On Friday, the globe hit 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees) above pre-industrial levels for the first time in recorded history
This will disproportionately effect the poor and developing countries, so the thinking of elites and super rich is that there’s still plenty of time to rectify the situation.
Rectify it? No, they know they’ll be gone before their life is disrupted so much that money can’t fix it.
That time is now before they get worse killler robots than they do.
No duh, because not a single country has made any real attempt to lower their citizens’ emissions.
It will take sacrifice from all of us to stop warming.
Forget 1.5°C, honestly, forget 2°C as well, keeping it under 3°C is likely the best that we can hope for right now. You’re needing to throw out our gas-based car infrastructure, reduce our reliance on jets as much as possible, lower not just meat consumption but also almonds/alfalfa/etc., and that is just to get started.
Really, I don’t see the average voter letting that happen. What’s going to happen is eventually, sometime 30-40 years from now, a heat wave is gonna thrash the Middle East, consistent 130°F days for a solid month, 100,000 people dead, and the very next year planes will be in the air, making clouds to block the sun.
We are not ready to give up the things that the developed world will have to give up to truly back away from this coming apocalypse.
The majority of emissions come from just a handful of large companies, even if every individual cut their carbon footprint to zero those companies would still continue to kill the planet. It’s also easier to change the behaviour of some companies than every person on the planet.
So clearly we need a different solution than cutting back on emissions.
I’d argue we might have to start human expansion into space to have any real positive impact. A solar shade, for example, could block out enough sunlight to artificially prevent warming and stabilize the climate while we construct or seek out alternative energy resources.
A solar shade, for example, could block out enough sunlight
Wouldn’t this undermine solar-generated electricity?
and our ability to grow food
But telling people to lower their emissions because the world is on fucking fire, is eugenics! /s
Planes are kinda necessary now and less of a convenience. I moved to Miami from NJ (where the rest of my family lives) and just came home today for Thanksgiving. Driving would have taken around 3 days/about 23 hours of total driving and cost a few hundred bucks in gas and maintenance costs. I flew home in under 3 hours and it cost me about $100.
My buddy in NJ married a British woman, so for her, if planes didn’t exist her only option would be to take a boat home which easily takes a week or two, instead it takes her about 7 hours.
The other option is to not expect to see people who live a plane flight away every year.
So you’re supposed to lessen your relationships just because you moved away?
We live in an age where you can literally talk face to face with virtually anyone, nearly anywhere in the world on a tiny rectangle in your pocket. Yes, we can all afford to travel a little less over long distances.
Not everyone has a smartphone or webcam, you, right? My father is 73 and has neither, he doesn’t like to videochat because he feels it impersonal. My mom has a smartphone but doesn’t video chat with anyone. So I’m just supposed to not see my parents for a year or more because they don’t want to video chat?
Yes, that’s how normal people live. Or, you know, HAVE FUCKING TRAINS.
What you consider “normal” isn’t exactly normal. This isn’t the 1800s.
Umm you know that trains take energy to run right? The energy doesn’t come out of thin air. Most trains either run off diesel fuel which is dirty as hell or they run off electric and that energy is usually from burning fossil fuels.
So your suggestion is “don’t use this one method of transportation that burns fossil fuels, use this other method of transportation that takes longer and still burns fossil fuels!”
Really great argument you have there! 🤦♂️
What you consider “normal” isn’t exactly normal.
Your American perspective is only a thin slice of the world. Don’t be so conceited.
you know that trains take energy to run right?
Less energy per passenger, and the energy sources available are much more diverse.
run off electric and that energy is usually from burning fossil fuels. [sic]
In ass-backwards places, sure. You know Brazil, that country to the south of yours, with a comparable landmass and population? More than 85% of their electricity comes from renewable sources. I guess 'murica is too much of a shithole to figure this one out.
So your suggestion is “don’t use this one method of transportation that burns fossil fuels, use this other method of transportation that takes longer and still burns fossil fuels!” [sic]
So the implication is that you think the efficiency of a process is meaningless and the path to an outcome is unimportant (which is braindead). You may as well drop dead right now, then, since “you’ll still die some day, anyway”.
Planes are ubiquitous to the global north. They’re not an American thing.
Or just… live closer together. You don’t see Europeans fly from Germany to the other side just for a few family days
So people aren’t supposed to move anywhere in your opinion, and if you do,just forget about seeing them for years. The US is a hell of a lot bigger than any European country.
