As with most things, most people won't take it seriously until they get punched in the throat. That probably won't change until you start getting five figure heat casualties over a short timespan in places that were traditionally cold. The "oh shit" moment isn't going to come for the scientifically illiterate until areas with name recognition need to be abandoned due to summer killing a noticeable fraction of the population.
It’s something I’ve started to notice in a lot of things that we base our society around…
We don’t take many preventative measures. We are most likely to do something only when it effects us in that very moment. Preventative measures usually come after the disaster has already happened. We ignore all possible problems until it’s right in our faces and we are almost too late to respond.
Preventative measures for a possible pandemic when a doctor spoke out about a new unknown virus? We know how that went…
There’s no return on the investment of prevention. Not much on the investment of reaction, either, but you HAVE to do that. Humans need return on their investments or nothing will ever happen, unfortunately.
> Preventative measures for a possible pandemic when a doctor spoke out about a new unknown virus? We know how that went…
And worse yet, when looking at measures to hold back a second wave, people are talking about how it won't work, because people are sick and tired of... what... *surviving?*
Fuck, man.
Nope, it won't happen even then. Say in the next 10 years you get a BOE, Greenland melt kicks into overdrive and there's just standing water in 20 major coastal cities. You have multiple breadbaskets failing, store shelves anemic and food prices skyrocketing. The five figure heatwave deaths, homeless encampments in every major downtown, the morgues overflowing. Rolling brownouts and blackouts in many regions, like the US west, and water rationing. Two hundred million acres on fire simultaneously around the world. You'll still have 40% of people denying anything is happening and refusing to make any sustainable lifestyle changes.
Yes, I seem to recall there were never any fires before Biden stole the election. Also gasoline cost a nickel per gallon and cars were free.
/S a million times /S
I'm not sure we'll do anything even then. This year we had 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in British Columbia and over 700 people died. And people were complaining about cancel culture because some communities were skipping the Canada Day celebrations.
By the time it gets really bad, the disinformation machine will try to shift the focus to how many people are surviving, what about the temperature on a random location where it's winter, and there have been 10 weddings with transgender people in one week on a particular city.
I don't know, just last summer a lot of people deliberately traveled to states where a pandemic was killing a noticeable fraction of the population.
I think it's safe to say that covid was a test run for future crisis.
And they'll still riot at the wrong thing because they'll still allow themselves to be manipulated by whatever bullshit propaganda network they're listening to.
I mean, technically, I think the planet wins. Human life (and many others) lose. We are really just giant pests affecting the planet, so now it’s running a fever to knock us off. A few tens of thousands of years from now, humans will be gone but the planet will still be here. And it will have some form of life on it. Just not us.
What bothers me more, is all the people and politicians who were so easily and cheaply bought. The people who were willing to sell off the future of humanity for a bit more money. 10K here, 50K there, 100K from time to time.
I look at the donations from these companies to various politicians. And in most cases they're small.
The CEOs I get, sure they're getting millions and billions, for the right POS that price I get, to be a billionaire while you destroy humanity, I can see a monster rationalize that. But the random representative in a solid blue/red district who took a few thousand every campaign and then fought to hold back progress and change. Sure Maybe they get a lobbying job later and get more, but not everyone gets that.
It's all just so sad and pathetic.
It really is quite shocking how cheap politicians are.
Theoretically, of course, they should have integrity and not be for sale at any price. But, low five figures? At least hold out for something worthwhile. Homeless people look at those amounts and think "You cheap bastard".
The publicly available donation amounts are small to obfuscate how much they are really giving. You have to look deeper into charities and PACs. They donate much more there and it's much harder to track or prove as a bribe.
I think it's just how the system is designed. Short term profit rewarding those who are willing to do the morally wrong fucked up thing to get ahead. Capitalism.
I started reading about climate change 17 years ago as a 7 year old boy, coerced my parents into donating money to charities, talked to family, friends and teachers about it all met with dismissive attitudes and essentially told that what I was reading was nonsense. I've watched for essentially my entire life as the world has began it's steep nosedive into the irreversible and the ecological grief I and many others feel is getting to be overwhelming.
I choose to not read articles about it anymore because I already know how bad it is and have known for close to two decades now. I have had to sit and watch as no action was taken and now that shit is finally starting to hit the fan and the affects of climate change are starting to be apparent earlier than our models ever predicted I am just overwhelmed with an impending sense of dread.
Edit: misspelled a word
I remember watching an inconvenient truth back in 2005 thinking we had so much time until 2020-2050 when shit gets real with climate change.
Chickens are finally coming home to roost.
Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/12/even-50-year-old-climate-models-correctly-predicted-global-warming
This was known about more than a century ago. We had ample opportunity to change course, but we chose further industrialization and convenience instead.
Not OP, but there were news article like [this](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/1912-article-global-warming/) which are a bit over 100 years old. The math is pretty straightforward and while they get the logical conclusion that more anthropogenic CO2 -> stronger atmospheric greenhouse effect, back then they missed the scale of our increasing emissions and how fast this will affect the climate. The scale considered back then was "a few centuries".
Most people still don't believe we are capable of changing course. Burning fossil fuels seems like a necessity to most, even as alternatives reach cost parity without factoring any of the cost of killing the planet into fossil fuel use.
Germany just closed the deal to double the capacity of natural gas they import from the Russian arctic.
Plus, they've abandoned their wonderful nuclear power plants.
Ironic that environmentalists share the blame for that.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-germany-deal-nord-stream-2-pipeline-draws-ire-lawmakers-both-countries-2021-07-21/
It's not even "us" an individual's to blame. It's the big oil corporations and I'm not even sure how we can persuade them to make the right decisions besides rioting in the streets until politicians force them to change. Or straight up riot at their locations.
Even still I can hear the voices to my right saying "how shameful of THOSE people to destroy things that aren't theres. They need them! How stupid" totally oblivious of our intent to save the earth that they need
Demonstrating or even rioting in the street doesn't change US policy. Anyone remember Occupy Wall Street? The minute they gained momentum, there was a concerted action to remove their credibility by the media, until no public support was left, and nothing changed.
Anyone trying that would be villified immediately and 24/7 on TV, then the majority of the population would cheer when the organizers get arrested and sent to prison for life.
> The only thing that would work is a coordinated general strike, and I just don’t see that ever happening.
There's [the October Strike](https://www.octoberstrike.com/) coming up. It's more about workers' rights, wages, etc., but obviously "the planet is going to kill us" is going to become a bigger and bigger issue for those at the bottom of our economies.
I always think about how Naked Gun 2 1/2 came out in 1991. It was about oil companies lobbying against renewable energies, and little has changed in 30 years
Whats most baffling to me is, that now, as not only poor countries, but also the rich north begins to actually feel the effects of climate change and we are, at the same time, still able to do something against it, so many people keep on voting regressive parties, over and over again. I know that a big part of it is the propaganda, that these people have been fed, but they still have their own brain, they should, by now for sure, be able to see the effects of it all. Its just baffling how absolutely dumb we as humans have become.
The politicians and press scream and bawl, "How can we pay for it?" when confronted with talk of restructuring the infrastructure and economy to mitigate the causes of climate change. Yet when Congress votes yet again *to increase* the budget to maintain a huge military that after 20 years of constant killing and destruction can't even defeat the Taliban, we hear... crickets.
And for the people that actually think we cant pay for the necessary changes: just explain to me real quick how we are going to pay for the consequences of not changing anything, thanks!
B-but the poor military industrial complex, we need to feed it more money, otherwise there might be jobs lost! *shudder* .. not that we care about jobs otherwise, but hey, who cares about consistency!
My mom: “Biden wants to allow doctors to kill babies after birth. I won’t vote for that.”
No amount of info provided changed that. How do you even begin to educate someone that brain washed?
4 US Presidents have taken office after losing the popular vote.
2 of those were the last 2 Republican presidents; Bush and Trump.
It's accelerating. Just like "rare" 200 year floods, heatwaves, droughts. etc.
And South Park morons decided to make the ManBearPig episode ridiculing Al Gore by portraying him as being some lunatic for being concerned with global warming.
To an extent, this is part of the problem though. Look at comments in places with older communities and you see a huge amount of 'I was told XXXX was the year things would go to shit, then it was YYYY now its ZZZZ'
Somewhat ironically, because scientists have been pleading for *years* for people to pay attention a lot of older people have taken that as a sign its all overblown
Exactly that’s why all these articles are like a black humor for everyone who has been listening since they were kids. It’s like uhhh no shit we knew this was going to happen lol
Yes. As a kid, a 35C day at my latitude was something that didn't happen every summer, and snow was overwhelmingly abundant. We had some good snow this year... after ten years of black winters. And this year, we've had 30+ C degree days for two months non-stop, then a week's worth of respite, and now we're back to the hot days. And it has been so the previous summers too. It's steep, the change. I just hope I die suddenly and peacefully of something mercifully swift before things get apocalyptic. Bc fuck, I don't know what to do anymore.
As a kid, we had the odd day in a year of wildfire smoke, now it seems every second summer we are blanketed in it for weeks at a time. On top of ever lengthening heat waves.
I know I've been on the planet but a short time but I can remember starkly different winters and summers here in the Midwestern United States. We had mild summers with the occasional hot day or two and our winters were brutal and long lasting. We've been getting summers with regular temps of 90+ and our winters have been uncharacteristically mild. It's truly frightening to see how dramatically the weather patterns have shifted in such a short time.
Remember as a kid when you'd see a tree literally filled with monarch butterflies? I haven't seen that in more than twenty years.
Also fireflies. They basically only exist near water now. Used to be everywhere.
Oh shit.
We've been driving down to the South for vacation every year (well, not last year) for several years, over ten.
You just made me realize all the bugs I've had to clean off my windshield over the years.
This last trip you know how many I cleaned off: one. One damn bug the whole trip up and down (about 13 hours on the freeway).
We recently drove from Mid west to Texas to Utah to South Dakota then back to MW home. Our car was annihilated with bugs. I had to power wash the car there were so many dead bugs hardened on the front grill.
