We can’t even figure out how to not have half our society be rasict, how the hell are we gonna save a whole planet from our fuckery?
We’re not gonna be able to combat climate change under capitalism anyway. The number one thing we need to do is to produce less but that goes directly against what capitalism needs to function. Not to mention that governments are bribed by companies to make laws in their favour.
But hey, what’s the point of saving our planet anyway if we can’t maximize profits anymore?
Yep. And if you mention this, you’re a commie and capitalism is the greatest thing ever and under socialism we will all starve and have nothing and it never worked look at Cuba.
Like capitalism works, and there are no imaginable alternatives.
Just don’t use resources to produce that much useless crap to just dump it in a landfill or burn it? Is it so hard to understand?
Damn right I’m a commie.
It’s working great in cuba. Best health care in the world too.
The problems in Cuba are all tied directly to us sanctioning them to try and destroy their economy
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Bold of you to assume that most people even want that. From what I can tell…
There are a large number of people out there who seem to be deliberately making it worse - not even for profit, but just out of spite.
Tbf, I think a certain minimum amount of intelligence is required to even qualify for that statement, which I suspect disqualifies most… but yeah, underneath that, there do seem to be a few, like Jeff Bezos.
Though Donald Trump himself I see more like a monkey doing its thing, as much a symptom as a feed-forward cause of his own. I ain’t saying that he’s not “evil” in his own way, just that he lacks sufficient character for his brand of it to have had any effect at all, if it weren’t for the fact that the systems were so broken to begin with. Money (his father’s in his case) corrupts.
We don’t and we won’t.
We cant even figure out how to make recycling work.
We could but it’s not profitable enough for corporations.
Recycling was never supposed to work alone. It was literally the last ditch effort after Reduce and Reuse.
Also, we already figured out how to make it work, but it isn’t profitable when it works, so obviously we have to use the less effective methods so that a small handful of big wigs can milk the process for personal gain.
We do what the British did with Australia, but with mars.
Send Elon and all the maga weirdos to the red place and we can begin following the plot of the expanse.
Like it should be.
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Humanity is fucked. My sympathy lies with the animals.
I sympathize with the children that had nothing to do with it.
It’s why I’m not having kids.
So you won’t feel guilty for not fighting for a better world?
That is such a needlessly abusive thing to say to a person.
Choosing not to have a child because you don’t believe the problems you’d be subjecting them to are likely to be solved is a heavy choice to make, and says nothing about whether they’re fighting climate change to whatever extent they’re able
Please don’t go around being a complete asshole for no reason. The space we have here in the fediverse is only as nice as we make it, and assuming the worst of people we’ve literally never met accomplishes less than nothing.
This was not an abusive statement, and I’m sorry if you feel that it was. I don’t believe that choosing not to have children because of climate change was made with a lot of deliberation, but because it’s the laziest choice. Children are tough. Fighting for change is tough. Convincing other to give a fuck about the environment is tough. It’s easier just to keep on keeping on and when the world breaks at least I didn’t create another soul who is going to go through pain.
This attitude doesn’t help fix the current situation and I believe that the apathy such a decision makes encourages people to be inactive on climate change.
Not having children is one of the easiest ways to contribute to solving climate change, which is exactly why we should encourage it regardless of whether the person is also taking other steps to solve it (which we don’t know). Not having a child also saves 58 tons of CO2 emissions per year, so it’s one of the most effective things you can do to fight climate change too, so that simple action does a lot to fight for a better world.
Source: https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children
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Not having children is obviously not a societal change that everybody can do, otherwise humanity would fail. I’m not saying everybody should be having 10 children, but there’s nothing wrong with having a couple.
The point I’ve been trying to make is that I’m worried that people who see that not having children is the easiest thing you can do to lower your carbon footprint will not care about doing anything else to help save the planet. You’ve done your part, so why not drive that gas guzzler for a little longer. Probably not gonna hurt you too much. I think more people will think this way than people who responsibly have children and have a physical reminder of why they’re trying to care about the future.
