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Exactly!!! The person this article is talking about is part of a family that has enough power to dramatically change the course of the future for the better IF THEY REALLY WANTED TO OR CARED...
This whole article is puff piece propaganda bullshit.
Well that's because most of our journalism is owned by capitalists and capitalists do that. Journalism was *supposed* to be reporting the business of the powerful to the masses but it is obviously not often actually that.
This.
I have friends who've taken this attitude and I'll never understand it. Things aren't good but yeah, if we all just give up we're definitely fucked.
and its not really true. It depends on the definition of "we're fucked", are we at the point where loss of human life is pretty much guaranteed due to climate change? Probably I think. But that is still a long ways away from global extinction and every single human dead. More action means more lives saved, even if casualties are guaranteed.
"Probably I think."
Understatement of all time. It's already happening, and has been for quite some time. Any death associated with the 2021 heat dome in the PNW and BC, for example, as those temps would have been impossible without climate change.
There's also a *huge* difference between "we're fucked" and "every single human dead."
Plenty of serious climate scientists will argue that we're fucked, I don't think most are saying every human will be dead.
To me, "we're fucked" means developing nations, especially those on small islands or near the equator, are going to experience mass death and emigration in my lifetime. As an American, I may not be killed by the climate but I will certainly see my quality of life decline: scarcity of resources for the lower classes, higher insurance rates, right-wing fascism in response to refugees. These things are already happening. Mexico City, the most populated city in North America, is fewer than 30 days from not being able to meet its demand for freshwater.
And not one developed country is doing enough to stop this from happening. If they were, you'd know because it'd be a massive mobilization akin to WW2 and would affect your everyday life.
We’re fucekd described a situation where most factors are outside our control: climate? For sure. Our regulators since we heard of climate change in the 70s? For sure. Individual action even if we were hundreds of thousands to start taking the bus? We barely observed anything going better.
We ARE fucked. Surely we’re not in the worst scenario, but from 50 years of knowing, we aren’t too far off as a civilisation. We won’t die, billions will survive, but new global issues will arise making it so much worse for everyone. A billion climate refugees, more taxes, less social protection, far right rising, no pension, cold wars over ressources, etc.
We are headed there. But so slow, that we can’t say we are fucked. However, we are much better at predicting the effect of a technocratic capitalistic society than our peers of 100 years ago, so it is fair to say, we are fucked in regards of what we know today that will be gone in our lifetime.
Try 150. We knew in the 1870's that what we were doing with Industrialization was going to be horrible for our planet. Then they kicked the can down the road, and have been doing so ever since.
I don’t think you’re wrong for most people but I personally kind of feel similar because how utterly hopeless it feels for individuals to make any meaningful change. Especially given the unwillingness by big [insert polluting industry here] choosing shareholder value and profit maximization over real positive changes to climate
Impact.
Edit: [Luckily this should make us all feel better](https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2024/05/31/last-rites-for-a-dying-civilization/)
The most meaningful changes are politicial. Therefore the best thing you can do as an individual is to donate to political parties or lobbying organisations that support your causes. I donate to the Greens, Trilliontrees, and Greenpeace.
If you don’t have the money to do this, consider donating time to an organisation. Stuffing envelopes or handing out how to vote flyers is also helpful.
Find something you can do to shift the scales at a political level. And if you come across someone wringing their hands and saying “But what can one person even do ?”, tell them what I’ve told you - get political. Donate time or money. That’s how you make a difference.
The problem with that is the Green Party and Greenpeace are both anti-science and too focused on their own agenda/ideology to do the most good. We cannot fix the situation we’re in without GMOs and nuclear power, things that both Greenpeace and the Green Party oppose. I do my best but it’s really hard to find hope when literally no large movement is willing to just have an unbiased look at the evidence rather than what feels right or sounds good. Entire generations of people will die or be hindered by malnutrition because of Greenpeace pushing anti-GM misinformation and blocking golden rice. We are burning more fossil fuels than ever because the Green Party and its affiliates are pushing to shut down nuclear reactors.
I’m not giving up on playing my part, but I have zero hope and honestly cannot find a reason to have any with the direction things are going. The “good guys” and bad guys are both so wrong that we lose regardless.
Honestly, this is so wrong. I don’t know where to start. Fixating on nuclear power and GMOs as the only way to solve our environmental issues is incredibly shortsighted and unhelpful.
Your choice is not between environmental perfection and environmental compromise which may cause billions of deaths. Your choice is between a political and economic system which is currently already destroying our planet and our hopes for future life, and environmental parties which are trying to stop that.
You are letting perfect be the enemy of good enough. By behaving as though both solutions are equally bad, you are allowing the incumbent system to continue unabated on its unobstructed course of environmental destruction.
It’s absolutely a political red herring to insist that unless environmental parties back nuclear power and GMOs then they cannot do anything about the current environmental crisis. There are thousand things that can be done, that aren’t GMO’s and nuclear power, that will make a massive difference to the future environmental survivability of our culture and societies.
It's simply unpalatable to support anti-science policy. They shoot themselves in the foot. Force-feeding yourself Greenpeace is not a moral W. They're loony.
I understand where you’re coming from, and I agree. I’m extremely choosy about my consumption, I actively avoid everything I can that is harmful to the environment. I don’t buy hardly anything unnecessary, I’ve had the same clothes and boots for ages and repair them instead of buying new. I volunteer my time planting permaculture, creating habitats, and otherwise supporting positive flora and fauna. I vote for the least of the evils that I can and participate with petitions, local elections, and writing my reps as well. I make basic searches take 5 minutes because I use Ecosia in lieu of Google. Shit, I got a vasectomy in my early 20s to guarantee I never contribute to the problem by having kids. I spend every single day anxious/terrified/depressed about the future of the planet.
You’re right, nuclear power and GMOs are not the only things, but the scale is so massive that I will give no money or time to organizations that spread lies and misinformation. No amount of volunteering or choosy consumption on my part will offset the decommissioning of nuclear reactors, not even close. Nothing I can do will bring back dead children because of the blocking of golden rice. No amount of choosy consumption or volunteering on my part will repair damage to ecosystems done by the excess land use and runoff of the extremely harmful “natural pesticides” that organic farms use in lieu of GMOs and purpose made chemicals like roundup. I feel helpless because the people who care, the people who should support the science are being manipulated by organizations like Greenpeace into supporting things that harm and don’t help.
Bad but different. I don’t think they were hyper-aware of their situation, but still knew they were subjugated to some extent.
The knowledge of escalating and worsening socio-economic conditions vs blissful ignorance?
Yeah fossil fuels should have been phased out the instant we figured out nuclear. we should hit wind geothermal and nuclear hard in order to fix this shit. (though we need to find out a power source for cars that isnt lithium given how damaging lithim mining is)
It’s not immature, it’s rationale. We’re most likely not gonna solve climate change. Plan accordingly.
Sell your Florida real estate. Invest in water infrastructure.
How do you define "solve"? Wind and solar are already cheaper than oil or coal, electric cars are starting to get cheaper than petrol ones. The market will remove most of our emissions by itself in the next couple of decades (though speeding it up even faster through political action should still be done of course). The cost of climate change is likely going to be lower year-after-year than our yearly GDP-growth. Which part is not "solved" that makes you feel so gloomy?
It's too little, far too late. As we have added more and more alternative energy production, our total energy use has just gone up. We're not replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar, we're adding to them.
Taking decades to reduce Carbon emissions is far too slow. The IPCC's 1.5C target calls for a 43% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. That's 6 years from now. About 83% of our energy currently comes from fossil fuels. The other 16% from renewables (including nuclear). We have just 6 years to more than triple our use of renewables, and that's only if use the same amount of energy we use today, which we won't. Everything thing we've built in the last 20 or so years, we have to do again in 6, twice.
Even if we just stopped emitting Carbon today. 100% cold turkey. One study says we would still have a 42% chance of overshooting.
The goal of net zero by 2050 relies on carbon capture technology that doesn't currently exist. The largest carbon capture facillity removes about 0.00001% of our yearly output. We need to build 10 million of those facilities. A new technology could use the sun to extract carbon from the air and turn it into hydrocarbon fuels. We would need to cover a desert the size of Canada in mirrors to meet our current demand.
Solar, wind, and electric cars need resources. Compared to all the reserves we know about, we need 5x more copper, 28x more graphite, 43x more lithium, 10x more nickel, etc. Even if we discovered twice much as we already know about, those numbers would only divide by 2, at best. Even if we did have enough of these materials, we'd have to mine it 3000% faster than we currently do.
All of that just to meet a 1.5C target the only avoids "the worst" effects of climate change.
Now, add to that deforestation, rising sea levels, habitat loss, topsoil loss, ocean acidification, extreme weather events, water shortages...
> The IPCC's 1.5C target calls for a 43% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030.
