This doesn't look good:
-
Christine Burns MBE 🏳️⚧️📚⧖replied to Emeritus Prof Christopher May last edited by
@ChrisMayLA6 And even if the humans have shelter and the aircon doesn’t give out there will soon be no wildlife in those places. No animals to breed for food or milk or to carry loads. No birds to lessen the silence whilst the people wait for a day that is fractionally hotter still. People think it’s all far off because it’s not that hot every day. They miss that, for them, it only has to be hot and humid enough one time.
-
Jonathan Schofieldreplied to Christine Burns MBE 🏳️⚧️📚⧖ last edited by
And while that trajectory unfolds, the growing of food in places like Pakistan does not look good https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/111555969227295370
-
@urlyman @christineburns @ChrisMayLA6 A bigger concern there is destabilisation and unpredictable behaviour of the monsoon cycle. More drought in Pakistan, more flooding in Bangladesh, more hunger in India.
-
@BashStKid it’s all bad. I wish we could take our foot off the accelerator and give ourselves time to think differently.
But the thermodynamic road seems to enslave us https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/112500670860562086
-
@urlyman @christineburns @ChrisMayLA6
I’ll make a point I often make, that we could stop all fossil fuel production right now. This weekend. Just need to turn a few thousand wheels on a few thousand wells, and that’s it.No need to discover revolutionary tech, or stop the sky falling, or perform superhuman feats. Just turn a few wheels to OFF.
Choose OFF.
Choose Life.
(Oh, and stop giving excessive power to sociopaths) -
@BashStKid we could. But we’ve been giving power to sociopaths for at least 7,000 years. Hope we can break the spell
-
Christine Burns MBE 🏳️⚧️📚⧖replied to Jonathan Schofield last edited by
@ChrisMayLA6 @urlyman @BashStKid The parts of the news that encourage me tend to come from projects done IN SPITE OF governments rather than because of them. But I think, sadly, it may take a massive disaster uncomfortably close to home to mobilise the wartime mindset where entire populations are diverted from business as usual into a heroic effort. And even then I think we’ll do it too late to avoid locking in long term harms. The future will hate us.
-
Emeritus Prof Christopher Mayreplied to Christine Burns MBE 🏳️⚧️📚⧖ last edited by
@christineburns @urlyman @BashStKid
'The future will hate us' - I agree, and we can already see the young developing exactly this sort of (completely justified) opinion of older generations who had the chance to act on the climate but chose (for whatever contorted reasons) not to...
-
Christine Burns MBE 🏳️⚧️📚⧖replied to Christine Burns MBE 🏳️⚧️📚⧖ last edited by
@urlyman @ChrisMayLA6 @BashStKid And, note, the disaster to shake us from complacency will need to be uncomfortably close to the West, where most of the emitting happens and where the denial and complacency is fostered. Places far away becoming uninhabitable for people who aren’t like us will not be enough. The sociopaths will even secretly welcome that kind of mass disaster. No, it has to be perceived as “coming our way”.
-
Christine Burns MBE 🏳️⚧️📚⧖replied to Emeritus Prof Christopher May last edited by
@ChrisMayLA6 @urlyman @BashStKid Whenever I look at graphs that show the acceleration in temperature increase from the sixties I know that’s us boomers living our lives of conspicuous overconsumption. It wasn’t our parents, who grew up in houses that were only just getting electric light as children. We did it. Us.
-
Ghost of Hopereplied to Christine Burns MBE 🏳️⚧️📚⧖ last edited by
@christineburns @ChrisMayLA6 @urlyman @BashStKid
I don't know.
You're technically correct of course but I don't see how individual members of our generations can be blamed.
It's about systems and about collective minds and so on. I was never given a realistic choice about my life of consumption, I've just had to live in the world I find around me and I think that's true for just about everyone.
Maybe I can be blamed for not going EV yet or not having solar panels yet or countless other things, or for not getting myself locked up for protesting. All valid arguments but none of that would change the system. I think the only thing that will change it will be catastrophe and I just hope it won't be too late to salvage something.
The mega-rich could change it. They won't.
-
@BashStKid The really hairy problem is, fossil fuels are not just burnt; a sizable share of them goes into the chemical industry and even things like steel metallurgy. If we abruptly stop these industries down, millions of people will suffer and starve. But because of our capitalist markets, it's impossible to shut down trade in fossil fuels for burning while trade in fossil fuels for other uses is going on.
-
Riley S. Faelanreplied to Jonathan Schofield last edited by
@urlyman Unfortunately, sociopaths made long ago the rule that only sociopaths get to make new rules about how our society works. What are we to do? Break the rules? But that's what sociopaths do!
-
Riley S. Faelanreplied to Christine Burns MBE 🏳️⚧️📚⧖ last edited by
@christineburns Deinvesting in new fossil fuel projects is very helpful. The pressure needs to be applied on both governmental subsidies and private money-hoarding specialists.