And thanks for labelling me in an out group. Be careful, you’re probably very suseptible to extremism.
You don’t know this person. And you don’t know anything about what they’re doing to combat climate change, or are capable of doing to contribute to combating climate change.
You don’t even know whether this was the only consideration in choosing not to have kids.
You know nothing about them, but the way your comment reads suggests that you’re essentially insinuating that their choice to not have kids is illegitimate by nature of the motives you presume they have (which isn’t a kind thing to do) and also that they’ve made that choice out of laziness. All based on assumptions you’ve made from the single sentence comment they left on a Lemmy thread.
It’s possible that was intended as a sincere question, but it reads as SUCH a heavily loaded question that it will be understood to be an accusation by pretty much anyone who reads it, which is why I call it abusive. And you can tell that that’s what it’s communicating by the fact that my comment saying as much has been upvoted repeatedly in the short period it’s been up. The question mark reads as rhetorical, and even if you meant to ask in order to get them to reflect, it’s unlikely you know them well enough or expressed that intention well enough for it to not just read as someone being a jerk on the internet
I can absolutely empathize with the idea that it is easier to check out and want to live small than to fight. And I can certainly understand wanting to fight back when you perceive that others are doing that, because our future is all on the line. I just left a long comment about it on another thread where I shared some quotes I found validating or poinant with respect to my struggle to keep fighting for things bigger than myself when I can barely function.
I get that it’s important for people to fight, but what you said to them kinda sucks, and isn’t a good way to engage with someone you don’t know at all.
Edit: adjusted to reflect the fact I also made assumptions in the initial version of this comment. Apologies if parts feel out of sync, I’m editing this while fairly sleep deprived.
You’re a good person who seems able to see both points of an argument. Thank you. You’re right, I don’t know the person who said they wouldn’t have children. They had a quick quip and I had a quick quip too and didn’t really want to get into my argument.
Comments like “That’s why I’m not having children” get positive upvote and attention, but it could have been “And that’s why I’m ready to fight for climate change so that there’s a future for humanity”. To me it is a statement of surrender and being proud of essentially waiting for the end of the world, which tells me a bit more about the person making the statement.
Anyway, I didn’t realize my initial comment would come off that negatively and I’ll try to be more respectful.
You’re a moron if you think bringing more people into the world is fighting for a better world
That’s all of us unless you’re an executive in a multinational corp, or work for the oil and gas industry.
We’ve all been ramrodded into this reality by a handful of giant Corporations, over the last 100 years.
Yeah I agree. But I could have chosen more fuel efficient cars when I was younger. Bought less shit I didn’t need. I could’ve done more. Yeah it’s not entirely my fault, we’ve been thrown into the gauntlet, what can you do if you wanna live? But the children born now, or God forbid even later are going to find themselves in a hellscape of an economy and ecosystem. And my heart goes out to them because they’ll get less than I had, less freedom, less upward mobility, less drinkable water, less food, less breathable air, and be more fucked by everything. The longer we push it, the worse it gets for the people who had less to do with it.
If it helps to assuage your guilt at all, we have been living, inundated with corporate propaganda, for all our lives.
“Carbon footprint” is a great example; it’s a Corporate guilt trip.
Oh absolutely. The carbon footprint was bullshit from the oil companies to put the onus on individuals to fix it while not giving people any options. It was all bullshit. That being said, I do have some guilt. Or at least feel it. Less because I was making bad decisions and more of a “survivors guilt” kind of thing. That’s not the right term, cause I’m going to die before the younger generations. But I feel guilt just because my child and millions of others will get a worse and worse end of the stick than I got just because of when they were born. This is why I argue with boomers about the difference between generations.
Like, you had the American dream fucking handed to you. Do you not feel some kind of guilt for getting a degree for $8k, a house for $35k, and a top of the line vette costing $4.5k? Even at the lower rates of pay, that’s a fraction of the budget compared to today. If I had it that easy, I would absolutely feel bad for people coming up behind me. And yet, VERY few boomers acknowledge this, and that is why I’m so hostile to them.
