This is fine, we just need to switch from plastic bugs and make caps attached to bottles and everything will be alright! Together we can fight at least 1% of the carbon emissions from top 100 corporations in the world :)
I really think this narrative is counterproductive. It’s not like corporations produce greenhouse gasses because they think it’s fun. They’re doing it to produce goods that people want at the absolute minimal price possible.
No corporation is going to choose more environmentally friendly practices out of the goodness of their own hearts unless those practices are cheaper. And given that that is very rarely the case, we have to look at things like carbon taxes to actually price in the externalities of climate damage. But that is going to increase the prices of some goods, and that requires a level of political will that has proven very difficult to come by. “Just make corporations pay” to fix things, whether that’s a carbon tax or taxes on oil company executive pay or dividends or whatever else the proposal may be is always going to mean “increase prices to compensate for climate-related externalities”.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that all costs of addressing climate change must directly fall on consumers; government subsidies to reduce the costs of environmentally sustainable practices can also be extremely beneficial. But ultimately, this is a problem that we’ve all created, and we’re all going to have to be part of solving it. Blaming corporations, even if partially accurate, doesn’t actually get us any closer to solving things.
Yes and No. Yes, it’s not only corporations and we must act ourselves.
No, it’s the rules that set the game. Corporations play within the rules. Politics is owning and can change the rules. The society and corporations will follow accordingly. If we really want to change we can. Look what happened during Covid. In retrospect, some insane rules (eg Germany kids not allowed to enter playgrounds. Kids couldn’t play to save the elderly). However, society obeyed to those rules.
It’s not us, it’s the rules that must change. In my view this should be the priority.
At least here in Australia parents were using the kids at the playground to socialise (standing right up in each other’s space, holding empty coffee cups to justify no mask), and so there were multiple vectors of infection. That and multigenerational households are more common in some parts of the world, so if the kid brings it home, whole family gets sick, hospital system overloads.
It wasn’t specifically kids suffer so oldies don’t die, but the continuation is that if the oldies are healthy, if anyone needs the hospital, there’ll be staff to look after them.
TL;DR people are taking the piss and making the jobs of HCWs harder… Not like that’s anything new 🙄
yeah it was obviously the same on any playground so the above comment saying it was “to safe elderly” is just very short sighted. Additionaly implying that this was the case in whole of Germany is again wrong. Each federal state had it’s own health regulations in place but yeah some of those were kind of mediated by the ministry of health. Anyway it was a lot more complex than what this comment suggests
Sure it was more complex. Not going to write a Phd here.
My point is, the society accepts rules even tough rules if it’s for everyone. If it’s fair. So, at Covid times younger people, who are less likely to get serious sickness were accepting being „caged“ for two years (exaggerating a bit. If you are 5 years old. 2 years is half of your life!)
I strongly miss this generational fairness when it comes to climate change. Not seeing any step back in terms of carbon consumption/ consumption at all from the older people.
Don’t know about your country. The bigger goal in Europe was to keep hospitals working. Goal was not to Triage people cos hospitals were crowed. That happened in the beginning in Northern Italy. At Triage you look at who has biggest chances of survival, who is worth to invest your effort. Guess if it’s the elderly or the younger.
Just to make it clear. It’s fine for me how it worked out in Germany. China is the blue print how it worked bad. But want to make my argument that all that rules were on the shoulders of the younger generation to safe the elderly.
Right now in Germany, we have an insane political discussion about carbon reduction. It’s about actions. Being active. So, your heaters need to be replaced from oil and gas to renewables. Yes, it will cost some money. Do you think people are following that goal to safe the younger generations? I‘m pretty pissed about my and the older generation. And concerned about the reality for my kids.
and guess who lobbies a ridiculous amount to either keep the rules the same or bias it further towards their interests
yep, corporations once again
Indeed. Go out at the street and show you want change. Politics fear many people on streets fighting for their rights. Look at France, Israel. When was last time you fight for your rights?
However, society obeyed to those rules.
We did but we’re paying for it now with the rise of “-isms” whose values are built on stifling change. 2-3 years of rapid change might have helped redefine an era of politics for the contrary. TBD I guess.
Blaming the public over corporations is the #1 reason why we are in this mess in the first place. For decades, the narrative has been “it’s your fault and you need to change your habits”. It is a pointless and useless narrative because nobody is going to actively change anything like that until they are forced to. Even when we make moderate, easy efforts to do stuff like recycling, the recycling companies bitch and moan about how they can’t ship this shit off to China to let them do the work, and then throw away most of it, anyway. We PAY recycling companies to recycle this shit and they can’t be bothered to figure out how to recycle it. We PAY THEM to take away materials to use in new products, not the other way around.
In every aspect of people’s lives, you will find that corporations use up 90% of the resources that the general public use because corporations deal in economies-of-scale far bigger than anything a person or even a country can do. Corporations have been pushing the “blame the public” narrative to shift focus away from the decades of abuse they will continue to inflict on the planet. Corporation shit all over everything, and they will continue to do so in the name of profit. That is exactly what they are designed to do.
