On Friday, the globe hit 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees) above pre-industrial levels for the first time in recorded history
The dismaying reality is that it is driven by the wealthy. I got rid of my car, I shop local, and everything in the home is low emissions. No reduction in my personal life can ever offset the way they live.
The truth of the matter is that it’s impossible to stop climate change in the short and mid term without degrowth in energy consumption. World leaders gathered and celebrated when they agreed to trade responsibilities for CO2 emissions, when a market-oriented world economy was always going to provoke this result unless there were explicit limits to the production of contaminant energy sources.
But I drive my car less, that should do it! /s
This is the reason we’re should focus out efforts to make a ruckus and force decision makers to enforce carbon neutrality BY NEXT YEAR instead of by next century. Of course that won’t happen but that would be the reasonable way.
A general strike? Say the word
God, I wish.
Will just result in new draconian laws being drafted and enacted. Watch how fast people lose the right to peaceful assembly if it actually affected the ruling class.
I think some rights you either have, fight for, or you just default to being a slave
Not even if 99% of us would (or even could, for that matter)
It’s not driven by the wealthy, because there are far fewer wealthy people than everyone else.
Individual shopping habits are a band-aid until we can fully replace how some of those habits work.
Carbon taxes would be infinitely preferable to voluntary changes, but we can’t pass carbon taxes because people will go absolutely insane if asked to pay the true cost of their goods.
The richest 1% produces more emissions than the poorest 66%
Worldwide, yes. That generally includes your average Americans, who are in the richest 1% globally.
The largest climate contributors are the billions of “average” people worldwide though, and it isn’t close.
The average american is a millionair?
1.1% of the world’s adult population are millionaires. This adds up to about 56 million people. Collectively, this group has about $191.6 trillion and controls about 46% of the world’s wealth.
1.1% of the world’s adult population are millionaires. This adds up to about 56 million people
I had a decimal point wrong on the Top 10% which does indeed make me look silly.
Regardless, this holds true:
The largest climate contributors are the billions of “average” people worldwide though, and it isn’t close.
The idea that owning stock makes you a polluter is beyond stupid, and that entire article you’re initially referencing is dumb as fuck.
People are arguing with you because they don’t want to take responsibility for themselves or pay the true cost of their consumption. As long as they see someone worse, they don’t have to do anything. The top 1% make 16% of the emissions, sure. But the top 10% are responsible for 52%. That’s 34% belonging to the 1.1-10% . Much of that is due to transportation (in dumb Suv and trucks), inefficient home heating, aviation, and dirty power generation.
We simply don’t solve this problem by focusing on the top1% alone . Which, like you said, is why carbon taxes should be effective. Especially how Canada did it, with the tax being redistributed to the bottom 90% or so. Unfortunately, bringing in an effective system of carbon taxation just gets you voted out for a science denier.
I swear, if I was the fossil fuel industry this exact kind of class anxiety is what I would exploit to stop progress. Get people paying attention to Taylor Swifts jet so they’ll refuse the systematic changes needed avoid this actual crisis.
I mean, over the years I’ve heavily reduced my meat intake, am super conscientious about transportation (haven’t flown in a decade, keep my revs low when I drive, and try to get all my errands done in efficient ways as to minimize gas usage), turn off lights, ration my hot water usage, don’t eat out at wasteful restaurants, buy “ugly” produce from the grocery store, promote renewable energy solutions whenever possible, compost, recycle, and create extremely little garbage. Yet, at my work, several of our AC generators that we use to power the facility use more oil in one day than my car does in its entire lifetime. Several handfuls of billionaires and their families emit the same amount of carbon as the poorest 66% of humanity. Seems to me, if we want to solve climate change, we have to get rid of the biggest polluters first, then transition to clean energy.
And the biggest polluters are corporations/industry, and the rich.
no one wanted to be held accountable for the triage so we let everyone bleed out, safe in the knowledge there was nothing we could have done.
Wealthy nations are making progress, but too little and they’re starting from a bad place.
Poor nations are busily repeating the industrialization process that made the wealthy nations wealthy. Anyone want to tell them they don’t have the right to do so?
I wonder if the window of opportunity on geoengineering is also closing. Because this emissions reduction thing isn’t going anywhere.
“But there are risks with geoengineering! We don’t know what might happen!” So: let’s get testing and find out, the way we do with everything else. Doing nothing on this spells certain doom. I’ll take an unknown quantity over certain doom.
No duh, because not a single country has made any real attempt to lower their citizens’ emissions.
It will take sacrifice from all of us to stop warming.
Forget 1.5°C, honestly, forget 2°C as well, keeping it under 3°C is likely the best that we can hope for right now. You’re needing to throw out our gas-based car infrastructure, reduce our reliance on jets as much as possible, lower not just meat consumption but also almonds/alfalfa/etc., and that is just to get started.