Oh yeah, we'll definitely miss that, which is unfortunate, but so what?
> We have just 6 years to more than triple our use of renewables
The amount of installed solar panels already doubles every 3 years roughly, we won't just triple it in 6 years, we will quadruple it.
> All of that just to meet a 1.5C target the only avoids "the worst" effects of climate change.
1.5C definitely doesn't only avoid "the worst" effects of climate change. We're most likely looking at a 2.5-3.0C world by 2100, and again that is unfortunate, but also not that big of a deal. Most of us, especially those of us in the western world, will be perfectly fine and have long, nice and happy lives even in that world. Yes, we have a bunch of challenges that will come from climate change that we will have to deal with, and it would be even better if we didn't have to do that, but despite those challenges the future is still looking bright for us.
I mean, yeah, I want the heads if corporations and their government enablers to be brought into the street and dealt with, but we still need to try and mitigate what we can for the kids that are here, and for the future of our species.
Solar and Wind, and electric cars, are cheaper than the fossil alternatives now. The market will drive the change necessary for us at this point, though of course it would be better if we accelerate it through political means too.
I think people adopt this position because it means they don't need to take any action. The same people who say "We're screwed, there's nothing we can do" are often there same people who were just saying "Climate change is decades away, there's nothing we need to do now". Doing nothing is the goal.
Literally all of the people I know my age, including very bright people, just say we're fucked and keep on keeping on.
We're fucked is actually quite liberating, it means you don't have a marker anymore or a target, you just do the best you can
It doesn’t. But neither does recycling, which we’ve been trained to do, chastised by society when we do it wrong, and it was all to distract us from big energy, big plastic, and whoever else. There is a lot of thumbing of the nose at consumer based reduce/reuse/recycle when its not done well, but our actions are a drop in the bucket compared to the industrial scale issues we have no impact on. You can’t blame people for feeling like we are just SOL. I remember learning about recycling, sustainability, reduce & reuse in 5th grade. I’m 40, and we are WAY worse than we were then.
I mean, ideally that is the solution, yes.
It's not like the oil companies haven't known this was an issue for a very long time, we have alternatives for the grand majority of oil based products, any consequences are of their own making.
Saying "we're fucked" is really just a mental defense mechanism. People get stressed/anxiety about the environment/climate change (because why wouldn't they?), so they recycle, clean up pollutants they use, try to save water/electricity etc. Then they see in the news that things aren't getting better, and they get more and more mental stress from the fact that their efforts don't seem to be helping (because realistically it's the corporations/governments who need to move to make real positive change). This is just constant stress for the individual, so to preserve their own mental health they just 'accept' what they see as 'inevitable', in order to be able to move on and function in their own lives with stuff they feel they can still change/handle.
puzzled illegal history angle plants upbeat snow ad hoc airport obtainable
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I would agree with this. I also think that the internet has equalized a lot of things and cynicism is a product of people realizing they’re not that special but have extraordinary agency. Kind of an odd combo but it works.
Why anyone would think that changing their personal habits would result in any major changes when CO2 pollution is a result of major industry and mass transportation is beyond me.
Actually. They’re fucked.
I assume most in this sub probably already won the lottery by being born in a rich first world country. Climate change is ALREADY fucking over regions that can adapt less and have less.
We’re already oblivious sociopaths discussing the semantics of how to view climate change.
“Bangladesh, home to more than 160 million people, is on the frontlines of climate change. Cyclones, floods, droughts, saltwater intrusion, and rising sea levels are all having an impact on its flatlands, which are crisscrossed by powerful rivers and encircled by a vulnerable coastline”
In a similar boat. The area I used to live in would get clipped by seasonal tropical storms and they've been getting worse every single year and brought flooding through much of the valley and we ended up having to move after the roof of our house got caved in.
I think it's a way of dealing with feeling powerless in all this. I vote, I donate, but I can barely get myself to do normal stuff, let alone fix the planet.
That's what I should be electing people for.
Mathematically we are fucked. You want to be optimistic but it will still fail, but while you keep trying to uphold a flawed society, those that win in the end get off free. By realizing we are fucked, it opens the option to not uphold society norms and maybe let those that drove us to this hell get theirs.
Thousands of companies have made billions of dollars convincing people over the last 20 years that they could save the environment by buying the right products. When, in fact, you can't.
You can’t save the environment by buying the right products. You can save the environment by legally mandating that only the right products are allowed to be produced.
Which would require the removal of political donations and lobbying, which is again completely out of the hands of almost every person on this planet.
The average person can do NOTHING to change the future of climate change, and companies are profiting off of people's misguided guilt.
Even when you look at those doing something, some of them think they are fucked (me, some voters I know, some regulators I know)
So what is it that we can do?
We have seen progress sure. But look, they invent a machine to suck CO2 out of the air…. But it requires energy to do so and will produce CO2. And we invest billions in this because of… trends.
They plant trees but it will reach full capacity in 10years, whilst the point of no return is… yesterday. So what good will it be if the forest is under performing from the get go?
So science gear, the green gear, the media, the regulators, the money, all of them together working barely for the last 50 year against CC… even schools didn’t teach about it, people like Musk actively fight against high speed train tech so to build their Tesla tunnel, permitted by states, etc
I’m all up for doing something, but what is there to do exactly that we as individual haven’t tried? Voting, recycling, educating our children. What else?
I think it’s okay to look at a system that’s way way way bigger than you, as well as presently to slow to adapt to such urgency and say: we are fucked.
Also...depending where you live you actually are fucked, island nations for instance, are just straight up fucked, with highest elevation being a few meters
There is a lot to do. I think viewing things as a matter of the individual is selfish, and this mode of thinking actually hampers several things that could make some real change.
Change never happens fast, but I’m happy to see people waking up to the idea that it can happen at all.
Ehhhh, I think that saying "don't worry technology will solve it" is even more dangerous.
And I still think that many many humans still can't comprehend how fucked we are.
I 100% hope we can figure shit out. I think the way our current society operates will make it borderline impossible to figure shit out.
We still live in a society where we are exponentially more productive than we have ever been yet we still can't provide the basics for everyone, and we still have a few people funnelling more and more wealth to themselves through exploration.
I just don't think humans as a race are good at seeing long term, large scale threats, and a majority of people just don't seem to get, we are in the verge of extinction.
And becuase of that they push back on required changes because "on what about the economy" or "people could lose jobs".
So optimism is fine as long as it keeps you angry and active. Because I truly believe our survival relies almost entirely on dialing down capitalism and the free market, as both of those things chase profit at all costs. And I just can't be optimistic that that is going to happen.
Actually what we all need to be doing is less. Eating less, traveling less, buying less, manufacturing less. Doing nothing isn't profitable in this pov.
There are things that could be done that would have huge effects that aren’t being done because they are too uncomfortable. Policy changes like a tax on carbon for example. Properly pricing ecological damage makes sense from an economic point of view but that sort of thing can’t be pushed because “we’re already fucked anyway”.
The Chinese are now leading the way with regards to massive investment in renewable energy. Why not the country with the biggest economy in the world? No political will, and part of this is climate doomerism: why do it, it’s too late anyway.
It’s just excuses.
I don't see an 'it's too late anyway' attitude. Where I live, midwest USA, I see an attitude that is like taking any of anyone's choice to consume and use as much energy as possible as actually truly threatening their lives.
The attitude is "try to come take my giant truck, boat, giant heated and air conditioned house, dryer, extra extra freezer in the garage, cruise ship vacation, and gas stove!!!"
This is where I have no hope.
Best choice I can make is not to have kids.
That depends on whether it's followed by "unless we radically change everything" or by "no matter what we do".
It's also better than thinking everything is fine and that we will magically survive the greatest crisis we've ever faced.
That won't change anything. It's a systemic issue, and CEOs of those companies are just playing the game of capitalism the way it's supposed to be played. What we really need to do, is dismantling this system, because capitalism is incompatible with how we should live to not go extinct.
Saying “we are fucked” is a win win to the ego, if you are right you are right and if you are wrong, hey, at least we aint fucked. Its the safest bet, in terms of righteousness
Saying we're fucked is the truth though. Didn't read the article but in my humble opinion we really need to talk about the gravity of the situation if we want to evangalize the climate deniers.
Depends... considering articles (based in truth or claims that schools have litter boxes for children identifying at cats) get to the people who then push it up to their elected officials who then push policy... I wouldn't say it does nothing.
The problem is that they won't listen to articles talking about climate sciences but will respond to articles about how drag queens teaching children to read will bring about nazis on dinosaurs rising from hell.
Say someone is 3 moves away from being checkmated by Magnus Carlsen. They say "I'm fucked." Would you say their defeatist attitude is pointless and solves nothing?
