Yeah sure, tell that to the billionaires that are actively ruining the planet.
The world is being run by conservatives and fascists.
The world will not change course, humanity is borked.
Whatever tiny hope of correcting this died when Trump was re-elected. It’s been game over for a while now. That’s not to say we shouldn’t try to make a difference where we can, but it’s too late for Earth.
Whatever tiny hope of correcting this died when Trump was re-elected.
The bulk of greenhouse gas emissions are occurring outside the US. Americans have a far higher per-capita output but a relatively small gross population. Even then, the median American’s emissions pale beside that of their billionaire neighbors.
If global change comes, it is going to have to come through the BRIICS, where the bulk of new industrial activity is taking place and the vast majority of emissions already occurs. Trump decoupling the US economy from the rest of the world and his inadvertent quest to tank the fuck out of the US consumer economy is (quixotically) working in favor of these ends.
It’s been game over for a while now.
The game isn’t over, its simply changing. Areas of the world that were habitable will no longer be habitable. Mass migration began in earnest 20 years ago, at the outset of the Iraq War and near-total destabilization of the Middle East. Population growth globally has staled out due to exploding cost of living and economically engineered social isolation of the working class. Foodstuffs that we once considered staples - beef and almonds and oranges - are increasingly categorized as luxury goods.
But we’ve been in the Holocene Extinction Era for over 200 years. This is the sixth great extinction event in planetary history. And through it all, humans flourished. Hell, the advent of modern nitrogen fertilizers have made plant life flourish. The Earth isn’t going anywhere. Humans aren’t going anywhere (certainly not Mars, given how much more inhospitable it is than even the most nightmarish climate change scenarios). Life as we know it and human engineering as we’ve managed it are both far more stubborn and persistent than you’re giving it credit for. We can endure at a much more efficient level of biome utility than we currently employ. We can persist at a scale of hundreds of millions rather than tens of billions.
But we’re going to see sweeping changes. Really ugly ones. What we’re seeing in Gaza today is the roadmap for the future of the Global South, unless they can organize and resist a modern western eugenics regime. There is going to be more war and more bombing and more industrial annihilation and more sophisticated efforts by one group of humans to massacre others.
That’s probably good for the climate, long term. Not good for us or our kids or our grandkids, though.
weve known this for awhile and we know 2 is already unavoidable. We are going backwards when we have to be taking the most extreme actions we can to just slow it down.
The problem is capitalism
-Sent from my iPhone
The old Soviet Union’s environmental record wasn’t great. And environmentalism was very low on the Dengist priority list.
Capitalism incentivizes industrial growth. But it was the “free” real estate of the colonial era and the massive surpluses of the industrial era that incentivized capitalism and created the illusion of unlimited economic expansion.
The problem is one of economic planning. Can we, as an intelligent advanced civilization, collectively manage the scarce resources of our planet? Or will a handful of individuals continue to divide and conquer the proletariat mass? Simply going socialist isn’t enough. Bookchin will tell you that. Hell, Kropotkin will tell you that.
It isn’t enough to merely establish a central and democratically managed local economy. We need a world wide organization capable of balancing the current demands against future resource constraints on the scale of centuries. And we need it to be equitably operated by a planetary consortium of committed socialist ideologues, not a handful of post-war juntas that run one another into the ground in another Cold War.
Consumer-capitalism. Neither is great, but their combination is truly horrifying.
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”
It just seems crazy. Normal, sane, hardworking people of the world are begging for governments and corporations to stop killing us through pollution, but the rich don’t give a fuck. There won’t be consequences for them. There won’t be a reckoning. It just feels like they’ll stubbornly punish all of us for not being born wealthy like they were.
And the corpos and govs cry incessantly about not being given new victims to exploit and discard. The entitlement is disgusting.
This is where I envy religious people: I would love to believe that proper justice will be served eventually. But I can’t, I have to watch the injustices and cannot do anything about it.
We are fucked.
Thats been humanities lower back tattoo for a while now.