“Generation Me” will never cop to their culpability. They’re narcissists, ie to admit being wrong now would absolutely crumple their sense of identity. And we all know Boomers #1 rule is looking out for numero uno.
I’m not saying all Boomers are Captain Planet villains…but all Captain Planet villains were definitely Boomers.
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Respectfully, carbon footprint as a measure is just a measurement and is really useful in the right context. It’s important to remember that it’s the misapplication to individuals that is a con game.
When Rees and Wackernagel came up with ecological footprint as a measure, it introduced a systems analysis to human activity that we really needed. Carbon footprint is just a subset of that and ignoring it is futile. Just apply the analysis where it matters: militaries, mining, transport, energy, civil engineering, etc etc.
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Animals are fucked! We decimated 75% of wildlife in 50 years, and it is still growing
If only we’d only “decimated” wildlife. Alas.
growing
Dwindling?
You understood me, the extinct part is growing
Gotcha
They’ll be fine 100 years after we’re extinct.
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Let me introduce you the crown of creation: the cockroach.
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Interesting, I just meant that cockroaches are nearly indestructible and will survive humanity. But I do agree with your first sentence.
Because most of us are relatively comfy and we’re so focused on surviving the day, week, or month (if you’re really lucky), that we don’t have time to even consider the effort needed to organize and focus on overthrowing those in power. The system working as designed.
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Or instead of saving the world you and your group fail, your group is now considered terrorists, and the knee jerk reaction of those in power removes more of the people’s freedoms and oppresses them more, all in an effort to ensure that little uprising doesn’t happen again.
I agree something needs to be done, but it’ll have to be done with elections and legislation that protects that progress from being dismantled by the next party that might not agree with that change.
Sustainable change is a slow process. Sometimes that process is so slow you might not see the results in your lifetime.
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societal collapse
Ah yes, that thing that has us laboring to chase meaningless plastic crap we’re brainwashed into needing instead of growing our own food and maintaining our own shelters as small, purposeful communities, all so the owners of this society can siphon our energy while poisoning the earth, all to live like wannabe gods above us.
No more penis Space tourist rockets? What a loss…
I dont think you would like what comes after societal collapse. It’s easy to pin society as just capitalism, but collapse will mean more than just the economic system. Democracies will collapse and entire regions will cease to exist. Food scarcity and mass migration will result in extreme regimes that will defend their territory, and a bunch of nomads who have to live with the constant worry of where the next food and freshwater source is. Not to mention the constant fighting over geopolitical issues (imagine current day scaled up exponentially)
Yes, we should fix our economic system, but societal collapse is not an end result we ever want.
Suffering I fear, death I welcome.
I know, we all weep for our poor capitalist lords :c
/s
You know what would be useful in a societal collapse? Electric vehicles and solar panels.
Hopefully peppers aren’t building zombie busses because they’ll be useless in 6 months after the oil stops flowing.
An ev with a charger panel and bicycles will be useful indefinitely.
When society collapses, upwards of around 95-100% of us die. That’s reality.
I’ll probably be one of them.
Me too
Being old looks rough anyway.
you would get murdered for those rather quickly, i’d imagine. what would be useful is to get far away from strangers somewhere defendable near fresh water.
That would be only one of the many competing reasons for my murder.
I do have camping gear, woodworking hand tools, a good bike, I know how to shoot and clean fish+game and cook, and I have knowledge of some remote areas with sparse populations including their flora.
On paper it all sounds good, but I would likely die miserably in the first Canadian winter.
Even if you did everything right there isn’t that much wildlife to live off of. A single human requires a vast healthy wilderness to live off of foraging only.
Yeah, I watch Alone and I’ve seen Outlast. No way are 99% of people going to be able to live like that. Even the contestants who prep and practice and research only last a few weeks in the winter.