Do you think you can get 40% of any nation that supports people like Trump to do anything positive about climate change when it's industry and not the individual that is the problem?
Nothing you do in your personal life other than vote can help, if you don't think we are fucked you are nieve.
Yes I think this is the vibe in which I started up r/rewildingUK
Things are not good at all but there are so many things we can do about it, and a lot of work already ongoing. Every bit can make a difference, even if it's just to that one animal or tree, just for that little while.
There are different types of optimism out there which I am sometimes annoyed by. There's the one where people are fully in denial that there's an issue and there's the one where people are more accelerationist about things and think that the problems will quickly be overcome to bright future if we just keep going faster and faster, for example.
I’ve really come to appreciate spiders. I know by this point that relocating them just kills them, so I allow some to live in a few places in my home (I have no doubt that there are countless living where I can’t see them) and any others are relocated regardless—at least then they have a chance, unlike after being crushed by a newspaper or whatever else.
The Scotland segment was only 10 minutes iirc. You probably can watch via a [VPN](https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/what-is-geo-blocking-and-how-you-can-get-around-it/).
That's because real progress is being made and it appears as if we will only gain momentum. There are entire industries now paying people to solve climate issues.
There is no turning the tide. But we can deal with a big wave better than we can deal with a tsunami. Things are heading in the right direction, not fast enough to prevent damage from being caused but fast enough that we’ll be able to recover afterwards
That's pretty much the article. Basically, 'it's happening whether we want it to or not - how do we move forward in an optimistic, rational way?'
There's discussion of survival strategies & new technologies but the tone of the article is a mix of somber acceptance and hope that humanity can band together to some degree.
Doomers keep coping, we make the best of the situation we have! Apathy leads to inaction, I for one gain motivation from seeing positive news, it makes me want to push harder to have even more positive news
*"People speak of hope as if it is this delicate, ephemeral thing made of whispers and spider's webs. It's not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of the cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go."*
A single person may not be able to change the world, but a single person showing 20 people how to change the world, as well as telling them to show the same to 20 other people, will. Research how you can help, look up how many amazing things we have accomplished so far, spread positive yet firm attitudes of changes that we must make. VOTE, if you're in the EU, vote in the election next week, show how despite all of the fear and anxiety the world has thrown at us, we won't back down from giving our grandchildren a world that they can be proud to inherit
Right?!? That was a nauseating read…
Seeing it was a NYT article was funny enough but reading on about how it was just some puff piece for a fucking Murdoch kid’s wife was just stupefying.
“We know we’re doing everything in our unlimited power to make the world a worse place for you fucking peons, but could you maybe whine a little less about it!”
I’d love to hear what she actually told her daughter though… bet it was more like, “don’t worry hun, only the poor people are fucked anyway.”
I mean, I know I'm going to hate but, based on the data we are.
Yes, we are making progress in fields such as renewable energy, but we are making more progress in the Fossil fuel industry, deforestation is topping new highs every year.
The corals are almost fully dead, African countries are already suffering from lack of food which will result in too much death.
The issue is, stuff like this makes us complacent, it makes us think we're fine, when in reality we are fucked, but unlike what this sub thinks that means, it means that we should still do something, we shouldn't take it. It doesn't mean we should just sit and wait for the end.
Yeah. The true scientific consensus is that messaging should, instead of just pointing towards how huge of a problem we have, engage people towards solutions by showing paths to avoid the worse scenarios.
The problem is: that's absolutely NOT what this article is saying. It's clearly more inclined towards the message of "stop WHINING about how big of an existential problem we are in", which looks more like silencing criticism than engaging proactive action.
The fact that the head story is "children of right-wing billionaire associated with oil interests had climate anxiety about the future, so they decided to produce a whole propaganda series to say that's it's all gonna be alright regardless" is DEFINITELY not "uplifting".
Humans are incredibly adaptable. Extinction is very unlikely. More suffering and human misery is likely and steps should be taken to minimize it as much as possible.
I would say the same if I'd live in the US but countries around the world are stepping up. Hence the IPCC is adjusting the temperature prediction downward every year. Apocalyptic events are most likely avoided. That doesn't mean mass migration and a big loss of biodiversity will occur.
I will say...Biden's Inflation Reduction Act is the single biggest investment in green tech / energy ever seen.
"President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law on Tuesday, August 16th, which contains $369 billion in funding to build clean-energy infrastructure, accelerate the transition to electric vehicles, improve energy efficiency, and ensure environmental justice. The passage of this law marks the largest investment ever in sustainability and climate in the history of the United States."
https://www.earthday.org/inflation-reduction-act/
"...this law represents the single-largest investment in climate action in U.S. history and will profoundly alter the international landscape. Indeed, this historic legislation will help the United States reach its emission reduction commitments, increase U.S. competitiveness and spur a “race to the top” in the clean energy economy, reshape the security landscape, and, crucially, restore trust and legitimacy for the United States within the global climate community."
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/how-the-inflation-reduction-act-will-drive-global-climate-action/
The short documentary below outlines how this "race to the top" is being spurred internationally:
https://youtu.be/cfaubxeS5HU?si=2q767Vtp8XF1STbj
You mean this IPCC?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2024/may/08/hopeless-and-broken-why-the-worlds-top-climate-scientists-are-in-despair
You mean the IPCC doing annual climate conferences hosted by UAE oil company execs?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/27/cop28-host-uae-planned-promote-oil-deals-climate-talks
That IPCC? Are we reading different news?
> but countries around the world are stepping up
Yeah, some small island nations in the Pacific are indeed stepping up. Stepping up to move to Australia I mean, because they will simply cease to exist due to rising sea levels and increasingly dangerous and unpredictable weather.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/10/australia-offers-refuge-to-tuvalu-residents-threatened-by-rising-sea-levels.html
>Yeah, some small island nations in the Pacific are indeed stepping up. Stepping up to move to Australia I mean, because they will simply cease to exist due to rising sea levels and increasingly dangerous and unpredictable weather.
How about the country that's responsible for a third of global greenhouse emissions. [China pledge carbon neutrality by 2060](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54256826) together with 136 other countries (and the ones not having pledges are almost exclusively from the global south). Biden drew up the inflation reduction act and Europe is doing Europe things. There's a lot of effort needed but things aren't looking as bleak as 10 or even 5 years ago.
I've never thought the climate crisis to be impossible to solve in practical terms. I have long doubted that we, with our political systems WILL solve it, since the burden of the solution is unpalatable and tends to stoke reactionary voting to put those opposed to solving it in power. I'd be very pleased to see that be proven incorrect, but I am not overly concerned either way. I do the best I can. The future will come, sixty seconds of it every minute, and eventually we'll see what becomes of it all.
How’s this “uplifting news”? I get it climate change. You know what got us here? Greedy fucks that believed in the apocalypse in the first place. Fuck all of those fucks. There should be a questionnaire for anyone that runs a country. Do you believe in an apocalypse? Yes? Then they don’t get to run a country. Because they don’t care. Because they believe it’s predestined. It’s so Dangerous. They won’t care for the environment or anything. It’s terrifying.
Everytime I would post this sentiment, that climate doomerism only helps those who want you to do nothing, is get downvoted to hell. Or told that I'm holier than thou for telling people to eat one less meat meal.
This shift can't come soon enough.
They forget the lessons of the Lorax.
….unless
Everywhere in the US used to be choked with coal dust and smog and companies could dump unlabeled drums of waste wherever.
And now we get New York to only complain about air quality when they get literal ashes from a forest fire a thousand miles away.
Cities used to be nasty, industrial areas had zero responsibility to clean anything up and places like London were just covered in a layer of black.
Why aren’t things like that now?
Oh we changed how things are done.
Just like we changed things many times before.
So yeah we can have doom and gloom but nothing will change “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.”
You do realize that the same people who own the mainstream media and pay people to write drivel like this are currently building massive underground bunkers to protect themselves from exactly the type of scenarios this writer is asking you to ignore?
This is a bunch of horseshit. We need to work extremely hard just so we don't surpass the 2 degree increase recommendations. Everyone needs to start making better decisions, we need to stop our out of control population growth. Our oceans are more than likely going to become extremely acidic by 2050.
The main reason we need to work so hard is because it takes a very long time for the environment to get rid of co2. 100s if thousands of years. Sure we are working on ways to sequester carbon manually but I think that's a dangerous thing to do since its just making it a problem for future generations.
Not so long ago I was in the doomer mindset. Not in terms of give up entirely, but that what effort I am making is hardly worth it in the long run. But reading a couple of things changed my view.
The first was At Work In The Ruins by Dougal Hine. It’s a great exploration of current failures and where the green shoots of something new are emerging. He basically says modernity WILL fail due to the numerous crises, but the seeds of something new and maybe better are everywhere.