Lol yeah change course now because all the other warnings worked
We all know we are fucked. I am living in the moment till it all ends and never having children. Humanity will destroy this planet long before it changes course.
Covid convinced me we’re done.
We couldn’t even get people to wear a fucking mask to protect themselves from a disease they saw killing their neighbors. Shit - we can’t get them to allow other people to wear a mask.
The part that absolutely kills me about this is that there were anti-maskers during the 1918 “spanish flu” pandemic. This suggest that with two valid examples that this is a bad idea, people still chose to not do it. It also suggests that we’re still the same society that we were 100 years ago.
https://www.history.com/articles/1918-spanish-flu-mask-wearing-resistance
We’re still the same society we were 500 years ago, just with technology.
COVID (or more specifically, the response to it) was the turning point for me as well. The realization that we would not work together to manage a crisis.
If people won’t do the easy shit, they sure as hell won’t do the more difficult things that are needed to address climate collapse.
Planet will be fine. Humanity and many other lifeforms? Not so much.
Mass extinction event is all ready happening so yeah
The next topic under this Post is that Texas sues Tylenol because of autism claims.
We’re fucking doomed. Thats what I personally think and I really Wish and Hope that I’m wrong.
It’s over. Even if every single person and corporation did an about-face on this right now, inertia alone would carry us into the consequences this was intended to avoid. Enjoy it while it lasts.
If everyone got together and came to the decision to fix the planet, it would probably still be possible, even though it’ll likely get to a point where going outside is a complication. Generations, to be sure.
Though of course, we’re never all going to agree on how to go about it, so you might be right.
Money buys power and influence and politicians react more to that than their own constituents. When money can bend reality and get people to vote against their own interests just to keep the status quo, there’ll be no change.
I mean, for all the things we do right we get stuff like the Bezos wedding where everyone arrives via private jet or COP25 where everyone also arrives by private jet to discuss the climate.
We have Greta Thunberg who addressed the world leaders and voiced our discontent at their lack of action. Her views are not unique and are a reflection of many but yet, despite laying the truth bare and shaming leaders for their inaction, power and influence labels her as whatever they want to discredit her words and influence.
So, if we want to reverse things and change, we need to target the rich and tax them, shame them, eat them… Whatever it takes and only then will we be able to do something net positive. Doing ‘our part’ is not enough when the top 1% literally offsets all of our efforts everyday.
World is too busy deciding whether to kill minorities or tax the rich an extra few percent to make any progress on this.
We desperately need a socialist revolution.
No we don’t.
What we really need is people to stop fantasizing about spherical revolutions in frictionless societies and do the boring, unfun, hard things that actually make a difference.
It requires people not doing nothing until magically the perfect thing comes along and realizing they’ll have to wade through and actively support shit, until they’ve successfully reformed or composted said shit into something that is finally able to grow the first leafs of anything resembling a society they want.
I’m just so tired of people rejecting the facts of the political systems they live under in order to pretend to chase some other system they won’t see within their life time.
We have to pick the least bad option and then try to make them better because that’s just the way shit works. Acknowledging that doesn’t mean you are complicit or any other such nonsense in the same way acknowledging climate change doesn’t mean you don’t want a climate that isn’t rapidly deteriorating.
“But if x, y, and z people just…” yeah well they won’t, and we know they won’t, so we have the constraints we have.
Not super directed at you, I’ve just been seeing entirely too many naive, in my opinion, fake socialists that seem to only value socialism as far as they can use it as a weapon to brandish against liberals and other socialists who simply see reality and acknowledge that doing anything requires getting your hands dirty.
The “boring, unfun, hard things that actually make a difference” have already been tried in the last 50 years. It has not made a difference. The only thing that can make a difference, as history has shown us time and time and time again, is a revolution
If you can’t see the difference where we have gay marriage, for a while had notably less discrimination, a massive improvement in workers rights, improvements to social security nets etc, I don’t know what to tell you.