It takes governmental effort and regulations against the corporations to stop this sort of thing. They do it for clean water, and CFCs, and automotive design, and architecture, and many many other things. Why? Because a minority group of people who are struggling to make a living is never going to have enough power and clout as a large corporation or a government.
It’s not like corporations produce greenhouse gasses because they think it’s fun.
I think we can agree on that corporations are aimed at cheapest way to produce most popular goods at the biggest scale they can achieve for, in the end, produce the biggest possible profit. Thats what corporations are made for: money.
In the end, rich guy gets a yacht, bunker for apocalypse and private residence with AC, private kitchen stuff and anything they want so he will be fine even if its 60C outside. If it will get unbearable, they’ll move to something like Norway and will be fine.
At the same time, hundreds of thousands of people who live in hot countries will die and millions will be climate refugees.
All that, because producing iphone with coal electricity (simplification, albeit I feel like its close to truth) is 10$ cheaper.
Blaming corporations, even if partially accurate, doesn’t actually get us any closer to solving things.
Swapping to paper bags will not help either. There are only two options to solve the issue:
- Government forces corpo to stop wasting our planet (because we don’t have a spare one)
- People get torches
1 is impossible because gov will never cut the feeding hand and 2 is just a matter of time until we will get couple hundred millions migrants from Aftica, India, Pakistan etc.
1 is still possible. But, we’re at a tipping point between ending up in some Cyberpunk corporate-ran dystopia and one where the general public actually has the upper-hand and can fend off governmental corruption.
Choose wisely. Vote every year, twice a year.
but the thing about voting is that basically every politician is either:
- In the pocket of one or more corporations
- Literally part of a corporation (or outright owns one)
- A politician at who doesn’t have as much power as the former two or is in the pocket of one of them
so we could vote for John StopClimateChange, and then find out that every single thing that Mr. StopClimateChange said about his crusade to stopping climate change was not at all true or was so utterly miniscule in the long run as to be meaningless
then what?
This is a defeatist and authoritarian position that the rich and powerful want you to have. They want to feel like you can’t win, so that they vote behind you while you sit at home. Until eventually, they just dismantle democracy altogether and we go back to fiefdoms.
There is clearly one party that is more in line with the goals of fighting climate change than the other. Vote for that group. Vote for that group twice a year.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=t0e9guhV35o
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
this is a problem that we’ve all created
You mean this is a problem that the boomers and gen x created. THEY are the generations that controlled the corporations whose only concern was profit. THEY are the generations that pushed consumerism with no regard to the natural world. THEY are the generations that elected the politicians that allowed this all to happen. So here come the millennials and zoomers to clean up their mess, just like everything else they fucked up for the rest of us.
Yeah, don’t put the blame on us. In all my 29 years of life climate change has always been a big topic no one has done anything about.
We’re living in this ridiculous gerontocracy where old lizards bought by corporations are making decisions to benefit said corporations for the next couple of months, all the while the coming generations suffer.
At this point it’s too late. It’s time to owe up, apologise for being so greedy that you used up the world, leaving nothing for coming generations.
If you’re 29 that means you’re borderline millennial/gen z. Definitely not blaming you here. You are correct, this has been an issue for our entire lives and the generations before us have done exactly nothing to curtail the destruction of our planet
What an awkward speech.
Sure people spending all day on TikTok and playing with cryptocurrencies are actually solving problems created by people who worked in the mines and watched TV.
The truth is, across all generations, everyone is doing anything to live the most confortable life possible according to their convictions, and YouTubers today are not better promoting their shitty gamer drinks or VPN services than a 1980s vendor trying to sell as much diesel engines as possible. It’s even more true when it comes to corporate, or you’ll have to tell me what’s is Zuckerberg doing for the planet that Bill Gates is not.
At any given time there were people willing to change the world, trying to make it more fair. We’re just never enough. And being a millennial I can assure you it’s not changing anytime soon, even tho things are getting shittier and shittier.
Playing with cryptocurrency (monopoly money/disney dollars) is an incredibly energy intense process. Extremely wasteful and damaging just to play with some made up money.
although it’s very common for the earlier generation to blame the later generation for the world sucking (or what they percieve as “sucking”), in this case it doesn’t work because not every boomer and gen-x-er is a CEO or past CEO
like they’re wrong to blame the later generations for this, but that’s because it’s not mainly a generational thing
Looking at the voting results for younger generations, this isn’t even close to this simple. Yes, there is a slight shift towards more environmental policies/parties, but it is far from a majority even in the youngest age bracket that is allowed to vote (looking at voting results from the last general election in Germany).
They produce like double of what we need, it’s not only what we need and buy, capitalism is extremely inefficient in the usage of resources, which brought us into this mess.
Yeah. Anything that isn’t consumed is destroyed. Case in point, dumpster diving at grocery stores is illegal. Fast fashion companies destroy clothes that don’t sell.
The entire system is fucked.
