This has been a doozy of a year. And it’s the best year so far blah blah. So how are you all coping? Does it hit anyone else like a bolt of lightning that probably I - we - won’t die of old age?
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I become a stauncher anti-capitalist every day, since capitalism and its unsustainable and literally impossible aim of infinite growth, and the greed and corruption it encourages, is why climate change is not only happening but also not being treated seriously, and abolishing it is the only hope we have of dealing with the damage climate change will bring and try and minimize it going forward (since its past the point of stopping it entirely).
The whole point of those responsible shifting blame on to individuals who have nothing to do with the decisions that got us here, nor the profits they make, is to get you to the point you’re at now - hopelessness which leads to inaction, or desperation that leads to futile action (like banning straws or paying to reduce your “carbon footprint” - a term they made up for this exact purpose, and so on, all of which are there to make sure you’re criticising your neighbour for their recycling habits instead of the companies that say they’re recycling and get paid to but really send the garbage directly to landfill, or to a developing nation already drowning in western trash).
What you actually need to be is angry and focused, to ensure your anger is aimed at the right people and the systems they uphold that got us here. Those systems are not natural or inevitable or immutable, they are artificially created by and for the benefit of a really small group of humans, a group we could easily be rid of if we actually united to do so.
This could have been written by me. I despise capitalism, capitalists, and if I could, would ensure that every company knowingly polluting or harming people or the planet would be dissolved and their boards put in jail, or worse. I have always hated capitalism, I’m realizing, the older I get, and learning how many of these companies KNEW the consequences of their greed makes me even more radicalized against it.
We glamorize wealth hoarding and that baffles me. I have a 4yo son. I see in him the same things I see in these capitalists. I give him what he wants, say a scoop of ice cream. I get some for myself, maybe a different flavor, and he asks for mine. He gets upset when I tell him to enjoy what he has and that I want to enjoy my ice cream too.
Recently, we got into LEGO and I will be building something, usually just fucking around, and I’ll start to make something cool. He’ll come up and want it. Even with other blocks, it’s what little I have that he wants. Sometimes, there is no amount of persuasion to allow me to continue what I’m doing.
I’m convinced that greed is just a regression/stopping of cognitive development to the level of a child. I would pity these capitalist fuckers if they weren’t destroying the planet and our lives for their greed.
Makes me think, sure, go ahead, build that bunker to escape the disaster you [capitalists] created. Nature may not be able to get in that easily, but people didn’t become the apex hunters of this planet from giving up. Persistence will reap what you have sowed.
I honestly believe that billionairism is a mental illness and should be treated as such. Involuntary confinement and treatment, because they’re a danger to others.
How dramatic, nothing this year is out of the ordinary.
People crying that during the summer it gets hot? Ridiculous.
Lol
I’m hoping you just forgot an /s. But just in case, there’s nothing ‘ordinary’ about it. Unless you are talking about the ‘new ordinary’.
I bought significantly above sea level. Surely, I will have beachfront property within my lifetime, if all the claims are to be believed!
The world is fucked but apparently people like to live the way they do, so I expect worst shit.
Edit: I have to admit I believe there are worst shit why people will not die old.
100mg Fluvoxamine and 5-10mg Diazepam a day seems to be working for me.
I’ve been doing occasional psilocybin and hedonism and that’s been pretty good so far
I really wanna try psilocybin. Like so much I’m thinking about growing it myself, just for one time, ego-shattering trip to break this cycle.
Sure, or even if you want to just microdose your first time, it’s super worth it. It’s pretty fun imo
My issue is trying to get my hands on it. I’m hopeful the up-and-coming trials of this, ketamine, and the like prove overwhelmingly successful, and quickly. I’m drowning in my own to-do list!
It grows wild on the Oregon coast along the beach grass basically as soon as it rains in the fall (maybe give it a week or two of rain) throughout winter. It is decriminalized here in Oregon so not illegal for me to tell you this, either :)
You can also legally order spore kits, which I recommend for a beginner, if you’re growing yourself.
Thank you for the information. I may try my hand at growing it if I’m feeling brave this fall!
I don‘t. I‘m accepting that i, as an individual, will not be able to impact it and so i‘m pretty much going with it. Humanity will survive, thats for sure but i make sure to make the most of it in the time where it‘s still bearable.
