Climate change apathy Ragnarok thread - The Bear and Badger

mistercrayon

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57733178

How could plastic eating mushrooms go wrong.

MattyJ

Sat wearing jeans and a fucking hoodie in August, two weeks ago it was 30 degrees

SpaceGazelle

mistercrayon wrote:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57733178 How could plastic eating mushrooms go wrong.

Yep. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

SpaceGazelle

Imagine if it worked so well we had a world without plastic.

acemuzzy

Imagine if they got onto Reg's shelf of Nintendo tat - a feast fit for shroom kings!

SpaceGazelle

That pesky methane permafrost.

poprock

So the latest apocalyptic worry is that the Gulfstream could collapse at any moment in the next 10 to 100 years. It’s already flowing at it’s slowest for 1600 years. Lovely.

Diluted Dante

That's been a worry for as long as I can remember.

SpaceGazelle

I think we need to stop pretending we are going to get under 2C. It's a fucking pipe dream to pretend otherwise yet no country is preparing for it in anyway whatsoever.

Yossarian

I think we’re just fucked, TBH.

poprock

We need survival strategies. How to survive on a knackered planet. That’ll be our legacy for future generations.

GooberTheHat

I know how to shoot. Just need a gun now, then I'm sorted.

Yossarian

poprock wrote:

We need survival strategies. How to survive on a knackered planet. That’ll be our legacy for future generations.

I’m not convinced that we’re going to leave enough behind for anything to survive on.

SpaceGazelle

Yossarian wrote:

I think we’re just fucked, TBH.

This isn't helping. There's more hope in a denier. The best chance we have are in between deniers and the narrsists. We just need to be optimistically realistic.

SpaceGazelle

And that means no economic growth. Surely we can handle that as adults?

nick_md

I know how to shoot, used to be the only man out me, my brother and the old man who could hit the cans off the hedge every time with the air rifle (the sights were fucked, you had to aim up and to the right, they never figured that out). Went to a shooting range in Warsaw once, the old fella who ran it called me sniper, by the end he was bringing out his own personal collection of guns to show me. True story.

Yossarian

SpaceGazelle wrote:

And that means no economic growth. Surely we can handle that as adults?

Sure. Now get leaders who are willing to go along with that in charge of, say, the US, China, France and Germany at some point in the next couple of years and we’ll get started on these changes.

Diluted Dante

SpaceGazelle wrote:

I think we need to stop pretending we are going to get under 2C. It's a fucking pipe dream to pretend otherwise yet no country is preparing for it in anyway whatsoever.

The only sort of country that would prepare for it would be the sort of country that would actually be taking the steps required to avoid the 2C rise.

poprock

The issue is global capitalism. We won’t change that without multiple revolutions around the world at almost the same time.

Something really bold and simple like, I dunno, banning fossil fuels overnight, worldwide. Adapt or die, etc.

The problem is that the leadership with the power to make any changes has no interest in doing so. Our systems of governance aren’t fit for this purpose.

Maybe we need to reposition the challenge as a war. They seem to like wars. The war on warming. The war on CO2. The war on climate change. Something like that?

poprock

I was joking but that’s actually not a bad idea. Maybe it would magically unlock the defence funding of all the major powers, allowing it to be redirected towards climate action.

Silke

Yeah, in lack of other targets, I can even see the Trumpists proclaiming war on the climate: We have accepted weather and it's daily changes for long enough, it's finally time to show that fucker.

Kidding aside. I'm ready to sacrifice some nature-averse comforts in my life - are you?

monkey

War is the right metaphor to use for it. In the UK at least. WW2 in particular. Since the old gits are the ones that need to get onboard to accept the changes required and they're mad about WW2. Everyone needs to get it through their heads that the party's over.

The 6 o'clock news had about 10-15 minutes on this earlier. The UN report saying 'wake up morans, act immediately'. It was pretty stark. I haven't seen anything like it on the BBC before. I think even the Tories have woken up to the fact that they need to start getting people ready for some serious lifestyle changes. Because that report wouldn't have gone out like that a couple of years ago and it wouldn't have gone out without the government approving the step up in rhetoric. I'm actually more optimistic having seen that doomsday report than I was before it.

LivDiv

I havent read fully into today's report but from what I can tell the first thing that needs to happen is a global ban on investment in coal starting yesterday.
Then a flood of money put into helping all countries replace coal with an appropriate renewable.

If we aren't going to stop burning coal ASAP there is fuck all point separating plastics into little bins and having an extra veggie meal a week.

monkey

Yoghurt pots piss me off the most. I either chuck them in the bin and I'm a planet-killing scum bag or I'm washing fucking petit filous in the sink like a mug. I haven't done the maths on this but I can probably stand at that sink washing yoghurt pots for the rest of my life and that can be wiped out by one of Boris Johnson's private flights from London to Devon.

GooberTheHat

Putting the emphasis on the end consumer is a tactic used by manufacturers. It's bullshit and they should be taxed based on their products lack of green friendliness.

Escape

Silke wrote:

Kidding aside. I'm ready to sacrifice some nature-averse comforts in my life - are you?

I absolutely love motorbikes and couldn't afford an electric replacement (not even close), but if the gov offered like-for-like swaps I would.

That's the real problem: governments need to subsidise our losses with eco-friendlier replacements, else those with the least are likely being asked to give up the most. In lifestyle terms, not monetary.

Gremill

SpaceGazelle wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

I think we’re just fucked, TBH.

This isn't helping. There's more hope in a denier. The best chance we have are in between deniers and the narrsists. We just need to be optimistically realistic.

That's difficult to do when no leaders are willing to actually do anything that means anything substantial. As much as it depresses and terrifies me, I do think we're fucked - the socio-economic system we find ourselves locked into just isn't designed to tackle the kind of sweeping changes needed.

poprock

We need that benevolent dictatorship after all.

MattyJ

poprock wrote:

We need that benevolent dictatorship after all.

Pretty much.

It's so depressing. It was all completely avoidable but instead of pivoting into alternative fuels, the fossil fuel industry decided to spend millions and millions on disinformation, distraction and paying off politicians to keep their profits. And those politians putting themselves over everything else. At the cost to the planet and literally everyone living on it.

poprock

monkey wrote:

… that report wouldn't have gone out like that a couple of years ago and it wouldn't have gone out without the government approving the step up in rhetoric.

I don’t think the report would have been suppressed in the past. It’s been done every seven or eight years, I think. What’s changed is the amount of available data for the report to draw on. Measuring climate change is now an entire scientific discipline in its own right. Last time the report came out, in 2014, it drew on three scientific studies. Three. This time it’s based on data from thousands. It’s conclusions are beyond reproach.

(I picked that up yesterday on Twitter from one of the British authors who worked on the report. He also talked a lot about how supportive the UK Gov was during the reporting process - which surprised me.)

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