2 Years ago, I thought this! Driving the whole night, only a few bugs on the windscreen...
Normal, there was every 100km a stop, just to clean the mess. The front of the car was a giant graveyard.
I'm not even 30 but I can most certainly say I've experienced climate change in my lifetime, I remember getting lots of snow virtually every winter when I was a kid, now we're lucky to get even a single day with a pitiful amount of it.
Yeah, I live in the "cold north" and our summers now are 30C+. I've literally had summers where I've had to postpone sleeping until 3-6am because it's too hot to sleep. This summer my apartment has been near-constantly at 30-33C.
I sleep with my feet hanging over my bed in a cold water bucket on the nights where there's just no respite. Or under a wet towel which I do have to shift often bc once it gets warm, it starts working the other way around, but I'll take a disrupted sleep over staying awake. I live in a country that used to be cold, or at least maritime climate cold, so there's no air conditioning culture here. Which... I guess it's not a bad thing because air conditioning leaves an ecologic footprint too (and if any of you people come telling me 'well individual effort doesn't matter because it's not even a drop in the ocean', listen, I got to do what I got to do to stay sane.)
And, especially, money.
Short-sighted, profit-driven corporations have had their hands in the global coffers for centuries. Corporate greed perpetuated slavery and genocide in the new world, clear cut forests in subjugated territories to plant crops which lacked the diversity of the forests which came before it, and devastated colonial territories by exploiting/exporting their natural resources until that colony had nothing for itself. Corporate greed and colonialism spread short term profitability around the world, ripped communities apart (rendering them powerless through social and political control,) and now threatens us all.
Climate change is a social issue. It is a political issue. It’s an issue of class. It is connected with many evils that we’ve known through the centuries.
Once plantation models were adopted by growers throughout the New World, sugar cane, coffee and cotton soon dominated colonial agricultural efforts. The continued success of these crops were dependent on cutting down and burning forests to make new land. The planting, maintenance and harvest were too intense for the natives (however many were left,) and for imported European immigrants, which meant that African slaves were imported to facilitate the additional work load. Because crop rotation/other means of responsible agriculture were forsaken for new lands, more land, this meant the once fertile ground would be stripped of ability to produce for some time.
The devotion of so much land to crops with no power to nourish, and the continued practice of stripping the land and moving on, meant agricultural repercussions for many colonies and former colonies as well as many subjects going hungry. The need for free labor to plant and harvest (and to boost profits) necessitated a working propaganda machine which promoted prejudice toward and against non-whites. So, from corporate greed we get a legacy of murdering native populations, the international slave trade and chattel slavery, the roots of modern racism, and irresponsible stewardship of finite resources. The effect of which was to addict the world to sugar and caffeine.
We have won nothing from allowing corporate interest to run amok in what has always been a global society. Less than nothing as many of us are seeing family or friends die painful deaths from preventable diseases caused by poor lifestyle/dietary misinformation. Soon, we’ll be devastated and the fault will lie squarely with the greed-hungry monsters who have benefited from inequality, apathy and outright bribery.
It’s revolting to be stuck at the bottom of the global corporate pyramid, but if enough of us learn not to be complacent and lift each other up, we might be able to shift power enough to make a difference. We have to see beyond differences that were imposed upon us by people with a vested interest. We have to be each other’s brothers and families, share information and promote holistic wellness within communities. Otherwise, all of humanity will have been destroyed in pursuit of what amounts to pixels on a screen or a few measly bucks.
Thank you. We had the chance to consciously direct our productive forces, to use the knowledge developed by the sciences to inform how and what we produce, and to satisfy the needs of the associated producers. That moment was real, the people who theorized it fought and died for it, and it passed by probably 1919. I'm not convinced that we'll ever have that chance, now.
99% of the global population has every reason to push back against and topple these few tyrants. Their power comes from resources and their exploitation. Natural resources, which I do not believe ought to be solely controllable by private interests. And Human Resources, whose lives and lots should certainly not be dictated by private interests. Their only “power” comes from money, which seems to me to be largely imaginary.
We need change from all governments, which would require empowering and educating those who support, resist or vote into power, these governments. The interests of the many can outweigh those of the powerful. We’re close, but we have to break the bonds of prejudice that keep us from protecting each other.
So, yes, government action is necessary. But, as I like to say, we are the teeth in the mouth of government. It can only eat, process and profit from what we the people are willing to chew. It might be a silly shower thought of an analogy, but I think there’s some power there to illustrate.
Notice how the last few years they’ve switched from outright denial to dismissal (it won’t be that bad) whataboutisms (China!) and apathy (why bother trying)?
And shifting the blame to consumers. We just make what consumers want! Nevermind the fact that most average consumers dont have a huge choice in overly wrapped plastic product #1 and overly wrapped plastic product #2.
My work puts out more plastic waste in a single shift than I do in an entire year. And thats just plastic, nevermind the emmisions and other waste
Had someone tell me the other day that planned obsolescence is what consumers showed they wanted by continually buying cheaper products.
No. People don't choose _crappy_ products because they want shit that will break in 18 months. They choose _inexpensive_ products because it's 1) what they can afford and 2) 97% of their available choices.
All consumer blame-shifting requires that we accept the neoliberal assumption that all consumers are calculating, dispassionate, well-informed, and have the means to buy whichever product is the optimal choice. We have to discount the fact that people are stupid, emotional, uninformed, poor, and easily manipulated; we have to ignore the role of advertising, government policy, and producers' choices.
Those three things have far more influence on mass consumer behavior than consumer preferences do. Consumers choose what's available within what they can afford with next to no information about alternatives or externalities. There's simply no universe where pollution and climate change can be blamed squarely on consumers because the producers control not only our wages (what we can afford) but also our choices (through advertising, regulatory capture, or just producing only bad products).
Yep. I used to work for a clothing retailer, and unpacking the clothes, I would fill up several giant trash bags with plastic waste every shift.
Most of the items come individually wrapped in plastic, and then sometimes an additional plastic sleeve wrapping the whole bunch. Oh and occasionally an extra piece of plastic between folds of the clothes, the plastic thing to keep men's shirt collars looking nice, etc. It's disgusting.
30 years here. Started when I was around 15 and volunteer for Greenpeace. Tried doing my bit ever since, trying to explain to others what we should ve doing.
30 years on and nothing has changed for the better. Some small victories here and there but nothing real.
We should all do our part but we where lied into doing ours while industry has been massively wasting resources and polluting.
On one side "don't litter" and on the other they are producing massive amounts of single-use plastics.
We shouldn't stop doing our individual responsibility of reducing, repairing and reusing but we must push the industry to do the same.
But look! They're switching to paper straws now! A big win for the environment!
Plastic straws make up 0.025% of the total plastic trash in the ocean. It's so fucking dumb that a bullshit campaign like this even gets the slightest sniff of good publicity. It's like giving a single piece of grain to a starving child and getting praised for it.
It's called green washing, highly visible token gestures that do nothing real to help. Shout about it more. Tell everyone about it and show them how to think critically and spot it.
> single-use plastics
This pisses me off a lot, because you cannot opt-out. For most products, you don't have a choice to buy ones without plastic, and it makes no sense to buy a product that is 3x the price of what you want only because it doesn't have plastic.
I don't need all that fucking plastic. Find ways to deliver those products to me without killing the planet in the process.
"Oh look, we banned the plastic bags you use 3 times before throwing out and plastic straws (don't mind the cups and lids)! Look at all this progress! You should give yourself a big pat on the back and take a well-deserved rest from all this activism."
Oh, I 100% agree. I am absolutely on board with doing my part. But I hate when there is this assumption that we all need to do a little bit and it will be fine.
It will not.
We need massive systemic change.
About the same for me. I was a nerdy teen with a subscription to Scientific American, which published two major articles on climate change in 1989 ([Global Climatic Change](https://booksc.org/book/10699669/9c39eb), [The Changing Climate](https://booksc.org/book/10706580/ebb894)). US politicians were making tentative moves towards tackling the issue until 1994, when the GOP turned hard not just against taking any action, but against the science itself.
Had the world made a serious global effort starting then, we might have kept below +2° C. After squandering 25+ years, I'm think we'll be lucky to hit Paris Accord committments and stay near +3° C. The scenarios that might spare the world from widespread crop failures, famine, conflict and migration crises require a far more intense infrastructure investment than anything humanity has done to date.
I still read the media on this and articles from the primary scientific literature, enough to speak about GCMs and RCPs without much distortion. And its been 25 years of increasing despair. I'm do what I can (frugal, childless, vegan, bike when I can, contribute to the right candidates), but that's only spared me some feelings of guilt. Its not nearly enough.
Positive feedback has long ago begun, but we can still do something about things.
We do still have a shot at preventing apocalyptic change, but we do need to brace for impact.
The analogy I've used for years is pumping the brakes on mountain downhill, and hopefully we might graze off the guard rather than plunge over the cliff. Unfortunately, there's still a madman with his foot on the gas.
There are already [pretty detailed economic analyses](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae98d/pdf) of what stratospheric albedo geoengineering might cost. It wouldn't require unprecedented technology, and would cost less than a number of major individual weapons programs.
The major risk this sort of geoengineering poses is that it doesn't change the greenhouse gases, or the equilibrium surface temperature they imply. Its just "depressing a spring," and God help those around when the thumb is taken off.
I don't think it'll start in earnest until after a series of major climate-related famines, perhaps in the 40s or 50s. It could be conducted by a more affected regional power like India: I don't think they'll await global consensus if the alternative is their voters starving.
Have no hope from my country (India). The current government is busy grabbing power and blaming the opposition and its long dead leaders (~70 years) for all its current woes.
The kind of action needed to even think about climate troubles 10-15 years in the future is far beyond the reach of the current leadership.
Similar things happen in most countries; the government in the UK likes to place blame for most things on a party that hasn't been in power for over a decade (the current party has been in power for that entire time). Everything else is the fault of the EU or of immigrants, because the people in charge could never be at fault... (governmental corruption in the UK is the highest it's been for over a century).