I think I’m on an accepting phase too.
I’ve been through a lot personally and emotionally since I started reading about collapse 9 years ago.
I had a look at this publication a few years ago, it put me in a rough place for a few days.
Recalibration of limits to growth: An update of the World3 model
Humanity will survive I’m certain of it, however our thermo industrial civilization will not and most of the people currently living in the planet will not.
It will happen whatever I personally do.
The best I can do now is to find ways to have the happiest life I can using as little ressources as possible for my family, my community (neighbors, friends …) and me. It’s a process that forces us to reassess a lot of things we were doing but it is fascinating.
Practically it means finding ways to lower our monthly expenses, try to consume local as much as possible and learning a lot of new techniques…
Humanity will survive
…will it though?
Nah. It’s only been around a very, very short time and it won’t remain much longer despite probably being one of the longer stints the planet’s seen of life so far. We should still get to punch MAN into the high score screen and be seen by other players later on, like we saw with DNO.
Yes, don’t be ridiculous
Some humans somewhere will survive. We’re the most adaptable and intelligent species on the planet
We’re the most adaptable and intelligent species on the planet
Which makes all the other life on earth really sad if you think about it. /s
It’s easy to fall into doomerism, but the truth is we are incredible in taking immediate dangers head on. We just happen to be shit tier in doing something against anything vague in the future. A human TPK, without tapping into SciFi, is out of the question.
We are the most intelligent, not the most adaptable by a long shot.
That also doesn’t guarantee anything, we are smart not capable of impossible feats of magic. If the situation is irreversible that’s what it is and you die. The end.
My guess is humanity will, but society probably won’t, at least not in or near it’s current form.
I am educated in science and I do not think humanity will survive, no. Most megafauna will probably die out. There are ~10 planetary boundaries and we’ve crossed a lot of them. Earthquakes and volcanoes will start picking up. AMOC collapse could be as soon as 2025.
Why are you such a doomer?
Lol no you’re the poopy-butt!
Do you see how silly ad hominems are? Do you want to talk about something substantial? Or would you like to continue your tantrum because you don’t think the same as I do?
AMOC collapse could be as soon as 2025.
No. I also read that. There was a prediction that AMOC collapse might be inevitable by 2025 and take a couple centuries to happen.
We have pretty good evidence the currents are slowing, but no real data to predict if and when it might stop. A couple researchers made a prediction that is not currently accepted by the field. It’s just pretty dire, but would affect a few generations from now even if true
No, it won’t take a couple of centuries to happen, you misread. The collapse will most likely happen before 2050 according to new research which speeds up the timeline on the old research. The various environmental fields do actually agree on this and it’s accepted.
The impacts of an AMOC collapse would leave parts of the world unrecognizable.
In the decades after a collapse, Arctic ice would start creeping south, and after 100 years, would extend all the way down to the southern coast of England. Europe’s average temperature would plunge, as would North America’s – including parts of the US. The Amazon rainforest would see a complete reversal in its seasons; the current dry season would become the rainy months, and vice versa.
That means the collapse will happen, with immediate consequences as well as consequences that won’t stabilize for over 100 years, not taking into account other destabilizing forces. Like can you read?
Nothing you quoted even says it will happen, much less that the effects will be immediate
Lol
Can you please elaborate on what you mean by “educated in science”?
Uh, what? Earthquakes and volcanoes due to climate changes?
Earthquakes and Volcanic Activity has been tied to sea level and air pressure changes. So one leading theory is that climate changes will more likely than not cause more activity, however the last year has shown no such changes yet Source on last year activity
Then you should recall that some of the largest megafauna ever lived for tens of millions of years at much higher temperatures(and therefore sea levels)
At higher temps that changed over thousands of years gradually. This is not that. And that’s even if “high temp” was the ONLY planetary boundary being crossed. It is not. There are numerous SIMULTANEOUS extinction events happening. Amd we know megafauna isn’t serving this time because we are in the middle of a major extinction event already. Millions of sea life and millions and millions of birds and insects are dead already, from being boiled alive in the ocean to starvation to pollution to bird flu.
Extinction of individual unfit species doesn’t mean the total collapse of life.
Individual unfit species like ALL birds and ALL insects and ALL sea life and ALL fish? Not including ALL corals and ALL trees (forest fires). Lol what’s left, really? In terms of biomass, that’s like, most of it.