I think as someone who did “the things”, and that’s how I live now, it’s hard to look around and see basically no perceptible difference. The incentive is slim for the individual. The bulk of the population is never going to make those changes.
That’s why change needs to come from the corporate level through regulation.
People generally just want food, shelter, health, and comfort. And most people in the world are struggling to maintain food and shelter.
Their evironmental footprint doesn’t even register as an afterthought.
That’s what I was going to suggest but then I always feel this is a complicated problem and it’s not just one thing. It’s a lot of efforts on in different areas, but regulation is certainly one. It shouldn’t be that hard to do considering it’s one of the main responsibilities of government.
Have you seen how much CEOs get paid?
Corporations can switch to greener alternatives AND pay workers a living wage AND make a profit, without having the consumers pay the price.
All it takes is the willingness of politicians to force them to. Corporations raise prices because they’re allowed to, and they’ll take any excuse they can get to get more money out of people.
Gas prices have skyrocketed. First it was covid’s fault. Then it was the war in Ukraine. All the while gas corporations have been seeing record-breaking profits. It’s all just greed.Yes! If we’re expecting corporations to grow a conscience and “Do the right thingTM” then we’re doomed.
Though I do think the corporations are somewhat responsible for the narrative that everyone is powerless except for them. People pushing the “but the corporations!” while being unwilling to make any changes themselves are actually just carrying water for them. Promoting malaise and doomerism is just letting them have their way.
At any rate trying to appeal to the corporations to do the right thing is a complete waste of time. We need to make more effort ourselves. Which means making an effort to reduce our own carbon emissions as individuals. While also participating in the political process to create regulations that force the corporations to do the right thing. Because they sure as hell won’t do it on their own no matter how much people whine about it on the internet.
They’re doing it to produce goods that people want at the absolute minimal price possible.
And there are portions of people in our society that will pay for those minimal prices either because they can’t afford anything else, or strictly because it’s convenient for them to spend that little so that they have more money left over to do more stuff in their life elsewhere.
But there are also people that are willing to sacrifice and make changes to their lifestyles and spending practices to accommodate the impacts of their actions.
The same is true with corporations. Some large corpos in the world are actively trying to move towards sustainable, circular economies. I’m doing a lot of research right now into the textile industry, and two of the biggest corporations in that space that I’ve seen are doing decent work on the two fronts I previously mentioned are Lenzing (TENCEL™) and Aquafil (ECONYL®).
Lenzing uses wood of various species from places in Europe, all managed well and FSC/PEFC controlled, to draw out fibers and filaments that are just as fine and useful as polyester fibers/filaments, yet with the added bonus of biodegradability. They also recycle cotton clothing from collection centers in Spain and some larger textile service companies in southern Europe and mix that in with their wood-based feedstock to produce the same rayon fibers.
Aquafil runs on a similar model to Lenzing, except they base theirs on nylon instead of rayon. Aquafil collects ghost nets from around Europe and South America, along with other corporations’ scrap nylon (pre-consumer waste) and post-consumer waste from a number of brands (e.g. sunglasses, jackets, etc.) to regenerate nylon back into the same quality as you would find in virgin materials. Now, I don’t think that plastic is sufficient anymore thanks to the non-degradable waste associated with it, but it’s better than nothing.
Are there flaws with those 2 companies: of course. Their chemical processes might not be 100% closed loop and their claims might be overexaggerated in ways, but it’s better than nothing.
Anyways, what this examples shows is that there are corporations and even people on the ground that are willing to make more sustainable choices because they legitimately see the benefit of doing so compared to convention. Someone else might describe this as a form of an adoption life cycle, where you have those more willing to change and those less willing to change as practices and habits shift over time.
Could government help with that? I believe so. I think that’s just one lever of change though. If you’ve been following solar PV growth over the last decade and a half, then you know about the “contagion” phenomenon: some early adopters pick up solar, only for considerers and even late adopters to do the same as word of mouth and other social drivers influence decision making at a people level.
Could the same happen with other sustainable choices in the economy? I fall more into the early adopter camp, so I would say yes. I think corporations spend a lot of time and marketing convincing their customers that said corporations are the best and only options and that no other alternative exists out there: when there absolutely is or might be. Perhaps all it takes is demonstrating to people, doing, not talking, walking the walk, to change their minds. I think the same tactics could be used, in addition to government intervention.
Bottom-up + top-down is the strategy I’ve heard described by many proponents of sustainability, most notably Al Gore, and I’m all for it too. Luckily humans, at least in some countries around the world, live in free societies and can divide and conquer to work on both of these fronts to affect change.
I really think this narrative is counterproductive. It’s not like corporations produce greenhouse gasses because they think it’s fun. They’re doing it to produce goods that people want at the absolute minimal price possible.
No corporation is going to choose more environmentally friendly practices out of the goodness of their own hearts unless those practices are cheaper.
I didn’t get past you contradicting yourself in the first three sentences. Sorry.