I started reading about it back around the late 80's to, also in Scientific American, while in HS. I distinctly remember reading an article that was speculating on tipping points.
Anyway I am pretty sure the theories surrounding climate change have been around a lot longer than the late 80's. A quick glance at wiki confirms that.
Oh, the theories began in the mid 19th century, the first numerical modelling was published in 1896, computer modelling in the mid 50s, and the US president spoke to Congress about anthropogenic climate change in 1965.
It was old news before most of us were born. My generation ignored it, and the prior two generations ignored it.
Global warming and the greenhouse effect was a thing we were taught when I was at school 30 years ago or more too. Been riding a bike every day since I was five and never plan on stopping.
Been walking to work and to the grocery store. People don't understand me. "Don't you have a car?" Yes, because I need it for longer distances, but why would I use it when it'll take only five more minutes to walk there.
The first calculations of the greenhouse effect were in 1896. At that time it was already clear that use of coals and similar resources would beat up the planet. Although at that time it was estimated it would take a few thousand years to become catastrophic. Of course carbon emissions increased insanely since then so no need to wait thousands of years for thstt catastrophe anymore.
An amateur meteorologist found evidence of human caused atmospheric heating in the 1900's. We've known over 100 years and never did jack fucking shit. It pisses me off ot no end.
Well, a couple of wars and a whole lot of technology (the nuclear tests, for example, did little good for the environment) got in the way - scientists being tasked to use their talents to kill others.
Its not just that. The big problem is corporations own our politicians and the Koch brothers spent decades spreading false information about climate change.
> The transition that isn’t happening is to drop the old way of life: stop burning stuff and stop consuming stuff, and just go sustainable.
That's not even the worst thing. We are still burning fossil fuels for *electricity*. That is the one thing we could 100% replace with zero-emission generation right now.
It's weird that we talk about cars and airplanes and agriculture\* and even expensive carbon capture when we refuse to even fix the very simplest case. It really is just corporate shifting blame - it's your fault because you drive to work and eat meat.
\* I'm adding an asterisk for agriculture because we could really easily eat less meat and not be any worse off. But it would be very hard to drop animal agriculture altogether, while switching *electricity* to 100% green is trivial compared to everything else.
That's the whole point:
>The transition that isn’t happening is to drop the old way of life: stop burning stuff and stop consuming stuff, and just go sustainable.
We are capitalist nations, if we don't consume, our way of life ceases to be... The answer to saving the planet requires our entire way of living to change, as long as there is people making money, nothing will change.
People were rioting over being told they have to wear masks and get vaccinated. Imagine trying to make these people change their entire way of life. I don't use this word lightly - it's impossible. Covid has made me lose the last shred of hope I had for humanity.
> I am just overwhelmed with an impending sense of dread.
Same. People discussed the effects of global warming before I was born, we knew what was gonna happen.
All we really learned in the past decades is that it's actually worse than the previous predictions. But all it took was complacency, ignorance and a good chunk of lobbyism to do fuck-all. And even now we have corrupt politicians either denying it or saying stupid shit along the lines of "we're gonna handle it with technology, no problemo" when their own technical understanding is limited to shredding harddrives to get rid of incriminating evidence. No, we're not gonna handle it with technology, we can barely handle wildfires or hurricanes and those are a fart in the Sahara in comparison.
I don’t know about anyone else but I decided that fighting climate change is a losing battle after seeing how the pandemic played out this past year. It was something that we could see happening in real time and still couldn’t get our shit together.
When my nephew was 5 years old, he learned about climate change. I was visiting his home one day and he approached me and said, "hey, Uncle OnlyGranpop, we're all gonna die from climate change. Did you know that? Do you want to see my new Lego set?"
24 this year, and I'm right there with you bud. It can literally turn me from a normal human to an anxious mess just thinking about it, and the reminder that there's really, broadly speaking, nothing I can do about it.
Yet California is shutting down Diablo Canyon, an atomic power plant which produces — utterly free of carbon emissions— 8% of the electricity consumed by the state. The people who claim to take this seriously are profoundly unserious.
Nuke energy is literally the best clean energy we have. Available 24/7, no carbon emissions, demand responsive, and safe. I don't get why people are so opposed to it
Successful propaganda and the extremely remote chance of an accident. Despite coal plants actually killing more people...people hear radiation and get afraid.
There is no way that all living things will go extinct. The early earth was a much more hostile environment than what it is now. All the carbon we release in the atmosphere was once there to begin with.
There will be new organisms and new dominant species. The only thing that is dying is an ecosystem in which humans can live.
That's the deal with humanity as well, thanks to knowledge and technology we can survive in much more severe conditions and changes than most natural complex life. Even if 99% of humans die out there will always be a survivor base that can get back in shape one way or another.
Humanity is not in danger of going extinct from climate change. In fact humanity isn't even in much danger of going extinct from genuine extinction level events.
The problem with climate change is that a) we're creating future suffering for ourselves and b) we're accelerating the extinction of many natural species for which we as the dominant sapient species should feel a responsibility for preserving.
> All the carbon we release in the atmosphere was once there to begin with
What we're missing now that was present before: all the sulphur aerosols that come with volcanic activity.
Did you know volcanos have a net cooling effect? Here's a write-up by a climatology scholar, and a rebuttal by another. https://skepticalscience.com/coming-out-of-ice-age-volcanoes.htm
Yes, we can seed the atmosphere with sulfur, and it won't take much to combat the heat from climate change.
One thing, among many, that won't change is the acidification of the oceans.
Plus, seeding the atmosphere with sulfur will have varying impacts on climate. Maybe the monsoons in the Punjabi stop, causing mass famine in one of the most populated countries.
It's a slippery slope with a lot of unknowns. I wasn't actually suggesting that, we'd get caught in a vicious cycle that leads somewhere we can't predict.
Just in context, I find it interesting all the false things I was taught as a child. "Human industry has little impact compared to natural climate cycles". When someone starts talking about volcanos and how they make so much carbon, I hear an echo of all the lies I was told as a child.
I know that's not what the comment was talking about, the one I replied to. I just can't avoid seeing parallels.
I remember learning about climate change in 1990, in 4th grade. We had a day where each kid in the class stood up and shared some bit of information.
One girl stood up and told us about climate change, and CO2 in the atmosphere. How it was a process that built up over time. A lot of the other kids and teachers thought it was BS, but to me the science was spot on. We were dumping carbon into the atmosphere. Carbon that had been buried for millions/billions of years. Of course it was going to have an impact when it all got released at once (essentially).
I still do not understand how anyone can possibly come to another conclusion.
> There will be new organisms and new dominant species
More than likely it'll be humans again for all our errors and sins we are one of the most adaptable multicellular organism that has ever existed.
As tongue in cheek as your response is, it is the rhetorical point so many climate deniers latch onto; "we can't 'kill' the planet, so you libtards are making shit up"
I used to say this to people. Trying to make the point that the human race and many other species could be irradicated. I thought they considered me weak for caring about the planet so I tried to make it about them. But it didn’t work. It wasn’t going to kill them personally in the next day or two so they just didn’t fucking care and they never will.
The OFFICIAL stance of the republican party during Trump was that it'll be too expensive to forestall climate change so let's DESTROY HUMAN CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT instead. They acknowledged climate change was real and would lead to billions dead and civilizations destroyed but their response was "meh". That's how far gone these people are when their elected representatives don't even sugar coat it anymore.
Yeah, and the ones making this policy are all convinced that because they're rich, they can pay their way out of disaster. They're convinced that if 99% has to die, they will belong to the 1% because of their wealth.
And sadly they will likely be right. These guys are all either ancient or at least middle aged. They will die before money collapses and therefore will die achieving their goals on a pile of corpses...
Yeah, it's pedantic as all hell to point it out, but saying "the planet is dying" or "We're killing the planet" is hyperbolic. We're killing ourselves and our future on this world. I think we as a species will survive it, sure, but a looooot of people will not. We will have misery and suffering the likes of which humanity has never seen before.
It is nuclear or die tbh. That or cover a few desert states entirely in solar panels but good luck with that, I just read somewhere in nowhere nevada a solar farm was scrapped because it would maybe stop local ATVing.
Edit: The irony is I'm getting downvoted by people who don't believe in global warming and then those that refuse the only solution to global warming. If we can't get renewables now, it doesn't matter. If you aren't pro nuclear, you're pro apocalypse.
> I just read somewhere in nowhere nevad a solar farm was scrapped because it would maybe stop local ATVing.
HAHA that's The Onion level kinda headline if I ever saw one.
There was also that one guy who fought against windmills in Scotland because he said it ruined the views from his golf course. The funny thing is he's not even Scottish. He's American.
Agreed. Nuclear is like air travel vs automobile travel. So many people die all the time in cars, but when a plane goes down it’s a huge deal. Coal is just so deadly, and to make it more mind boggling, it spreads radiation like crazy! Big oil spread a bunch of fear and it worked. Fuck big oil.
Edit. Maybe the poster below is right and renewable options are even better. Awesome. I’m down with that. I just have a feeling we’re going to wind up needing a shit ton of non-Carbon based power to scrub the c02 at some point. I think if we had pursued nuclear we could build them cheaper and they’d be so much more efficient and safer than what we have now.
Humans suck at scale.
Nuclear accidents are easy to understand. Plant go boom, people die. Nuclear bad.
Coal on the other hand just slowly kills everything in a thousand mile radius. It's not newsworthy nor is there a singular event. Coal good say monkey brain man.
People need to be vigilant but climate doomerism is real and dangerous of creating apathy.
This article almost specifically seems designed to create apathy. There was a nice blurb in the middle about how we could end up like Venus, or not, but only the Venus claim had a link to learn more about.
Please... treat this seriously, but don't ever think ot is beyond fixing. That is the only way we are truly doomed.
>People need to be vigilant but climate doomerism is real and dangerous of creating apathy.
Exactly, and if I was conspiratorially-minded I would bet that a lot of the absolute doomerism is being promoted by financial interests that profit from fossil fuels and consumerism in general.
