Its not really a matter of if I care. I cannot sway billionaires, the ones who put us into this situation. I cannot make them stop destroying the planet. They do not care what I think, and they are solely motivated by profits. Nothing else. They have no morality, no sensibilities, no sympathy, and they have absolutely no desire to do literally anything about the unfolding climate crisis. They don’t care. They’d double emissions in a heartbeat if they’d make a few cents off of it. God knows they’ve done it before, and they’ve done much worse for much less money.
Until the money billionaires have stolen from us is rightfully given back to us, we have no means of intervening directly ourselves. The only other option is insurrectionary revolution. Those in the ruling class have shown us consistently over the last 150 years that they have callous disregard for the environment and for the future of humanity. They have shown time and again they will ignore all warnings, they will dismiss all concerns, they are apathetic to human life, and are solely focused on the accumulation of stolen wealth. There’s no middle ground here. If we want to do something meaningful to mitigate this crisis, the billionaires and the ruling class have to go.
If it gets too hot, they’ll just buy a bigger AC unit. Then a bigger one. Then they’ll move underground. Until that gets too hot as well.
There was a meme floating around a while back with a quote from some native american fellow saying something along the lines of ‘only when the last bison has been killed,[…] the last tree has been felled, will they realized they can’t eat money’.
Their power of the rich only exists as long as the rest of the people are giving it to them. We as a collective are not able to break away though. At the end of it all apathy goes both ways. They are apathetic to human life, the rest of humanity is apathetic to human life. It’s a self perpetuating system. The ‘fuck you, got mine’ mentality is the one to blame here and perhaps it’s one of the traits that brought us so far.
And, for all the good and bad it’s brought us, we conquered the planet (grey connotation intended there) because it was ‘never enough’. For instance, some creatures could fly. We couldn’t. So we fixed that by keeping birds in cages as pets and by inventing powered flight.
Undeniably, we’ve gotten ourselves in quite a pickle with this mentality, but I propose here that they are the inevitable result of humanity. Hoarders have been around since humanity started killing each other for resources (see monarchies as an example). They are probably not fecking off too soon. And I don’t believe eat the rich is a solution because people will just eat the closest rich person and change the definition of rich to ‘has a bit more than me’ to justify it.
Depends, how likely do you see a socialist insurrectionary revolution happening?
To be clear, I do care. I’d like to have a good life. But I cant snap my fingers and magically radicalize the entirety of the world. I do my best with the limited platform I have, but I’m only one radical anarchist.
I’m not saying you can or that you’re expected to. Just like a single rain drop doesn’t make a flood.
But if every rain drop got discouraged from falling because it can’t make a flood all on its own we’d have been in droughts earlier and more often.
As far as likelihood, I think we’ve been approaching a revolution of some kind or another for a couple decades at least. It could be a violent one like the French Revolution, or a cultural one like the Industrial Revolution. Time, events, and people will make that determination, but the visible unrest with income disparity grows more obvious on a pretty regular basis.
The Lorax which is really the most applicable one here.
If you haven’t read it I’ll also suggest The Butter Battle Book if you’re interested in morality that boomers retroactively want to have not taught their children
Seeing how we’ve known about it for decades and this is the amount of progress we’ve made towards slowing/fixing it… idk maybe I’m just being cynical, then again Covid really showed us just how much the general public doesn’t care about their well-being and other’s wellbeing
I had a slight glimmer of hope at the start of covid-19, when people were dazed and confused and isolating and waiting for a vaccine. At the very start, I actually thought humanity is proving we’re not that bad.
IMO, it’s always better to try. Worst case scenario is that nothing changes, so no worse than if you didn’t. The only sane choice in that kind of situation is to pick the one with a chance for improvement.
In my experience, giving a shit about what you’re doing has a bunch of positing knock-on affects as well. You just end up feeling better about yourself. In your specific scenario it sounds like trying would also afford you the opportunity to live a happier life, and that’s worth chasing. The world is fucked, but scientists keep saying they if we act soon it’s not so fucked they we’re past the inflection point to un-fuck it.
It’s looking more and more depressing on that front too…
Apparently we’re discovering that our type of star system with its long periods of stability and lack of local disruptive bodies is incredibly, incredibly, rare… There are a (literal) astronomical amount of systems out there so there’s no way we’re the only one with life, but it’s really looking like there could only be a “handful” of others out there :/
If you have the energy to try I’d say do so, but be careful not to overexert yourself. When it comes to doing good or altruistic things that don’t have a lot of direct value to us, we all have different amounts of energy. If that energy runs out, people burn out and stop doing anything. With that in mind, try to do small things here and there. For following your dreams, I’d say to my knowledge we only live once and you should do something you enjoy, and it’s possible at any age to change careers, but it’s important to be realistic and build a plan before making the jump.