Not that far and still expect to see family for every freaking occasion. I meant through Europe, if I’m Dutch and my family is in Spain, I’m not going for Christmas or whatever. Maybe once in a few years, or stay for a vacation not just a few days. That’s idiotic.
Yes, wanting to see your family is idiotic 🙄
Are you being purposefully obtuse?
My parents are getting older and I want to see them as much as I can while still living where I want to. IMO its ridiculous to be like “live in a place you don’t like because you want to see your family often or live where you want to and rarely see your family.” There is a middle ground. Yo may be cool with seeing your family once a year, I’m not.
Trains!
I wonder if I’ll be alive for the moment everyone goes from “This is bullshit and I’m going to ignore it” to “Oh no who could have seen this coming?”
Some people will never admit anything is happening. They’ll just blame everything on something else.
We are already seeing the effects of climate change. If they were going to admit it, they would have done so already.
We’re gonna go from ignoring it to seeding the atmosphere
Eh, humanity had a good run I guess
didn’t we pass the point of no return like 10 years ago
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I’ve been day saying this for the past two years now, humanity is fucked, and soon.
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is a direct result from the energy we took from burning fossil fuels. To get all that CO2 out were going to have to wait Millenia for earth to do it (that is, if it still can) or spend that same amount of energy to get the CO2 out.
To put that into something understandable: we’re going to have to spend ALL the energy we produced over the last two centuries on too of the energy we need for ourselves to be able to get CO2 back to preindustrial levels. Basically, for the next two to four centuries were going to have to spend at least 50% of our world energy budget to scrubbing CO2 and NONE of that energy is allowed to generate CO2. Actually, NOTHING from humanity can generate CO2 to reach that. If we continue spewing CO2 then you can double that number.
To put that into perspective, adding all required work and infrastructure, energy -all energy- will become 3-4 times as expensive for the next few centuries
People will not understand the issue and will not want to pay more, rich people will not want to foot the bill even though they could, so we won’t do anything and things will get worse and worse until we all die.
One possible alternative might be spraying sulphuric acid into the atmosphere, that might buy us a few valuable years while we fix shit but what will happen is that we’ll just spray the crap out of it and call that a solution while we continue to spray CO2 into the atmosphere like there literally is no tomorrow for humanity
We’re fucked
Always the possibility we eat the rich but I’m not hopeful
🎵*it’sthe end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine!*🎵
You mean pledging to eventually tackle the problem 20-30 years down the road and doing nothing about it in the meantime hasn’t solved the problem?! I’m shocked! 🤯
Every time I hear “carbon neutral by 2050” I’m always thinking yeah like it’ll fucking matter at that point, Honda (or whomever).
no one wanted to be held accountable for the triage so we let everyone bleed out, safe in the knowledge there was nothing we could have done.
The fact is that this was a conscious choice, even recently. The switch to natural gas that everyone is touting is one that is designed to cause higher short-term emissions.
Methane is really bad over a 20-year time frame and only really lets natural gas equal coal over a 100-year period (assuming typical fugitive emissions rates). The transition from coal to natural gas is accelerating the rate at which we boil ourselves alive.
Methane is burned at the point of use and produces carbon dioxide. Ideally there is no methane released in to the environment.
Methane leaks
Something like 3-10% of all methane production leaks. Methane is about 80x worse than CO2 over a 20-year period.
Yes but they’re paying for an already protected forest to be protected, so it balances out right?
Fortunately the EU is making that kinda advertisement illegal
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It’s China generating all the pollution. Their ‘reported’ emissions are 13.7 billion metric tons versus the US’s 5.9 billion. And 90% of China’s fuel consumers are private, one-off shuttles that don’t even report their emissions. US is contributing a tiny fraction of global emissions and it’s falling. Yes, US industrialized earlier and has contributed more in total, but we can’t time travel, we have to look at who is emitting NOW. China’s emissions are rising and nobody there cares to put a cap on it. You want to stop the world from cooking? Talk to China.
Edit: it’s odd how many tankies are on lemmy. Obviously we should take steps ourselves to stop emissions too but China is the world’s true problem when it comes to emissions. US has been steadily falling while China is rising rapidly and that’s only what’s actually reported
I’m not a big fan of China, but that’s just dishonest. Yes, China emits more than twice the co2 US emits. But that means that its per capita emissions are still way below those of the US, even after western countries outsourced a lot of their own pollution to China. Yes, you NEED to talk to China if you’re going to solve it, but pretending that it is more on them than on the west is ridiculous.
The Japanese are pouring radiation into the Pacific Ocean so that’s probably it.
