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Floods, fires and deadly heat are the alarm bells of a planet on the brink (www.washingtonpost.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 78 points 1 year ago

Reading climate change articles always reminds me of this monologue from the antagonist in Westworld:

I think humanity is a thin layer of bacteria on a ball of mud hurtling through the void. I think if there was a God, he would’ve given up on us long ago. He gave us a paradise and we used everything up. We dug up every ounce of energy and burned it. We consume and excrete, use and destroy. Then we sit here on a neat little pile of ashes, having squeezed anything of value out of this planet, and we ask ourselves, “Why are we here?” You want to know what I think your purpose is? It’s obvious. You’re here along with the rest of us to speed the entropic death of this planet. To service the chaos. We’re maggots eating a corpse

[-] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago

From the late great George Carlin: "The planet is fine. The people are fucked."

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Except we’re taking out a load of other species with us

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Life on earth has been through far worse than humans and recovered (in a few million years).

Different species will fill the available ecological niches.

Life will survive.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Nobody is claiming or worried that all life will go extinct. What sucks is that we are fucking over all the animals that we know and love. If elephants go extinct, there will never be elephants again. Same with whales and koalas and sloths and bees. They will all be gone forever like dinosaurs and dodo birds and thylacines and trilobites.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

The jellyfish, mosquitoes, mold, sea urchins, flies, algae, fungi and cockroaches will probably thrive. That's a good foundation for evolution to start a new ecosystem, isn't it?
This is the kind of hope I am clinging to this year.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Thank God, I was really worried about the mold.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Mold, uh, finds a way.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Or in the words of Agent Smith:

"You move to another area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure."

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Smith program was so edgy in the early 2000s 😂

[-] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago

This world will burn to a crisp before the big corporations and government say they fucked up and believe scientists now.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

This is how I feel with the corporations. As a result of this feeling, I stopped giving a damn. I attempt to live my life the best I can, while still trying to care for the world, even though I know we are doomed. Nothing will change until something catastrophic has happened.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Sorry, but this is such fatalistic bs.

So much has changed.

I remember acid rain.
I remember leaded gas.
I remember 12mpg cars.
I remember the photos of terrible brown smog floating over Los Angeles.
I remember before anyone had a recycling bin.
I remember...

The list goes on. And I'm only a handful of decades old.

Can we do more? Yes.
Should we do more? Absolutely.
Are more people aware of that than ever before? Yes.

Humans have technologied their way out of so much shit, I am not ready to give up on us yet.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Will we do more? No.

We have only got so far with technology because it resulted in sales. When the goal is less sales, less industry, less mindless consumption, no innovation is going to happen.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Ah, but you forget about the rubber band finally snapping. When it is released there will be push back and things will happen quickly.

Now the real question becomes, how much more can we take. I believe we are reaching a tipping point where the uber-rich either help, or are removed. And I think they are starting to see that too.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Part of the work has to be processing the emotions of our past failures. It's okay to feel fatalistic for a minute just to sit with those feelings. But we do need to get over it sooner or later and get to work, too.

[-] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I remember acid rain.

Still happens just in 3rd world countries.

I remember leaded gas.

Which didn't get fixed until an act of congress.

I remember 12mpg cars.

Marginal increases in technology are not to be celebrated when the medium of consumption is still a greenhouse gas.

I remember the photos of terrible brown smog floating over Los Angeles.

Those still exist just in 3rd world countries.

I remember before anyone had a recycling bin.

Recycling that does nothing???

I remember…

Yeah me too -- and shit's still absolutely fucked.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Im here with you on this. Ive seen so much fake climate actions from government and corporations, that ive accepted were fucked. Ill do the best i can, so at least i can say it wasnt my fault.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Reminds me of unvaccinated covid patients

[-] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

Okay but that doesn't affect corporate profits, and that's what's really important!

[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

And that’s the rub.

A guy with a tall collar needs to appease a bunch of old guys with even taller collars and if that means we’re all doomed as a species and taking everything we know with us in this cycle of earth, then so be it so some people can have a high score on their bank roll.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

I live in the southern state of India called Kerala, we had a huge flood that wreaked havoc in 2018. Just last week, we had these huge floods again, but it was not big as last time. This week it is floods in northern India. This is not normal, and we are noticing these scenarios which are affecting millions of people. The people at the top who are supposed to make rules to mitigate this are making the people fight amongst themselves. I don't know how much time till we get until it's too late. I hope we can overcome this.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Business idea:

Underground cooling stations with backup power systems.

this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
298 points (95.7% liked)

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