You get that nuance out of here, young man/woman! We won’t have that kind of thing round these parts!
Can we please leave these canned responses on reddit
Can we leave simplistic, reductionist arguments on reddit?
Also if you only eat meat in the weekends then the rich peoples private jets will suddenly have no environmental impact
Is there a bracelet I can wear to show my solidarity with the people dying of heat stroke, or perhaps an instagram filter.
These two things have no relation. One is about climate change, the other one about (micro)plastics in the environment and our food chain.
Apparently there are still loads of people who don’t understand this simple fact and think everything that is done to make the world a better place is for climate change.
I mean, they both show a callous disregard for the fragility of life on this planet, and a keen disinterest in anything but short term convenience and comfort? Oh and profit, can’t forget about MONEY
This argument keeps coming up as an excuse to do nothing.
- It’s not my fault but theirs!
- Why should I change when they won’t?
- I’m just one person against all these big corps, why try?
- Even if I stopped, it wouldn’t make a difference.
Pure defeatism neglecting even any bit of responsibility.
Yet people who say this will put another child on the planet, buy yet another product from Apple on release, love fast fashion, buy the cheapest goods possible, toss their meal as soon as they’re full, vote egoistically, take the cheapest trip to wherever, drive a car, toss cigarette butts on the ground, and so much more.
It’s always easier to blame others. Yes, corporations are shit, but remember, they are made up of people like you and I.
WE work there.
WE buy their crap.
WE vote for the same politicians over and over again (or don’t vote at all).
WE put another child on this planet to go through this shit.
WE as humans are the problem.See, that’s your point of view. My point of view is that people who are all doom online are the problem.
I feel the need to remind people that the concept of the ecological footprint was invented by BP to direct the focus of climate fears away from large corporations and onto individuals.
WE as humans are the problem.
you can count the owners of the entities that produce the most greenhouse gases within 3 digits; it’s not “everybody”
Together we can fight at least 1% of the carbon emissions from top 100 corporations in the world :)
I wish our choices had a 1% impact… That seems extremely generous.
For example…
Go look at your local Walmart and it’s bazillion products. They expect to sell almost everything in that store multiple times within a month. All that generates enormous waste on a scale that’s literally impossible for the earth to sustain for another 100 years without total ecological collapse.
We’re living in the single most polluting decade in human history, every decade, since all of us were born. Even if the entire Lemmy user base become subsistence farming monks, the factories would just keep churning out poison unphased.
I’m not saying it’s bad for people to try and consume more responsibly. I’m just saying it doesn’t make a difference over any meaningful time period until there’s a radical change in how our global economy functions.
Environmental catastrophe will continue until we literally cannot ignore it, only then will we do anything substantial about it. Unfortunately that’s just how our society works.
I don’t agree with you. Many individuals changing their behavior is what it takes for an economic shift in our society. By thinking that we don’t have an impact we loose motivation to change our behavior. So if you say you are annoyed by big supermarkets filling our planet with waste that’s fine, I agree. But this needs to lead to a change in behavior, first of yourself, then for those who notice you haven’t died from eating mostly vegan products and buying from local farmers markets and then hopefully for most people in our society.
Companies produce as long as people consume their products. If commnsumers switch to sustainable products (quite different from products advertised as sustainable) companies will have to follow
I’m not saying your personal choices are bad, I’m saying if you live as sustainably as possible, you’re only delaying the inevitable by a millisecond at best. Change needs to be forced, globally, or we’re still in the same situation, just by 2051 with a massive “green movement” instead of 2050.
But this talk we’re having, it’s all too late.
We’re entering an era of climate induced super weather that will force the hand of leaders across the globe.
It’s gotten to the point where it’s becoming cheaper and more strategically significant to do something about climate change, than it is to ignore it. That’s when the change happens under our system.
What has that to do with anything? Reducing single use plastics is environmental protection which is not the same as fighting climate change. No one who fights against plastics does so for climate change. Stop spreading such nonsense. Not even your linked article claims something like that.
Why would that be orthogonal? Most plastics are created using crude oil and natural gas feedstocks - the creation of these single use plastics directly impacts climate change.
Energv wise plastics are often super cheap to produce especially compared to their reusable and non plastic alternatives. IIRC the CO2 footprint is drastically lower for items like bags and straws made of plastic.
we have the 80% solution and it’s nuclear power, but whatever y’all keep wailing and gnashing teeth and denying the obvious. I’m just gonna keep on living I guess and hope my house survives the shitty weather.
We have what, 10 years to try stop the planet to get over 1,5ºC? 20 over 2ºC?, that’s pretty much the time it takes to build a new nuclear power plant from 0.
We are too late.
“No need to change, NUCULAR will save us.”
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At this point, I’m down for the execution of selfish billionaires who actively push for coal and other harmful climate policies. They not only don’t care about the world, they are actively harming it to make their short time left feel better from seeing a number go up in their bank.
If you were on reddit: “You have been permanently suspended for threatening to use violence.”