One could argue that we (humans) are doing exactly what we are meant to do and that the climate change isn’t a ‘problem’ on the grander scale.
Change is only ‘bad’ based on perspective. Climate Change could also be the pressure catalyst that drives evolutionary change. The pressure exerted on coal underground could be considered ‘bad’ for the coal but it also drives the transformation of coal into diamond.
This is exactly why I dislike the phrase climate change. Outside of academia, it should be ‘climate catastrophe’. Or maybe ‘sixth mass extinction’. Those are much less ambiguous.
Mate believe me i’m thorn between the exact same feelings…
It’s hard to find a balance in an unbalanced world, a world that is demanding us to work hard to fix important problems and to create new and different possibilities.
At the same time a lot of us are just needing social interactions to the point they are starving: a lot of people of my generation grew up with technology ( the specific capitalist kind of technology that wanna keep you glued to the screen even if it’s hurting you) and are really in the need of some real human contact.
Finding a balance is incredibily hard, there’s this will of finding truth: true actions, true relationships, true help.
But at the same time the actions required to find solutions could take us a lot of time, mental and phisical resources…
But from as i see it now, i feel good if i can live one good day with the people i love even if rarely, than living with the consciousness i’ve never even tried to do something to change the world and create a better future for me and for them.
In torn between following my dreams and dedicating my life to attempting to help the climate crisis by going to school and inventing some tech to help
and giving up entirely, coasting through life with my stable government job, and drinking to forget until the day I hang myself…
This world is fucked, should I even try? Or should I just hope in reincarnation?
Well if no one does anything it won’t be better should reincarnation come around.
I think Dr. Seuss has some pertinent wisdom here.
Its not really a matter of if I care. I cannot sway billionaires, the ones who put us into this situation. I cannot make them stop destroying the planet. They do not care what I think, and they are solely motivated by profits. Nothing else. They have no morality, no sensibilities, no sympathy, and they have absolutely no desire to do literally anything about the unfolding climate crisis. They don’t care. They’d double emissions in a heartbeat if they’d make a few cents off of it. God knows they’ve done it before, and they’ve done much worse for much less money.
Until the money billionaires have stolen from us is rightfully given back to us, we have no means of intervening directly ourselves. The only other option is insurrectionary revolution. Those in the ruling class have shown us consistently over the last 150 years that they have callous disregard for the environment and for the future of humanity. They have shown time and again they will ignore all warnings, they will dismiss all concerns, they are apathetic to human life, and are solely focused on the accumulation of stolen wealth. There’s no middle ground here. If we want to do something meaningful to mitigate this crisis, the billionaires and the ruling class have to go.
If it gets too hot, they’ll just buy a bigger AC unit. Then a bigger one. Then they’ll move underground. Until that gets too hot as well.
There was a meme floating around a while back with a quote from some native american fellow saying something along the lines of ‘only when the last bison has been killed,[…] the last tree has been felled, will they realized they can’t eat money’.
Their power of the rich only exists as long as the rest of the people are giving it to them. We as a collective are not able to break away though. At the end of it all apathy goes both ways. They are apathetic to human life, the rest of humanity is apathetic to human life. It’s a self perpetuating system. The ‘fuck you, got mine’ mentality is the one to blame here and perhaps it’s one of the traits that brought us so far.
And, for all the good and bad it’s brought us, we conquered the planet (grey connotation intended there) because it was ‘never enough’. For instance, some creatures could fly. We couldn’t. So we fixed that by keeping birds in cages as pets and by inventing powered flight.
Undeniably, we’ve gotten ourselves in quite a pickle with this mentality, but I propose here that they are the inevitable result of humanity. Hoarders have been around since humanity started killing each other for resources (see monarchies as an example). They are probably not fecking off too soon. And I don’t believe eat the rich is a solution because people will just eat the closest rich person and change the definition of rich to ‘has a bit more than me’ to justify it.
Are they going to go just because you say they have to, or will action be required?
Assuming it’s action does that happen with apathy or do you have to care?
Caring a “whole awful lot” does not start and stop with green initiatives by the people.
The “do you care” flow chart boils down to two directions:
Which branch gets to what you’re talking about?
Depends, how likely do you see a socialist insurrectionary revolution happening?