That we are in an extinction event is widely known in the scientific community.
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2023/09/human-driven-mass-extinction-eliminating-entire-genera
^There, read up. Sorry to break the news to you.
like ALL birds and ALL insects and ALL sea life and ALL fish?
Where does it say that???
Not including ALL corals and ALL trees (forest fires).
Coral life is dying for the most part, but not everywhere
Global forest area loss has significantly slowed, and seems to be continuing to go down
Wildfires are not a significant risk to global forest coverage.
What I mean is that ALL species in those categories are affected. It’s not 1 or 3 species, it’s affecting literally every species across those Phylla. Your claim was that is was a few unfit species. It’s not, it’s all the species.
Several tree species in the US are undergoing extinction due to forest fires, including the Redwoods: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/23/extinct-tree-species-sequoias/
The coral thing you posted is kinda laughable, sorry to be rude when you’re facing total annihilation of most life on this planet, but I have been chuckling about that for a couple of minutes. https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/noaa-confirms-4th-global-coral-bleaching-event
“From February 2023 to April 2024, significant coral bleaching has been documented in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres of each major ocean basin,” said Derek Manzello, Ph.D., NOAA CRW coordinator.
“Climate model predictions for coral reefs have been suggesting for years that bleaching impacts would increase in frequency and magnitude as the ocean warms,” said Jennifer Koss, director of NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP).
The 2023 heatwave in Florida was unprecedented. It started earlier, lasted longer and was more severe than any previous event in that region.
NOAA made significant strides to offset some of the negative impacts of global climate change and local stressors on Florida’s corals, including moving coral nurseries to deeper, cooler waters and deploying sunshades to protect corals in other areas.
(Do you see how NOAA was unable to fix the root cause of bleaching at any level? This is our governments failing us)
Global forest area LOSS has slowed. Meaning how much we are losing is going down, but we are still losing it.
Boreal forests in regions all over the world have been experiencing the worst wildfires in recorded history in 2023, according to new research.
The total wildfire emissions for 2023 is estimated to be almost 410 megatonnes, the highest on record for Canada by a wide margin, according to the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service dataset, which provides information on the location, intensity, and estimated emission of wildfires around the world. The previous annual record was set in 2014 at 138 megatonnes of carbon.
It isn’t even close to the end of 2024 fire season so I gave an article from 2023.
The biggest threat to your life from climate change is this kind of doomerism making you suicidal. I’ve been down that road myself.
Either get off your ass and do something about it or stop worrying about it. You’re not helping anyone by making yourself sad.
I’m not suicidal.
I’m not saying you are. You missed my point entirely.
I’m asking for coping methods or strategies. For example, I sing a lot because it doesn’t contribute anything to capitalism and more fossil fuels being released, and it releases oxytocin so it makes me feel good. I also read and spend time with others, smoke cannabis, take psilocybin.
That we don’t want to die, and don’t want the planet to die, shows that we are very much not suicidal so it’s just weird you brought that up at all lol.
The Earth has been much hotter than the worst-case scenario for anthropogenic climate change. (It used to be rainforests-at-the-North-pole hot.) Climate change isn’t going to kill you unless you’re both extremely poor (by global standards, not by first-world standards) and unlucky, although it may significantly reduce your quality of life as resources are redirected to mitigation. Where do these “mass death everywhere” ideas come from? They’re not a product of the scientific consensus.
As for me: it seems like the climate where I live is getting warmer. There has been much less snow recently than there was when I was a kid; it’s convenient but unsettling. The summers are getting hotter too, although the difference isn’t as dramatic. I’d like to move to somewhere further north, or maybe a place like coastal California which is without temperature extremes, but I would want to do that even if the climate wasn’t changing.
Where do these “mass death everywhere” ideas come from?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event
The problem isn’t that it’s going to be warmer. The problem is that it’s getting warmer so quickly that populations won’t be able to adapt. Ecological collapse is absolutely on the table here. There is no real debate in the scientific community about this, just deceptive propaganda that’s disguised as ‘conflicting science’ but is simply a smoke screen to keep people ignoring the problem.
We’re going to lose a lot of diversity but hardy, fast-growing species will spread into niches formerly filled by specialists. Some models even predict that net ecological productivity will increase significantly (there does exist disagreement about this).
