1159
The temperature in China hit 52.2°C (126°F)
(lemmy.world)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
1159 points (98.8% liked)
News
23625 readers
2841 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
The whole situation with climate change feels so hopeless.
I think the worst part of it is that its not actually hopeless, at least not in theory. It's just that we, or more accurately the people with actual power, refuse to act because it would mean slightly less profit.
I fully believe that if the world comes together, a united global effort, it is solvable, but we won't.
Me too, specially when I was younger I thought we could change the world for good if united. I saw cristal clear that the rich wanted to be richer at the expense of the poorer, but as I grew older and saw the reality and stupidity of the world (Like Trump, a massively rich guy being massively voted by the poorest and less educated people) I lost hope. I came to realize that education and stoicism and the best tools the human race has to progress to a healthy society. So that’s what I try to share now when I can.
Though I mostly agree with you, sometimes I feel human nature is just ugly.
Some very highly educated people have done some very terrible things throughout history.
(Sorry about submitting the half sentence, I meant to hit cancel and then decided to commit after that blunder.)
This is not true. Humans are created by the material conditions they find themselves in. "Human nature" when in an abundant environment is very different, we can see this among remaining hunter gatherer tribes like the Hadza (watch/read the whole thread).
Living in capitalism is what makes people the way you see them. Competition for resources with your fellow workers and an endless toil for the benefit of someone else enforced by the threat of homelessness and death if you don't take part.
Being an asshole under capitalism is as natural as coughing is in a smoke filled burning building. If you don't know anything different you can't see that to constantly cough is not the natural way of human beings. When you take people and put them in different material conditions you get a completely different outcome.
The biggest issue with our environment that drives these problems is that human brains can only reliably grok a few hundred other humans as being people. Beyond that, to a greater or lesser degree, anyone else just feels like an object (which is why we feel upset when people we know die but the statistics of how many people die each day globally don't have a similar effect.)
Some of us cope better than others but fundamentally any environment that requires humans to be reliant on interacting with over a few hundred other people will lead to people treating each other as objects.
It's why conservative people often feel it would be inconceivable to mistreat someone they personally know but will casually do profoundly cruel things to people they don't. If you view their actions towards people outside of their sphere of personhood through the lense of what is and isn't an appropriate way to treat an object rather than a person they often seem perfectly naturally.
I know the research you're talking about here but don't think it should be viewed as something that makes people incapable of empathy to those outside their core group. It makes it harder, but that hasn't stopped entire nations of people moving hard left towards extreme vocal empathy among one another as the working class. Unity, solidarity and love for one another is demonstrably possible among very large numbers it just requires the right set of prerequisites to achieve, these prerequisites are what socialists should be working towards ticking off in order to set the stage for a wider revolutionary movement.
yeah, it’s true that some humans are really bad, but they’re nothing without (poorly educated) followers, and their followers are the one that give those humans the power to do evil things. Critical thinking is something that should be taught more often to avoid history from repeating.
I'm going to gently remind you that Drumpf's base is actually on avg. wealthier than the opposition's base. That's why you get those obnoxious trucks, flags and infinite merchandise (courtesy of Chinese workers).
No need to smear the common people, it's simply a fact that democracy is not a real tool for change.
Nono look at the 10 poorest states in America(with worse living conditions). They all voted majority Trump, some of the porest counties in the USA are literally voting 80% for trump
I am fully convinced that won't materialize until a major Western city or province/state/territory/[insert administrative unit here] gets catastrophically and irreparably fucked up.
Not even then.
So it's hopeless. Lol
Not sure if this will give you hope or not, but one thing to consider is that we could still make it far worse, or put differently, that it's still in our power to stop that from happening. We can't change the fact that climate change already has noticeable negative consequences today, nor that global temperatures will rise by at least 1.5° towards the end of the century (compared to 1950-1980), probably more. But we do have a somewhat realistic chance of keeping it at around 2° or below (see e.g. here or here for easy simulations in your browser). The point is that every tenth of a degree counts, and our action or lack thereof now might well make the difference between it "just" getting bad with regular droughts, crop failures, some regions becoming temporarily uninhabitable due to wet bulb temperatures and so on on the one hand, or all of that at a much larger scale leading to societal collapse if we don't act at all. We live in the worst extinction event the earth has seen since the asteroid that killed the non-bird dinosaurs, but we can still keep it at that instead of turning it into the worst extinction event the earth has ever seen. Luckily, governments (and industry) largely have at least accepted that climate change is a thing, and in Europe and the Americas green-house gas emission have actually already been sinking for the last 15 years or so. Don't get me wrong, it's not great, and these governments still should do much more, but it could also be worse, and the fact that we're lowering emissions despite our politicians generally being very friendly with industry could give at least a sliver of hope. The emissions of China and India (and the rest of Asia) are still rising, but show signs of decelerated growth at least, and in Africa emissions are still fairly low and rising rather slowly, with a chance that some less developed countries might more or less just skip a big chunk of carbon-based industrialisation in favour of renewables. Altogether this means that we're already on a way to avoid the worst possible scenarios, and still have the power to keep it towards the lower end of the scale as far as terrible outcomes are concerned.
In addition, while individuals have always less power than whole governments or industries, there are nevertheless things anyone reading this could do, e.g.:
If you're reading this and whether or not you're already doing some of those things, I'm sure you can find at least some things you could do (I know I can, and I'm trying to put it into practice), which might in turn also make you feel less depressed about the situation. As mentioned before, I'm not saying that we're in a great situation, but whining about it helps nobody, and we're still in a situation where we have the power to stop things from getting even worse.
