Climate change: just how f***ed are we?

[obsessedwithsleep]

Obviously it's on my mind at the moment and it seems that nothing of any significance is being done. Like we're just watching those juggernaut come down the road and not even trying to the move the car.

Anyway, as the title says: how awful will the future be? What is the most likely degree rise by 2100? What does this actually mean in reality?

Would love to hear people's thoughts and wisdom.

People do need a holiday! But they could go by train etc and not always fly. I’ve had holidays every year but I don’t fly, I go by train.

Nobody needs a holiday

The earth will survive. Just less humans

The only way to limit the extent and impact of climate change is to end capitalism.

It's a system which by its nature is incapable of limiting itself. It will destroy all attempts (if there are any serious ones) by consumers to self-limit, because that is the point of it - to extract consumption by any means necessary. It's not rational or monolithic or sentient - it's a network of nodes which may be individually neutral or benign or humane. But as a system, as a whole, it must expand or die. If it is blocked, it will find another way.

I've completely changed my view in the last five years. Western liberalism/democracy - values/philosophies in which I had absolute faith - is a really just a sop; worse actually - a mask.. Liberalism performatively limits capitalism's most egregious inhumanities, and appears to be an objective good - but it does so only in order that the system as a whole can continue to expand unchallenged.

I don't think many of us Western liberals realise that this is what we're doing. We're not arseholes - we think we're decent left-liberals who believe in equality and human rights and environmental protections. But none of those will ever be achieved globally under capitalism. It's simply not possible - the system requires inequality, and it will create a market by any means necessary, and one of those means is the destruction of the planet for short-terms profit. And every attempt to give capitalism a more human face delays the moment that real humans understand that fact.

obsessedwithsleep

I think I'd still want to live now weirdly. You never know, we may be blindsided with some amazing tech discoveries at the last minute! Humans are incredible, just wish to god the governments would all work together but that ain't ever going to happen is it

Once you are gone no one remembers you anyway after about 50 years so it will be no great loss, it's like you never existed

I am unsure about what you mean by this post. Are you arguing that Asia and Africa do not deserve to improve their living standards? What do you want me to convince governments of? I am not Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerburg.

👏👏👏👏👏

All of this!

obsessedwithsleep

I think I'd still want to live now weirdly. You never know, we may be blindsided with some amazing tech discoveries at the last minute! Humans are incredible, just wish to god the governments would all work together but that ain't ever going to happen is it.

Not as fucked as the earth will be in 5 billion years, when the sun’s fucked.

I’d argue they do, particularly given how bleak the world is. Mental health wise we all absolutely benefit from time not working, time spent with our loved ones, time outdoors.

Perhaps it’s more true to say: no one needs a holiday abroad. No one needs to fly, see the world – it’s not a right, it’s a privilege – stay in resorts etc. I have my grandmother’s diaries, and every year their holiday was a train to the same hotel in England, daily walk down to the beach, an ice cream each. Cheap air travel and the internet showing us everything we can do has tricked us into thinking a holiday has to be far-flung, with bragging rights. That simply taking a break isn’t enough, that our own country – which has a myriad of beautiful, idyllic places! – isn’t enough.

But I absolutely believe we can attempt to combat the climate emergency without putting our hair shirts on and climbing up on the cross denying everyone a break from the crushing misery. We just need to collectively approach those breaks wisely: rewarding slow travel (lots of workplaces now give extra annual leave for this), remembering that the break and the change from the grind are the thing, not the 5*-resort and 12-hour flight.

Totally agree with this.

rewarding slow travel (lots of workplaces now give extra annual leave for this)

Do they? Not in any industry I've worked in.

I was reading earlier that the gulf stream is at its weakest for 1000yrs.

I don't think many people realise that climate change = melting poles = changing ocean currents = no more gulf stream = very cold here!

I genuinely think this would scare more people into action here than heat.

The tory candidates just show the extent to which the establishment (people?) think its business as usual. A problem for tomorrow.

news.sky.com/story/weakest-gulf-stream-in-1-000-years-could-bring-more-extreme-winters-to-uk-and-europe-says-study-12228956

Really no holidays, holidays if you are working are a legal entitlement. You go to work every day, good for you.
Maybe holidays aboard or far way in the UK.

We are not fucked. Thinking we are is unhelpful climate doomism

”Climate scientist Dr Friederike Otto, who has been working with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says: "I don't think it's helpful to pretend that climate change will lead to humanity's extinction."
In its most recent report, the IPCC laid out a detailed plan that it believes could help the world avoid the worst impacts of rising temperatures.
It involves "rapid, deep and immediate" cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases - which trap the sun's heat and make the planet hotter.
"There is no denying that there are large changes across the globe, and that some of them are irreversible," says Dr Otto, a senior lecturer in climate science at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment.
"It doesn't mean the world is going to end - but we have to adapt, and we have to stop emitting."”
www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-61495035

Yes the climate has changed - we will have to adapt

@frazzledmess they need to make caring more lucrative, for example, they will pay me £3 an hour more as a HCA to go and help people to get washed/dressed but won’t pay carers the same. I also think there needs to be serious conversations over keeping people alive at any cost, it’s ludicrous really I’d rather have quality of life than quantity

Don’t be so ridiculous, capitalism isn’t the root of environmental evil. Communism has a much worse environmental impact than capitalism. Capitalist countries have higher equality indexes (rights, income, wealth) than non-capitalist countries. Capitalism actually depends on increasing equality, not on creating inequality- it makes no sense to impoverish potential consumers now does it?

We're fucked because no government is interested in making those 'rapid, deep and immediate' cuts to emissions that are required. Because our political and financial systems are inherently short-termist and no one who could actually do something meaningful ever thinks beyond the next electoral cycle.

I agree fully with @WinterDeWinter - absolute, total and fundamental change of all our systems, throughout the world, it's what's needed, and it ain't gonna happen whilst we are wedded to 'growth' and 'the markets'.

We are screwed. That won't stop me trying to make a small daily difference, but deep down I know we're screwed.

I think a good deal of the lack of action in recent years has been down to the complete hijacking of the green movement by corporate interests.
The original message of the green movement was a plea for smaller lives, to 'tread more lightly' as we used to say. Have less, consume less. A hard sell to the hand wringing champagne socialists, who wanted more, more, more, however.
So the focus of shifted to buying stuff, just stuff that was green or 'sustainable'. Green lifestyles became quite expensive, and profitable for corporations. A focus on technology became obsessive. We are always one technological innovation away from solving the whole thing. So keep buying more.

When really the only real way to ever solve this was always to have less. To tread more lightly.

@WinterDeWinter great post, well said.

Once again, human arrogance at its best! Humans cannot control nature. End of.

Yes.
The false god of 'growth' pursued still by governments, and unthinkingly accepted by most of the rest of us.
Growth is toxic to the planet.