Ok. So what should I be doing about it now? I’ve been on the recycling train for 30 years, I ride my bike instead of driving as much as possible, I compost and grow vegetables with it to name a few things. What else would our corporate overlords like me to do while they do nothing but gouge us?
It’s disgusting that I first scrolled past this headline and shrugged before coming back to make this comment.
The reality is that this is not a problem that can be solved by individual action. The only way forward is systemic change away from the capitalist system where large industry is owned by the oligarchs. What people in the west need to do is to start organizing a movement for socialism before capitalism kills us all.
We’re already in the realm of no return to historical norms, barring some dramatic innovation on carbon sequestration. But I will push back against the sentiment among some that we’re totally fucked and there’s no point in fighting anymore. Current projections are for some very bad things but we are on track to avoid the absolute worst scenarios, and emissions reductions will actually have a bigger impact now than had we implemented them sooner.
Why? The harm from climate change will be exponentially worse the farther and faster it progresses. A mildly warmer world will create minor problems and possibly even some benefits, but substantial warming will come with more dire catastrophes. And on the extreme end (though unlikely) collapse of world economic systems may become a possibility. At each step the consequences become bigger and bigger, and so the more urgently we need to fight for emissions reductions.
Global warming is the major factor, said Piers Forster, professor of climate physics at the University of Leeds, but El Nino, the decline in Saharan dust blowing over the ocean and the use of low-sulphur shipping fuels were also to blame. “So in all, oceans are being hit by a quadruple whammy,” he said. “It’s a sign of things to come.” Thousands of dead fish have been washing up on Texan beaches and heat-induced algal blooms have also been blamed for killing sea lions and dolphins in California.
Yeah we are so fucked, I don’t trust corporations to make any meaningful changes.
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