More than that, this childish opinion misses that you haven’t tried this.
You’ve constantly swapped between democrats and republicans, and purity tested so hard that democrats have basically stopped seeing you as a real force for change within their party.
You have only tore down your chances while actual progressives keep trying, only to be disappointed that you’re there as a roadblock to your shared goals.
To top this all off, you clearly do not understand that you not only need 3 of 4 branches of government and definitely need a super majority senate (Which you haven’t had usably in 25 years) but you also need enough progressives within the party to sway their goals away from just the wishes of their corporate donors.
You want to pretend that we have tried this, but we haven’t tried jack shit, because of folks like you.
More than that, you haven’t tried any other method either, so your comment ends up boiling down to “lets try nothing because I don’t like, nor do I want to try the ‘boring, unfun, hard things that actually make a difference’”
We have to pick the least bad option and then try to make them better because that’s just the way shit works
No we don’t, and no it isn’t. That’s how the suppression of radical change works. I am not saying that anything short of utopia is not worth pursuing, just that I don’t see why we shouldn’t start from that and then work down to a realistic compromise, rather than starting from the bad options that are given to us. There are other choices, if you can look further than your nose.
No we don’t, and no it isn’t. That’s how the suppression of radical change works.
You aren’t doing jack shit of this radical change you spout on about. You don’t actually want to help, so you come up with excuses to do nothing while feeling better than those who do because your ideas all start with someone else moving first.
I am not saying that anything short of utopia is not worth pursuing, just that I don’t see why we shouldn’t start from that and then work down to a realistic compromise
Because you don’t have the leverage or organization to start there. Instead you must start by slowly working to put out the fire and getting your fellow countryman to see the benefits of socialist policy.
rather than starting from the bad options that are given to us.
You exist in this system, not outside of it. You start here for that is reality, not fantasy. Id love to start from the position of being the rich using my wealth to sway policy. It’s not reality though.
There are other choices, if you can look further than your nose.
List one that doesn’t start with some fantastical revolution you aren’t organizing and aren’t willing to risk your life in as a first mover
If the answer is about forming a new party in a country that has winner takes all or first past the post, I fear you’ve not thought it through.
We’re talking about a socialist revolution here. The electoral process of the capitalist rulers of the United States is hardly relevant.
Its completely relevant to anyone who isn’t a child.
You can’t magically have this whimsical revolution you dream of.
Its 100% a “you first” type of deal where you absolutely are not willing to be first, and don’t realize you have a whole lot of the population you’d need to convince first, and until you do, you need to face the hard realities of the system you live in, and mitigate the damage.
You aren’t doing jack shit of this radical change you spout on about. You don’t actually want to help, so you come up with excuses to do nothing while feeling better than those who do because your ideas all start with someone else moving first.
Uh, source? Do I know you?
Because you don’t have the leverage or organization to start there. Instead you must start by slowly working to put out the fire and getting your fellow countryman to see the benefits of socialist policy.
The leverage is numbers. 8 billion humans against what, a stadium of people? And the organization at this point is just basic survival instinct?? We’re on a burning planet and being told that yes we need change, but we also need to wageslave while doing it. I do agree on the “teaching” part btw.
You exist in this system, not outside of it. You start here for that is reality, not fantasy. Id love to start from the position of being the rich using my wealth to sway policy. It’s not reality though.
The system is something that monkeys invented. I “exist in it” in the sense in the sense that I am contemporary to it, yes. I exist in what you could call the universe, nature, or reality.
List one that doesn’t start with some fantastical revolution you aren’t organizing and aren’t willing to risk your life in as a first mover
Nice try glowie. I just know what has already happened in the past and can try to extrapolate. And again, I don’t know what basis you have to speak of my character.
If the answer is about forming a new party in a country that has winner takes all or first past the post, I fear you’ve not thought it through.
Jesus christ, is that the most radical, outside-of-the system take you could think of for global policy change?
The leverage is numbers. 8 billion humans against what, a stadium of people?