I’d always just drop a link. Got the message across, but never got me banned:
I always thought Lemmy (at least this instance) had stricter rules than Reddit. Seeing a comment here that outright wishes for billionaires to be culled is a huge culture shock.
Because we aren’t worried about offending advertisers. This is what real people think without being forced to be advertiser friendly.
It’s also a VERY popular sentiment the world over
But also Reddit admins are total deadshits, I was permanently banned and then harassed on other platforms for pointing out that Pitbulls are banned in Australia and that we euthanise them, and any other violent animals(just said that was a law here, nothing else). Crazy dog fuckers wouldn’t leave me alone.
I got banned from Reddit, then when I sent an appeal, got permabanned on the alt account too for “repeated violations”.
Damned if they say you did, damned-er if you say you did not.
At least Lemmy has a modlog for everyone to see (until some instance decides to scrub that… but I wouldn’t like to stay on one of those).
Unfortunately, now the comment just says Removed
The comment itself is still there, just hidden. You can see it in the modlog, page source, or some apps.
It would do absolutely nothing at all. For every billionaire that is running some seedy enterprise that you don’t like, there are dozens if not hundreds of well paid people that are supporting that enterprise and would keep it going going forever.
Send them all to a for-profit prison I say!
Yeah, the vast majority of human kind would gladly own a multi billion dollar company even if that company were causing climate change.
I would gladly own one, I would also gladly pivot it towards not causing climate change.
Only problem is owning one in the first place; most are “publicly owned” by a bunch of investors who themselves are investment funds owned by some other bunch of investors like those putting their money in 401k plans.
It’s a nice tangle of cross-ownerships that ends up hurting the actual owners without them having any power to change anything.
You know what the French nobility did when the people started to, quite rightfully, remove their heads? It sure wasn’t move in to the newly vacant palace…
Start at the top and keep going down the list until emissions fall far enough.
It’s not just the billionaires.
It’s the entire first-world culture of consumerism.
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dang my comment was quadruple removed, no ragrets
you are a naughty boy.
pretty stupid reason to remove the comment.
If only somebody warned us 50 or 100 years ago. Oh wait, they did.
More like over 200 years ago. There was a french female scientist that discovered the greenhouse effect before John Tyndall but I forgot her name and I’m at work rn, can’t search for it.
Are you thinking of Joseph Fourier? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science
It was an American named Eunice Foote that detailed the mechanics of the greenhouse effect, but, give or take, it was also around the same time that many scientists came to the same or similar conclusions about this subject. So yes, we’ve been warned for over 200 years and have done exactly nothing to solve the problem. Why? $.
That’s it!
Yeah they were predicting an ice age. And technically we’re still in an ice age, so the planet has to get warmer to reach it’s natural balance point. But it could also get cooler, because we’re in an interglacial period. If we don’t want continental glaciation maybe we should be thankful that the planet’s warming and not cooling.
That’s a myth perpetuated by oil companies to discredit climate science. There was a single paper about it that was widely rejected as a crackpot theory by the larger scientific community. The consensus then was the same as it is now.
Yes, we are in an ice age, seeing as there are frozen poles. But we are changing that, soon there will be no frozen pole caps and with that, the ice age will have ended. We are creating our own hot period.
Btw. it can only be an interglacial period if the glaciers return after. It’s a descriptive term, not a prescriptive, and there is no reason why the current warm period should be seen as interglacial.
Because climate doesn’t just change without a cause, it needs a driving force. Earlier hot periods were caused by volcanic CO2 and the change happened slowly, over millions of years. Earlier cold periods had a number of different reasons, from nuclear winters after asteroid impact, ultra-high plant growth with not enough O2 consumers or global darkening due to the ash of a supervolcano or even the changing tilt of earths axis.
There is no natural reason for the current warm period to turn into continental glaciation, let alone end so early and so fast, let alone the entire ice age, that has created temperatures that humans are comfortable with, just melting away around us. We have likely ended the ice age entirely, as much heat as we trapped in the atmosphere.
Climate changes more rapidly right now than it ever did before bar the impact of ecocidal asteroids and the consequences are dire. We are heating up the planet and there is no force cooling it. If we want to stay even a little bit comfortable, we should drastically reduce the amount of energy trapped in our atmosphere.
New normal, folks. So begins the era of climate migration.
A reminder that this is why we should never tolerate selfishness. We’re now largely screwed because we, as a species, valued our individual comfort over expert research.
We knew what we needed to do - but no, profits. Such a dumb way to die.
Climate and Healthcare migration. I can’t afford to retire here in the states. It’s coming.
you will probably not be entirled tobhealthcare in Europe either then.
Usually the idea is that you pay as a worker into the healthcare system. If you never paid in here you will probably have to fo dor private insurance and you’ll be faced with similiar rates like in the US because the age of entry is crucial for the rates of private health insurance
Some European countries do provide healthcare if you get permanent residence or citizenship, despite not paying throughout your life.
Some countries have “universal healthcare” for all citizens, you only pay as a worker to get a retirement fund.