You would need a small community, agriculture and to store your food for winter, and livestock for reliable protein. Even then there’s a good chance you get wiped out by diseases unless you’re making soap and prepping food and water safely.
But once you’ve figured out a way to store food and resources, then you’re a target. You can’t easily defend against bands of looters with tons of weapons and nothing to lose
I generally never last very long in a playthrough of The Long Dark
win win.
Maybe. I’ve wondered about that. It’s easy to imagine a Mad Max scenario with bands of raiders looting all potentially useful technological remains, but does solar change that? You can’t as easily steal that without destroying it. You can’t just put it to use without some technical knowledge. It’s not immediately useful to loot.
Destroy, sure.
That’s why Musk is backing Trump and Putin and trying to turn the world into Thunderdome. EVs will reign supreme.
Don’t worry, we’ll fix climate change by reflecting sunlight before it hits the Earth’s surface. Of course this will eradicate most pests (and nature) but hey, problem solved!
batteries die
“Well, shit.”
Societal collapse is the best thing that can happen right now, capitalism will not save the workers nor the environment. Only a complete revolution can save the workers, the environment, and the future of humanity.
So back to the rule of kings and Strongman Despots.
Because that’s what a social collapse will get you every time. There will be no “worker’s paradise”.
Societal collapse doesn’t guarantee anything for people who want any kind of revolution
Most people forget they are probably just gonna die in an apocalypse.
We are gonna die anyway. At least with societal collapse there will be a chance that not everyone will die from climate collapse.
We can put paper bags over our heads if we forgot our towels though.
Human death and suffering are guaranteed…
Societal collapse is enviable, the downfall of humanity however is not.
It means industry and industrial pollution stops.
Except it might not. In fact it might increase the dependency on fossil fuels as supply chain and the electrical grid break down.
I doubt they’d be a net increase. So much CO2 is from industry and average people aren’t going to know how or were to get their own coal or oil.
Idk… I’d rather just fix this issue and not have to find out the hard way 🤷
We had easy solutions to covid, but people decided that “their way of life” was more important then other people’s lives.
Covid lockdown taught us it basically just needs most cars of the road. There’s a million ways we COULD fix everything, basically overnight. We just won’t
I’m afraid it’s not going to save anyone, because it’s going to be a collapse with many casualities mainly on the side of the poor, not a revolution. I imagine it as a social disaster. The rich will be ok.
The rich will be ok and their kids will repopulate earth. With a plow, a hammer and a sicle. Oh the irony…
Richfolk are known for their strong survival skills.
My odds are on them being the first ones killed and looted when the shit really hits the fan.
Probably by the very armies and security forces they hired to protect them from that in the first place, once they realize that the rest of society collapsing means there probably won’t be consequences for forcibly inheriting their employer’s estate.
Or maybe it will be whoever holds the keys to the safety system they built when they realised they’d be at the mercy of their security forces.
What’s the richman gonna give his army? Money?
His army’s got the guns. It’s one versus the entire staff, on a private island, at the collapse of society, and you think the guys with all guns and no food are gonna treat their boss with the civility that’s expected in a typical employee/employer relationship?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
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The rich are only safe if they keep every grain of gunpowder and lump of c4 in there with them.
Do you actually think that?
As though we just do societal collapse on Wednesday and then start living our best lives on Thursday?
If capitalism is allowed to continue it will render humanity extinct. If we collapse now, and are reduced to a fraction of our population this century, humanity may live.
I don’t enjoy that being the best option we have at this point. It brings me no joy. But what brings me less joy is knowing that we won’t even make a choice. We will continue blindly waddling along and as capitalism consumes the world, we will wonder who will save us. And no one will.
Is anyone actually claiming that we’re on a path to extinction? That’s hyperbole.
This type of thinking is not constructive in any way.
We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event the earth has experienced. As ecosystems collapse, organisms at the top of the food web are in peril. Yes, humans are in danger of extinction.