All great points and I agree 100%. Thanks for taking the time to write this
Not sure if this will give you hope or not, but one thing to consider is that we could still make it far worse, or put differently, that it's still in our power to stop that from happening. We can't change the fact that climate change already has noticeable negative consequences today, nor that global temperatures will rise by at least 1.5° towards the end of the century (compared to 1950-1980), probably more. But we do have a somewhat realistic chance of keeping it at around 2° or below (see e.g. here or here for easy simulations in your browser). The point is that every tenth of a degree counts, and our action or lack thereof now might well make the difference between it "just" getting bad with regular droughts, crop failures, some regions becoming temporarily uninhabitable due to wet bulb temperatures and so on on the one hand, or all of that on a much larger scale leading to societal collapse if we don't act at all. We live in the worst extinction event the earth has seen since the asteroid that killed the non-bird dinosaurs, but we can still keep it at that instead of turning it into the worst extinction event the earth has ever seen. Luckily, governments (and industry) largely have at least accepted that climate change is a thing, and in Europe and the Americas green-house gas emission have actually already been sinking for the last 15 years or so. Don't get me wrong, it's not great, and these governments still should do much more, but it could also be worse, and the fact that we're lowering emissions despite our politicians generally being very friendly with industry could give at least a sliver of hope. The emissions of China and India (and the rest of Asia) are still rising, but show signs of decelerated growth at least, and in Africa emissions are still fairly low and rising rather slowly, with a chance that some less developed countries might more or less just skip a big chunk of carbon-based industrialisation in favour of renewables. Altogether this means that we're already on a way to avoid the worst possible scenarios, and still have the power to keep it towards the lower end of the scale as far as terrible outcomes are concerned.
In addition, while individuals have always less power than whole governments or industries, there are nevertheless things anyone reading this could do, e.g.:
If you're reading this and whether or not you're already doing some of those things, I'm sure you can find at least some things you could do (I know I can, and I'm trying to put it into practice), which might in turn also make you feel less depressed about the situation. As mentioned before, I'm not saying that we're in a great situation, but whining about it helps nobody, and we're still in a situation where we have the power to stop things from getting even worse.
I don't think this is a hot take anymore. Middle/lower class are sick of hearing that everything is our problem. It isn't.
I know this won't change your mind or anything, but this is probably pretty close to the mindset of some other ~1.5 billion first world countries' populations' mindset. And those combined account to currently around ~37% of CO2 emissions. So if all people like you (if you consider first world countries' people to be people like you) all came together and did more we could have some pretty huge impact. Of course the other ~63% may still fuck things up, but this is a much different comparison than just you against the rest of the world, you're not very unique in that regard.
I'm so tired of people turning everything into an awful prisoner's dilemma. Everyone should just aim to be the best person you can be and stop fretting about whether everyone else is trying quite as hard as you. It doesn't need to be complicated.
Right? On a global scale, though, "best person you can be" should be something like, "let's try to behave in such a way so that if everyone behaved like me, the world would be a good place". That is hard though, to think like that.
What can help is the knowledge that by doing so it is impossible not to on some level inspire others to do the same to some degree by example.
If you're a selfish jerk that will cause people around you to be .001% (or something) more selfish and jerky. If you are kind and good that will push the needle the other way similarly.
Except the amount more those people are better or worse for knowing you then also influences how much better or worse the people they know are etc and so while it is a small effect per person, the diffused effect is meaningful, cumulative and self-reinforcing. It doesn't take a lot of people within a community either giving up and being the worst or finding enough of a spine to try to be good to start to tip the balance of the whole community in either direction. It also means that as you are better and kinder, your immediate external world gradually becomes a little better and kinder which makes it easier and more rewarding to be that way in an endless virtuous cycle.
Ok now apply the fact that at least 45% of the western world is brainwashed by the fossil fuel industry. They're low IQ repeater bots who would glady kill every single one of us because climate change is a "hoax".
I think a very small minority "would gladly kill every single one of us", not 45%. If it were 45%, there'd already be open civil war all over the west.
Can also create isolated cells to coordinate .... I'm gonna stop before this gets added to my file.
Thank you this was actually really nice to read. I feel like everywhere I look is more bad news about the climate it's nice to see we can at least still mitigate it
Human problems have human solutions.
The science is clear, now it's an engineering problem.
Unfortunately, it's actually a political problem.
Another human problem, so solvable.
It's not like a super volcano or asteroid.
Asteroid problem is more solvable than political problem.
Armageddon solved it like in 2 hours or so.
Is it though?
CEOs don't want to risk their profits.
Politicians don't want to risk their terms.
Voters don't want to lower their living standards.
No one really wants to do something.
Appropriate username, but I (unfortunately) agree
There's like 100 people with the power to make the change and they've all decided to invest the money and power in self preservation. It's the biggest 'fuck you proletariat scum' I could imagine. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff
As if the voters are any better. They could vote for policy makers that bring change, or go into politics themselves. But they don't actually want to be affected by such policy changes. It's always the others, always just finger pointing.
Are you talking about American voters?
Only about 35 percent of the eligible voters participated, so yeah. Apathy and complacent comfort is a big player in the game. I'm pretty convinced that a lot of people's apathy comes from the lack of political agency. When business interests conflict with human interests guess who wins every time.
Dropping a big ice cube on the ocean every now an then?
Would you need a bigger ice cube every time?
My 13yo refuses to discuss the topic. He says he's already been traumatized by it.