I think we’re past the point of the car hitting the wall even if we brake, and the damage ruining your day. We’re not past the point that braking will save lives or even make the car unrepairable.

Futurama, Crimes of the hot episode was a prophecy

All that’s left is to make the rich suffer.

We kill 80 billion land animals per year for factory farming and we’ve caused almost 2 species of animal per year, every year, to go completely extinct over the last 500 years.

We are going to destroy almost all life on this planet.

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.

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.

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

So this is the meagre hope I cling to now. I guess it’ll have to do.

We haven’t taken our foot off the gas and legislators are stopping us from even touching the brake pedal.

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.

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.

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.

I’m down.

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.

“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.

And thank the Saudis too. Guess where the previous conference on phasing out fossil fuel, but agreed to slow down the process, was held.

Most everyone who’s even slightly well off in north America creates significantly more environmental damage than the average human

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.

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.

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.