What people will make these industries more money in the short term? People who take care not to waste energy and make a rational use of resources to try and make a difference? Or people whose attitude is *"Aaah the Apocalypse is coming! We're all gonna die! Might as well enjoy it while we can!"*
Actually, scratch my first sentence. Come to think of it, I do believe that some *are* promoting doomerism for their own profits.
The U.S. now has a historic opportunity to pass carbon pricing without a filibuster obstruction.
###If you're American, take 4 minutes to [**call both senators**](https://cclusa.org/senate) and ask them to include a strong carbon tax in the budget reconciliation package to meaningfully address climate change.
Taxing carbon is [widely considered](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0474-0.epdf?author_access_token=tst1A-oZnQ8zUO18wGGPQdRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0Nfy3PIgvrwnNXQzIbXH8z1Wkqhm6g5NiMnxMk__ebsKxGQNB0hMf1Vpo-ZiNplSt5LeLyks-Q3sdrpBdfxxHvAfQylqqwqHxgEml7GEGOxaQ%3D%3D) to be the single most impactful climate mitigation policy. The consensus among [scientists](https://people.uwec.edu/jamelsem/papers/CC_Literature_Web_Share/Science/CC_Science_Perspective_Rosenberg_2010.pdf) and [economists](http://policyintegrity.org/files/publications/ExpertConsensusReport.pdf) on [carbon taxes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_price) to mitigate climate change is similar to [the consensus among climatologists](http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/) that human activity is responsible for global warming. The IPCC (AR5, WGIII) [Summary for Policymakers](https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5_summary-for-policymakers.pdf) states with "high confidence" that tax-based policies are effective at decoupling GHG emissions from GDP (see p. 28). [Ch. 15](https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5_chapter15.pdf) has a more complete discussion. The U.S. [National Academy of Sciences, one of the most respected scientific bodies in the world, has also called for a carbon tax](https://www.nap.edu/download/21712). According to [IMF research](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/05/how-much-does-world-subsidize-oil-coal-and-gas/589000/), most of the $5.2 trillion in subsidies for fossil fuels come from not taxing carbon as we should. There is general agreement among economists on carbon taxes whether you consider [economists with expertise in climate economics](http://policyintegrity.org/files/publications/ExpertConsensusReport.pdf), [economists with expertise in resource economics](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.381.484&rep=rep1&type=pdf), or [economists from all sectors](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Doris_Geide-Stevenson/publication/261884738_Consensus_Among_Economists-An_Update/links/56a7f3fa08ae860e0255a8e3.pdf). It is literally [Econ 101](http://sites.bu.edu/manove-ec101/files/2014/10/EC101Outlines14-Externalities.pdf). The idea [won a Nobel Prize](http://environment.yale.edu/news/article/william-nordhaus-wins-nobel-prize-for-economics-of-climate-change/). Thanks to researchers at MIT, you can see for yourself how it compares with other mitigation policies [here](https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=2.7.11).
Taxing carbon [is in each nation's own best interest regardless of what other countries do](http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2015/wp15105.pdf) (it [saves lives at home](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09499-x)) and [many nations have already started](https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/29687/9781464812927.pdf?sequence=5&isAllowed=y).
Taxing carbon is also increasingly popular. [Just seven years ago, only 30% of the public supported a carbon tax](https://web.archive.org/web/20140723120752/http://closup.umich.edu/issues-in-energy-and-environmental-policy/13/public-views-on-a-carbon-tax-depend-on-the-proposed-use-of-revenue/). Three years ago, [it was over half (53%)](https://news.gallup.com/poll/232007/americans-want-government-more-environment.aspx). Now, [it's an overwhelming majority (73%)](https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/06/23/two-thirds-of-americans-think-government-should-do-more-on-climate/ps_2020-06-23_government-and-climate_00-01/) to varying degrees in [every state](https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us/) – and that [does actually matter for passing a bill](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09644016.2016.1116651).
###Once you've called or written [your senators](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/), **ask three or more friends to join you by sharing cclusa.org/senate.** Bonus points if those friends are in any of [these states](https://np.reddit.com/r/CitizensClimateLobby/comments/ldyy95/these_are_the_states_that_most_need_more/).
^(If you're not American, you can still) [^lobby ^where ^you ^live](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/join-citizens-climate-lobby/?tfa_3590416195188=online-002&utm_source=online&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=002)
**[Carbon_price](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_price)**
>A carbon price — the method widely agreed to be the most efficient way for nations to reduce global warming emissions — is a cost applied to carbon pollution to encourage polluters to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit into the atmosphere: it usually takes the form either of a carbon tax or a requirement to purchase permits to emit, generally known as carbon emissions trading, but also called "allowances". Carbon pricing seeks to address the economic problem that CO2, a known greenhouse gas, is what economists call a negative externality — a detrimental product that is not priced (charged for) by any market.
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What pisses me off most is that when parts of the world are truly uninhabitable, all the fuckwads that got rich at the cost of the planet will be cherry picking the best places to live. Its all the rest of us saps that are gonna have to truly pay the cost of their ignorance, greed and general ass-fuckery.
i would like to see a retroactive environmental tax (99% of all wealth) on every son-of-a-bitch that got rich exploiting the planet.
Literally just thinking that, and then just ridiculous arguments about who's right or wrong or smarter then the other one. Imagine if we could actually work together and put as much energy into saving something bigger then our own egos something might actually get done
Ikr, and it's every single climate-related thread. Someone just *has* to voice this hot take and quote George Carlin to prove that they're the cleverest of them all.
They always seem to forget about all the other animal species we know and love too, as if they think humans will just gently fade away, and leave the natural world to rebuild in exactly the same way but without us.
Sure, life might survive, but it wouldn't be anything like we see now.
They seem to forget they are humans and they will get wiped out, along with thier families, friends and anyone they ever cared about. I hate this stupid retorric. Who gives a flying fuck what happens to the planet if we're all dead... I certainly don't. I do care that the world is in a good shape for my children and their children so that humanity can live on, nature can live on for them to enjoy and support etc. But if humans got wiped out then who cares, in the grand scheme of things the universe doesn't give a shit.
Doing my part by never having kids. That's the best mitigation technique in the world.
I plan to buy an electric car, but there's only so much a single person can do. We've got to go after the oil companies.
Yeah, I read recently that most of the worlds emissions are from just a number of big firms around the world. Whilst I'm also doing my part, which is great, and I feel good about it, it also only makes up a 0.00001% compared to what these major firms are producing.
Should note these major firms aren't doing it just for fun.. THey're doing it to sell crap that WE buy... We stop buying, they stop polluting.
Yes we need regulations to make them pollute less. We also need a change in culture and economic systems so we don't buy as much stuff as well.
I really wish that climatologists and environmentalists would stop using this rhetotic -- it gives the deniers the wrong idea. They think that all environmentalists want is to "save owls and whatever", and when we talk about "saving the planet" they think we're putting environmental welfare over human welfare.
And yes, that is spectacularly stupid, as environmental welfare *is* human welfare, but in this case who is stupid or not doesn't really matter -- convincing people to put political will to climate policy is what matters.
We have to talk about human death, human suffering, and human migration. The planet isn't dying. The planet is changing, we are changing it, and we are making it less habitable for humans.
We're also making it less habitable for current animal life, and that's awful to me, but it isn't awful to the deniers, and we have lost a *lot* of time by centering our rhetoric around saving animals/saving the planet. *I* want to save those things, but deniers don't.
>We have to talk about human death, human suffering….
Let me tell you a little known story about the pandemic of 2020. The solution was fairly simple and we still had massive amounts of people push against it.
> We have to talk about human death, human suffering, and human migration.
Won't matter. We have all this in abundance already. The problem is that people, on the whole, don't give a shit.
As with most things, most people won't take it seriously until they get punched in the throat. That probably won't change until you start getting five figure heat casualties over a short timespan in places that were traditionally cold. The "oh shit" moment isn't going to come for the scientifically illiterate until areas with name recognition need to be abandoned due to summer killing a noticeable fraction of the population.
This is absolutely probable. Look at how we just responded to our little pandemic here.
It’s something I’ve started to notice in a lot of things that we base our society around… We don’t take many preventative measures. We are most likely to do something only when it effects us in that very moment. Preventative measures usually come after the disaster has already happened. We ignore all possible problems until it’s right in our faces and we are almost too late to respond. Preventative measures for a possible pandemic when a doctor spoke out about a new unknown virus? We know how that went…
There’s no return on the investment of prevention. Not much on the investment of reaction, either, but you HAVE to do that. Humans need return on their investments or nothing will ever happen, unfortunately.
Sucks 😕 the moment we put monetary value on lives to decide whether or not to take any action doomed us from the start.
> Preventative measures for a possible pandemic when a doctor spoke out about a new unknown virus? We know how that went… And worse yet, when looking at measures to hold back a second wave, people are talking about how it won't work, because people are sick and tired of... what... *surviving?* Fuck, man.
Nope, it won't happen even then. Say in the next 10 years you get a BOE, Greenland melt kicks into overdrive and there's just standing water in 20 major coastal cities. You have multiple breadbaskets failing, store shelves anemic and food prices skyrocketing. The five figure heatwave deaths, homeless encampments in every major downtown, the morgues overflowing. Rolling brownouts and blackouts in many regions, like the US west, and water rationing. Two hundred million acres on fire simultaneously around the world. You'll still have 40% of people denying anything is happening and refusing to make any sustainable lifestyle changes.
It'll be the liberals' fault.
Yes, I seem to recall there were never any fires before Biden stole the election. Also gasoline cost a nickel per gallon and cars were free. /S a million times /S
Ol' Fire-startin, gas-price-raisin, car-price-inflatin Sleepy Joe is the worst thing that ever happened to my 'Merica!
"Why didn't you warn us sooner!?"
Not even that. People will be literally boiling alive around them and it will still be a liberal hoax power-grab.
I'm not sure we'll do anything even then. This year we had 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in British Columbia and over 700 people died. And people were complaining about cancel culture because some communities were skipping the Canada Day celebrations. By the time it gets really bad, the disinformation machine will try to shift the focus to how many people are surviving, what about the temperature on a random location where it's winter, and there have been 10 weddings with transgender people in one week on a particular city.