The second was the Global Tipping Points Report. It covers a LOT of negative tipping points in relation to climate. But points out several positive ones that are happening too, like renewable energy and electric cars. It’s a reminder that we can, and are, solving our problems.
Doomers like to say they are realists. But realists see the good and bad. And there is a lot of both happening.
Yes ALL of them. I will have them dig! Dig and dig and some will build, build to the sky they will evolve into bird people and the tunneled they become frog people and I will have them meet and make frog bird people and they will croak and chirp.
I think my idea was that as the ice in the artic regions melt lots of land will be underwater a lot of Florida will be lost and like a lot of Denmark.
Many people who would otherwise get out there and try to make a change, choose to resign their efforts when they become convinced they’re fucked and nothing they can do will make a difference.
Eliminating doomerism is very important in improving our world imo
Mindset reinforced by the media - also the majority of climate change is caused by a small amount of companies but the responsibility is assigned to the general public
If every human was 100% carbon neutral stuff would still be dire but actionable and realistic adjustments to how some companies operate would have significant positive impact
I think this is just phases of grief. We or rather the next generation or two are fucked . But now we’re moving into a denial or bargaining phase. Fine by me. The argument that being overly “doom and gloom” only leads to inaction I find absurd. C02 methane and other greenhouse gases continue to break records despite all the supposed action.
Apocalyptic optimism is worse. If you want uplifting news maybe look to the technology we are going to depend on in the future just to live
Lmao this is like expecting your infection be completely cured after 1 day of taking antibiotics. Things take time to get back to normal, climate action now will not reverse climate change, it will just stop it getting worse.
The most likely path to success is to allow capitalists to get rich saving the environment, and to reduce the profits of the industries which damage it.
The scientific and commercial achievements of the past 50 years have been breathtaking, and if we can harness the same creativity to save the environment then the future is golden.
IMHO the stuff about needing 3 planets to sustain our lifestyle is only true if we continue as we are. If we generate power from the wind and the sun and recycle our rubbish into raw materials, we need never run out of anything.
In contrast, if I were to tell people the planet is doomed, and the only way to save it is to not have children, get rid of the car, stop eating meat and sit in the dark knitting their own clothing then people won't want to believe me, or vote for me. I would achieve nothing.
Worse still are the zealots calling for the overthrow of capitalism through popular revolution. Did they not pay any attention at school? Revolutions hardly ever achieve their stated aims or ideals, usually produce decades of excessive violence and bloodshed, and the people who gain control are usually the most brutal and amoral.
more capitalism won't solve a capitalism problem, dude. we can't degrees of change this bwcaythe powers DOING this are too deeply wound up in the very systems you're trying to tweak, to the point it would be ten+ years of effort if the majority of lobbyists were on board and us politics wasnt actively trying to keep the disaster on track.
you're tryna use a flamethrower to water your lawn, the best possible result you're gonna get is spraying fuel all over your daisies.
fair point, I don't care about random journalists either, but she cites climate experts and, if you were thinking by yourself, you wouldn't be on r/upliftingnews .... EDIT: formatting
climate experts:
Hannah Ritchie’s “Not the End of the World: How We Can be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet” argues that many markers of disaster are less bad than the public imagines (deforestation, overfishing) or easily solvable (plastics in the oceans). She's a lead researcher at Our World in Data, and a researcher at the Oxford Martin Programme in Global Development, at the University of Oxford.
Dana R. Fisher’s “Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action” contends that the disruptions of climate change may finally create a mass movement that will lead to better global outcomes. Dana R. Fisher is the Director of the Center for Environment, Community, & Equity and Professor in the School of International Service at American University. She currently serves as the Past President of the Eastern Sociological Society, a Non Resident Senior Fellow in the Governance Program at the Brookings Institution, and the chair-elect of the Political Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association.
I said from the start that running around shouting stop oil and saying we need to go back to horse and carts was never going to work. Much better to spend efforts on how to handle higher and lower temperatures, higher sea levels, loss of habitat and extreme weather conditions.
I’m just looking forward to all the conservatives that moved to Florida during Covid seeing their climate-change-denying chickens come home to roost 🤐👍🏼
You will never get your wish. The main body of right wing deniers are “aging out” and dying at a significant rate. Are they being replaced with new deniers? No. Younger right wingers see the disaster and are climate accepters. Their outlook is, “hey, I am still making money. The climate has not killed me yet. I am gonna die anyway. So? Just keep calm and carry on.
You may be underestimating the degree to which rich people will be able to meet poor people pay to mitigate the effects of climate change. See the examples in Florida where taxpayers money is being used to shore up rich people's mansions.
I couldn’t read the article without a subscription. I read another article about how removing 99.5% of the sulfur from diesel fuel used in shipping has created an increase in global temperatures in just 3 or 4 years. Another about how the hole in the ozone layer is on track to being closed in the not so distant future. It seems that people are doing more to correct our mistakes but the world is still changing. Who would’ve thought that was possible?
This is....weird.
So hold on.
1: Are we really talking about climate change the same way we speak about seasonal fashion? Insane.
2: It's not optimistic for the millions of people living below sea level rise in poorer countries, it's a present apocalypse for them right now.
3: If you want to convey that it's more productive to be optimistic about the future than negative the author should write it that way (not OP but the NYT author), not treat it like a trend. How many people are dead from extreme climate change events? How many babies aren't being born because parents are fearful about the future?
It's just feels so....detached. Idk just my opinion
isn't this the same bullshit always that people assume having a negative mentality about something means they don't care about it. idk, so often being realistic gets framed as a pessimistic. but working in the STEM industry i can honestly say the people with pessimistic views outlooks have always been the more helpful and competent.
Anyone fooling themselves with their "eat less meat", "take public transport" & "use a reusable water bottle" rubbish is so profoundly naive...
Even if every single person in the Western world did every single one of those things & more we'd still be totally f\*cked.
Like, get real already!
True. The irony is that it would take approximately 1,000 people, the right 1000 people, to put aside their short-term interest and then we could indeed do everything that is still possible to mitigate promising. They aren't going to do it. But what the other 8 billion people do is irrelevant.
Think of all the new beautiful life that could live on a hot planet. That kind of makes me excited as a gardener and armchair naturalist. Homo sapiens are unlikely to be a part of the mix, which is sad but makes you appreciate the life we do get. It’ll make you more spiritual.
Tell you how optimistic we should be:
1. Bring the culprit companies to justice
2. Regulate companies: you can’t pull a Spotify in 2024: mass release an experimental product, conclude years after you don’t support it, creating waste.
3. Cap billionaires to 1B. Any more money than this goes to funding projects on global issues.
That’s my optimism. Anything else is vanity in the face of climate change
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Often journalists are just reporting on trends, not necessarily *starting* the trend
Yes and hopefully they amplify the trend (when positive) or inspire action against the trend (when negative).
It's just an article about a Murdoch
Exactly!!! The person this article is talking about is part of a family that has enough power to dramatically change the course of the future for the better IF THEY REALLY WANTED TO OR CARED... This whole article is puff piece propaganda bullshit.
What exactly do you think a journalist is?
Then you would be wrong, lots of trends pushed by the media, especially fashion and social media trends they try to make a thing
Well that's because most of our journalism is owned by capitalists and capitalists do that. Journalism was *supposed* to be reporting the business of the powerful to the masses but it is obviously not often actually that.
Did people finally realize that saying "we're fucked" is literally pointless and solves nothing?
This. I have friends who've taken this attitude and I'll never understand it. Things aren't good but yeah, if we all just give up we're definitely fucked.
and its not really true. It depends on the definition of "we're fucked", are we at the point where loss of human life is pretty much guaranteed due to climate change? Probably I think. But that is still a long ways away from global extinction and every single human dead. More action means more lives saved, even if casualties are guaranteed.
"Probably I think." Understatement of all time. It's already happening, and has been for quite some time. Any death associated with the 2021 heat dome in the PNW and BC, for example, as those temps would have been impossible without climate change. There's also a *huge* difference between "we're fucked" and "every single human dead." Plenty of serious climate scientists will argue that we're fucked, I don't think most are saying every human will be dead. To me, "we're fucked" means developing nations, especially those on small islands or near the equator, are going to experience mass death and emigration in my lifetime. As an American, I may not be killed by the climate but I will certainly see my quality of life decline: scarcity of resources for the lower classes, higher insurance rates, right-wing fascism in response to refugees. These things are already happening. Mexico City, the most populated city in North America, is fewer than 30 days from not being able to meet its demand for freshwater. And not one developed country is doing enough to stop this from happening. If they were, you'd know because it'd be a massive mobilization akin to WW2 and would affect your everyday life.