Look at who funded that study, and the actual contents.
According to this study - funded by the Chinese government, the single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions on earth - we’ll see increased plant growth in the short term under controlled warming. Even ignoring the incredible conflict of interest, the fundamental assumption of the study is that we’ll be able to get warming under control and stick to the goals of the Paris agreement, maintaining only 2 degrees of warming by 2070. That’s absolutely absurd. We’ll be incredibly lucky to not hit 2 degrees of warming by 2040 at this rate. Besides that, they are essentially just looking at how plant growth responds to changes in temp and CO2. Of course plant productivity increases with higher temps and more available CO2, that’s not where the problems come in.
The problems occur when those hardy, fast growing species start really exploding. Cyanobacterial blooms that deoxygenate massive swaths of the ocean, killing millions of fish at a time. Population explosions of pests, contaminating food supplies and starting future pandemics. The ecosystem is complex and interconnected, things will adapt eventually, but the transition period will be catastrophic.
We are not a hardy, fast growing species. I have no doubt that people will survive, but it’s going to effect everyone, and a lot sooner than you think.
The study looks at that particular increase in temperatures but a higher increase would probably lead to even more plant growth.
I agree that that there will be disasters during the transition period (and even if there aren’t, transitioning will be very expensive). However, humans are extremely hardy and fast-growing. We’re probably the most hardy, fast-growing species of large terrestrial animal that has ever existed - right now humans and domesticated animals make up the overwhelming majority of terrestrial mammal biomass. Climate change is going to affect me, at least because I live in a large coastal city and seawalls cost a lot of money, but it is unlikely to kill me.
Temperature is not the problem. No climate scientist has ever worried that plants won’t produce well in higher temperatures. Acting like they’re ‘exploring the consequences of climate change’ is a smokescreen, it’s a way of making it seem like the fears are overblown. They’re testing a hypothesis with an obvious conclusion that’s somewhat related to global warming, while conveniently ignoring the things real scientists are actually worried about.
The fears come from the other effects of rising temperature and greenhouse gasses. Most of the real scary stuff is happening in the oceans. Things like the potential for massive amounts of algal death and the loss of potentially 60% of the oxygen creating organisms on earth. Plants are gonna grow great when oxygen levels drop to 15% and people have to wear breathing masks anytime they venture to the surface.
We are absolutely not a hardy or fast growing species. It takes years, for our children to be remotely self sufficient, and over a decade to reach sexual maturity. We have a similar growth pattern to elephants, outside of whales, we’re some of the slowest growing animals alive. We can’t survive extreme temperature swings, radiation, loss of oxygen. We’ve created things to overcome our physical mediocrity, but those things can very quickly disappear for most of the population when the infrastructure supporting global shipping and manufacturing collapses. The fact that we make up such a huge portion of mammal biomass mostly just means we’ll be a great food source for whatever bugs evolve to eat us. Keep in mind that we may be about 30% of mammal biomass, but livestock make up more than 60%. That’s not because they’re small and adaptable, it’s because they’re food.
This is a ‘transition period’ on a geologic scale. We’re talking about the next 50,000 years at best, it’s not something we’re just to ride out and things go back to normal.
Humans have drastically altered ecology permanently anyways, during fruits and vegetables into near monocrops and changing them within just a few decades, it’s pretty clear that can be done for temperature changes. Though yeah of course temperature changing changes ecology, but why assume that change will be disastrous collapse
Because higher temperatures aren’t the problem, the rate of change is. I assume the worst because we’ve seen it before in the fossil record. The best comparison is the Triassic-Permian extinction. Rapid change in temperatures led to global ecological collapse and the death of 85% of all life on earth. Now, during the Triassic-Permian extinction CO2 levels rose from 400 ppm to ~2500 ppm over the course of ~50,000 years, with an estimated rate of change of around .05 ppm per year. We’re starting out lower at 280 ppm before the industrial revolution, but we’ve already hit 420, and we’re now adding about 2.5 ppm every year, with that number increasing every year. So we’re currently experiencing warming that’s 50 times faster than the most devastating extinction event in Earth’s history.