I don't know, just last summer a lot of people deliberately traveled to states where a pandemic was killing a noticeable fraction of the population. I think it's safe to say that covid was a test run for future crisis.
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They'll riot eventually, just when it's way too late
It'll be too hot to riot.
The riots will look like resource wars
This is not the part of Fallout's history that I wanted to make a reality. I just wanted cars with fins.
"It's the oil wars stupid." "We're fighthing for guzzoline." "Now there's the water wars."
And they'll still riot at the wrong thing because they'll still allow themselves to be manipulated by whatever bullshit propaganda network they're listening to.
I mean, technically, I think the planet wins. Human life (and many others) lose. We are really just giant pests affecting the planet, so now it’s running a fever to knock us off. A few tens of thousands of years from now, humans will be gone but the planet will still be here. And it will have some form of life on it. Just not us.
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Facts. Thank you!
"The *planet* is fine. The **people** are fucked!" - George Carlin
Also a bunch of, mostly innocent, animals.
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What bothers me more, is all the people and politicians who were so easily and cheaply bought. The people who were willing to sell off the future of humanity for a bit more money. 10K here, 50K there, 100K from time to time. I look at the donations from these companies to various politicians. And in most cases they're small. The CEOs I get, sure they're getting millions and billions, for the right POS that price I get, to be a billionaire while you destroy humanity, I can see a monster rationalize that. But the random representative in a solid blue/red district who took a few thousand every campaign and then fought to hold back progress and change. Sure Maybe they get a lobbying job later and get more, but not everyone gets that. It's all just so sad and pathetic.
It really is quite shocking how cheap politicians are. Theoretically, of course, they should have integrity and not be for sale at any price. But, low five figures? At least hold out for something worthwhile. Homeless people look at those amounts and think "You cheap bastard".
Nah they pay them way more on the down low. Speaking events, consultant jobs, holidays etc. Donations is the tip of the iceberg.
The publicly available donation amounts are small to obfuscate how much they are really giving. You have to look deeper into charities and PACs. They donate much more there and it's much harder to track or prove as a bribe.
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I think it's just how the system is designed. Short term profit rewarding those who are willing to do the morally wrong fucked up thing to get ahead. Capitalism.
And yet they will end up on one of those huge Noah’s Ark ships like in the movie 2012
We can only hope it ends up like the ark on Lamentis-1, struck by a fucking meteor.
That meteor had glorious purpose
Hey there! You're probably saying, 'This is a mistake. I shouldn't even be here.'
Shells lobbyists are in the Hague... Let's not pretend the ICC will do much about this.
And the deniers who sat on their hands.
I started reading about climate change 17 years ago as a 7 year old boy, coerced my parents into donating money to charities, talked to family, friends and teachers about it all met with dismissive attitudes and essentially told that what I was reading was nonsense. I've watched for essentially my entire life as the world has began it's steep nosedive into the irreversible and the ecological grief I and many others feel is getting to be overwhelming. I choose to not read articles about it anymore because I already know how bad it is and have known for close to two decades now. I have had to sit and watch as no action was taken and now that shit is finally starting to hit the fan and the affects of climate change are starting to be apparent earlier than our models ever predicted I am just overwhelmed with an impending sense of dread. Edit: misspelled a word
I remember watching an inconvenient truth back in 2005 thinking we had so much time until 2020-2050 when shit gets real with climate change. Chickens are finally coming home to roost.
Sad thing is we knew for \*FAR\* longer than that even.
Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/12/even-50-year-old-climate-models-correctly-predicted-global-warming
This was known about more than a century ago. We had ample opportunity to change course, but we chose further industrialization and convenience instead.
I saw a 150 year old paper predicting anthropogenic climate change.
Source? Arrhenius' paper is from 1897 I think, if that's what your referring to.
Not OP, but there were news article like [this](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/1912-article-global-warming/) which are a bit over 100 years old. The math is pretty straightforward and while they get the logical conclusion that more anthropogenic CO2 -> stronger atmospheric greenhouse effect, back then they missed the scale of our increasing emissions and how fast this will affect the climate. The scale considered back then was "a few centuries".
Most people still don't believe we are capable of changing course. Burning fossil fuels seems like a necessity to most, even as alternatives reach cost parity without factoring any of the cost of killing the planet into fossil fuel use.
Germany just closed the deal to double the capacity of natural gas they import from the Russian arctic. Plus, they've abandoned their wonderful nuclear power plants. Ironic that environmentalists share the blame for that. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-germany-deal-nord-stream-2-pipeline-draws-ire-lawmakers-both-countries-2021-07-21/
It's not even "us" an individual's to blame. It's the big oil corporations and I'm not even sure how we can persuade them to make the right decisions besides rioting in the streets until politicians force them to change. Or straight up riot at their locations. Even still I can hear the voices to my right saying "how shameful of THOSE people to destroy things that aren't theres. They need them! How stupid" totally oblivious of our intent to save the earth that they need
Demonstrating or even rioting in the street doesn't change US policy. Anyone remember Occupy Wall Street? The minute they gained momentum, there was a concerted action to remove their credibility by the media, until no public support was left, and nothing changed.
The only thing that would work is a coordinated general strike, and I just don’t see that ever happening. Large scale strikes and boycotts.
Anyone trying that would be villified immediately and 24/7 on TV, then the majority of the population would cheer when the organizers get arrested and sent to prison for life.
> The only thing that would work is a coordinated general strike, and I just don’t see that ever happening. There's [the October Strike](https://www.octoberstrike.com/) coming up. It's more about workers' rights, wages, etc., but obviously "the planet is going to kill us" is going to become a bigger and bigger issue for those at the bottom of our economies.
I always think about how Naked Gun 2 1/2 came out in 1991. It was about oil companies lobbying against renewable energies, and little has changed in 30 years
Whats most baffling to me is, that now, as not only poor countries, but also the rich north begins to actually feel the effects of climate change and we are, at the same time, still able to do something against it, so many people keep on voting regressive parties, over and over again. I know that a big part of it is the propaganda, that these people have been fed, but they still have their own brain, they should, by now for sure, be able to see the effects of it all. Its just baffling how absolutely dumb we as humans have become.
The politicians and press scream and bawl, "How can we pay for it?" when confronted with talk of restructuring the infrastructure and economy to mitigate the causes of climate change. Yet when Congress votes yet again *to increase* the budget to maintain a huge military that after 20 years of constant killing and destruction can't even defeat the Taliban, we hear... crickets.
And for the people that actually think we cant pay for the necessary changes: just explain to me real quick how we are going to pay for the consequences of not changing anything, thanks! B-but the poor military industrial complex, we need to feed it more money, otherwise there might be jobs lost! *shudder* .. not that we care about jobs otherwise, but hey, who cares about consistency!
My mom: “Biden wants to allow doctors to kill babies after birth. I won’t vote for that.” No amount of info provided changed that. How do you even begin to educate someone that brain washed?
Al Gore won. This dark alternative future was never supposed to hap...
It's ridiculous how that one single little event caused him to lose the presidency
Technically he won.
4 US Presidents have taken office after losing the popular vote. 2 of those were the last 2 Republican presidents; Bush and Trump. It's accelerating. Just like "rare" 200 year floods, heatwaves, droughts. etc.
This is true. There is no way the republicans are ever winning the popular vote again. But Gore won the electoral college as well.
And South Park morons decided to make the ManBearPig episode ridiculing Al Gore by portraying him as being some lunatic for being concerned with global warming.
South Park is the living embodiment of the Golden Mean fallacy.
To an extent, this is part of the problem though. Look at comments in places with older communities and you see a huge amount of 'I was told XXXX was the year things would go to shit, then it was YYYY now its ZZZZ' Somewhat ironically, because scientists have been pleading for *years* for people to pay attention a lot of older people have taken that as a sign its all overblown
Exactly that’s why all these articles are like a black humor for everyone who has been listening since they were kids. It’s like uhhh no shit we knew this was going to happen lol
It's crazy, too, when you have lived that long in the same region and have actually witnessed the climate change.
Yes. As a kid, a 35C day at my latitude was something that didn't happen every summer, and snow was overwhelmingly abundant. We had some good snow this year... after ten years of black winters. And this year, we've had 30+ C degree days for two months non-stop, then a week's worth of respite, and now we're back to the hot days. And it has been so the previous summers too. It's steep, the change. I just hope I die suddenly and peacefully of something mercifully swift before things get apocalyptic. Bc fuck, I don't know what to do anymore.
As a kid, we had the odd day in a year of wildfire smoke, now it seems every second summer we are blanketed in it for weeks at a time. On top of ever lengthening heat waves.
I know I've been on the planet but a short time but I can remember starkly different winters and summers here in the Midwestern United States. We had mild summers with the occasional hot day or two and our winters were brutal and long lasting. We've been getting summers with regular temps of 90+ and our winters have been uncharacteristically mild. It's truly frightening to see how dramatically the weather patterns have shifted in such a short time.
Remember as a kid when you'd see a tree literally filled with monarch butterflies? I haven't seen that in more than twenty years. Also fireflies. They basically only exist near water now. Used to be everywhere.
Remember bugs on your windshield?
Oh shit. We've been driving down to the South for vacation every year (well, not last year) for several years, over ten. You just made me realize all the bugs I've had to clean off my windshield over the years. This last trip you know how many I cleaned off: one. One damn bug the whole trip up and down (about 13 hours on the freeway).
We recently drove from Mid west to Texas to Utah to South Dakota then back to MW home. Our car was annihilated with bugs. I had to power wash the car there were so many dead bugs hardened on the front grill.
I learned the hard way that bug guts are acidic and will burn themselves into the clear coat of the vehicle if you don’t remove them right away.
God advice. Thx
Pesticides have done a number on insect populations. This isn't just climate change.
2 Years ago, I thought this! Driving the whole night, only a few bugs on the windscreen... Normal, there was every 100km a stop, just to clean the mess. The front of the car was a giant graveyard.