So you can end up penniless and homeless, but they will keep you alive (…sometimes to suffer for as long as possible, but that’s a different matter).
Detroit ftw.
This has been the mildest summer in my 5 years living in the area, I’m loving it
Tornado watches are becoming more frequent tho
Same here in montreal, my grass has never been this green in the middle of july. Kinda weird that we had all those forest fires when the summer’s been pretty damn mild for now
Mild in Montreal, maybe, but check out the Canadian Drought Monitor as the rest of Canada is in drought. Like, the entire rest of Canada. https://agriculture.canada.ca/en/agricultural-production/weather/canadian-drought-monitor/current-drought-conditions
Over here in the west it’s never been so dry. Pastures are brown, hay and crops aren’t just stunted but are dying before maturity. Trees are yellowing and dropping leaves. Plague of grasshoppers eating everything that was still green. Every day is hot and the air is full of smoke, it feels like the end of the world over here.
That isn’t “just” climate change though, it’s also urbanisation and the way you guys over there use ground water. It’s a combination of a lot of things, climate change is only one puzzle piece in the whole scheme of things.
Also, the drought thing is easily combatable with desalination, which has a few other benefits. The main caveat is, it’s expensive. But, it’s a lot cheaper than having to deal with various other things due to the droughts.
Guessing you’ve never been to Western Canada. We only have a couple major cities, and we don’t use that much groundwater both as it tends to be saline and because we have plenty of surface water to use due to snowmelt runoff. Also we don’t have anything to desalinate, unless we’re talking about that low-quality groundwater, which is a very expensive proposition as you say to get any significant volume.
We’re not concerned about water for drinking, city usage etc. Most cities are on major rivers that are running near normally. Hydro dams have tons of storage to run until next winter’s snow. On my farm I have dugouts that capture runoff, they are full. I have shallow wells on GUDI aquifers where the water is near the top of the casing! I’m irrigating my garden and my orchard like mad out of my yard dugout and that usage isn’t even noticeable compared to evaporation losses.
We’re concerned that our crops are dying, our livestock are starving (sold mine already) and almost none of our land is irrigated. In BC the trees are dying and burning for lack of rain and there is no way to irrigate them of course. This part of the country has long relied on a steady cycle of June and July thunderstorms for moisture - but the thunderstorms have dried up.
It just won’t rain, that’s all.
No, I have never been to Western Canada (it’s very high on my bucket list, though) and I was broadly talking about North America. Sorry for the generalization. This year being also an El Nino year may have contributed…while some people will say otherwise, Europe has been uncharacteristically moist. We got a lot of places that already have reached 90% of their yearly average precipitation…
Same in Vancouver, though the deep heat usually comes in August. It is however extremely dry. I can’t remember the last time it actually rained. Looks like 2-4 rain events since May 1.
You can look up your area here:
Newly-minted Albertan here, extreme thunderstorms are a weekly occurrance. Haven’t lived here long enough to know if that’s normal, but in Grand Forks, BC a thunderstorm was a rarity.
It’s not just individual comfort, it’s also keeping up with the Jones’ and looking good in front of our peers.
If it were sexier to consume less, that’s what we’d do.
It’s been sexy to consume more, because those who can must have a lot of excess to do so.
It’s so much worse than the new normal. It’s going to keep changing just as fast, or faster. “Normal” isn’t going to exist much longer.
We fucked around, now we’re going to start finding out.
Captain Planet tried to tell us
So did Al Gore.
He’s a hero
If only we took pollution down to zero…
At this point it’d make things worse due to what climate researchers call the Faustian Bargain
Bjørn Samset of the University of Oslo and his colleagues used four climate models, which cover a range of climate sensitivities, to see what would happen to the global average temperature if the short-lived greenhouse gases (methane, nitrous oxide etc) were kept at their current level, but CO2 emissions ceased once they have reached a level of 420 parts per million (ppm). (This is 15 ppm above the current level of 405 ppm, or just another five years of emissions at the current rate.)
The result was average warming of 1.35°C over the four models, above a late 19th century baseline. (It has been demonstrated that global average temperatures increase while CO2 is increasing, and then remain approximately constant until the end of the millennium despite zero further emissions.)
You know, when I was a kid, I kind of had this thought that maybe nobody was doing anything because there was nothing to be done. I was wrong on that, and it would still be unequivocally better the sooner we do this. But I wasn’t entirely wrong, and here we are. If we stopped yesterday, this shit would last into the next millennium!?
If nothing else, at least it made me very conscious of enjoying everything I had.
Ahh, I see. Interesting read/study. I wouldn’t say they call it the Faustian bargain, but an example of a Faustian bargain. I suppose they could call it the Faustian bargain of GHG reduction, so that it doesn’t usurp the term entirely, haha.
(Also I was referencing lyrics from the captain planet theme :P)
“we”
Yeah, I didn’t even get to fuck around before finding out.
Yes, we. While some are of the impression, that climate change is only because of a select few, it’s because every single one of us consumers is to blame as well.