Really, I don’t see the average voter letting that happen. What’s going to happen is eventually, sometime 30-40 years from now, a heat wave is gonna thrash the Middle East, consistent 130°F days for a solid month, 100,000 people dead, and the very next year planes will be in the air, making clouds to block the sun.
We are not ready to give up the things that the developed world will have to give up to truly back away from this coming apocalypse.
The majority of emissions come from just a handful of large companies, even if every individual cut their carbon footprint to zero those companies would still continue to kill the planet. It’s also easier to change the behaviour of some companies than every person on the planet.
Then we’ll go too far and freeze the planet as foretold by the wise minds of Hollywood.
So clearly we need a different solution than cutting back on emissions.
I’d argue we might have to start human expansion into space to have any real positive impact. A solar shade, for example, could block out enough sunlight to artificially prevent warming and stabilize the climate while we construct or seek out alternative energy resources.
A solar shade, for example, could block out enough sunlight
Wouldn’t this undermine solar-generated electricity?
and our ability to grow food
But telling people to lower their emissions because the world is on fucking fire, is eugenics! /s
Planes are kinda necessary now and less of a convenience. I moved to Miami from NJ (where the rest of my family lives) and just came home today for Thanksgiving. Driving would have taken around 3 days/about 23 hours of total driving and cost a few hundred bucks in gas and maintenance costs. I flew home in under 3 hours and it cost me about $100.
My buddy in NJ married a British woman, so for her, if planes didn’t exist her only option would be to take a boat home which easily takes a week or two, instead it takes her about 7 hours.
The other option is to not expect to see people who live a plane flight away every year.
So you’re supposed to lessen your relationships just because you moved away?
We live in an age where you can literally talk face to face with virtually anyone, nearly anywhere in the world on a tiny rectangle in your pocket. Yes, we can all afford to travel a little less over long distances.
Not everyone has a smartphone or webcam, you, right? My father is 73 and has neither, he doesn’t like to videochat because he feels it impersonal. My mom has a smartphone but doesn’t video chat with anyone. So I’m just supposed to not see my parents for a year or more because they don’t want to video chat?
Yes, that’s how normal people live. Or, you know, HAVE FUCKING TRAINS.
What you consider “normal” isn’t exactly normal. This isn’t the 1800s.
Umm you know that trains take energy to run right? The energy doesn’t come out of thin air. Most trains either run off diesel fuel which is dirty as hell or they run off electric and that energy is usually from burning fossil fuels.
So your suggestion is “don’t use this one method of transportation that burns fossil fuels, use this other method of transportation that takes longer and still burns fossil fuels!”
Really great argument you have there! 🤦♂️
What you consider “normal” isn’t exactly normal.
Your American perspective is only a thin slice of the world. Don’t be so conceited.
you know that trains take energy to run right?
Less energy per passenger, and the energy sources available are much more diverse.
run off electric and that energy is usually from burning fossil fuels. [sic]
In ass-backwards places, sure. You know Brazil, that country to the south of yours, with a comparable landmass and population? More than 85% of their electricity comes from renewable sources. I guess 'murica is too much of a shithole to figure this one out.
So your suggestion is “don’t use this one method of transportation that burns fossil fuels, use this other method of transportation that takes longer and still burns fossil fuels!” [sic]
So the implication is that you think the efficiency of a process is meaningless and the path to an outcome is unimportant (which is braindead). You may as well drop dead right now, then, since “you’ll still die some day, anyway”.
Planes are ubiquitous to the global north. They’re not an American thing.
Or just… live closer together. You don’t see Europeans fly from Germany to the other side just for a few family days
So people aren’t supposed to move anywhere in your opinion, and if you do,just forget about seeing them for years. The US is a hell of a lot bigger than any European country.
Not that far and still expect to see family for every freaking occasion. I meant through Europe, if I’m Dutch and my family is in Spain, I’m not going for Christmas or whatever. Maybe once in a few years, or stay for a vacation not just a few days. That’s idiotic.
Yes, wanting to see your family is idiotic 🙄
Are you being purposefully obtuse?
My parents are getting older and I want to see them as much as I can while still living where I want to. IMO its ridiculous to be like “live in a place you don’t like because you want to see your family often or live where you want to and rarely see your family.” There is a middle ground. Yo may be cool with seeing your family once a year, I’m not.
Trains!
I wonder if I’ll be alive for the moment everyone goes from “This is bullshit and I’m going to ignore it” to “Oh no who could have seen this coming?”
Some people will never admit anything is happening. They’ll just blame everything on something else.