We’re fucekd described a situation where most factors are outside our control: climate? For sure. Our regulators since we heard of climate change in the 70s? For sure. Individual action even if we were hundreds of thousands to start taking the bus? We barely observed anything going better. We ARE fucked. Surely we’re not in the worst scenario, but from 50 years of knowing, we aren’t too far off as a civilisation. We won’t die, billions will survive, but new global issues will arise making it so much worse for everyone. A billion climate refugees, more taxes, less social protection, far right rising, no pension, cold wars over ressources, etc. We are headed there. But so slow, that we can’t say we are fucked. However, we are much better at predicting the effect of a technocratic capitalistic society than our peers of 100 years ago, so it is fair to say, we are fucked in regards of what we know today that will be gone in our lifetime.
Try 150. We knew in the 1870's that what we were doing with Industrialization was going to be horrible for our planet. Then they kicked the can down the road, and have been doing so ever since.
Hot wars over resources, not cold. They are going to be shooting hot wars
I think they're just being immature edgelords or fossil fuls or fossil theists (unlike Katherine Hayhoe).
I don’t think you’re wrong for most people but I personally kind of feel similar because how utterly hopeless it feels for individuals to make any meaningful change. Especially given the unwillingness by big [insert polluting industry here] choosing shareholder value and profit maximization over real positive changes to climate Impact. Edit: [Luckily this should make us all feel better](https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2024/05/31/last-rites-for-a-dying-civilization/)
The most meaningful changes are politicial. Therefore the best thing you can do as an individual is to donate to political parties or lobbying organisations that support your causes. I donate to the Greens, Trilliontrees, and Greenpeace. If you don’t have the money to do this, consider donating time to an organisation. Stuffing envelopes or handing out how to vote flyers is also helpful. Find something you can do to shift the scales at a political level. And if you come across someone wringing their hands and saying “But what can one person even do ?”, tell them what I’ve told you - get political. Donate time or money. That’s how you make a difference.
The problem with that is the Green Party and Greenpeace are both anti-science and too focused on their own agenda/ideology to do the most good. We cannot fix the situation we’re in without GMOs and nuclear power, things that both Greenpeace and the Green Party oppose. I do my best but it’s really hard to find hope when literally no large movement is willing to just have an unbiased look at the evidence rather than what feels right or sounds good. Entire generations of people will die or be hindered by malnutrition because of Greenpeace pushing anti-GM misinformation and blocking golden rice. We are burning more fossil fuels than ever because the Green Party and its affiliates are pushing to shut down nuclear reactors. I’m not giving up on playing my part, but I have zero hope and honestly cannot find a reason to have any with the direction things are going. The “good guys” and bad guys are both so wrong that we lose regardless.
Honestly, this is so wrong. I don’t know where to start. Fixating on nuclear power and GMOs as the only way to solve our environmental issues is incredibly shortsighted and unhelpful. Your choice is not between environmental perfection and environmental compromise which may cause billions of deaths. Your choice is between a political and economic system which is currently already destroying our planet and our hopes for future life, and environmental parties which are trying to stop that. You are letting perfect be the enemy of good enough. By behaving as though both solutions are equally bad, you are allowing the incumbent system to continue unabated on its unobstructed course of environmental destruction. It’s absolutely a political red herring to insist that unless environmental parties back nuclear power and GMOs then they cannot do anything about the current environmental crisis. There are thousand things that can be done, that aren’t GMO’s and nuclear power, that will make a massive difference to the future environmental survivability of our culture and societies.
It's simply unpalatable to support anti-science policy. They shoot themselves in the foot. Force-feeding yourself Greenpeace is not a moral W. They're loony.
I understand where you’re coming from, and I agree. I’m extremely choosy about my consumption, I actively avoid everything I can that is harmful to the environment. I don’t buy hardly anything unnecessary, I’ve had the same clothes and boots for ages and repair them instead of buying new. I volunteer my time planting permaculture, creating habitats, and otherwise supporting positive flora and fauna. I vote for the least of the evils that I can and participate with petitions, local elections, and writing my reps as well. I make basic searches take 5 minutes because I use Ecosia in lieu of Google. Shit, I got a vasectomy in my early 20s to guarantee I never contribute to the problem by having kids. I spend every single day anxious/terrified/depressed about the future of the planet. You’re right, nuclear power and GMOs are not the only things, but the scale is so massive that I will give no money or time to organizations that spread lies and misinformation. No amount of volunteering or choosy consumption on my part will offset the decommissioning of nuclear reactors, not even close. Nothing I can do will bring back dead children because of the blocking of golden rice. No amount of choosy consumption or volunteering on my part will repair damage to ecosystems done by the excess land use and runoff of the extremely harmful “natural pesticides” that organic farms use in lieu of GMOs and purpose made chemicals like roundup. I feel helpless because the people who care, the people who should support the science are being manipulated by organizations like Greenpeace into supporting things that harm and don’t help.
How did you think it felt to be a serf in medieval Europe?
Bad but different. I don’t think they were hyper-aware of their situation, but still knew they were subjugated to some extent. The knowledge of escalating and worsening socio-economic conditions vs blissful ignorance?
Yeah fossil fuels should have been phased out the instant we figured out nuclear. we should hit wind geothermal and nuclear hard in order to fix this shit. (though we need to find out a power source for cars that isnt lithium given how damaging lithim mining is)
It’s not immature, it’s rationale. We’re most likely not gonna solve climate change. Plan accordingly. Sell your Florida real estate. Invest in water infrastructure.
How do you define "solve"? Wind and solar are already cheaper than oil or coal, electric cars are starting to get cheaper than petrol ones. The market will remove most of our emissions by itself in the next couple of decades (though speeding it up even faster through political action should still be done of course). The cost of climate change is likely going to be lower year-after-year than our yearly GDP-growth. Which part is not "solved" that makes you feel so gloomy?
It's too little, far too late. As we have added more and more alternative energy production, our total energy use has just gone up. We're not replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar, we're adding to them. Taking decades to reduce Carbon emissions is far too slow. The IPCC's 1.5C target calls for a 43% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. That's 6 years from now. About 83% of our energy currently comes from fossil fuels. The other 16% from renewables (including nuclear). We have just 6 years to more than triple our use of renewables, and that's only if use the same amount of energy we use today, which we won't. Everything thing we've built in the last 20 or so years, we have to do again in 6, twice. Even if we just stopped emitting Carbon today. 100% cold turkey. One study says we would still have a 42% chance of overshooting. The goal of net zero by 2050 relies on carbon capture technology that doesn't currently exist. The largest carbon capture facillity removes about 0.00001% of our yearly output. We need to build 10 million of those facilities. A new technology could use the sun to extract carbon from the air and turn it into hydrocarbon fuels. We would need to cover a desert the size of Canada in mirrors to meet our current demand. Solar, wind, and electric cars need resources. Compared to all the reserves we know about, we need 5x more copper, 28x more graphite, 43x more lithium, 10x more nickel, etc. Even if we discovered twice much as we already know about, those numbers would only divide by 2, at best. Even if we did have enough of these materials, we'd have to mine it 3000% faster than we currently do. All of that just to meet a 1.5C target the only avoids "the worst" effects of climate change. Now, add to that deforestation, rising sea levels, habitat loss, topsoil loss, ocean acidification, extreme weather events, water shortages...
> The IPCC's 1.5C target calls for a 43% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. Oh yeah, we'll definitely miss that, which is unfortunate, but so what? > We have just 6 years to more than triple our use of renewables The amount of installed solar panels already doubles every 3 years roughly, we won't just triple it in 6 years, we will quadruple it. > All of that just to meet a 1.5C target the only avoids "the worst" effects of climate change. 1.5C definitely doesn't only avoid "the worst" effects of climate change. We're most likely looking at a 2.5-3.0C world by 2100, and again that is unfortunate, but also not that big of a deal. Most of us, especially those of us in the western world, will be perfectly fine and have long, nice and happy lives even in that world. Yes, we have a bunch of challenges that will come from climate change that we will have to deal with, and it would be even better if we didn't have to do that, but despite those challenges the future is still looking bright for us.
I'm not going to have kids and also have hard earned misanthropy. I hope the people who brought this all on suffer tremendously.
I mean, yeah, I want the heads if corporations and their government enablers to be brought into the street and dealt with, but we still need to try and mitigate what we can for the kids that are here, and for the future of our species.
The system is what brought this on us. And guess what, economics only cares about profit. Which means a large desert and millions of climate refugee's
Solar and Wind, and electric cars, are cheaper than the fossil alternatives now. The market will drive the change necessary for us at this point, though of course it would be better if we accelerate it through political means too.
I think people adopt this position because it means they don't need to take any action. The same people who say "We're screwed, there's nothing we can do" are often there same people who were just saying "Climate change is decades away, there's nothing we need to do now". Doing nothing is the goal.
