You’re wrong 
Even if the majority do eventually become part of the problem some will follow their feelings and develop a passion for positive action. The more things like this happen the greater the number of passionate people. It is a slow process but better than fuck all and currently the only hope. As for suggesting that limited procreation is the solution. 
@NAM not suggesting you did.
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I certainly did not limit my procreation
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David Attenborough in episode 1
Jesus…how fucked must things actually be if even politicians are openly saying there’s a climate emergency
The problem being, they should have been saying it 15 years ago.
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Was it inevitable that as the shit started to hit the fan, national leaders who were in denial about climate change would assume control in key countries? Rather than take the difficult decisions, it’s far easier to simply promise wealth for all through accelerated economic growth
We have Trump in the US pledging to burn more coal and now Bolsonaro in Brazil levelling forests.
Stupidity. The end of all this isn’t going to be pretty.
Well thats a fucking cheery morning read…
His analogy with an Indian tribe is a bit useless though. They had a clear enemy, and a clear choice of actions. We need the entire world to work together to (in some degree) abandon years of ‘progress’ and a standard of living in a self-sacrifice that might not even work to prevent climate effects which (at least to start with) have a far worse impact on the poor (who have little influence on this) than the rich (who have almost all the influence). I suspect the odds of anything happening are vanishingly small. We will accelerate our way to whatever is coming, and either die in the climate disaster, or in a war over the climate disaster (who can’t imagine Trump bombing fuck out of somewhere like Mexico if they start to migrate in serious numbers?)
Yes. In fact it may be worse than that. If we are going to sustain anything which resembles what we have now then we are going to have to fight nature - our own nature.
Since at least the evolution of multicellular life, several hundred million years ago, competition between individuals and groups (species) has been the general rule. Co-operation has mostly happened only when it has been win-win. Both parties actually have to do better from it. General competition has also been the norm over the course of governed human society, roughly the last 5,000-7,000 years or so. Again the driving force behind stable governments has been the betterment of the lot of their people.
It seems that limiting the effects of climate change while sustaining a population anything like the size it is now would require the first world to embrace the objective lowering of its living standards. As the writer puts it
… Consider everything we take for granted: perpetual economic growth; endless technological and moral progress; a global marketplace capable of swiftly satisfying a plethora of human desires; easy travel over vast distances; regular trips to foreign countries; year-round agricultural plenty; an abundance of synthetic materials for making cheap, high-quality consumer goods; air-conditioned environments; wilderness preserved for human appreciation; vacations at the beach; vacations in the mountains; skiing; morning coffee; a glass of wine at night; better lives for our children; safety from natural disasters; abundant clean water; private ownership of houses and cars and land; a self that acquires meaning through the accumulation of varied experiences, objects, and feelings; human freedom understood as being able to choose where to live, whom to love, who you are, and what you believe; the belief in a stable climate backdrop against which to play out our human dramas. None of this is sustainable the way we do it now …
I’m not aware that any society (in this case it’ll have to be the first world) has ever accepted such a reduction in living standards as a permanent state of affairs, although they certainly have as a temporary one, most obviously as the price to be paid for winning a war. Furthermore the chances of convincing them (us) to do it when the situation hasn’t actually materialised in their everyday lives seem small. My house hasn’t flooded. My supermarket shelves aren’t bare. My water supply isn’t being rationed. My air quality hasn’t killed anyone I know personally, nor anyone I’ve heard of who wasn’t vulnerable already. The two biggest impacts in my life are, off the top of my head, a) that my car has become too complex for me really to work on it any more and b) that I’m never going to see ‘proper’ snow here again (like when it’s feet deep, not an inch or two). Those are not enough to reduce my meat consumption to once a week or to persuade me to demolish my unalterably inefficient Victorian house and replace it with a carbon-neutral one.
If I had to bet I’d put my money on this ending with enough conflict and change that the human population will shrink a good deal - maybe by a factor of ten. The remaining folks will adapt (that is something we’re good at) and will eventually be able to sustain a lifestyle not hugely different from what we have now. But I fear it’ll get worse before it recovers to that ‘better’ state.
VB
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The other thing is the only method for changing behaviour that seems to get considered is basically taxation - we’ll make ‘dirty’ stuff more expensive. That implies there is a choice and that we’ll therefore go for the cheaper option. But for much of this there isn’t a choice. We can chose to have electricity - or not. Ditto Gas, ditto petrol - so not really a choice at all. The people that could afford to install the ‘clean’ options - ground source heatpumps, solar, replace their car etc etc, will do it because they save money - so tax rebates etc. Paid for by the rest of us.
I’d happily replace my gas central heating with a heatpump and solar/wind. But not if i have to pay for it all - I can’t afford it and I’ll be long gone before I see any return and no doubt our lovely government will find a way to tax me to get some money back as well. Some new houses have just gone up across the road from us - Affordable Houses (we’ll see). No sign of solar panels, wind turbines, CHP or anything else. Bog standard materials, usual sloppy standards (I’m guessing that bit but it’s not too unlikely). So yet again, the poor sods with the least money will get lumbered with the worst products and the highest (relative) running costs.
A huge investment programme is needed to bring houses and construction out of the 18th century, fix the electricity grid, re-balance the power generation, change the transport infrastructure so it actually works. Only governments can do that, but they’d rather reduce taxes for the better off… The stupid thing is that such a programme would benefit everyone as long as it wasn’t outsourced to a Carillion or similar.
Unfortunately, I think you are right, VB. This will not end well, but I suspect as soon as the rich parts of the US start to feel the effects, it’ll become all out war. Anyone know when Manhattan is likely to start flooding?
optimist
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It’s really come to something when global nuclear war is the best thing that could happen for the planet.
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Hopefully Skynet will find a way to knock off most off us before we despoil the planet with nuclear armageddon.
Skynet tried to finish us off with…
Nuclear Armageddon
Unlikely - after Amazon, Facebook and Bitcoin miners there can’t be much computing power left for the US military to develop it. Now the chinese…
It’s not about accepting a reduction in living standards it’s about a change in the human mindset. It appears so difficult because we don’t desire the change enough. Many things could be done that aren’t. Currently we are paying no heed to the shit storm that is approaching. War seems the inevitable finale.
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