We are already seeing the effects of climate change. If they were going to admit it, they would have done so already.
There are constant cycles of ‘fuck around’ and ‘find out’ that are naturally occurring, pay too close attention and you’ll see more than you want to. Like 5g conspiracies were always fucking dumb, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t hear almost nothing serious about them after someone decided to try and bomb a city block over it.
We’re gonna go from ignoring it to seeding the atmosphere
The fact is that this was a conscious choice, even recently. The switch to natural gas that everyone is touting is one that is designed to cause higher short-term emissions.
Methane is really bad over a 20-year time frame and only really lets natural gas equal coal over a 100-year period (assuming typical fugitive emissions rates). The transition from coal to natural gas is accelerating the rate at which we boil ourselves alive.
Methane is burned at the point of use and produces carbon dioxide. Ideally there is no methane released in to the environment.
Methane leaks
Something like 3-10% of all methane production leaks. Methane is about 80x worse than CO2 over a 20-year period.
Oh it does for sure. At least in Canada there are government regulations requiring inspections by 3rd parties to check for leaks with some sort of thermal camera. I’m not familiar with the technology to check for leaks but I’ve had to fix the leaks before and it’s taken seriously and well documented.
This will disproportionately effect the poor and developing countries, so the thinking of elites and super rich is that there’s still plenty of time to rectify the situation.
Rectify it? No, they know they’ll be gone before their life is disrupted so much that money can’t fix it.
That time is now before they get worse killler robots than they do.
Yes but they’re paying for an already protected forest to be protected, so it balances out right?
Fortunately the EU is making that kinda advertisement illegal
Eh, humanity had a good run I guess
didn’t we pass the point of no return like 10 years ago
I’ve been day saying this for the past two years now, humanity is fucked, and soon.
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is a direct result from the energy we took from burning fossil fuels. To get all that CO2 out were going to have to wait Millenia for earth to do it (that is, if it still can) or spend that same amount of energy to get the CO2 out.
To put that into something understandable: we’re going to have to spend ALL the energy we produced over the last two centuries on too of the energy we need for ourselves to be able to get CO2 back to preindustrial levels. Basically, for the next two to four centuries were going to have to spend at least 50% of our world energy budget to scrubbing CO2 and NONE of that energy is allowed to generate CO2. Actually, NOTHING from humanity can generate CO2 to reach that. If we continue spewing CO2 then you can double that number.
To put that into perspective, adding all required work and infrastructure, energy -all energy- will become 3-4 times as expensive for the next few centuries
People will not understand the issue and will not want to pay more, rich people will not want to foot the bill even though they could, so we won’t do anything and things will get worse and worse until we all die.
One possible alternative might be spraying sulphuric acid into the atmosphere, that might buy us a few valuable years while we fix shit but what will happen is that we’ll just spray the crap out of it and call that a solution while we continue to spray CO2 into the atmosphere like there literally is no tomorrow for humanity
We’re fucked
Always the possibility we eat the rich but I’m not hopeful
You mean pledging to eventually tackle the problem 20-30 years down the road and doing nothing about it in the meantime hasn’t solved the problem?! I’m shocked! 🤯
Every time I hear “carbon neutral by 2050” I’m always thinking yeah like it’ll fucking matter at that point, Honda (or whomever).
🎵*it’sthe end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine!*🎵
And my cousins are having kids. 🤦
Being vegan is the most impactful change that individuals can make.
But we won’t change.
It is totally hopeless.
Systemic problems require systemic solutions. Hoping everyone collectively changes their behaviour isn’t a solution unfortunately.
We have all the tools and technology to make a huge dent in this problem right now if not outright solve it. The most impactful thing you can do is spread awareness and do what you can to make this a voting issue if you live in a democracy. It could even be as simple is making it a non negotiable for how you choose to vote.
Lack of climate action needs to be a death sentence for the careers of the political class or it will become a death sentence for the the rest of us.
I’ll do you one better: don’t have kids!
Maybe Vote for candidates who won’t FORCE people, and children, to have babies.
My trick is to not live in America
And if that’s not enough, then at least there won’t be any humans around to suffer through it!
But you’re fighting against a fundamental urge of life here … kinda hard to achieve that at a large scale. At least that’s why I tell myself and my kid.
Yea, you’re absolutely right. Humans are just animals in the end. Tho it is important to remember that your impact is absolutely microscopic, and even if 95% of people suddenly had the willingness, income and ability to make such changes to their life…
…there would still be a market for it, and we’d barely make a dent in the problem. Big corporations and billionaires are so much worse
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
No one want’s to hear “Don’t fuck in the front hole” after a hard day at work
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I can recommend explanations on youtube. It’s hosted by a clinical sexologist and covers topics around birth control and more
Yeah… after having a child we needed to double the size of our trashcan just because of diapers.