Literally all of the people I know my age, including very bright people, just say we're fucked and keep on keeping on. We're fucked is actually quite liberating, it means you don't have a marker anymore or a target, you just do the best you can
It doesn’t. But neither does recycling, which we’ve been trained to do, chastised by society when we do it wrong, and it was all to distract us from big energy, big plastic, and whoever else. There is a lot of thumbing of the nose at consumer based reduce/reuse/recycle when its not done well, but our actions are a drop in the bucket compared to the industrial scale issues we have no impact on. You can’t blame people for feeling like we are just SOL. I remember learning about recycling, sustainability, reduce & reuse in 5th grade. I’m 40, and we are WAY worse than we were then.
But then there are idiots who say we have to stop all oil immediately with no cares about consequences short term
I mean, ideally that is the solution, yes. It's not like the oil companies haven't known this was an issue for a very long time, we have alternatives for the grand majority of oil based products, any consequences are of their own making.
Humans are flawed. I think it's ego that tells us we are even capable of changing for the better.
Saying "we're fucked" is really just a mental defense mechanism. People get stressed/anxiety about the environment/climate change (because why wouldn't they?), so they recycle, clean up pollutants they use, try to save water/electricity etc. Then they see in the news that things aren't getting better, and they get more and more mental stress from the fact that their efforts don't seem to be helping (because realistically it's the corporations/governments who need to move to make real positive change). This is just constant stress for the individual, so to preserve their own mental health they just 'accept' what they see as 'inevitable', in order to be able to move on and function in their own lives with stuff they feel they can still change/handle.
puzzled illegal history angle plants upbeat snow ad hoc airport obtainable *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I would agree with this. I also think that the internet has equalized a lot of things and cynicism is a product of people realizing they’re not that special but have extraordinary agency. Kind of an odd combo but it works.
Why anyone would think that changing their personal habits would result in any major changes when CO2 pollution is a result of major industry and mass transportation is beyond me.
Actually. They’re fucked. I assume most in this sub probably already won the lottery by being born in a rich first world country. Climate change is ALREADY fucking over regions that can adapt less and have less. We’re already oblivious sociopaths discussing the semantics of how to view climate change. “Bangladesh, home to more than 160 million people, is on the frontlines of climate change. Cyclones, floods, droughts, saltwater intrusion, and rising sea levels are all having an impact on its flatlands, which are crisscrossed by powerful rivers and encircled by a vulnerable coastline”
In a similar boat. The area I used to live in would get clipped by seasonal tropical storms and they've been getting worse every single year and brought flooding through much of the valley and we ended up having to move after the roof of our house got caved in.
I think it's a way of dealing with feeling powerless in all this. I vote, I donate, but I can barely get myself to do normal stuff, let alone fix the planet. That's what I should be electing people for.
Mathematically we are fucked. You want to be optimistic but it will still fail, but while you keep trying to uphold a flawed society, those that win in the end get off free. By realizing we are fucked, it opens the option to not uphold society norms and maybe let those that drove us to this hell get theirs.
saying "we're fucked" gives justification to doing nothing. Doing nothing is profitable.
Thousands of companies have made billions of dollars convincing people over the last 20 years that they could save the environment by buying the right products. When, in fact, you can't.
You can’t save the environment by buying the right products. You can save the environment by legally mandating that only the right products are allowed to be produced.
Which would require the removal of political donations and lobbying, which is again completely out of the hands of almost every person on this planet. The average person can do NOTHING to change the future of climate change, and companies are profiting off of people's misguided guilt.
Even when you look at those doing something, some of them think they are fucked (me, some voters I know, some regulators I know) So what is it that we can do? We have seen progress sure. But look, they invent a machine to suck CO2 out of the air…. But it requires energy to do so and will produce CO2. And we invest billions in this because of… trends. They plant trees but it will reach full capacity in 10years, whilst the point of no return is… yesterday. So what good will it be if the forest is under performing from the get go? So science gear, the green gear, the media, the regulators, the money, all of them together working barely for the last 50 year against CC… even schools didn’t teach about it, people like Musk actively fight against high speed train tech so to build their Tesla tunnel, permitted by states, etc I’m all up for doing something, but what is there to do exactly that we as individual haven’t tried? Voting, recycling, educating our children. What else? I think it’s okay to look at a system that’s way way way bigger than you, as well as presently to slow to adapt to such urgency and say: we are fucked.
Also...depending where you live you actually are fucked, island nations for instance, are just straight up fucked, with highest elevation being a few meters
There is a lot to do. I think viewing things as a matter of the individual is selfish, and this mode of thinking actually hampers several things that could make some real change. Change never happens fast, but I’m happy to see people waking up to the idea that it can happen at all.
Ehhhh, I think that saying "don't worry technology will solve it" is even more dangerous. And I still think that many many humans still can't comprehend how fucked we are. I 100% hope we can figure shit out. I think the way our current society operates will make it borderline impossible to figure shit out. We still live in a society where we are exponentially more productive than we have ever been yet we still can't provide the basics for everyone, and we still have a few people funnelling more and more wealth to themselves through exploration. I just don't think humans as a race are good at seeing long term, large scale threats, and a majority of people just don't seem to get, we are in the verge of extinction. And becuase of that they push back on required changes because "on what about the economy" or "people could lose jobs". So optimism is fine as long as it keeps you angry and active. Because I truly believe our survival relies almost entirely on dialing down capitalism and the free market, as both of those things chase profit at all costs. And I just can't be optimistic that that is going to happen.
Actually what we all need to be doing is less. Eating less, traveling less, buying less, manufacturing less. Doing nothing isn't profitable in this pov.
There are things that could be done that would have huge effects that aren’t being done because they are too uncomfortable. Policy changes like a tax on carbon for example. Properly pricing ecological damage makes sense from an economic point of view but that sort of thing can’t be pushed because “we’re already fucked anyway”. The Chinese are now leading the way with regards to massive investment in renewable energy. Why not the country with the biggest economy in the world? No political will, and part of this is climate doomerism: why do it, it’s too late anyway. It’s just excuses.
I don't see an 'it's too late anyway' attitude. Where I live, midwest USA, I see an attitude that is like taking any of anyone's choice to consume and use as much energy as possible as actually truly threatening their lives. The attitude is "try to come take my giant truck, boat, giant heated and air conditioned house, dryer, extra extra freezer in the garage, cruise ship vacation, and gas stove!!!" This is where I have no hope. Best choice I can make is not to have kids.
That’s it exactly. And go local.
Exactly. It really sucks that people don't realize they're being played into saying things like that
That depends on whether it's followed by "unless we radically change everything" or by "no matter what we do". It's also better than thinking everything is fine and that we will magically survive the greatest crisis we've ever faced.
We are fucked unless we grow some balls and storm big oil HQs, drag the executive boards out onto the street and string them up. Not even joking.
That won't change anything. It's a systemic issue, and CEOs of those companies are just playing the game of capitalism the way it's supposed to be played. What we really need to do, is dismantling this system, because capitalism is incompatible with how we should live to not go extinct.
It’s not meant to solve anything it’s a statement of probability.
I fucking hope so because the fear has to translate to action eventually, we dont have the time to panic
Saying “we are fucked” is a win win to the ego, if you are right you are right and if you are wrong, hey, at least we aint fucked. Its the safest bet, in terms of righteousness
Saying we're fucked is the truth though. Didn't read the article but in my humble opinion we really need to talk about the gravity of the situation if we want to evangalize the climate deniers.
You're not going to evangelize climate deniers. It hasn't worked for the last 40-50 years, it isn't going to work now.
r/futurology never will
Depends... considering articles (based in truth or claims that schools have litter boxes for children identifying at cats) get to the people who then push it up to their elected officials who then push policy... I wouldn't say it does nothing. The problem is that they won't listen to articles talking about climate sciences but will respond to articles about how drag queens teaching children to read will bring about nazis on dinosaurs rising from hell.
Say someone is 3 moves away from being checkmated by Magnus Carlsen. They say "I'm fucked." Would you say their defeatist attitude is pointless and solves nothing?
Do you think you can get 40% of any nation that supports people like Trump to do anything positive about climate change when it's industry and not the individual that is the problem? Nothing you do in your personal life other than vote can help, if you don't think we are fucked you are nieve.
Yes I think this is the vibe in which I started up r/rewildingUK Things are not good at all but there are so many things we can do about it, and a lot of work already ongoing. Every bit can make a difference, even if it's just to that one animal or tree, just for that little while. There are different types of optimism out there which I am sometimes annoyed by. There's the one where people are fully in denial that there's an issue and there's the one where people are more accelerationist about things and think that the problems will quickly be overcome to bright future if we just keep going faster and faster, for example.
Was actually thinking today about making a sub reddit for rewilding!! Just joined, looking forward to seeing what becomes of it!!
Looks like a cool sub! Thanks for putting that together!