What a silly thing to say.
You realise extinction requires no living specimens to exist right?
Some number of humans will prevail even if the only thing left to eat is slime mold.
Climate change is a big deal. The future is very bleak. People with the power to mitigate the damage are doing the opposite.
Claiming that human extinction is possible or likely about as helpful as suggesting that ancient aliens have the solution.
Claiming that human extinction is possible
What a silly thing to say, indeed. Of course it’s possible.
Oh yes, silly me. Anything is possible.
Let’s all bemoan the possibility that a nearby supernova destroys all life on planet earth next week, rather than confronting the nuance of the problems we face and developing constructive solutions.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-47540-7
Don’t miss this bit:
The bounds are subject to important limitations. Most importantly, they only apply to extinction risks that have either remained constant or declined over human history. Our 200 kyr track record of survival cannot rule out much higher extinction probabilities from modern sources such as nuclear weapons or anthropogenic climate change.
Oh sweetheart.
Did you google “human extinction science” and link the first result without reading it?
The part you quoted just says modern extinction risks are out of scope for this study.
It does not say that extinction is probable or likely.
Interesting thought. What is the nutritional profile for slime mold, can humans survive eating just slime mold?
As though we just do societal collapse on Wednesday and then start living our best lives on Thursday?
Commenter never said that. So you’re just strawmannning. Do you honestly think capiatlism and consumerism will do an about face and start taking care of the rapidly degrading environment? If not, it would seem that we then we need to change how we behave, soon-- right? Accelerationists are at least doing something, even if it may not be the right plan, while you are whining to keep the exact status quo going thats killing us all, and doing nothing to improve things .
To use a metaphor: dont criticise the fat guy working out at the gym while you youself are sitting on your butt, are also fat and have ice cream on your face. If you want to criticise, get off your ass and get to work on something better. Otherwise shut it and let the adults figure out how to save your ass while you do nothing.
I didn’t say that the commenter said that. Ironically, you’re just strawmanning.
Anyone suggesting that societal collapse is a good outcome doesn’t really understand what societal collapse entails.
I also didn’t suggest that capitalism will save us - that’s another straw man.
Your metaphor is disingenuous.
This commenter is the fat guy eating burgers all day trying to bring on a coronary because it’s inevitable so you may as well get it over with, all while claiming that’s a better outcome than wasting time and effort at the gym trying to lose weight.
Anyone suggesting that societal collapse is a good outcome doesn’t really understand what societal collapse entails.
Anyone who says preserving the status quo is a viable outcome doesnt really understand how high the cost of that status quo is.
Participating in an Ethnic cleansing of a group that is 26% of the humans on the planet will end in tears for us, and pull this country inexorably rightward as we respond to its effects. Even now just a few Yemeni missiles on cargo ships in the Suez has upended Americans faith in the dems by raising prices. Thats with true pushback having not even begun yet. DNC leadership and dem voters are not taking the long view on this. Why dont you think long term and tell me what you see 8 years into the future.
Anyone who says preserving the status quo
This is an epic straw man. Usually I avoid calling out straw man arguments because you can frame almost any assertion as a straw man and ultimately it doesn’t further discussion. In this case though, you started it.
If you’re into logical fallacies, I will say that your argument is a false dichotomy. Between “societal collapse” and “status quo” there’s an obvious third option: “try to fix all the broken things”, which is what most people are trying to do. Both societal collapse and status quo are absurd propositions that no reasonable person would subscribe to.
which is what most people are trying to do
I dont agree that this is happening. Climate pledges are being abandoned. The imagination of International solutions are being abandonded for self serving ones. Even recycling in my area has been throttled way back. Internal combustion engine cars are surging back into popularity. One of the biggest possible polluting events are wars, and theres possibly a whole bunch on the horizon as Pax Americanan ends with the disolution of our soft power. We are not motivated to make progress and our political system and international reach seems to be in decline.