Dayum, and the smell of that must be horrid
Not really. We have one of those smell free diaper cans. They close after you put something in them.
Why did you have a kid?
What else were they going to use all those diapers for?
All my friends are doing it.
Lmao, wow. That’s bleak. I hope you tell your kid this, they’re going to be living through collapse and you forced them into this because of fucking FOMO and peer pressure.
Yo here’s some fun links from the World Economic Forum and United Nations for you:
Global freshwater demand will exceed supply 40% by 2030 and 90% of global top soil and arable land is at risk of depletion by 2050.I hope you’re proud of yourself.
It was a joke you ham-sandwich. I and my wife wanted a family. Now we do. And so far it’s going quite well so I will take my chances. :)
you’re spreading eugenicist propaganda and you should stop.
malthusianism is gross.
Not having children is the most impactful individual change one can make, well over going vegan.
Becoming a vegan anti-natalist is the most impact a person can make.
I am uncertain of the numbers regarding both individually. You might be right.
Personally, I think both are important.
Well, no, wandering off into the woods is the biggest personal offset you can make.
And there’s a whole range between that and being a vegan anti-natalist, and once you get into calculating your impact on others the whole equation changes
This isn’t a problem that can be solved personally, it doesn’t make sense to look at it like that
wandering off into the woods is the biggest personal offset you can make.
what about destroying fossil fuel extraction or transportation projects?
Well that’s not really personal anymore.
Like say you blow up an oil rig or tanker… Congrats, you just made huge a carbon footprint.
Now say oil equipment gains a habit of being sabotaged, consistently. If it’s one person, It’s a problem for law enforcement. If it’s a consistent thing, fossil fuels have just become more expensive to produce statistically
Or, you know, we could pass a tax or regulate them properly
Regardless, my point is that climate change is a systematic problem, thinking of it in terms of individual action is already flawed
That’s not really a change that an individual can make. Either you already have them or you don’t.
It’s a choice you can make
this is eugenicist propaganda. also, going vegan has no impact at all.
No it is not. Eugenics is an attempt to improve the genetic quality of a human population.
We are talking about an attempt to stop climate change. We are not trying to “improve” the genetics of human population.
Eugenics sounds good at first, but human greed and corruption makes it an incredibly dangerous tool that should probably not be in the hands of anyone
I don’t think eugenics sounds good.
I’ve heard too many people (mostly elderly) speak out for it. It’s definitely a bad idea
We are talking about an attempt to stop climate change
those are the trappings, but the method is bare eugenics
No it is not. Eugenics is a pseudo-science about improvement of genetics. Period.
Trying to avoid climate catastrophe is not about improving genetics.
Eugenics is a pseudo-science about improvement of genetics. Period
no, it’s not, even the wikipedia article we both love disputes this claim plainly.
Trying to avoid climate catastrophe is not about improving genetics.
if the method by which you try to avoid it is eugenicist, then it is.
I’m done.
I am not into bickering for no reason.
that’s a narrow definition that doesn’t really encompass all the ways in which eugenics has been practiced. frequently, as i have done here, it is used synonymously with genocide. stop practicing genocide.
No. Genocide is murdering people. Genocide is violence against people. Forcing people, against their will to stop existing.
Asking people to reproduce less is asking people (not forcing them) to exercise their own will.
genocide is also propaganda that encourages one segment of the population to cease reproduction.
that is true, but eugenics is something very different
Braindead take. We don’t need more children to be born into a world of suffering.
Then what do you suggest? Thanos?
i suggest we figure out a way to maintain the habitability of the planet without eugenics.
Right, but from a “carbon footprint” perspective, making new humans is the worst thing a human could do for their footprint. What we need to get away from is the argument that our individual carbon footprints are too high. I mean, they are, but the ruling class is a lot more egregious.
from a “carbon footprint” perspective, making new humans is the worst thing a human could do for their footprint.
this is actual eugenicist propaganda. you should stop spreading it.
No it is not. It has nothing to do with eugenics. Nothing at all.
And the easiest. But even if all animal products were eliminated worldwide tomorrow, it would probably still not be enough for the emissions target. So individual changes do not make a dent in the problem.
What makes you think major nations will forego their cheapest source of energy if other nations are using it?
Being vegan is the most impactful change that individuals can make.
being vegan has no impact at all.
Are you joking? Industrial scale production of cow and pig meat are disastrous for the climate.
being vegan doesn’t stop production.
“Hurr durr, me not killing people doesn’t stop murderers from killing people, so I should just kill people”
where did you find that quote, and why do you think it’s relevant?
regrettably, God made animals taste good.