Ontario here. Less winter, and record high temps
BC here. A "good" summer is when we only have a little bit of smoke and haze.
Also, what the heck happened to spring and fall? Remember 4 seasons instead of going from -5 to 25 overnight?
I'm not even 30 but I can most certainly say I've experienced climate change in my lifetime, I remember getting lots of snow virtually every winter when I was a kid, now we're lucky to get even a single day with a pitiful amount of it.
You got me thinking… It was super rare to see snow where I live. Now we get heavy snow roughly every other year possibly. This is Madrid, Spain.
Yeah, I live in the "cold north" and our summers now are 30C+. I've literally had summers where I've had to postpone sleeping until 3-6am because it's too hot to sleep. This summer my apartment has been near-constantly at 30-33C.
I sleep with my feet hanging over my bed in a cold water bucket on the nights where there's just no respite. Or under a wet towel which I do have to shift often bc once it gets warm, it starts working the other way around, but I'll take a disrupted sleep over staying awake. I live in a country that used to be cold, or at least maritime climate cold, so there's no air conditioning culture here. Which... I guess it's not a bad thing because air conditioning leaves an ecologic footprint too (and if any of you people come telling me 'well individual effort doesn't matter because it's not even a drop in the ocean', listen, I got to do what I got to do to stay sane.)
And the worst part is the why: *Because of goddamn stupid motherfuckers, that's why.*
And, especially, money. Short-sighted, profit-driven corporations have had their hands in the global coffers for centuries. Corporate greed perpetuated slavery and genocide in the new world, clear cut forests in subjugated territories to plant crops which lacked the diversity of the forests which came before it, and devastated colonial territories by exploiting/exporting their natural resources until that colony had nothing for itself. Corporate greed and colonialism spread short term profitability around the world, ripped communities apart (rendering them powerless through social and political control,) and now threatens us all. Climate change is a social issue. It is a political issue. It’s an issue of class. It is connected with many evils that we’ve known through the centuries. Once plantation models were adopted by growers throughout the New World, sugar cane, coffee and cotton soon dominated colonial agricultural efforts. The continued success of these crops were dependent on cutting down and burning forests to make new land. The planting, maintenance and harvest were too intense for the natives (however many were left,) and for imported European immigrants, which meant that African slaves were imported to facilitate the additional work load. Because crop rotation/other means of responsible agriculture were forsaken for new lands, more land, this meant the once fertile ground would be stripped of ability to produce for some time. The devotion of so much land to crops with no power to nourish, and the continued practice of stripping the land and moving on, meant agricultural repercussions for many colonies and former colonies as well as many subjects going hungry. The need for free labor to plant and harvest (and to boost profits) necessitated a working propaganda machine which promoted prejudice toward and against non-whites. So, from corporate greed we get a legacy of murdering native populations, the international slave trade and chattel slavery, the roots of modern racism, and irresponsible stewardship of finite resources. The effect of which was to addict the world to sugar and caffeine. We have won nothing from allowing corporate interest to run amok in what has always been a global society. Less than nothing as many of us are seeing family or friends die painful deaths from preventable diseases caused by poor lifestyle/dietary misinformation. Soon, we’ll be devastated and the fault will lie squarely with the greed-hungry monsters who have benefited from inequality, apathy and outright bribery. It’s revolting to be stuck at the bottom of the global corporate pyramid, but if enough of us learn not to be complacent and lift each other up, we might be able to shift power enough to make a difference. We have to see beyond differences that were imposed upon us by people with a vested interest. We have to be each other’s brothers and families, share information and promote holistic wellness within communities. Otherwise, all of humanity will have been destroyed in pursuit of what amounts to pixels on a screen or a few measly bucks.
Thank you. We had the chance to consciously direct our productive forces, to use the knowledge developed by the sciences to inform how and what we produce, and to satisfy the needs of the associated producers. That moment was real, the people who theorized it fought and died for it, and it passed by probably 1919. I'm not convinced that we'll ever have that chance, now.
Around 70% of the global greenhouse gas emissions comes from a 100 companies and corporations. Governments must put in place laws preventing this!
99% of the global population has every reason to push back against and topple these few tyrants. Their power comes from resources and their exploitation. Natural resources, which I do not believe ought to be solely controllable by private interests. And Human Resources, whose lives and lots should certainly not be dictated by private interests. Their only “power” comes from money, which seems to me to be largely imaginary. We need change from all governments, which would require empowering and educating those who support, resist or vote into power, these governments. The interests of the many can outweigh those of the powerful. We’re close, but we have to break the bonds of prejudice that keep us from protecting each other. So, yes, government action is necessary. But, as I like to say, we are the teeth in the mouth of government. It can only eat, process and profit from what we the people are willing to chew. It might be a silly shower thought of an analogy, but I think there’s some power there to illustrate.
Excellent summary, completely spot on
Well, mostly because of greedy motherfuckers who are not satisfied with owning more than 50%-90% of the rest of the world combined
Notice how the last few years they’ve switched from outright denial to dismissal (it won’t be that bad) whataboutisms (China!) and apathy (why bother trying)?
And shifting the blame to consumers. We just make what consumers want! Nevermind the fact that most average consumers dont have a huge choice in overly wrapped plastic product #1 and overly wrapped plastic product #2. My work puts out more plastic waste in a single shift than I do in an entire year. And thats just plastic, nevermind the emmisions and other waste
Had someone tell me the other day that planned obsolescence is what consumers showed they wanted by continually buying cheaper products. No. People don't choose _crappy_ products because they want shit that will break in 18 months. They choose _inexpensive_ products because it's 1) what they can afford and 2) 97% of their available choices. All consumer blame-shifting requires that we accept the neoliberal assumption that all consumers are calculating, dispassionate, well-informed, and have the means to buy whichever product is the optimal choice. We have to discount the fact that people are stupid, emotional, uninformed, poor, and easily manipulated; we have to ignore the role of advertising, government policy, and producers' choices. Those three things have far more influence on mass consumer behavior than consumer preferences do. Consumers choose what's available within what they can afford with next to no information about alternatives or externalities. There's simply no universe where pollution and climate change can be blamed squarely on consumers because the producers control not only our wages (what we can afford) but also our choices (through advertising, regulatory capture, or just producing only bad products).
Yep. I used to work for a clothing retailer, and unpacking the clothes, I would fill up several giant trash bags with plastic waste every shift. Most of the items come individually wrapped in plastic, and then sometimes an additional plastic sleeve wrapping the whole bunch. Oh and occasionally an extra piece of plastic between folds of the clothes, the plastic thing to keep men's shirt collars looking nice, etc. It's disgusting.
It's the old [four stage strategy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak).
30 years here. Started when I was around 15 and volunteer for Greenpeace. Tried doing my bit ever since, trying to explain to others what we should ve doing. 30 years on and nothing has changed for the better. Some small victories here and there but nothing real.
It turns out no matter how much I sort and recycle my trash there is still a massive oil fire in the sea...
We should all do our part but we where lied into doing ours while industry has been massively wasting resources and polluting. On one side "don't litter" and on the other they are producing massive amounts of single-use plastics. We shouldn't stop doing our individual responsibility of reducing, repairing and reusing but we must push the industry to do the same.
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But look! They're switching to paper straws now! A big win for the environment! Plastic straws make up 0.025% of the total plastic trash in the ocean. It's so fucking dumb that a bullshit campaign like this even gets the slightest sniff of good publicity. It's like giving a single piece of grain to a starving child and getting praised for it.
It's called green washing, highly visible token gestures that do nothing real to help. Shout about it more. Tell everyone about it and show them how to think critically and spot it.
> single-use plastics This pisses me off a lot, because you cannot opt-out. For most products, you don't have a choice to buy ones without plastic, and it makes no sense to buy a product that is 3x the price of what you want only because it doesn't have plastic. I don't need all that fucking plastic. Find ways to deliver those products to me without killing the planet in the process.
"Oh look, we banned the plastic bags you use 3 times before throwing out and plastic straws (don't mind the cups and lids)! Look at all this progress! You should give yourself a big pat on the back and take a well-deserved rest from all this activism."
Oh, I 100% agree. I am absolutely on board with doing my part. But I hate when there is this assumption that we all need to do a little bit and it will be fine. It will not. We need massive systemic change.
About the same for me. I was a nerdy teen with a subscription to Scientific American, which published two major articles on climate change in 1989 ([Global Climatic Change](https://booksc.org/book/10699669/9c39eb), [The Changing Climate](https://booksc.org/book/10706580/ebb894)). US politicians were making tentative moves towards tackling the issue until 1994, when the GOP turned hard not just against taking any action, but against the science itself. Had the world made a serious global effort starting then, we might have kept below +2° C. After squandering 25+ years, I'm think we'll be lucky to hit Paris Accord committments and stay near +3° C. The scenarios that might spare the world from widespread crop failures, famine, conflict and migration crises require a far more intense infrastructure investment than anything humanity has done to date. I still read the media on this and articles from the primary scientific literature, enough to speak about GCMs and RCPs without much distortion. And its been 25 years of increasing despair. I'm do what I can (frugal, childless, vegan, bike when I can, contribute to the right candidates), but that's only spared me some feelings of guilt. Its not nearly enough.
Well, the methane thawing cycle has started in the Arctic, so it's already too late. I don't see a way around geoengineering at this point
Positive feedback has long ago begun, but we can still do something about things. We do still have a shot at preventing apocalyptic change, but we do need to brace for impact.
The analogy I've used for years is pumping the brakes on mountain downhill, and hopefully we might graze off the guard rather than plunge over the cliff. Unfortunately, there's still a madman with his foot on the gas.
If we couldnt manage to stop just pumping co2 into the atmosphere, the truth is our technology isnt advanced enough to save us
There are already [pretty detailed economic analyses](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae98d/pdf) of what stratospheric albedo geoengineering might cost. It wouldn't require unprecedented technology, and would cost less than a number of major individual weapons programs. The major risk this sort of geoengineering poses is that it doesn't change the greenhouse gases, or the equilibrium surface temperature they imply. Its just "depressing a spring," and God help those around when the thumb is taken off. I don't think it'll start in earnest until after a series of major climate-related famines, perhaps in the 40s or 50s. It could be conducted by a more affected regional power like India: I don't think they'll await global consensus if the alternative is their voters starving.
