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  3. ‘It’s too late’: David Suzuki says the fight against climate change is lost - iPolitics

‘It’s too late’: David Suzuki says the fight against climate change is lost - iPolitics

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  • C canadiancorhen@lemmy.ca

    Genuinely seen conspiracy theorists say “they removed lead paint to that they can control you with 5g”

    If we still had lead gasoline, people would say you can pry it out of their cold dead hands

    J This user is from outside of this forum
    J This user is from outside of this forum
    jafffacakelemmy@mander.xyz
    wrote last edited by
    #32

    We do still have leaded petrol. All piston engined aircraft are still burning fuel with added lead.

    1 Reply Last reply
    2
    • J jafffacakelemmy@mander.xyz

      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.

      LumpyPancakesB This user is from outside of this forum
      LumpyPancakesB This user is from outside of this forum
      LumpyPancakes
      wrote last edited by
      #33

      Just put ice in the airbags.

      1 Reply Last reply
      7
      • W wrathfulbirch@lemmy.cafe

        I gave up a long time ago. The last time we really did anything about an issue like this was lead in gasoline. 50+ years of knowing we had to change. I wonder if maybe the wealthy elites know whats coming. I wonder if this new rise in facism is partially an answer to the fact that there won’t be enough of anything to go around. That is why they want us having babies. for soliders. I hope they have some spark of humanity and let people self terminate but I bet you would need money for it.

        Match!!M This user is from outside of this forum
        Match!!M This user is from outside of this forum
        Match!!
        wrote last edited by
        #34

        what possible reason could there be in self termination when there is a good fight to be fought (against the oppressors)

        1 Reply Last reply
        3
        • A asg101@lemmy.ca

          How to say Marx was right without saying “Marx was right”.

          M This user is from outside of this forum
          M This user is from outside of this forum
          myrmidex@belgae.social
          wrote last edited by
          #35

          the focus on politics, economics, and law are all destined to fail because they are based around humans. They’re designed to guide humans, but we’ve left out the foundation of our existence, which is nature, clean air, pure water, rich soil, food, and sunlight. That’s the foundation of the way we live and, when we construct legal, economic and political systems, they have to be built around protecting those very things, but they’re not.

          Powerful truth!

          L 1 Reply Last reply
          25
          • J jafffacakelemmy@mander.xyz

            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.

            H This user is from outside of this forum
            H This user is from outside of this forum
            haizhung@feddit.org
            wrote last edited by haizhung@feddit.org
            #36

            This is flat out wrong. In fact, the more co2 is emitted, the more extreme the consequences are. The change from 0->1 degree of global warming barely registers. The change from 3->4 degrees is catastrophical, for example.

            Thus, the warmer it gets, the more worth it is to fight against it, as each small win contributes more to the bottom line than in the beginning.

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            • A asg101@lemmy.ca

              How to say Marx was right without saying “Marx was right”.

              circav@lemmy.caC This user is from outside of this forum
              circav@lemmy.caC This user is from outside of this forum
              circav@lemmy.ca
              wrote last edited by
              #37

              Canada (and the world) will burn. You think migrants are a problem now? Wait until millions of people have no choice but to go north and the water wars start.

              huppakee@feddit.nlH K 2 Replies Last reply
              53
              • M MochiGoesMeow

                Yep, Trump just put all our climate mitigation funds into big oil. We’re cooked.

                circav@lemmy.caC This user is from outside of this forum
                circav@lemmy.caC This user is from outside of this forum
                circav@lemmy.ca
                wrote last edited by
                #38

                And Trunp is bringing back coal too. Fucked doesn’t even describe it.

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                • P pedz@lemmy.ca

                  Just wanted to add that maybe the last thing that we did for the environment and that really worked was for acid rain in 1991. At least where I live.

                  A few years before that there was the Montreal Protocol that banned CFCs and helped to heal the hole in the ozone layer. I think.

                  But yeah, I don’t remember anything of the sort recently,

                  circav@lemmy.caC This user is from outside of this forum
                  circav@lemmy.caC This user is from outside of this forum
                  circav@lemmy.ca
                  wrote last edited by circav@lemmy.ca
                  #39

                  Where I live people are replacing furnaces with heat pumps, if enough do it could make a minuscule effect.

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                  • J jafffacakelemmy@mander.xyz

                    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.

                    V This user is from outside of this forum
                    V This user is from outside of this forum
                    voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
                    wrote last edited by
                    #40

                    That’s why it’s an analogy, and not reality.

                    There is no point where hitting the brakes will not help. We can always reduce the amount of harm done.

                    P 1 Reply Last reply
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                    • C canadaplus@lemmy.sdf.org

                      Sort of? I don’t think he mentioned tipping points anywhere in there, it was pretty non-specific and ranty, but if we’ve passed a tipping point it becomes less a matter of applying a brake and more of actively causing massive climate change in the other direction. Failing that, the warming trend and other shifts will stop when the Earth reaches a new balance and no sooner.

                      Nobody really knows where those tipping points are. The Paris thresholds were our expert’s best guesses for a “safe” amount of warming.