To be clear, I do care. I’d like to have a good life. But I cant snap my fingers and magically radicalize the entirety of the world. I do my best with the limited platform I have, but I’m only one radical anarchist.
I’m not saying you can or that you’re expected to. Just like a single rain drop doesn’t make a flood.
But if every rain drop got discouraged from falling because it can’t make a flood all on its own we’d have been in droughts earlier and more often.
As far as likelihood, I think we’ve been approaching a revolution of some kind or another for a couple decades at least. It could be a violent one like the French Revolution, or a cultural one like the Industrial Revolution. Time, events, and people will make that determination, but the visible unrest with income disparity grows more obvious on a pretty regular basis.
Which book is this from?
The Lorax which is really the most applicable one here.
If you haven’t read it I’ll also suggest The Butter Battle Book if you’re interested in morality that boomers retroactively want to have not taught their children
I have, just many moons ago. I’ll take another read. Very pertinent
The problem isn’t tech to help the environment, as far as I can tell. It’s more getting the people in charge to actually do something about it.
I think the French once invented a device for that, I forget what it was called.
Guillotine
Hmm… a baguette?
Hon hon hon
Removed by mod
Seeing how we’ve known about it for decades and this is the amount of progress we’ve made towards slowing/fixing it… idk maybe I’m just being cynical, then again Covid really showed us just how much the general public doesn’t care about their well-being and other’s wellbeing
I had a slight glimmer of hope at the start of covid-19, when people were dazed and confused and isolating and waiting for a vaccine. At the very start, I actually thought humanity is proving we’re not that bad.
The rest is history now.
IMO, it’s always better to try. Worst case scenario is that nothing changes, so no worse than if you didn’t. The only sane choice in that kind of situation is to pick the one with a chance for improvement.
In my experience, giving a shit about what you’re doing has a bunch of positing knock-on affects as well. You just end up feeling better about yourself. In your specific scenario it sounds like trying would also afford you the opportunity to live a happier life, and that’s worth chasing. The world is fucked, but scientists keep saying they if we act soon it’s not so fucked they we’re past the inflection point to un-fuck it.
Would you really want to be reincarnated onto this sweat box of a planet?
Lots of planets out there, maybe another has life, and you can be snail-like creature on beta-kapsilon 114-3b
I want to be a brain slug when I grow up.
It’s looking more and more depressing on that front too…
Apparently we’re discovering that our type of star system with its long periods of stability and lack of local disruptive bodies is incredibly, incredibly, rare… There are a (literal) astronomical amount of systems out there so there’s no way we’re the only one with life, but it’s really looking like there could only be a “handful” of others out there :/
All it takes is one
If you have the energy to try I’d say do so, but be careful not to overexert yourself. When it comes to doing good or altruistic things that don’t have a lot of direct value to us, we all have different amounts of energy. If that energy runs out, people burn out and stop doing anything. With that in mind, try to do small things here and there. For following your dreams, I’d say to my knowledge we only live once and you should do something you enjoy, and it’s possible at any age to change careers, but it’s important to be realistic and build a plan before making the jump.
Listen to Kim Stanley Robinson’s interview on chapo trap house. Something comes next, we just can’t see what that is.
Maybe a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B.
One could argue that we (humans) are doing exactly what we are meant to do and that the climate change isn’t a ‘problem’ on the grander scale.
Change is only ‘bad’ based on perspective. Climate Change could also be the pressure catalyst that drives evolutionary change. The pressure exerted on coal underground could be considered ‘bad’ for the coal but it also drives the transformation of coal into diamond.
This is exactly why I dislike the phrase climate change. Outside of academia, it should be ‘climate catastrophe’. Or maybe ‘sixth mass extinction’. Those are much less ambiguous.
I mean what’re you gonna do?
The water is getting warm, so you might as well swim 🤷♀️
Mate believe me i’m thorn between the exact same feelings…
It’s hard to find a balance in an unbalanced world, a world that is demanding us to work hard to fix important problems and to create new and different possibilities.
At the same time a lot of us are just needing social interactions to the point they are starving: a lot of people of my generation grew up with technology ( the specific capitalist kind of technology that wanna keep you glued to the screen even if it’s hurting you) and are really in the need of some real human contact.
Finding a balance is incredibily hard, there’s this will of finding truth: true actions, true relationships, true help.
But at the same time the actions required to find solutions could take us a lot of time, mental and phisical resources…
But from as i see it now, i feel good if i can live one good day with the people i love even if rarely, than living with the consciousness i’ve never even tried to do something to change the world and create a better future for me and for them.