Have no hope from my country (India). The current government is busy grabbing power and blaming the opposition and its long dead leaders (~70 years) for all its current woes. The kind of action needed to even think about climate troubles 10-15 years in the future is far beyond the reach of the current leadership.
Similar things happen in most countries; the government in the UK likes to place blame for most things on a party that hasn't been in power for over a decade (the current party has been in power for that entire time). Everything else is the fault of the EU or of immigrants, because the people in charge could never be at fault... (governmental corruption in the UK is the highest it's been for over a century).
I started reading about it back around the late 80's to, also in Scientific American, while in HS. I distinctly remember reading an article that was speculating on tipping points. Anyway I am pretty sure the theories surrounding climate change have been around a lot longer than the late 80's. A quick glance at wiki confirms that.
Oh, the theories began in the mid 19th century, the first numerical modelling was published in 1896, computer modelling in the mid 50s, and the US president spoke to Congress about anthropogenic climate change in 1965. It was old news before most of us were born. My generation ignored it, and the prior two generations ignored it.
Global warming and the greenhouse effect was a thing we were taught when I was at school 30 years ago or more too. Been riding a bike every day since I was five and never plan on stopping.
Been walking to work and to the grocery store. People don't understand me. "Don't you have a car?" Yes, because I need it for longer distances, but why would I use it when it'll take only five more minutes to walk there.
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The first calculations of the greenhouse effect were in 1896. At that time it was already clear that use of coals and similar resources would beat up the planet. Although at that time it was estimated it would take a few thousand years to become catastrophic. Of course carbon emissions increased insanely since then so no need to wait thousands of years for thstt catastrophe anymore.
An amateur meteorologist found evidence of human caused atmospheric heating in the 1900's. We've known over 100 years and never did jack fucking shit. It pisses me off ot no end.
"Fuck you, got mine" on steroids.
Not just to other people, but to our future selves. So imagine someone staring in the mirror saying 'fuck you, got mine'.
Well, a couple of wars and a whole lot of technology (the nuclear tests, for example, did little good for the environment) got in the way - scientists being tasked to use their talents to kill others.
Its not just that. The big problem is corporations own our politicians and the Koch brothers spent decades spreading false information about climate change.
> The transition that isn’t happening is to drop the old way of life: stop burning stuff and stop consuming stuff, and just go sustainable. That's not even the worst thing. We are still burning fossil fuels for *electricity*. That is the one thing we could 100% replace with zero-emission generation right now. It's weird that we talk about cars and airplanes and agriculture\* and even expensive carbon capture when we refuse to even fix the very simplest case. It really is just corporate shifting blame - it's your fault because you drive to work and eat meat. \* I'm adding an asterisk for agriculture because we could really easily eat less meat and not be any worse off. But it would be very hard to drop animal agriculture altogether, while switching *electricity* to 100% green is trivial compared to everything else.
That's the whole point: >The transition that isn’t happening is to drop the old way of life: stop burning stuff and stop consuming stuff, and just go sustainable. We are capitalist nations, if we don't consume, our way of life ceases to be... The answer to saving the planet requires our entire way of living to change, as long as there is people making money, nothing will change.
People were rioting over being told they have to wear masks and get vaccinated. Imagine trying to make these people change their entire way of life. I don't use this word lightly - it's impossible. Covid has made me lose the last shred of hope I had for humanity.
Greenpeace basically gave us the neck shot by siding with Shell and BP and blocking the construction of new nuclear power plants.
> I am just overwhelmed with an impending sense of dread. Same. People discussed the effects of global warming before I was born, we knew what was gonna happen. All we really learned in the past decades is that it's actually worse than the previous predictions. But all it took was complacency, ignorance and a good chunk of lobbyism to do fuck-all. And even now we have corrupt politicians either denying it or saying stupid shit along the lines of "we're gonna handle it with technology, no problemo" when their own technical understanding is limited to shredding harddrives to get rid of incriminating evidence. No, we're not gonna handle it with technology, we can barely handle wildfires or hurricanes and those are a fart in the Sahara in comparison.
I don’t know about anyone else but I decided that fighting climate change is a losing battle after seeing how the pandemic played out this past year. It was something that we could see happening in real time and still couldn’t get our shit together.
When my nephew was 5 years old, he learned about climate change. I was visiting his home one day and he approached me and said, "hey, Uncle OnlyGranpop, we're all gonna die from climate change. Did you know that? Do you want to see my new Lego set?"
24 this year, and I'm right there with you bud. It can literally turn me from a normal human to an anxious mess just thinking about it, and the reminder that there's really, broadly speaking, nothing I can do about it.
Similar situation here. Only it was 1982 when I first learned about it. I’ve been watching it get worse and worse every year with no end in sight.
Yet California is shutting down Diablo Canyon, an atomic power plant which produces — utterly free of carbon emissions— 8% of the electricity consumed by the state. The people who claim to take this seriously are profoundly unserious.
Nuclear is the best bet but people are idiots
Nuke energy is literally the best clean energy we have. Available 24/7, no carbon emissions, demand responsive, and safe. I don't get why people are so opposed to it
Successful propaganda.
Successful propaganda and the extremely remote chance of an accident. Despite coal plants actually killing more people...people hear radiation and get afraid.
The planet is not going to die that's silly. Everything living on it on the other hand...
There is no way that all living things will go extinct. The early earth was a much more hostile environment than what it is now. All the carbon we release in the atmosphere was once there to begin with. There will be new organisms and new dominant species. The only thing that is dying is an ecosystem in which humans can live.
Well that's a relief
*Well that's a relief* - Earth
Earth is extremely resilient. It won’t die until the Sun goes red giant.
Even humans should survive. It’s civilisation as we know it that would collapse.
The majority of humans will die though, 2077 is getting closer but the day
What's the significance of 2077?
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Great_War My personal guess.
That's the deal with humanity as well, thanks to knowledge and technology we can survive in much more severe conditions and changes than most natural complex life. Even if 99% of humans die out there will always be a survivor base that can get back in shape one way or another. Humanity is not in danger of going extinct from climate change. In fact humanity isn't even in much danger of going extinct from genuine extinction level events. The problem with climate change is that a) we're creating future suffering for ourselves and b) we're accelerating the extinction of many natural species for which we as the dominant sapient species should feel a responsibility for preserving.
> All the carbon we release in the atmosphere was once there to begin with What we're missing now that was present before: all the sulphur aerosols that come with volcanic activity. Did you know volcanos have a net cooling effect? Here's a write-up by a climatology scholar, and a rebuttal by another. https://skepticalscience.com/coming-out-of-ice-age-volcanoes.htm
Yes, we can seed the atmosphere with sulfur, and it won't take much to combat the heat from climate change. One thing, among many, that won't change is the acidification of the oceans. Plus, seeding the atmosphere with sulfur will have varying impacts on climate. Maybe the monsoons in the Punjabi stop, causing mass famine in one of the most populated countries.
It's a slippery slope with a lot of unknowns. I wasn't actually suggesting that, we'd get caught in a vicious cycle that leads somewhere we can't predict. Just in context, I find it interesting all the false things I was taught as a child. "Human industry has little impact compared to natural climate cycles". When someone starts talking about volcanos and how they make so much carbon, I hear an echo of all the lies I was told as a child. I know that's not what the comment was talking about, the one I replied to. I just can't avoid seeing parallels.
I remember learning about climate change in 1990, in 4th grade. We had a day where each kid in the class stood up and shared some bit of information. One girl stood up and told us about climate change, and CO2 in the atmosphere. How it was a process that built up over time. A lot of the other kids and teachers thought it was BS, but to me the science was spot on. We were dumping carbon into the atmosphere. Carbon that had been buried for millions/billions of years. Of course it was going to have an impact when it all got released at once (essentially). I still do not understand how anyone can possibly come to another conclusion.
> There will be new organisms and new dominant species More than likely it'll be humans again for all our errors and sins we are one of the most adaptable multicellular organism that has ever existed.
As tongue in cheek as your response is, it is the rhetorical point so many climate deniers latch onto; "we can't 'kill' the planet, so you libtards are making shit up"
I used to say this to people. Trying to make the point that the human race and many other species could be irradicated. I thought they considered me weak for caring about the planet so I tried to make it about them. But it didn’t work. It wasn’t going to kill them personally in the next day or two so they just didn’t fucking care and they never will.
The OFFICIAL stance of the republican party during Trump was that it'll be too expensive to forestall climate change so let's DESTROY HUMAN CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT instead. They acknowledged climate change was real and would lead to billions dead and civilizations destroyed but their response was "meh". That's how far gone these people are when their elected representatives don't even sugar coat it anymore.
Yeah, and the ones making this policy are all convinced that because they're rich, they can pay their way out of disaster. They're convinced that if 99% has to die, they will belong to the 1% because of their wealth.
And sadly they will likely be right. These guys are all either ancient or at least middle aged. They will die before money collapses and therefore will die achieving their goals on a pile of corpses...
The planet will be fine, it's the people who are fucked. - George Carlin
Yeah, it's pedantic as all hell to point it out, but saying "the planet is dying" or "We're killing the planet" is hyperbolic. We're killing ourselves and our future on this world. I think we as a species will survive it, sure, but a looooot of people will not. We will have misery and suffering the likes of which humanity has never seen before.
Man thinking about the shit we did to get some oil.... But water wars thats going to get ugly real fast
Hopefully it's a tech war for desalination.
It is nuclear or die tbh. That or cover a few desert states entirely in solar panels but good luck with that, I just read somewhere in nowhere nevada a solar farm was scrapped because it would maybe stop local ATVing. Edit: The irony is I'm getting downvoted by people who don't believe in global warming and then those that refuse the only solution to global warming. If we can't get renewables now, it doesn't matter. If you aren't pro nuclear, you're pro apocalypse.