                      V This user is from outside of this forum
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                      voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
                      wrote last edited by
                      #41

                      Even if we do pass some kind of “tipping point” (and you need to understand that every tipping point is just an arbitrary line that climate scientists draw to try to draw people’s attention to the problem), we can still mitigate the damage. There is never a point where fighting climate change becomes worthless. The less we do now, the greater the damage will be in the future. That’s all there is to it. Tipping points are just a way of illustrating that.

                      G C H 3 Replies Last reply
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                      • Y yucandu@lemmy.world

                        Back before George W Bush directed NASA to call it climate change, it was called global warming, and you can definitely win against that - by stopping the earth from warming. That’s unwinnable due to feedback loops that have now begun.

                        V This user is from outside of this forum
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                        voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
                        wrote last edited by
                        #42

                        Does not remotely address my point. We can always - always - work to reduce the harm caused by climate change.

                        The point where the harm could be reduced to “none” is decades past us. If that’s the point where you give up then fuck off. Climate change is actively causing harm as we speak, and it is still worth fighting. We can still make life better for ourselves and future generations.

                        The notion that climate change is some kind of runaway engine that will continue amok without any further human input is nonsense. Yes, I’m aware of ideas like “Permafrost methane bombs” and I’ve also done enough research to be aware that only a small fringe of climate scientists actually support those ideas. They’re flashy and exciting and get big press, but they are not widely accepted climate science.

                        What climate science shows is that the climate actually responds faster to reductions in CO2 than our older models predicted. That means that debacarbonization can have real and meaningful positive impacts beyond what we previously thought possible.

                        There is real damage already done, and there is damage that we cannot undo, but there is never a point where the problem goes beyond our input. The climate fight is always worth fighting.

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                        • V voroxpete@sh.itjust.works

                          That’s why it’s an analogy, and not reality.

                          There is no point where hitting the brakes will not help. We can always reduce the amount of harm done.

                          P This user is from outside of this forum
                          P This user is from outside of this forum
                          pfeffy@lemmy.world
                          wrote last edited by
                          #43

                          This seems like the “comforting fantasy” to me. Or a terrible analogy.

                          V P 2 Replies Last reply
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                          • T teppa

                            This guy says climate change mitigation will be a blip on the radar of economic growth:

                            B This user is from outside of this forum
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                            belastend@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                            wrote last edited by
                            #44

                            This guy has no fucking clue about human beings and does not give a single shit about human beings. His opinion can be safely discarded

                            1 Reply Last reply
                            1
                            • circav@lemmy.caC circav@lemmy.ca

                              Canada (and the world) will burn. You think migrants are a problem now? Wait until millions of people have no choice but to go north and the water wars start.

                              huppakee@feddit.nlH This user is from outside of this forum
                              huppakee@feddit.nlH This user is from outside of this forum
                              huppakee@feddit.nl
                              wrote last edited by
                              #45

                              O damn, almost forgot about the water wars. Those were brutal. Before those people genuinely believed there was nothing bigger than a World War. The fools. Like if you’re still here in 2125.

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                              • V voroxpete@sh.itjust.works

                                Even if we do pass some kind of “tipping point” (and you need to understand that every tipping point is just an arbitrary line that climate scientists draw to try to draw people’s attention to the problem), we can still mitigate the damage. There is never a point where fighting climate change becomes worthless. The less we do now, the greater the damage will be in the future. That’s all there is to it. Tipping points are just a way of illustrating that.

                                G This user is from outside of this forum
                                G This user is from outside of this forum
                                gamegod@lemmy.ca
                                wrote last edited by gamegod@lemmy.ca
                                #46

                                every tipping point is just an arbitrary line that climate scientists draw to try to draw people’s attention to the problem

                                That is completely, utterly wrong. Climate scientists are talking about the physical concept of the tipping point, which is observed in nature and also comes out of their models. In climate, it’s the point at which reversing a change that originally happened over decades would take thousands of years. For example, this has been the huge concern with the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), which plays a large role in the climate of western Europe: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2791639/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturning_circulation

                                Especially read the sections about Stability and vulnerability, Effects of an AMOC slowdown, and Effects of an AMOC shutdown.

                                My point is, tipping points are absolutely not an arbitrary thing. They are very solid predictions based on the physics of the climate. We don’t necessarily understand exactly how close we are, even though we’re observing some effects of being close to them, but the impacts of crossing them will make climate change even worse and hence the alarm.

                                Edit: If anyone reads these links and your eyes glaze over and you don’t understand of word of what’s written, then you need the humility to listen and accept what climate scientists have been trying to tell you. Some of the smartest people on the planet have been working on this for decades.

                                V 1 Reply Last reply
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                                • A asg101@lemmy.ca

                                  How to say Marx was right without saying “Marx was right”.

                                  T This user is from outside of this forum
                                  T This user is from outside of this forum
                                  tiger666@lemmy.ca
                                  wrote last edited by
                                  #47

                                  Did he fly across the world on his private jet to announce this?

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                                  • P pfeffy@lemmy.world

                                    This seems like the “comforting fantasy” to me. Or a terrible analogy.