If you look at the trajectories we are on in multiple areas, you can see inevitabilities. I dont fault you for having hope that the whole of human society will pull it out of the fire at the last second, but I no longer beleive its in our nature to act on these threats. Americans arent even convinced climate change is real.
I still do beleive in the good will of the American people, and their ability to rebuild quickly and better. When forced to come together on a pursuit, American free thinking outpaces other international mindsets pretty reliably. Or it used to.
Implicit in your assertion is that we can stave off this collapse and that theres plenty of time to iterate to some changes.
Consider that by 2050 we’ll need 60% more food than we produce now, and projections are that with climate change effects we’ll have no way to make that much, even if we start all eating bugs and kelp. So at the end of many of our lifetimes we’ll observe tangible impacts. 2050 is just 26 years from now. So just sit on our hands and be patient, you think?
Your accelerationist bullshit does nothing but harm us all
I’m not an accelerationist, but they aren’t wrong.
it’s not that I want a collapse, but at some point soon(very soon) the only answer will be for a collapse.
I stopped fighting against corpos years ago because the only way to stop them would restrict my freedom and take me away from my family. all I can do now is to stay informed, plan, and educate myself and family.
I’m not rich. I have no bunker. my mind is sharp. my goal is to survive what comes next. not because I want it to happen, but because corpos won’t stop and my government sold me out long before I was born.
It’s not accelerationism if it’s happening anyway.
I’m not all for his rhetoric that it will be an improvement, but I’m not doubting it won’t happen.
Better to understand it is inevitable and prepare for it instead of sticking your head in the sand about it.
Even better to understand that there may be no coming back. We’ve burned bridges behind us and populated way beyond any ability to survive without it. We desperately need this society to succeed because there may be no alternative anymore
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If you take a look at history, you’ll notice a pattern:
- civilization/empire/society/whatever X begins forming
- X is at it’s peak, it’s situation is pretty stable and prosperous
- event Y starts
- as a result, X’s situation begins to worsen
- X has fallen completely, it’s previous members now struggle with disease, famine, and political instability
- whoever survives begins to form a new civilization/empire/society/whatever
- repeat
And honestly, I don’t think that the left at it’s current state is anywhere near strong, large, or unified enough to be the one to rise from the ashes. It’s better to do what we can now, and save the revolution for when we are able to actually succeed at it.
We’ll burn down capitalism one piece at a time.
That’s unfortunate because I have been trying really hard to participate in society.
We’re moving back to office until we can’t move at all.
That’s old news, no? I recall reading that basically from 2°C there is no more economic growth, what means a lot of people are thrown under the bus. From 3°C there is no more economy, meaning no food, heating, fighting everywhere. From 4°C there is basically no more humanity.
That sounds pretty extreme. I’d be Interested in reading that article, if you can find it.
It’s mild hyperbole, but it’s not far off from best-guess speculation. It’s well and regularly covered in IPCC reports. Have at.
One of the counterproductive parts of projections like this is humans do poorly with long term thinking. These results are not immediate. Most people will just assume hyperbole when they see it not happen*
- in an arbitrarily short time
Societal collapse, eh? Sounds like a great opportunity for profit!!!
Imagine how much ACs we could sell! And how expensive we could make food!
I really have to slow down on Armored Core, I thought you were talking about selling everyone mechs for a minute
I like that idea for our timeline better.
a bit late for that when society is turning to fascism all over the world.
Good ol’ fascism! You can always count on fascism to to help people. Well, the right people. I mean, some of the right people, maybe a small subset of the right people.
An ever increasingly small subset of the right people because Fascism requires there to ALWAYS be an other to blame it on.
Fascism saved my buddy’s life in 'Nam, maaaaan.
I’d say the ones who have been saying it’s not real should be the first to become soylent green
:shocked-picachu:
People think it’s gonna be fun, like Zombieland. Instead, it’s going to be fun, like The Road.
gestures broadly
🤨
What a time to be alive!
