Enjoy a high standard of living now that you still can. This ship is going down. Might as well make the most of it instead of trying to carry buckets of water out of the hull, it's futile. Humanity has spoken, this is collectively what we want on average. Is it good? Is it fair? It just is.
The sad part is, it's not happening because we couldn't do anything but because we didn't do what we could.
Remember the sinking island scene in Erik the Viking?
Every time this comes up, mostly people talk about driving less, eating less meat, etc. How about we fix stuff instead of throwing it out? In early 2000s my parents bought a washer machine, it still runs, it does run pretty well, then had to repair heating element at least once, but it runs just fine even now. It’s has every cycle you can possibly have. We had to replace our bosch after about 8 years of use. I can’t buy spare parts. Had to replace drain pump twice, not there is a hose that cracked and I just can’t buy a replacement with matching connector. Similar stories for a microwave, fridge, dishwasher, laptops and even vacuum cleaner.
We need to force manufacturers to make things fixable. And mandate certain level of support for spare parts and batteries.
Same with all types of connectors. I wish the US passed the passed the law requiring common charging port, common audio port(audio jack was perfect), etc. Audio jack removal by Apple and subsequently Google is an atrocity.
No one is really interested in doing the work to slow global warming.
- Build nuclear power plants everywhere. Yes even in countries like Iran and North Korea
- Don't subsidize fossil fuel use by any mechanism. Yes dropping the Russian fuel cap.
- Make reducing emissions a priority that means it comes first in consideration. Yes ahead of Uighurs in China, Women in Iran and Afghanistan.
You will not get everything you want.
But if you believe climate change is civilization ending then you need to give up what you don't need.
Just Stop Oil is super obnoxious but if climate change is destroying our planet why is it they still get openly assaulted in the street in a "first world" country? It's because people aren't even willing to be late to the cinema.
Which will occur first, irreversible worldwide climate catastrophe, or the technological singularity? Either way, the 2020s will be the most pivotal decade in human history.
At which point do you think humanity will start seriously thinking about radical solutions? Such as detonating thermonuclear weapons to throw enough dust above the troposphere to cool the planet down?
I'm thinking we're still really far away. Migration from areas that become uninhabitable is still weak. And it doesn't look like any state that has substantial military/commercial/political power is interested in starting a fuss about it. Germany's Green party, probably the strongest climate centric party in the world, somehow thinks that potential nuclear reactor problems are just as bad as global warming.
The cascading events that might lead to the end of organized nation-states in many parts of the world due to climate change look like a real possibility now.
I wonder if we should instead embrace the climate change. We know that no one will accept stopping rising standards of living or even lowering them. As such we are not going to emit less in long run.
Can we instead of make some changes on local level that effectively work with the climate change or minimise the impact? Might mean need to abandon some locations, but there has always been population movements.
Anecdotal story time. We have a family villa in Spain about an hour and a half south of Alicante. We just got back from two weeks there like we do every year. The heat and humidity this time was the first time it was too much so that we didn’t enjoy our time there. We’ve had this place 21 years.
Yes it’s Spain and it’s always hot which is why we bought it but this year was something else. The mix of both very high temps (higher than usual for July) and much higher humidity just made it very uncomfortable. We don’t usually need the AC on in July but we had to run it every night this time to be able to sleep.
Even the pool wasn’t refreshing as it was a constant 33C whereas it is usually around 28-30.
On the Wednesday night just gone we also had a heat burst. My first experience with such a thing and wow that was something else. It was like opening an oven door. The blast of scorching hot air in my face was almost suffocating.
Of course there have always been outlier days that have been too damn hot over the past two decades but this time it was the whole two weeks. Not just the odd day. I dread to think that it will be like in August which is when the temps usually hit their highest.
I’m a simple software guy I don’t pretend to know much about the climate but I listen and when thousands of scientists present data that shows average temps going up it makes me worry. If things continue like this some areas just won’t be reasonable to live or visit. They’re just not comfortable. You have to stay indoors as the sun roasts you in minutes and the humidity just makes you feel like crap constantly.
Even our neighbours who live there are talking of moving as it isn’t a nice place to live anymore. You feel trapped indoors with AC and do all you can to avoid going outside.
If these kinds of temperatures do continue to rise as predicted there is going to be a huge relocation of people to more liveable locations which is going to be a whole other problem.
I live in [redacted] where we have hot temperatures in the summer but we have pretty good humidity and it rarely feels “too hot”. I have AC but almost never need to use it unless it climbs to around 40C for a few consecutive days so I am used to pretty hot but I just did not enjoy Spain these past two weeks and was so glad to arrive home last night to 29C.