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                                    V This user is from outside of this forum
                                    voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
                                    wrote last edited by
                                    #48

                                    The comforting fantasy is the idea that we can throw up our hands and say “We lost.”

                                    Losing is easy. It demands nothing from us. Losing has no call to action. If we’ve lost, then there’s no fight left to be fought.

                                    The reality is that the fight is always worth fighting. And that sucks, because it means we never get to give up. We never get to say “It’s over”, and stop caring. Caring is a lot harder.

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                                    • V voroxpete@sh.itjust.works

                                      Let’s be clear about something; climate scientists almost universally agree that there is no such thing as “winning” or “losing” the fight against climate change (Suzuki, for the record, is a zoologist, not a climate scientist). This isn’t a game, there’s no referee, and no one gets a trophy at the end.

                                      The battle against climate change is about mitigating harm. The worse we do, the more harm there will be. But there is never a point where it is “too late”. The car is going to crash, but the sooner you hit the brakes, the less damaging the impact will be. Everything we do to push the needle will save lives. There is never a point where we get to throw up our hands and succumb to the comforting fantasy that it’s “too late” to change anything.

                                      I have a lot of respect for Suzuki, and I don’t blame him for feeling defeated with everything that’s happening, but spreading this kind of message is, dangerous, damaging, and flies entirely in the face of the science.

                                      T This user is from outside of this forum
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                                      tiger666@lemmy.ca
                                      wrote last edited by
                                      #49

                                      Suzuki is and always was just a mouthpiece for corporate masters. Controlled opposition to steer public opinion. He is not and never will be a climatologist. His message is one of defeat because his backers want us to give up.

                                      Suzuki can kiss my white ass.

                                      1 Reply Last reply
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                                      • P pfeffy@lemmy.world

                                        This seems like the “comforting fantasy” to me. Or a terrible analogy.

                                        P This user is from outside of this forum
                                        P This user is from outside of this forum
                                        puppinstuff@lemmy.ca
                                        wrote last edited by
                                        #50

                                        In not an appropriate analogy. We are not just the people in the car, we are the whole neighborhood.

                                        Even if the people in the car cannot prevent a crash by braking, they can still prevent further damage to people and property by braking as much as possible while within their means.

                                        xthexder@l.sw0.comX 1 Reply Last reply
                                        5
                                        • G gamegod@lemmy.ca

                                          every tipping point is just an arbitrary line that climate scientists draw to try to draw people’s attention to the problem

                                          That is completely, utterly wrong. Climate scientists are talking about the physical concept of the tipping point, which is observed in nature and also comes out of their models. In climate, it’s the point at which reversing a change that originally happened over decades would take thousands of years. For example, this has been the huge concern with the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), which plays a large role in the climate of western Europe: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2791639/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturning_circulation

                                          Especially read the sections about Stability and vulnerability, Effects of an AMOC slowdown, and Effects of an AMOC shutdown.

                                          My point is, tipping points are absolutely not an arbitrary thing. They are very solid predictions based on the physics of the climate. We don’t necessarily understand exactly how close we are, even though we’re observing some effects of being close to them, but the impacts of crossing them will make climate change even worse and hence the alarm.

                                          Edit: If anyone reads these links and your eyes glaze over and you don’t understand of word of what’s written, then you need the humility to listen and accept what climate scientists have been trying to tell you. Some of the smartest people on the planet have been working on this for decades.

                                          V This user is from outside of this forum
                                          V This user is from outside of this forum
                                          voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
                                          wrote last edited by
                                          #51

                                          If that’s what we’re meaning when we talk about “tipping points”, yes, they exist. But as you yourself said, “We don’t necessarily understand exactly how close we are.” The idea that passing some arbitrary line like “1.5 degrees” is a point of no return is unscientific nonsense, and that’s what the vast majority of people mean when they say “tipping points.”

                                          And the point is, none of that changes the need to keep working towards improvement. Every fraction of a degree less the planet heats will make a difference. Even as monumental climate changes occur, those changes can be lessened, their impact reduced, by any amount that we decarbonise the atmosphere.

                                          If you’re under the impression that I’m arguing against climate change being real in any way shape or form, or that I’m arguing against it being utterly catastrophic, you’ve missed my point so badly that you might as well be reading it in a different language. My point is very, very simple; there is never a point where we get to give up.

                                          No matter what happens, every effort to reduce the damage to our climate will save lives. Things can always be worse, and because things can always be worse it ontologically follows that things can always be better, even when the definition of "better’ is “fewer people die.”

                                          The fight isn’t lost or won. Get those concepts out of your mind. Suzuki - as brilliant as he may be - is an idiot for invoking them like this. He’s speaking about a very limited, very specific piece of the fight, but he should have understood that the public would take his words entirely out of context. The people who want to poison and destroy our planet for profit are, right now, actively pushing the propaganda that the battle against climate change is over. They are wrong, and they are lying. The battle against climate change is a battle to reduce harm, and you can always reduce harm, now matter how great the scale of the eventual harm may be.

                                          J 1 Reply Last reply
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