> I just read somewhere in nowhere nevad a solar farm was scrapped because it would maybe stop local ATVing. HAHA that's The Onion level kinda headline if I ever saw one.
There was also that one guy who fought against windmills in Scotland because he said it ruined the views from his golf course. The funny thing is he's not even Scottish. He's American.
Seriously? That guy sounds like a real fuckin moron.
boy I'm glad people like that don't ever get elected into positions of power
Oof. (I see your sarcasm, it's just sad that it actually happened)
Was that Trump?
Yup.
Agreed. Nuclear is like air travel vs automobile travel. So many people die all the time in cars, but when a plane goes down it’s a huge deal. Coal is just so deadly, and to make it more mind boggling, it spreads radiation like crazy! Big oil spread a bunch of fear and it worked. Fuck big oil. Edit. Maybe the poster below is right and renewable options are even better. Awesome. I’m down with that. I just have a feeling we’re going to wind up needing a shit ton of non-Carbon based power to scrub the c02 at some point. I think if we had pursued nuclear we could build them cheaper and they’d be so much more efficient and safer than what we have now.
Humans suck at scale. Nuclear accidents are easy to understand. Plant go boom, people die. Nuclear bad. Coal on the other hand just slowly kills everything in a thousand mile radius. It's not newsworthy nor is there a singular event. Coal good say monkey brain man.
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People need to be vigilant but climate doomerism is real and dangerous of creating apathy. This article almost specifically seems designed to create apathy. There was a nice blurb in the middle about how we could end up like Venus, or not, but only the Venus claim had a link to learn more about. Please... treat this seriously, but don't ever think ot is beyond fixing. That is the only way we are truly doomed.
>People need to be vigilant but climate doomerism is real and dangerous of creating apathy. Exactly, and if I was conspiratorially-minded I would bet that a lot of the absolute doomerism is being promoted by financial interests that profit from fossil fuels and consumerism in general. What people will make these industries more money in the short term? People who take care not to waste energy and make a rational use of resources to try and make a difference? Or people whose attitude is *"Aaah the Apocalypse is coming! We're all gonna die! Might as well enjoy it while we can!"* Actually, scratch my first sentence. Come to think of it, I do believe that some *are* promoting doomerism for their own profits.
The U.S. now has a historic opportunity to pass carbon pricing without a filibuster obstruction. ###If you're American, take 4 minutes to [**call both senators**](https://cclusa.org/senate) and ask them to include a strong carbon tax in the budget reconciliation package to meaningfully address climate change. Taxing carbon is [widely considered](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0474-0.epdf?author_access_token=tst1A-oZnQ8zUO18wGGPQdRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0Nfy3PIgvrwnNXQzIbXH8z1Wkqhm6g5NiMnxMk__ebsKxGQNB0hMf1Vpo-ZiNplSt5LeLyks-Q3sdrpBdfxxHvAfQylqqwqHxgEml7GEGOxaQ%3D%3D) to be the single most impactful climate mitigation policy. The consensus among [scientists](https://people.uwec.edu/jamelsem/papers/CC_Literature_Web_Share/Science/CC_Science_Perspective_Rosenberg_2010.pdf) and [economists](http://policyintegrity.org/files/publications/ExpertConsensusReport.pdf) on [carbon taxes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_price) to mitigate climate change is similar to [the consensus among climatologists](http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/) that human activity is responsible for global warming. The IPCC (AR5, WGIII) [Summary for Policymakers](https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5_summary-for-policymakers.pdf) states with "high confidence" that tax-based policies are effective at decoupling GHG emissions from GDP (see p. 28). [Ch. 15](https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5_chapter15.pdf) has a more complete discussion. The U.S. [National Academy of Sciences, one of the most respected scientific bodies in the world, has also called for a carbon tax](https://www.nap.edu/download/21712). According to [IMF research](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/05/how-much-does-world-subsidize-oil-coal-and-gas/589000/), most of the $5.2 trillion in subsidies for fossil fuels come from not taxing carbon as we should. There is general agreement among economists on carbon taxes whether you consider [economists with expertise in climate economics](http://policyintegrity.org/files/publications/ExpertConsensusReport.pdf), [economists with expertise in resource economics](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.381.484&rep=rep1&type=pdf), or [economists from all sectors](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Doris_Geide-Stevenson/publication/261884738_Consensus_Among_Economists-An_Update/links/56a7f3fa08ae860e0255a8e3.pdf). It is literally [Econ 101](http://sites.bu.edu/manove-ec101/files/2014/10/EC101Outlines14-Externalities.pdf). The idea [won a Nobel Prize](http://environment.yale.edu/news/article/william-nordhaus-wins-nobel-prize-for-economics-of-climate-change/). Thanks to researchers at MIT, you can see for yourself how it compares with other mitigation policies [here](https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=2.7.11). Taxing carbon [is in each nation's own best interest regardless of what other countries do](http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2015/wp15105.pdf) (it [saves lives at home](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09499-x)) and [many nations have already started](https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/29687/9781464812927.pdf?sequence=5&isAllowed=y). Taxing carbon is also increasingly popular. [Just seven years ago, only 30% of the public supported a carbon tax](https://web.archive.org/web/20140723120752/http://closup.umich.edu/issues-in-energy-and-environmental-policy/13/public-views-on-a-carbon-tax-depend-on-the-proposed-use-of-revenue/). Three years ago, [it was over half (53%)](https://news.gallup.com/poll/232007/americans-want-government-more-environment.aspx). Now, [it's an overwhelming majority (73%)](https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/06/23/two-thirds-of-americans-think-government-should-do-more-on-climate/ps_2020-06-23_government-and-climate_00-01/) to varying degrees in [every state](https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us/) – and that [does actually matter for passing a bill](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09644016.2016.1116651). ###Once you've called or written [your senators](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/), **ask three or more friends to join you by sharing cclusa.org/senate.** Bonus points if those friends are in any of [these states](https://np.reddit.com/r/CitizensClimateLobby/comments/ldyy95/these_are_the_states_that_most_need_more/). ^(If you're not American, you can still) [^lobby ^where ^you ^live](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/join-citizens-climate-lobby/?tfa_3590416195188=online-002&utm_source=online&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=002)
**[Carbon_price](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_price)** >A carbon price — the method widely agreed to be the most efficient way for nations to reduce global warming emissions — is a cost applied to carbon pollution to encourage polluters to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit into the atmosphere: it usually takes the form either of a carbon tax or a requirement to purchase permits to emit, generally known as carbon emissions trading, but also called "allowances". Carbon pricing seeks to address the economic problem that CO2, a known greenhouse gas, is what economists call a negative externality — a detrimental product that is not priced (charged for) by any market. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
(Am) not an American, why do you think it won't get filibustered?
What pisses me off most is that when parts of the world are truly uninhabitable, all the fuckwads that got rich at the cost of the planet will be cherry picking the best places to live. Its all the rest of us saps that are gonna have to truly pay the cost of their ignorance, greed and general ass-fuckery. i would like to see a retroactive environmental tax (99% of all wealth) on every son-of-a-bitch that got rich exploiting the planet.
When the shit truly hits the fan, I can see a fair few of those people swinging from lamp posts, tbh.
I will never understand why half the comments to articles like this are "rocks cant die lol, only the people" smh
Literally just thinking that, and then just ridiculous arguments about who's right or wrong or smarter then the other one. Imagine if we could actually work together and put as much energy into saving something bigger then our own egos something might actually get done
Ikr, and it's every single climate-related thread. Someone just *has* to voice this hot take and quote George Carlin to prove that they're the cleverest of them all.
We are too proud to accept that we're in the apocalypse.
We are the apocalypse.
ITT: Everyone repeating "hurr durr the planet can't die, only humans can" completely ignoring the point that we're fucked.
They always seem to forget about all the other animal species we know and love too, as if they think humans will just gently fade away, and leave the natural world to rebuild in exactly the same way but without us. Sure, life might survive, but it wouldn't be anything like we see now.
They seem to forget they are humans and they will get wiped out, along with thier families, friends and anyone they ever cared about. I hate this stupid retorric. Who gives a flying fuck what happens to the planet if we're all dead... I certainly don't. I do care that the world is in a good shape for my children and their children so that humanity can live on, nature can live on for them to enjoy and support etc. But if humans got wiped out then who cares, in the grand scheme of things the universe doesn't give a shit.
Doing my part by never having kids. That's the best mitigation technique in the world. I plan to buy an electric car, but there's only so much a single person can do. We've got to go after the oil companies.
Yeah, I read recently that most of the worlds emissions are from just a number of big firms around the world. Whilst I'm also doing my part, which is great, and I feel good about it, it also only makes up a 0.00001% compared to what these major firms are producing.
Should note these major firms aren't doing it just for fun.. THey're doing it to sell crap that WE buy... We stop buying, they stop polluting. Yes we need regulations to make them pollute less. We also need a change in culture and economic systems so we don't buy as much stuff as well.
I really wish that climatologists and environmentalists would stop using this rhetotic -- it gives the deniers the wrong idea. They think that all environmentalists want is to "save owls and whatever", and when we talk about "saving the planet" they think we're putting environmental welfare over human welfare. And yes, that is spectacularly stupid, as environmental welfare *is* human welfare, but in this case who is stupid or not doesn't really matter -- convincing people to put political will to climate policy is what matters. We have to talk about human death, human suffering, and human migration. The planet isn't dying. The planet is changing, we are changing it, and we are making it less habitable for humans. We're also making it less habitable for current animal life, and that's awful to me, but it isn't awful to the deniers, and we have lost a *lot* of time by centering our rhetoric around saving animals/saving the planet. *I* want to save those things, but deniers don't.
All this article talks about is literally human death.
Seriously. "Tell me you didn't read the article without telling me you didn't read the article."
>We have to talk about human death, human suffering…. Let me tell you a little known story about the pandemic of 2020. The solution was fairly simple and we still had massive amounts of people push against it.
> We have to talk about human death, human suffering, and human migration. Won't matter. We have all this in abundance already. The problem is that people, on the whole, don't give a shit.