The idea that 8 billion people would be on your side is the forefront of showing why what you’re suggesting is closer to fantasy than reality. More people than you care to admit are straight up fascist
It is not a “my side” thing. I do believe that 8 billion humans have tackling climate change in their best interest, whether they know it or not.
Uh, source? Do I know you?
You don’t. That’s why its up to you to make your point when making statements like this.
I’ve seen no such actions so without any particular claims, this is just fantasy posting.
The leverage is numbers.
I literally address the fact that you don’t have said leverage and wont get it any time soon in the very thing that you quote.
No one is being convinced by your angsty, snarky, online leftist purity raging.
And the organization at this point is just basic survival instinct?
If you think basic survival instincts are in any way conducive to long term goals… I don’t even have a clever retort. That’s just an insane thing to think.
We’re on a burning planet and being told that yes we need change, but we also need to wageslave while doing it.
You aren’t told, thats the reality.
People stop doing their jobs, without tremendous planning ahead, and they die.
That’s reality.
You are nowhere near having the capacity for a general strike, and you’re losing capacity as the tech feudal lords clamp down on the means of communication, and as people on decentralized platforms are notoriously completely impossible to deal with and hyper idealistic.
Nice try glowie.
See, it’s childish bullshit like this which means we can’t make progress.
My point is clearly that nothing remotely like these fantastical ideas of an underground revolution are actually happening. We’ve seen these grumblings online for fucking decades.
You’d think you’d have literally anything, like non personally, to show for it. Instead its nothing but talk.
Some random not hyper online dude shooting a healthcare ceo in the back because his back hurt and he was hard done by them is the closest you’ve come to that, and it wasn’t you.
I just know what has already happened in the past and can try to extrapolate.
You are remembering selectively, and remembering out of context, because the US is not WW2 germany. They’re WW2 germany with nukes and a military multiples of times more formidable than the next multiple combined.
There is no coalition of countries currently equipped to take them on.
More than that, those countries are all having similar problems with right wing groups flaring up.
More than that still, in recent history, when there have been revolts, they haven’t switched to socialism, or even just more socialism than before in notable ways. They’ve mostly just switched to more capitalism, supported by the US.
And again, I don’t know what basis you have to speak of my character.
Because once again, the online fringe you represent simply has no track record to speak of. They simply have not done anything for decades, and if they had any teeth, there would be something, anything to show for it.
Jesus christ, is that the most radical, outside-of-the system take you could think of for global policy change?
No, it isn’t the previous thing you absolutely do not have the guts or organization for is. This is the accomplishable thing that would not accomplish the final goals and instead would be handing right wing fascists the long term victory on a silver platter.
Taxes and levies to incentivise behavior don’t work. People will eat shit salads before they give up their F150s. We can’t just let people pay to avoid responsibility.
Bullshit. Costs absolutely influence shopping behavior. If you drive it out of an affordable range while providing viable, more environmentally friendly, alternatives. People will be forced to change
Have you ever considered taxes to pay for collective goods and services, making peoples lives easier, them smarter, building trust in the idea that government can work and giving the government more teeth?
People will eat shit salads before they give up their F150s. We can’t just let people pay to avoid responsibility.
The F150 people were sold on the ridiculous trucks by the automotive industry. Theyre also much smaller as a part of the problem.
The people who make decisions we all feel forced to live with are the ones whose businesses choose the path of least resistance
F150s are a significant part of the entire emissions of the united states. Cars in general are one of the largest single categories.
How do you change that though? By beating down the people who have the least damage per person? Or by beating down the companies that push these products, and more importantly the ownership class that owns them and casually use private jets to chauffeur their poodles around?
You cannot do one or the other to stop climate change. You have to do both. Again, cars are one of the single largest polluters in the world, and especially in the usa. The working class will need to make changes in their life styles as well. The problem is not solveable just by having companies change, consumers also need to be willing to accept changes in purchasing habits
Hot climate take: Having children is the most selfish thing possible.
