this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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Is it just me who thinks we should act as if it is going to collapse soon, even if a few scientists aren't sure?
But what if it's all a hoax and we make the world a better place for no reason?
Won't someone think of the shareholders?
I am never going to recover financially from this.
I mean, that is always a concern lol.
I think it's more 99.9% of the scientists think it will get proper fucked up in the 2100s, but this one report says it'll happen in the next few years.
But we should be doing something about it anyway.
If we actually cared we'd ban everything that's fucking the world up, and ban any imports from countries that don't agree. But if the last 5 years or so have told us anything, it's that a lot of people don't care. Even about things that directly affect them.
And people who do care often feel impotent to do anything about it.
Agree that drastic measures are necessary. It doesn't even have to mean a drop in living standards; but it will take radical changes to protect (and even raise) those standards.
Agree about imports. The problem I see is that even if products with a high carbon footprint are imported, it doesn't mean the person responsible for that carbon footprint isn't domestic to e.g. (going by your 'feddit.uk' handle) the UK. This could still be captured by an import ban (i.e. shareholders can't just export their emissions and pretend everything is okay), but the people with the power to export their emissions tend to have a lot of power to lobby the government, sit on government decision-making panels, or even choose MPs. They're unlikely to shoot themselves in the foot like that.
An example is laptops. They break every few years. For the past decade-or-so, they're made to be irreparable. They become landfill, and all that embodied carbon is wasted. Today's laptops don't even do anything that laptops of 15 years ago couldn't do, except deal with websites bloated with adverts. It doesn't matter so much where that consumer item is produced. The problem is the decision to make it so that it breaks and has to be replaced. Those decisions tend to be made in the west by people who will never willingly change their ways. It's all about profit.
I think part of the reason that people feel apathetic is that they know it's all about profit and are convinced that a system based on profit is the only way, so there's nothing to be done. Another way is possible, though, people just need to be organised and educated§ to achieve it.
§ I mean working-class education, not e.g. going to college/university.
I didn't realise how bad laptops had got until I had to repair one for my uncle a few years ago.
I'd always known laptops to be pretty good. Panels underneath for access to RAM and HDD (the most common things to need replacing), and a removable battery.
This thing was glued shut. I did manage to get it open and replace the drive with an SSD, but it was clearly designed to be thrown away once anything went wrong with it. Getting it back together again meant the trackpad didn't work reliably any more, but what can you do?
Anyway, I digress. I fear that real change means a drop in living standards for many. It's unpalatable to the career politicians whose only real motivation to do anything is to get re-elected every 4-5 years, and maybe line their own pockets courtesy of corporate donors.
Reminds me of this article: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/12/how-and-why-i-stopped-buying-new-laptops.html
Aha! So that one fringe scientists isn't sure? Then maybe nothing will happen so let's continue the course!
World leaders mentality
Actions that work in the possible world in which it collapses soon are actively harmful in possible worlds in which it doesn't. Acting as if a threat will happen only makes sense if the action isn't significantly harmful in cases where it doesn't, where significantly is based on the harm of not being prepared and the chance of it happening.
If the Gulf Stream will collapse by 2025, the response isn't to be more eco-friendly. In fact, it's the opposite. Everyone in the north should prepare to burn a lot more fuel, and concern for global warming would definitely be reduced. Global warming is something you can only afford to give a shit about when temperatures haven't just dropped by 3.5C and you haven't just lost 78% of your arable land (UK figures, because that's where I live).
Do you mean that people need to see how their life will get worse before they will be willing to act? That sounds a little accelerationist to me. But I'm not entirely sure of your argument. You seem to be saying that people would not be worried if they lost 4/5ths of their arable land, but I think I must be misunderstanding something.
(I think it's s tributary to the Gulf Stream that is at risk of collapsing, not the Gulf Stream itself, which, I'm told, is based on the earth's rotation rather than climate.)
You are. People would be very worried. It's just that their worry would not be expressed in attempts to improve things in the long-term when there's a short-term disaster.
If the Gulf Stream will definitely collapse in 2025 (which is not what the study says), then that's too soon to do anything about, so the priority is surviving it rather than preventing it. Fundamentally, things that help prevent disaster are not the same as things that help survive it.
I see, yes, that makes more sense: if conditions get that bad that quickly, it won't be a question of preventing worse change, it'll be figuring out how to survive day-to-day.