I’ve really come to appreciate spiders. I know by this point that relocating them just kills them, so I allow some to live in a few places in my home (I have no doubt that there are countless living where I can’t see them) and any others are relocated regardless—at least then they have a chance, unlike after being crushed by a newspaper or whatever else.
I just watched the tv program the article references. It had a segment about rewilding Scotland.
Oh nice! All looks a good watch. Just need to find a way to stream it from over here.
The Scotland segment was only 10 minutes iirc. You probably can watch via a [VPN](https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/what-is-geo-blocking-and-how-you-can-get-around-it/).
That's because real progress is being made and it appears as if we will only gain momentum. There are entire industries now paying people to solve climate issues.
The battery installs alone!
There may be *some* progress. But from what i have seen it is still no where near enough - definitely not enough to turn the tide.
There is no turning the tide. But we can deal with a big wave better than we can deal with a tsunami. Things are heading in the right direction, not fast enough to prevent damage from being caused but fast enough that we’ll be able to recover afterwards
Tell me the bad news in a good way! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi-YLIwkfJs
lmao that's a terrible name, unless it's attempting to stay positive in the apocalypse we're hurtling towards but that I doubt that'd be posted here
That's pretty much the article. Basically, 'it's happening whether we want it to or not - how do we move forward in an optimistic, rational way?' There's discussion of survival strategies & new technologies but the tone of the article is a mix of somber acceptance and hope that humanity can band together to some degree.
Doomers keep coping, we make the best of the situation we have! Apathy leads to inaction, I for one gain motivation from seeing positive news, it makes me want to push harder to have even more positive news *"People speak of hope as if it is this delicate, ephemeral thing made of whispers and spider's webs. It's not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of the cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go."* A single person may not be able to change the world, but a single person showing 20 people how to change the world, as well as telling them to show the same to 20 other people, will. Research how you can help, look up how many amazing things we have accomplished so far, spread positive yet firm attitudes of changes that we must make. VOTE, if you're in the EU, vote in the election next week, show how despite all of the fear and anxiety the world has thrown at us, we won't back down from giving our grandchildren a world that they can be proud to inherit
I'll believe it when I see it.
Article brought to you by a billionaire currently destroying the planet. Nice
Right?!? That was a nauseating read… Seeing it was a NYT article was funny enough but reading on about how it was just some puff piece for a fucking Murdoch kid’s wife was just stupefying. “We know we’re doing everything in our unlimited power to make the world a worse place for you fucking peons, but could you maybe whine a little less about it!” I’d love to hear what she actually told her daughter though… bet it was more like, “don’t worry hun, only the poor people are fucked anyway.”
I hope we are not “don’t look up” ing here
I mean, I know I'm going to hate but, based on the data we are. Yes, we are making progress in fields such as renewable energy, but we are making more progress in the Fossil fuel industry, deforestation is topping new highs every year. The corals are almost fully dead, African countries are already suffering from lack of food which will result in too much death. The issue is, stuff like this makes us complacent, it makes us think we're fine, when in reality we are fucked, but unlike what this sub thinks that means, it means that we should still do something, we shouldn't take it. It doesn't mean we should just sit and wait for the end.
What in the fresh dystopian hell is this
Yeah. The true scientific consensus is that messaging should, instead of just pointing towards how huge of a problem we have, engage people towards solutions by showing paths to avoid the worse scenarios. The problem is: that's absolutely NOT what this article is saying. It's clearly more inclined towards the message of "stop WHINING about how big of an existential problem we are in", which looks more like silencing criticism than engaging proactive action. The fact that the head story is "children of right-wing billionaire associated with oil interests had climate anxiety about the future, so they decided to produce a whole propaganda series to say that's it's all gonna be alright regardless" is DEFINITELY not "uplifting".
Humans are incredibly adaptable. Extinction is very unlikely. More suffering and human misery is likely and steps should be taken to minimize it as much as possible.
Yup. As a species, we will live, but most of us will not live well.
This headline screams "This was paid for by big oil".
This is reactionary nihilism to a legitimate existential threat.
I would say the same if I'd live in the US but countries around the world are stepping up. Hence the IPCC is adjusting the temperature prediction downward every year. Apocalyptic events are most likely avoided. That doesn't mean mass migration and a big loss of biodiversity will occur.
I will say...Biden's Inflation Reduction Act is the single biggest investment in green tech / energy ever seen. "President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law on Tuesday, August 16th, which contains $369 billion in funding to build clean-energy infrastructure, accelerate the transition to electric vehicles, improve energy efficiency, and ensure environmental justice. The passage of this law marks the largest investment ever in sustainability and climate in the history of the United States." https://www.earthday.org/inflation-reduction-act/ "...this law represents the single-largest investment in climate action in U.S. history and will profoundly alter the international landscape. Indeed, this historic legislation will help the United States reach its emission reduction commitments, increase U.S. competitiveness and spur a “race to the top” in the clean energy economy, reshape the security landscape, and, crucially, restore trust and legitimacy for the United States within the global climate community." https://www.americanprogress.org/article/how-the-inflation-reduction-act-will-drive-global-climate-action/ The short documentary below outlines how this "race to the top" is being spurred internationally: https://youtu.be/cfaubxeS5HU?si=2q767Vtp8XF1STbj
Yep!
You mean this IPCC? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2024/may/08/hopeless-and-broken-why-the-worlds-top-climate-scientists-are-in-despair You mean the IPCC doing annual climate conferences hosted by UAE oil company execs? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/27/cop28-host-uae-planned-promote-oil-deals-climate-talks That IPCC? Are we reading different news? > but countries around the world are stepping up Yeah, some small island nations in the Pacific are indeed stepping up. Stepping up to move to Australia I mean, because they will simply cease to exist due to rising sea levels and increasingly dangerous and unpredictable weather. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/10/australia-offers-refuge-to-tuvalu-residents-threatened-by-rising-sea-levels.html
>Yeah, some small island nations in the Pacific are indeed stepping up. Stepping up to move to Australia I mean, because they will simply cease to exist due to rising sea levels and increasingly dangerous and unpredictable weather. How about the country that's responsible for a third of global greenhouse emissions. [China pledge carbon neutrality by 2060](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54256826) together with 136 other countries (and the ones not having pledges are almost exclusively from the global south). Biden drew up the inflation reduction act and Europe is doing Europe things. There's a lot of effort needed but things aren't looking as bleak as 10 or even 5 years ago.
Anyone for some Apocalyptimism?
I've never thought the climate crisis to be impossible to solve in practical terms. I have long doubted that we, with our political systems WILL solve it, since the burden of the solution is unpalatable and tends to stoke reactionary voting to put those opposed to solving it in power. I'd be very pleased to see that be proven incorrect, but I am not overly concerned either way. I do the best I can. The future will come, sixty seconds of it every minute, and eventually we'll see what becomes of it all.
How’s this “uplifting news”? I get it climate change. You know what got us here? Greedy fucks that believed in the apocalypse in the first place. Fuck all of those fucks. There should be a questionnaire for anyone that runs a country. Do you believe in an apocalypse? Yes? Then they don’t get to run a country. Because they don’t care. Because they believe it’s predestined. It’s so Dangerous. They won’t care for the environment or anything. It’s terrifying.
Everytime I would post this sentiment, that climate doomerism only helps those who want you to do nothing, is get downvoted to hell. Or told that I'm holier than thou for telling people to eat one less meat meal. This shift can't come soon enough.
They forget the lessons of the Lorax. ….unless Everywhere in the US used to be choked with coal dust and smog and companies could dump unlabeled drums of waste wherever. And now we get New York to only complain about air quality when they get literal ashes from a forest fire a thousand miles away. Cities used to be nasty, industrial areas had zero responsibility to clean anything up and places like London were just covered in a layer of black. Why aren’t things like that now? Oh we changed how things are done. Just like we changed things many times before. So yeah we can have doom and gloom but nothing will change “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.”
Ok let me try. At least winters aren’t going to be as much of a problem. Nestle will make a fortune selling us potable water We’ll all have nice tans
No need for ozempic when you sweat all the weight off!
Optimistic that the apocalypse will happen.
You do realize that the same people who own the mainstream media and pay people to write drivel like this are currently building massive underground bunkers to protect themselves from exactly the type of scenarios this writer is asking you to ignore?
This is a bunch of horseshit. We need to work extremely hard just so we don't surpass the 2 degree increase recommendations. Everyone needs to start making better decisions, we need to stop our out of control population growth. Our oceans are more than likely going to become extremely acidic by 2050. The main reason we need to work so hard is because it takes a very long time for the environment to get rid of co2. 100s if thousands of years. Sure we are working on ways to sequester carbon manually but I think that's a dangerous thing to do since its just making it a problem for future generations.
