‘It’s too late’: David Suzuki says the fight against climate change is lost - iPolitics
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Human civilization is bound to die at some point. If we give up now it will just happen faster and with more suffering. If we fight we will still improve things, maybe not everything will be okay, but when has it ever been?
I suppose it wasn’t clear in my comment but I’m not advocating for doing nothing. Just to have realistic expectations about what is possible. If you sell everyone on reversing everything, and then fail, it will breed discontent further than being honest. That’s all.
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How to say Marx was right without saying “Marx was right”.
Thanks to big corporations effectively owning governments and big politicians the world over, things aren’t bound to get better anytime soon, because “the economy”. Fuck that shit
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Even if we intentionally released as much co2 as we could all life on earth is not at risk. Remember that there’s a fair amount of life that is virtually unchanged since the paleozoic period when all that co2 was in the air. Beyond that there’s stuff that hangs out in volcanic vents, rapidly evolving life that can adapt even to rapid change, bacteria, molds, mosses and algae. And who knows maybe there’s even a small adaptable mammal or 2 that gets out and evolves enough for a second attempt at sapience.
Don’t get me wrong the climate disaster is truly a unique and devastating extinction event, but humans are not so powerful as to leave the earth a completely lifeless rock.
So this is the meagre hope I cling to now. I guess it’ll have to do.
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In your car crash analogy, we are now past the point where hitting the brakes will help. The car will be irrepairably destroyed and all passengers will be killed.
We haven’t taken our foot off the gas and legislators are stopping us from even touching the brake pedal.
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I think it helps to look at other problems caused by fossil fuel use. Higher CO2 concentrations make breathing air worse. Ocean acidification kills fish etc.
I think the bigger impact is thinking about changing weather patterns long term leading to new and larger deserts in the centres of continents and regular, massive storms on the coasts. That’s a changing climate beyond “everybody is a few degrees hotter” that is implied by global warming. CO2 isn’t going to effect breathing, but does cause acidification.
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Good point. I try my best, but even if like 90 % of the population tried harder, it would barely offset the billionaire companies killing our planet.
They’re the problem, always has been that way.
I think it’s time to stop them.
This simply isn’t correct. While the billionaires yacht fleet and jet setting make them have insane carbon footprints individually, it is their business practices that actually register in terms of contributing significant chunks of the carbon budget for humanity. Bezo’s jets and yachts pale in comparison to Amazons delivery fleet and manufacturing all that junk. It’s counterproductive to focus on their personal emissions, when it’s the interaction of their businesses, government, and consumers that are burning the earth. We have 2 levers on that problem.
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The actual problem is democratic oligarchism/zionism/neocon warmongering/US colonialism. Protecting establishment is easily supported when higher priorities than human sustainability can be manufactured. The more miserable you are made, the less you care about “higher level Maslow hierarchy needs” at political level.
The best way to reduce all the excess manufacturing for livestock is by not buying it their products. If it’s all about ROI for them, give them a reason to reduce their manufacturing with your purchasing power.
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The best we can do for the planet is toss a few billionaires into a volcano as a sacrifice to earth
I’m down.
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This simply isn’t correct. While the billionaires yacht fleet and jet setting make them have insane carbon footprints individually, it is their business practices that actually register in terms of contributing significant chunks of the carbon budget for humanity. Bezo’s jets and yachts pale in comparison to Amazons delivery fleet and manufacturing all that junk. It’s counterproductive to focus on their personal emissions, when it’s the interaction of their businesses, government, and consumers that are burning the earth. We have 2 levers on that problem.
You’re right. I was thinking more about the individuals responsible capture and refining of fossil fuels.
But the pretty ubiquitous use of Amazon delivery does greatly contribute a lot. Didn’t really think about it in that aspect. Thanks for pointing that out.
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All that’s left is to make the rich suffer.
“The Earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.”
~Utah Phillips
Inb4 some pedant quibbles that “the planet itself is not dying.” Yeah, but we and our fellow creatures are. It should be understood that is what Mr. Phillips meant.
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Thanks to big corporations effectively owning governments and big politicians the world over, things aren’t bound to get better anytime soon, because “the economy”. Fuck that shit
And thank the Saudis too. Guess where the previous conference on phasing out fossil fuel, but agreed to slow down the process, was held.
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I think he’s right, but he’s also a real asshole and lives in a mansion in Vancouver and likely creates more environmental damage than the average human
Most everyone who’s even slightly well off in north America creates significantly more environmental damage than the average human
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How to say Marx was right without saying “Marx was right”.
1950’s oil execs funded studies that show how they will kill the planet if they don’t stop, transition to something else, hell they had enough fore warning they could have R&D’d solar and monopolize the tech, but NO! They needed to make faster money faster and stopping yourself from killing the human race isn’t THAT important, and they knew they’d be dead by now.
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I’m sick of this WE, im not a billionaire pumping more Co2 per day with my yacht fleet than a town of people do in their life. I’m sick of being blamed for this shit, when all my conservation is undone in a minute by a corporation. I refuse to take equal blame any longer
A lot of people in western countries are living unsustainable lifestyles. Yes we need to target the billionaires too, but that alone won’t solve it. Also stop buying their shit. Actually, just stop buying shit in the first place as that is a large part of the problem.
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Again though, I do all these things and it doesn’t matter cause my entire life’s output of CO2 is being put out by one guy in an hour. I’m turning off lights and corporate buildings are running all the lights and AC 24/7
If the majority of people did, it actually would make a massive difference. This whole “but billionaires” and “but corporations” is just being used as an excuse to do absolutely nothing by far too many people.
All of those people doing nothing are why we are in this mess.
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1950’s oil execs funded studies that show how they will kill the planet if they don’t stop, transition to something else, hell they had enough fore warning they could have R&D’d solar and monopolize the tech, but NO! They needed to make faster money faster and stopping yourself from killing the human race isn’t THAT important, and they knew they’d be dead by now.
They might have been able to monopolize SOME of the tech, but they knew they could never own access to the sun. But yeah, they knew that they were incinerating us for decades. Which makes it premeditated murder in my books.
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How to say Marx was right without saying “Marx was right”.
Just hope that the next intelligent species will speedrun capitalism
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How to say Marx was right without saying “Marx was right”.
Can’t kill earth can only just piss her off, hopefully I’ll be useful enough to the overlords of Cascadia Dome #6 to get a really nice condo overlooking a nice park.
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Has been for ages. It’s now question of how bad, and we are still making it worse.
And we’re gonna increasingly train more AI, mine more crypto, open more coal mines, industrially kill more animals, fight more wars.
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The best way to reduce all the excess manufacturing for livestock is by not buying it their products. If it’s all about ROI for them, give them a reason to reduce their manufacturing with your purchasing power.
The best way to reduce all the excess manufacturing for livestock is by not buying it their products.
has that ever worked?
