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[Kurzgesagt] Is It Too Late To Stop Climate Change? Well, it's Complicated.
- Thread starter FliX
- Start date
This was actually the most time Climate Change has gotten at a debate so...
The wheels are in motion. Anthropogenic climate change cannot be stopped. The earth's systems are all interlinked and extremely complex. You cannot flip a switch and then the change "stops". This whole debate about "stopping climate change" is a fallacy. Climate is always changing, the difference about the current change is that it is happening much faster than what can be reconstructed about past changes, and this extreme acceleration of climate change is what will make it so difficult for the planet's ecosystems - including humans - to adapt to it. This whole stopping debate makes people think it's like a switch and if we implement some measures in the future it will just stop, so we can just delay them, that's not how it works. It's not about stopping change, it's about mitigating it and its effects. As long as capitalism is the global economic system and all countries are obsessed with permanent growth, this cannot be achieved.
They are obviously very tech and science focused, that's why most of their videos are into how tech can solve our problems instead of pondering the question of political change.
For all the people who think 'nothing' is being done: check out the good news network. They regularly have news on initiatives and developments regarding climate change.
Will the stuff they report on be enough? Perhaps (probably) not, but it paints a less grim picture than this thread. And could help relieve some existential dread, which isn't healthy for anyone.
Will the stuff they report on be enough? Perhaps (probably) not, but it paints a less grim picture than this thread. And could help relieve some existential dread, which isn't healthy for anyone.
That damn 2000 election. Imagine if Gore had been setting us up to deal with this shit 20 years ago?
Absolutely agreed here.
To put it in context:
Global Warming
Global warming is happening now, and scientists are confident that greenhouse gases are responsible. To understand what this means for humanity, it is necessary to understand what global warming is, how scientists know it's happening, and how they predict future climate.
It's the rapid rise that's going to choke us. That rate of change that is going to knock us out of our crib that we've taken for advantage since the dawn of agriculture. We all know the planet itself is just a rotating rock, and life in some fashion will go on, but what a lot of us are worried about is the complete collapse of the biosphere and poisoning of the oceans with overheating. Life for almost all creatures is going to be negatively impacted to the point of extinction for many.
So far our natural sinks (oceans, ice, forests, rocks, etc.) have been doing their job in making sure we're not feeling all of the warming we've already put out, but that's not going to last for long. In our lifetimes we're going to see more of earth's systems buckle and fail. As we see already with this rapid acceleration, they're already taking too much.And humanity as it is now is absolutely not ready for what has been cooking.
To give some props to a clear climate change analog, this line from Chernobyl hits it on the nose a bit:
"Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid."
And we keep stalling the real transformative societal change needed to give ourselves a fairer chance at coping with our already changed environment.
That what-if is always going to sting. At least we would've had a better shot at doing something than the actual less than nothing we got. Grass is literally greener when talking about this potential side, lol.
OP
OP
You're not wrong, I had the same though.
Though to be fair at least they have an old video that shows nicely that overall population growth really isn't a problem if we lift countries out of poverty.
Amazing post that really hammers home how influential the current economic system is in furthering climate change. Things will not change unless we change this system.
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The world's corporations have spent dozens of billions of dollars in bribes and lobbying (a.k.a. legalized bribes) over more than two decades in order to prevent production chain environmental standards being adopted as green policy. You occasionally hear of a factory-to-shop environmental standard being briefly discussed, only for it to vanish into nothingness after a few weeks. Remember their backlash against mandatory minimum operational lifespans for consumer products. You probably can't, since that initiative was quashed almost immediately after it was mentioned in the media, around 10 years ago (only thing we got out of it was that minimum two years' warranty for private consumers). Right-to-repair people still try to continue the fight, albeit from a slightly different angle (which is also furiously contested by the corporations).
Just shows that everything we try to help mitigate climate change is just instantly crushed and suppressed by big corporations and their billions. Stuff like this just makes me super pessimistic as it's like what we can do other than start a revolution? These corporations and lobbying groups aren't just going to change through us protesting and voting in a better candidate, anyone we get is owned by the corporations anyway. It's depressing to know that the biosphere of the earth which took billions of years to evolve and develop is going to be destroyed in the next 50 years or so because of the pursuit of infinite growth and profits. Thanks for the reply, really opens my eyes to how entrenched people are in the system in keeping the status quo.