going dry before our eyes
5.) Intensifying hurricane seasons, affecting new zones
And more?
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Who said I was ignoring all that? I'm well aware. But what the Fuck am I supposed to do about it?
I drive a hybrid, pickup litter, recycle, make most of my own food from scratch, and talk about how we need to do more (like with this tongue-in-cheek meme). I ain't in Congress (yet), but even if I was look how productive they're being towards this issue.
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It's all already slowly spinning out of control...
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That's what the hurricane said
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"slowly"
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Dont sit around and do nothing waiting for death. Grab a gun and take some rich people with you.
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Most rich people don't just stand around outside waiting to get shot. Especially not if they know someone is gunning for them. They may be morally bankrupt, but they're not stupid.
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Of course they dont, but they also not always stay hidden.
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I would suggest to, first, join your local Eco-social organizations. Normally the "take a gun a shoot a motherfucker" approach, while very satisfying to say, it's usually way less effective than organize with your community.
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I've been trying to
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@electriccars @memes I don't appreciate unfunny memes. :-(
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I'm sorry. Here's a modified version of the meme:
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DRS GME to stop global imperialism
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It's an excellent moment to remind you that even if we manage to dodge this, there is still the heat death of the universe, so it's just a matter of how long do we want to waste energy postponing the unavoidable
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It's worse than that. If we degrowthed and decarbonized fast enough to stop global warming, billons of people will die. If we continue to do nothing or weak sauce half measures to stop global warming, billions of people will die.
We are fucked either way now.
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We must start a revolution and end society now!
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And while we are on destroying it, making a greener and more tolerant one 😀 🍃 🏳️🌈
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I like how you think!
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Okay, jokes aside, how do I convince my dad?
He’s Silent Generation (86), and he’s very smart and savvy otherwise (he’s an aerospace engineer, still has his 9-5 job in airplane development and has recently started driving for Uber to fill his spare time), and plays VR games on Oculus with me and my sister on weekends, but he doesn’t have patience for our climate change talk. He’s extremely liberal otherwise, but he thinks this is all overblown and the natural cycle of climate, telling us he’s seen these changes before.
How do I convince him this is different? Im at a loss. Or maybe I shouldn’t bother because at his age it doesn’t matter and I should just let him ‘be right’?
My sister is disturbed by his attitude, but im not sure it matters, really.
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Does your dad believe that we can continue with our current rate of emissions and waste without consequence though? Maybe it's worth discussing from an environmentalist point of view rather than climate change specifically. Perhaps the phrase has become taboo for him.
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That’s an angle I hadn’t considered, thanks. Fortunately he’s not closed minded. But I think you’re right, the phrase ‘climate change’ has likely become taboo. Growing up in the 70s to 80s, I saw the propaganda. It was bad.
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163 comments
Don't just wait passively for it, take action. Everyone can contribute and together we will achieve big things. If we all work together the collapse is not just a dream.
Dont use plastic straws, drive public transport or bike, buy bio food, donate to orgs, glue yourself to the street
and maybe... just maybe... you will change fuck all
Plastic straws have almost zero to none impact on climate change. It is one of the biggest virtue signaling campaings that managed to scam shit ton of gullible people. Climate change is a never ending process, those who can alter the process have way bigger means to affect it than you and me. Regulate the companies, end the "too big to fail" market monopoly, tax the shit out of billioners. Dont fall to their diversion strategy that we are to blame for any of this shit.
... did everyone misread your comment or am I crazy? I have faith that we can make horrible climate change a reality if we just put our minds to it.
Nuclear Posadism is so Cold War. We need a new apocalyptic accelerationism.
Some sure did, but I don't mind it :)
Some only read the first part, some appreciated the dark humor.
Veganism is the movement which has the highest potential to change society and is a huge impact on the environment. (IPCC: biggest single step one can take / even without fossile fuels our current food system will still contribute with +2°C to global warming)
And it does not take away from any other activity we should pursue in the fight for climate, while ending support for some billionaires like Wesley Batista
Hoping to speed up the collapse I see lol.
I drive a hybrid.
I recycle everything I can.
I pickup litter.
I try to be as power efficient as possible.
I'm not a vegetarian but I don't eat meat everyday.
Plus, I post memes that stimulate conversation like this!
I am vegan since 5 years, before I was (don't judge me, or do- its deserved) 10 years vegetarian. Since ~15 years? PV on my roof which feed into the grid many times more power than I used I rarely travel, not one flight. I advocate and work towards a sustainable future. Demonstrations and some political work. Go on, check my my posts and judge for yourself if I was maybe sarcastic?
So long as we're pushing for systemic change - we don't dig ourselves out of this by "just taking personal responsibility" harder.
Gotta do both.
People say that but it would help if they mention things to actually do.
Went vegan. Got 35 solar cells. Replaced lawn with native plants. Work from home. Spending a lot of time advocating online and to friends and family. Raising kids as environmentalists.
Going vegan is according to the IPCC the single biggest step a individual can take. This does not take anything away from other actions we can simultaneous pursue. Veganism is growing and has despite being a small percentage of the population the potential for a change.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/27/climate-crisis-villains-americas-dirty-dozen I mean, ... the current profiteers which steer society into collapse have names.