We have the option to buy climate friendly stuff, lots of times it’s just more expensive or maybe a little bit inconvenient. Also, why does one need the next new iPhone after owning the last one for just over a year? Why do we have to eat Avocados in some cases a few times a day, that are shipped around the world and need heaps of water to grow? Same as Bananas or Strawberries in Winter…the list is very long. Same as plastic free vegetables - “the cucumber has a brown spot? Nope, not getting that, I demand it’s spotless!” So companies wrap them in plastic.
If there’s demand, companies will fulfill that demand, if there’s no demand, companies stop doing that shit, because it doesn’t make any money. Every single one of us is responsible in some way or another, even if the percentage is very miniscule.
I just wanted to say, this is a very good comment.
When people say it’s not “we” and it’s just a few people, or just companies, it always seems to me that they are - consciously or subconsciously - just making excuses for not having to actually do anything and hoping someone else will solve the problem for them. They want the problem to be solved, while not having to do anything or change their lifestyle.
There are some very obvious and clear examples of this; here’s two of them:
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Studies have shown most people are in favour of carbon taxes. But with carbon taxes, companies would just shift the extra cost onto the consumers by increasing prices. One thing affected by carbon tax, would be the price of gas itself. And when prices (especially gas prices) increase, that usually results in a lot of anger and protests. So why would any democratically elected politician ever implement a carbon tax? If they did, they would be voted out, and the next one to come in would just undo it.
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Another obvious example, is meat. We know one of the major protagonists in CO2 emissions is animal farming. Red meat especially is responsible for a huge source of those emissions. And yet most people don’t even wanna think about eating less meat, and they will still crack jokes about vegans and look at them sideways. And as for regulations regarding meat, the example from before still applies.
As you seem to be implying, what really needs to happen is a whole cultural shift. Trying to shift blame onto to a few people and hope they get the guillotine, won’t change anything as long as people keep demanding all the same things because then someone else will come in to fulfil that demand. Whether we like it or not, we have to accept that it’s the sum of all our actions that will determine the future, and our actions can influence other people’s actions; therefore, one way or another, we are all responsible.
Sorry for typing some much at you since you’re basically making the same point already, but I just felt like adding on.
To add to this, a simple example: Carbon Taxes are unavoidable. However, i wish people would stop arguing about what’s better (EVs or Synthetic Fuels), because in the end, both have their use cases. It’s a bit like iOS or Android. iOS and Android are very different, but also quite similar. I’m a HUGE petrol head and fossile fuels have to die as soon as possible and most governments around the world go about it completely wrong - i want to pay 2,50 Euro per Liter for 100% carbon neutral fuel, but i can’t because no country around the world actually does this properly (except maybe Sweden with HVO Diesel)
Meat has to get simply more expensive and the market will regulate that - which is also going to happen with carbon taxes, but it’s relatively slow.
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Most of the “we” who fucked around, are either already dead or dying of old age. They won’t find out a thing.
The “we” who believed and trusted them… along those who didn’t… yeah, those “we” will find out.
I wouldn’t just put this on those generations, Exxon and the oil industry and their government dogs and very wealthy and powerful people and their minions are who deserves the most of the blame, the rest of us were powerless to stop it or brainwashed by the propaganda and disinformation being produced by the oil industry and their many allies, like Kenneth Hamm and the Young Earth Creationist movement, the American GOP, the British Tory’s, Putin’s Ruzzia, The Gulf states, the auto industry, and so many more.
Do you mind posting something meaningful instead of a tired and boring aphorism?
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Don’t screw around. You screw around too much!
Serious business only
It’s not about being goofy. It’s about repeating the same damn thing for the millionth time. It gets annoying and adds no value to the conversation.
That’s what I really disliked about what reddit had become. A post with 500+ comments and having to scroll through the same fucking comment over and over again because everyone thinks they’re so fucking clever but didn’t bother to read any of the comments and see that a dozen other schmucks have made the exact same comment.
It’s not like posting anything meaningful here will change anything. The fuckheads that put the world in this situation laugh at our faces and of anyone who tries to undo their shit. They have money, what are we going to do? Sue them? They’ll buy every lawyer everywhere. Ask for political reforms? Yeah, maybe in 2050 something might pass. Picket outside the companies? Gee, that worked so well with Occupy Wall Street, didn’t it?
You realize there’s only two ways this is going to be dealt with, right? One, we have to murder the rich assholes who invested in fossil fuel production. Two, everyone needs to be able to migrate everywhere; climate migration is going to have to be embraced, even if it means a bunch of selfish bastard conservatives don’t like the economic fallout. But no, that’s not good enough for any of you to look at and say “okay, we have a chance to make the most of this”.
My childhood in the late 90s and early 00s was STOLEN from me by government cronies who literally ripped me away from my family for several years. I lived in BC, Canada. I was BORN here in Canada and my dad and grandfather were as well. There’s no reason I alone shouldn’t have gotten to enjoy that period, playing Pokemon and Neopets in my parent’s home.
