this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2024
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Building wall not enough to stop sea level rising, research says (www.rnz.co.nz)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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This is exactly why I made sure when buying my house/section that it was more than 5m higher than sea level and inland from the coast. Not that that will mitigate the societal collapse following the glaciers'.

The world might be able to geoengineer saving one maybe two glaciers. But not all of them, not Greenland's icesheet and not the entire Antarctic icesheet.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

No, I meant defeatism. The post I replied to said

Yup. It's already too late, even if all emissions stopped yesterday.

Emphasis mine. That's incorrect. It's not 'too late' and confidently stating it is achieves nothing but guarantee failure. That's not 'realistic'. We need drive, determination and hope to deal with what's coming. Those do not grow in a sea of doomerism, pessimism and defeat.

I'm not a 'fantasist'. I fully understand the scale of the problems we face. Optimism does not mean giving in to ignorance or 'praying the emissions away' it means understanding that pessimism isn't useful, it achieves the opposite of what we need: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23622511/climate-doomerism-optimism-progress-environmentalism

That article you linked is interesting, but as the comments below it allude to, it misses nuance. It is never too late to save humanity, even if our current understanding of what humanity is will need to change: https://andrewbirley1.medium.com/its-already-too-late-for-this-iteration-of-humanity-but-that-is-not-a-reason-to-stop-trying-e93e4b6b6b4

Also, whilst articles like that from your man Tom are fine in moderation, try not to drown yourself in them. Too much bad news is bad for you: https://www.wired.com/story/doomscrolling-bad-news-mental-health/

Don't forget to check out the good stuff to: https://fixthenews.com/

Finally, talking of nuance, whilst you are right that global emissions went up in 2023 by 1.1% what you neglected to mention is that emissions in advanced economies fell to their level of 50 years ago, a record decline: https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissions-in-2023/emissions-in-advanced-economies-fell-to-their-level-of-50-years-ago

And that the growth of clean energy means global energy related CO2 emissions could peak by 2025: https://www.iea.org/news/the-energy-world-is-set-to-change-significantly-by-2030-based-on-today-s-policy-settings-alone

So, I guess I am a optimist, just not in the way people on Lemmy seem to understand the word: https://medium.com/the-ascent/the-magic-that-happens-when-we-stop-equating-pessimism-with-realism-9480a5481540