The fact that our entire food industry is based around genetically engineered monocultures is just another point of failure. It’s a constant game of cat and mouse to continually keep each generation of plants protected against changing diseases and pests, and because the vast majority of the seed is coming from one company, if something does adapt to overcome the engineered defenses, it’s devastating to the entire global population of that crop.
The earth has never heated this rapidly before. And it’s not just heat, but other planetary boundaries as well being crossed.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458
That climate change is killing bigger multicellular organisms isn’t debatable, we are in an extinction event that was made significantly worse by bird flu. If we lived outside, we’d be dying too. And soon, our power grids will start failing even more, just like Texas.
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2023/09/human-driven-mass-extinction-eliminating-entire-genera
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/05/29/thousands-seabirds-starved-death-bering-sea-scientists-see-fingerprint-climate-change/ (^Bird deaths from 2019, before bird flu started decimating them too)
I do my best to limit plastic use and eat less meat. But that’s a mosquitoes fart compared to all the pollution that can easily prevented by the players that matter. Governments still choose fossil over nuclear, not enough subsidy on fossil alternatives that we could have had decades ago.
Same as always. Live my best life right up until the very end. Set a good example and understand my place in the universe.
I make myself the change I want to see in the world so I can live and die with a refreshing feeling of superiority.
I love it! Change the world for the better… out of spite XD
Badly. Really, not much more that I can say about it. The future terrifies me.
At least you can acknowledge it’s real at some level 😭
I still try my best to do what I can. But at the same time I’ve come to terms with the fact that we’re all fucked and everything I’m doing is pointless. But I’d rather do what I can and strive to do better than give up and make things worse. I have completely selfish reasons for doing my part and it’s literally just because I’d feel like an asshole.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw
I found this video to be helpful in putting things in perspective. Basically, despite all the news, we are making progress and it is a priority. Technology is improving really fast to the point where renewable energy is actually the more economical choice.
A lot of companies are actually making an effort to implement more green policies. I work for a tech company, and a lot of discussions revolve around energy efficiency and performance per watt.
Remember that climate change activists want to make the world seem much worse than it is. That’s their “job” after all - to raise awareness and attention. It doesn’t mean what they are saying isn’t true, just that you should view it as them putting a negative lens on it.
Personally, I worry about many things, but not really climate change. With most issues there conflict between two groups. But I think most people generally think climate change is a real thing, even if they disagree on its priority.
I found this video to be helpful in comforting me. It minimized all those scary truths those pesky scientists keep bringing up. Once you find just the right take you can be on the bandwagon but with zero responsibility and accountability!
This is why the moderates will be first.
I didn’t say that.
My point was that saying “nothing is getting better and everything is terrible” is doing a great disservice to all the hard work of people actually working on solving this issue. There’s certainly a lot of work that still needs to be done.
There are three lenses on how to look at the world:
- The world is awful.
- The world is much better.
- The world can be much better.
These need not be mutually exclusive and you are limiting yourself if you only focus on the world through one of these lenses.
I should minimize the hard hard work and message of the others to protect the feelings I think they have. Then, I should create a strawman argument.
No, apathetic moderate. You’re the greater obstacle.
Eh. I do what I can where I can. It’s something I’m trying to get better at accepting about myself. No use sressing about things I have little influence over.
Given all the arguments I’ve been in online, I’d hardly describe myself as “apathetic” though. :P
Dude, don’t waste your energy on this guy.
I’d hardly describe myself as “apathetic” though
I believe you’re heart’s in the right place. I’ll write a sincere response, though it’s deep meta.
Given all the arguments I’ve been in online
If you ever feel like that alone isn’t the best thing for you then the rest of my message could apply.
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
The individual who wrote the line above called it the “great stumbling block in (our) stride toward freedom”.
I do what I can where I can.
One thing you could choose to do is read his words in the context he wrote them, think about how the themes apply to almost everyone today, then target specific individuals with good questions.
It already is worse. The number of extinctions in the last few years alone is heartbreaking.
I don’t think that activists want it to seem worse than it is. I think they’re trying to wake us up from sleepwalking collectively into disaster. The ones I listen to seem pretty measured.
I just don’t give a fuck, when I’m dead I won’t care about anything. And my own existence is full of problems and worries enough just to worry about the goddamn sun or sea levels.
Fair enough, nihilism is a valid philosophy that often helps people cope in difficult times. And it really probably doesn’t matter at this point anyway.