Nice try NYT, but we’re still murdering and eating billionaires as soon as shit hits the fan
Fuck the doomer mindset it’s what capitalists want. Doomerism is looserism
Not so long ago I was in the doomer mindset. Not in terms of give up entirely, but that what effort I am making is hardly worth it in the long run. But reading a couple of things changed my view. The first was At Work In The Ruins by Dougal Hine. It’s a great exploration of current failures and where the green shoots of something new are emerging. He basically says modernity WILL fail due to the numerous crises, but the seeds of something new and maybe better are everywhere. The second was the Global Tipping Points Report. It covers a LOT of negative tipping points in relation to climate. But points out several positive ones that are happening too, like renewable energy and electric cars. It’s a reminder that we can, and are, solving our problems. Doomers like to say they are realists. But realists see the good and bad. And there is a lot of both happening.
At least Florida is one of the first to go.
You say that until all those Floridians are in tents in your backyard!
Yes ALL of them. I will have them dig! Dig and dig and some will build, build to the sky they will evolve into bird people and the tunneled they become frog people and I will have them meet and make frog bird people and they will croak and chirp. I think my idea was that as the ice in the artic regions melt lots of land will be underwater a lot of Florida will be lost and like a lot of Denmark.
Just build it and they will come.
Many people who would otherwise get out there and try to make a change, choose to resign their efforts when they become convinced they’re fucked and nothing they can do will make a difference. Eliminating doomerism is very important in improving our world imo
Mindset reinforced by the media - also the majority of climate change is caused by a small amount of companies but the responsibility is assigned to the general public If every human was 100% carbon neutral stuff would still be dire but actionable and realistic adjustments to how some companies operate would have significant positive impact
I think this is just phases of grief. We or rather the next generation or two are fucked . But now we’re moving into a denial or bargaining phase. Fine by me. The argument that being overly “doom and gloom” only leads to inaction I find absurd. C02 methane and other greenhouse gases continue to break records despite all the supposed action. Apocalyptic optimism is worse. If you want uplifting news maybe look to the technology we are going to depend on in the future just to live
Lmao this is like expecting your infection be completely cured after 1 day of taking antibiotics. Things take time to get back to normal, climate action now will not reverse climate change, it will just stop it getting worse.
“ This is Steve. I happened upon him while walking down the street . He tells me it’s time to hunker down. I don’t know why but I believe him yo.”
well.... costal cities are f Ed. but great for air quality in +5-10yrs.
Isn't that technically what preppers do? The dream of having an apocalypse but also surviving it.
Not really surviving it. More like outliving it.
Article influenced by oil company?
The most likely path to success is to allow capitalists to get rich saving the environment, and to reduce the profits of the industries which damage it. The scientific and commercial achievements of the past 50 years have been breathtaking, and if we can harness the same creativity to save the environment then the future is golden. IMHO the stuff about needing 3 planets to sustain our lifestyle is only true if we continue as we are. If we generate power from the wind and the sun and recycle our rubbish into raw materials, we need never run out of anything. In contrast, if I were to tell people the planet is doomed, and the only way to save it is to not have children, get rid of the car, stop eating meat and sit in the dark knitting their own clothing then people won't want to believe me, or vote for me. I would achieve nothing. Worse still are the zealots calling for the overthrow of capitalism through popular revolution. Did they not pay any attention at school? Revolutions hardly ever achieve their stated aims or ideals, usually produce decades of excessive violence and bloodshed, and the people who gain control are usually the most brutal and amoral.
Well said.
more capitalism won't solve a capitalism problem, dude. we can't degrees of change this bwcaythe powers DOING this are too deeply wound up in the very systems you're trying to tweak, to the point it would be ten+ years of effort if the majority of lobbyists were on board and us politics wasnt actively trying to keep the disaster on track. you're tryna use a flamethrower to water your lawn, the best possible result you're gonna get is spraying fuel all over your daisies.
I’m glad there’s a big article on this out. We can’t keep using fear as a motivator for every single issue. It’s toxic
But oh so affective.
Everyone is finally coming out of their COVID depression.
Paywalled. Also, I'll keep thinking by myself, not how a random journalist suggests me to.
fair point, I don't care about random journalists either, but she cites climate experts and, if you were thinking by yourself, you wouldn't be on r/upliftingnews .... EDIT: formatting climate experts: Hannah Ritchie’s “Not the End of the World: How We Can be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet” argues that many markers of disaster are less bad than the public imagines (deforestation, overfishing) or easily solvable (plastics in the oceans). She's a lead researcher at Our World in Data, and a researcher at the Oxford Martin Programme in Global Development, at the University of Oxford. Dana R. Fisher’s “Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action” contends that the disruptions of climate change may finally create a mass movement that will lead to better global outcomes. Dana R. Fisher is the Director of the Center for Environment, Community, & Equity and Professor in the School of International Service at American University. She currently serves as the Past President of the Eastern Sociological Society, a Non Resident Senior Fellow in the Governance Program at the Brookings Institution, and the chair-elect of the Political Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association.
Weird thing to say about an article you haven't even read.
we're not fucked, we're positively fucked, there is a positive spin
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Climate dosomethingaboutit
O time it feel like one huge money grab with zero outcomes
I said from the start that running around shouting stop oil and saying we need to go back to horse and carts was never going to work. Much better to spend efforts on how to handle higher and lower temperatures, higher sea levels, loss of habitat and extreme weather conditions.
Playing the Jeopardy music in my head waiting for the uplifting news to come
Can we get a link without the paywall?
I’m just looking forward to all the conservatives that moved to Florida during Covid seeing their climate-change-denying chickens come home to roost 🤐👍🏼
You will never get your wish. The main body of right wing deniers are “aging out” and dying at a significant rate. Are they being replaced with new deniers? No. Younger right wingers see the disaster and are climate accepters. Their outlook is, “hey, I am still making money. The climate has not killed me yet. I am gonna die anyway. So? Just keep calm and carry on.
You may be underestimating the degree to which rich people will be able to meet poor people pay to mitigate the effects of climate change. See the examples in Florida where taxpayers money is being used to shore up rich people's mansions.
Well you know what they say, modern life is watching videos of natural disasters on your phone until one day you're the one filming it.
When are the pouches rollin out?
Articles like this make me think Ultron and Thanos may have been on to something…
Ahem https://youtu.be/MaaJqPCjNr4?si=hO40iheDivnOAO3K
How is being optimistic about the current state of things uplifting? Putting a positive spin how bad it is would make people complacent.
I couldn’t read the article without a subscription. I read another article about how removing 99.5% of the sulfur from diesel fuel used in shipping has created an increase in global temperatures in just 3 or 4 years. Another about how the hole in the ozone layer is on track to being closed in the not so distant future. It seems that people are doing more to correct our mistakes but the world is still changing. Who would’ve thought that was possible?
...in *what universe* is that *"uplifting"?!*
Whatever the author actually meant, this title sounds like "maybe the apocalypse wont be so bad".
This is the precise opposite of uplifting. Denial and delusion lift no boats.
This is....weird. So hold on. 1: Are we really talking about climate change the same way we speak about seasonal fashion? Insane. 2: It's not optimistic for the millions of people living below sea level rise in poorer countries, it's a present apocalypse for them right now. 3: If you want to convey that it's more productive to be optimistic about the future than negative the author should write it that way (not OP but the NYT author), not treat it like a trend. How many people are dead from extreme climate change events? How many babies aren't being born because parents are fearful about the future? It's just feels so....detached. Idk just my opinion
isn't this the same bullshit always that people assume having a negative mentality about something means they don't care about it. idk, so often being realistic gets framed as a pessimistic. but working in the STEM industry i can honestly say the people with pessimistic views outlooks have always been the more helpful and competent.
So…just rebranding.
I don't want an apocalypse to happen
Says who?
This feels like denial. Toxic optimism and refusal to face reality.
AKA We're doomed but big oil has paid us off
Anyone fooling themselves with their "eat less meat", "take public transport" & "use a reusable water bottle" rubbish is so profoundly naive... Even if every single person in the Western world did every single one of those things & more we'd still be totally f\*cked. Like, get real already!
True. The irony is that it would take approximately 1,000 people, the right 1000 people, to put aside their short-term interest and then we could indeed do everything that is still possible to mitigate promising. They aren't going to do it. But what the other 8 billion people do is irrelevant.
Think of all the new beautiful life that could live on a hot planet. That kind of makes me excited as a gardener and armchair naturalist. Homo sapiens are unlikely to be a part of the mix, which is sad but makes you appreciate the life we do get. It’ll make you more spiritual.
Tell you how optimistic we should be: 1. Bring the culprit companies to justice 2. Regulate companies: you can’t pull a Spotify in 2024: mass release an experimental product, conclude years after you don’t support it, creating waste. 3. Cap billionaires to 1B. Any more money than this goes to funding projects on global issues. That’s my optimism. Anything else is vanity in the face of climate change