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Transcript:

It’s too late to save the world

Ash trees sprout in cracks in the asphalt. The gutters collect leaves, which become soil, in which dandelions sprout.

There’s nothing you can do

A man plants an entire forest. A young girl teaches a drone to deliver saplings. The elderly volunteer to clean up radioactive waste.

You might as well give up

Wolves return to ancestral hunting grounds. Bison return to the prairie. Otters return to the kelp beds. Young oaks push roots deep into reclaimed farmland.

Who cares anyway?

Children draw pictures of flowers. Festivals are held for cherry blossoms and pecans and apples. A crowd cheers as the last line is cut away from the ensnared creature.

I have disobeyed worse than you The world does not die on my watch

  • phoenixz
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    9 months ago

    I so so much wish I could agree with you.

    However, CO2 emissions are a bitch. Even if tomorrow we stop dead on our tracks, no more extra CO2 emissions, were still fucked for centuries to come.

    Even if tomorrow we stop, and spend ALL the global energy output (now magically generated by nuclear, aoloar and wind) on filtering out all extra CO2, we’d still be fucked for decades to about a century.

    That is if tomorrow we would start.

    Reality is that we’re still actually INCREASING CO2 output because hydrocarbons are (truthfully) a great energy source and converting our entire infrastructure to alternative sources is expensive and hey, we have an economy to uphold and we have shareholders to keep happy, and governments still have so much money to give to gas and oil companies to sponsor their world destruction, even though they have proven lied to use for decades about the problem!

    Also we’re so happy spending billions of dollars on green washed projects or on scam products that will just push more CO2 in the atmosphere, like Hyperloop and more and more electric cars!

    So here is a very cold dose of reality for you.

    Global temperatures will rise, and keepmtisijg faster and faster every year. Humanity won’t do shit until people start dying by the millions which, given current trends, I’d say will happen in about a decade from now.

    Then we’ll finally really start trying to do something more beyond the bullshit were pulling now.

    The CO2 in our atmosphere is there because we burned hydrocarbons. There is no way around it, there is no free lunch, we’ll have to pull that CO2 out. Filtering that out will cost roughly the same energy as we gemot by burning it. Then you need to store it somehow. But where? Because uouri talking about cubic kilometers worth of CO2 every. Single. Year. For decades to come. You can convert it to plastics, easier to store, but costs roughly twice the amount of energy we got for burning it.

    So we’ll need to spend around three times the amount of energy we got from burning fossil fuels for the past two centuries

    So to get there, For the next century or so, 30-50% of our entire energy production will have to go into CO2 scrubbing.

    So expect energy prices to go nuts.

    That is only on the cleaning up isle.

    Then we’re in the “were currently fucked” isle. Weather patterns are changing rapidly which will affect food production. Expect food prices to rise to crazy levels, expect food shortages. Maybe even wars, when resources get really thin.

    Expect loads of people to die during the summers due to high heat. Eh, that already had been happening multiple times, so expect it to be worse. Much, much worse

    We’ll have to resolve to atmospheric engineering (which, technically, we’ve been doing already for the past centuries by dumping so much CO2 in it) and start pushing sulfuric compounds into the atmosphere to block out some of the solar radiation, temporarily at least. If we don’t, things will get fucked even worse.

    Our generation is the last to enjoy the damn near free energy. The next generations will be paying through the nose for our partying, you’re welcome!

    Oh yeah, and don’t expect politicians to do anything about it. They don’t understand the issues, they don’t understand the severity and they don’t give a shit as they need to please the rich, and theyl.rich only cares about being rich, they’ll by extra airconditioning or something.

    TL;DR: We’re fucked, and millions, if not billions will die in the next decades over the results of climate change and there is nothing you cand do about it.

    • can@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      I mean, yeah. But half the people are going to read a few paragraphs of that wall of doom and give up entirely. Which isn’t great.

      Yes, things are bad.

      very bad

      But we can’t extinguish every glimmer of hope.

      • phoenixz
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        9 months ago

        There would be glimmers of hoor if I just didn’t have such a low view of humanity. From top to bottom it’s filled with assholes who just don’t care. Just now in the rainforest a successful tree replanting project has been burned to the ground by land grabbers.

        People don’t give a shit

    • icepuncher69@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      All the reasons of why its pointles to do something about it are tied to the economic system, so i say fuck the system and its oligarchic lizard people, lets take them out of the ecuation.

      • skulblaka@kbin.social
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        9 months ago

        Hard disagree. The world would be a much better place if more people had this conversation more frequently. Covering your eyes and la-la-laing the problem away solves nothing, and in fact is the very reason why we are so screwed now.

        We can act now, and maybe preserve humanity beyond the next 250 years. Or we can do nothing and guarantee the death of everyone. Make your choice.

        • Ataraxia@sh.itjust.works
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          9 months ago

          I mean, what exactly is the point of trying to “preserve” humanity? We are possibly just obsolete and unable to adapt. Instead we change and manipulate our environment and that’s what it gets us… we can’t just stop doing what we are doing. What’s the purpose of lingering on? Putting new humans who never consented to exist and suffer the consequences of their parents’ actions through literal hell? If you knew you’d be born to experience a horrifying gauntlet in which survival meant a lifetime of hardship and pain? Lol no. Nobody would. Not existing was fucking amazing. It was literal bliss. Dying on the other hand is horrifying. We aren’t contributing anything important to the universe with our existence. It’s fine if we die out. We had an interesting run.

          • can@sh.itjust.works
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            9 months ago

            What about the children who are going to live through a worsening world? You can start your suicide cult if you want to but many will carry on. The suffering is just beginning.

      • Takatakatakatakatak@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        9 months ago

        They’re right though. We will be scratched from the earth like fleas from a dog’s balls, having only existed a mere blink of time.

        The earth doesn’t give a fuck about us. It will heal when we’re gone.

      • phoenixz
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        9 months ago

        Because I’m right? Because I am. Climate change is a slow moving train and were all tied in a chair right in front of it and still most of us are “there is no train lalalalala”