But no. Thanks a lot to all you fuckers, the economic golden age that has existed since the 50s is gone forever and I’ll never live to see anything remotely as optimistic. I hate all of you and if this whole damn planet doesn’t choke on you not giving up just a bit of comfort so people less fortunate than you don’t have to struggle just to make ends meet, I will literally start setting oil refineries on fire. GO FUCKING DIE, EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU.
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You might be about to get it in the coming years, too. Temperature increases have been tentatively linked to violence.
what are we going to do?
Practice my aim I guess
I was so hoping that crap like this, FAFO, and the other weak sauce bullshit wouldn’t make it over here. I was stupid for even hoping that.
That’s literally impossible when you’re on the internet, you just hope to see less of it.
It’s slacktivism. If we keep saying the meme words something is bound to come from it
To what end? You think a user comment on Lemmy is going to change emissions policies? Direct your ire somewhere it might actually make a single bit of difference instead of just perpetuating the infighting that gets nothing done. If you’re going to waste your time on the subject, spend your thumb-taps on an email to your congressman instead.
We’re way past that.
Don’t worry guys, everything is fine. We just need to [redacted] and this will all go back to normal in no time.
Yeah, my dad says fux news did it’s just a cycle. So, no worries bro.
Hello my name is [redacted] I work for [redacted], all we need to do is [redacted].
Don’t you worry about [redacted], let me worry about blank!
Awesome. Awesome to the max.
Honestly I will never forgive people who STILL continue to deny climate change is happening and refuse to legilslate on it.
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and people say global warming/climate change is not real
“… It’s not normal”
It wasn’t normal.
Nowadays it is.
Hurray for new normals!
Yet, social medias are filled with people saying that they saw this every day when they were younger and the millenials are just weak and should stop complaining.
Literally my father moment
This is Charles Dickens syndrome (a term I just made up) but basically Dickens grew up 1810’s which was uncharacteristicly cold for Britain. Specifically, a lot more snowy than it had been for centuries. When he came to put the season into his stories, it was those seminal years that he wrote about. This then imprinted on our culture and the stories that came after it followed the theme. Anyone who lives in Britain can tell you, while we get some years that have a decent amount of snow, we get just as many that are wet and miserable.
People who believe ‘It was that hot when they were young’ likely remember one pivotal day or feeling warm but I doubt had any real concept of the actual temperature as a kid. What we’re seeing now is more regularity in the extremes. Yes, that day they remember may be imprinted on their minds for being extra hot, but then that becomes ‘It was this hot when we were young’.
Also, since the 60s life expectancy has got way longer. We’re living decades more than someone of that era, we’re extending the lifespans of the critically ill, and access to things like affordable housing have tanked making people live in less than ideal situations or a part of a much larger unhoused population than we’ve had for many years. All of these add up to extreme weather having an oversized impact.
It really annoys me when folks like that make blanket statements without realising we live in a very different world today. (Of course, there are some positives that advancements in technology and material science can bring to mitigate some of this).
Genuine old person here I call bullshit on whoever said that. I don’t remember it ever being this bad. Ever.
Meanwhile big polluters like Shell and others help pumping emissions and try to keep carbon based economy for short term profit 🙄
While funding messaging like “if you didn’t use your air conditioner when it was 118f it would certainly help”
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whatever could we have done to stop this!!!
Yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.
The planet will be fine. Humans I’m not sure about…
Humans and most other creatures
Please don’t post the same old replies every time they seem fitting. We’ve all read them a thousand times.
Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry: “we’re just trying to find the guy who did this!”
I dunno what I could have done, everything I try to have an impact on is always a pittance compared to the size of the problem, but I know what I can do going forward.
I’m quitting. I’m having zero children. Good luck, have fun the rest of you.
I was working outside this week (Southern US) and it was an absolutely miserable week. After a half an hour I was drenched in sweat, and it was rolling off my hard hat, getting in my eyes, and I was forced to pace myself and work much slower than I would otherwise be able to do because the heat was that intense.
I was able to drink some of my coconut water reserve because it has the things plants crave.
It’s definitely the worst summer heat I’ve felt since ever.
For the longest time, measures against climate change were decried for potentially impacting “the economy”. Well now we’re going to see the impact to “the economy” with climate change getting worse. I assume it’ll be a bigger impact than if we had invested in more sustainability earlier. Slower work pace outside just being a small taste of the impact.
Wait until next summer!
Why was your hard hat sweating? I wear a hard hat at work and I don’t think I’ve ever had sweat rolling off it. That doesn’t seem physically possible.
i imagine it was the humidity from the ambient air and not from his head.
This one has a cloth like padding at the forehead, it collects the sweat but gets saturated and beads up on the front and rolls off.
It’s nice to have if it isn’t a lot of sweat, but when your entire face is drenched, it does that.
Ohhh ok, I have a similar hard hat. I wear a chill-its cap under mine, it’s more comfortable and has a sweat band built in
