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Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#91

Post by amelius »

perfunctory wrote: post #11

We keep hearing that individual actions don't matter and that we need a system change instead. I used to hold the same opinion for the very long time. However, since recently I started to turn around. For the last 30 years governments and politicians have proven incapable to do anything about global heating. What makes us think it will be any different in the coming years. Scientists keep producing report after repor…

> For the last 30 years governments and politicians have proven incapable to do anything about global heating.

That's because politicians are bound to follow roughly the public opinion, or they risk being not re-elected.

Therefore (sadly), this proves that individual actions will not make much of a dent.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#92

Post by bryanlarsen »

tenpies wrote: post #59
bryanlarsen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next U.S. federal election is an excellent opportunity to address climate change. Ensure that the Democratic primary chooses a leader with a good plan, and then ensure that he/she wins in 2020.

Except it's also not. As a continent, Asia is the largest polluter by far. What's worst, they're exporting those practices to Africa. Meanwhile, the Anglo-West is hyper-focused on the US because there's a president they don't like. This has been a blessing (now the average Anglo-Westerner at least pretends to care about the environment), but also a curse (they think the US is the only country that can save humanity).

- US per capita emissions are more than double China's.

- China is taking concrete steps to reduce emissions: capping coal production, switching to electric buses, et cetera

- For better or worse other countries are far more likely to say "why should we reduce emissions if even the US won't" than to say "why should we reduce emissions if China won't".

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#93

Post by MiroF »

gambler wrote: post #53
perfunctory wrote: post #11

We keep hearing that individual actions don't matter and that we need a system change instead. I used to hold the same opinion for the very long time. However, since recently I started to turn around. For the last 30 years governments and politicians have proven incapable to do anything about global heating. What makes us think it will be any different in the coming years. Scientists keep producing report after repor…

Just don't be a douchebag who brags about being vegan (making everyone around hate the very concept), while simultaneously investing money into crypto mining and raving about AI toys that require showing terabytes of data into high-power video cards. Being reasonable and consistent works infinitely better than doing something to "make a statement".

This is definitely true! I do think that a lot of the stereotype about "obnoxious vegan" is something invented by people who eat to make themselves a little more comfortable with the moral tradeoffs they are making.

I say this as someone who has met lots of vegans in my life (and also is not one). The vast majority are not very pushy at all. The pushy ones exist, but seem to be much more common in the collective imagination of meat-eaters.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#94

Post by homonculus1 »

MiroF wrote: post #79
zdkl wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing "natural" would sustain 7b+ people anyway, so what's your point against "sustainable" as a reasonable (and considerable) improvement?

The point is that local and "natural" is not sustainable. We need scale for a reason.

Scale is not sustainable either. What we REALLY need is population reduction.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#95

Post by perfunctory »

ckastner wrote: post #50
perfunctory wrote: post #11

We keep hearing that individual actions don't matter and that we need a system change instead. I used to hold the same opinion for the very long time. However, since recently I started to turn around. For the last 30 years governments and politicians have proven incapable to do anything about global heating. What makes us think it will be any different in the coming years. Scientists keep producing report after repor…

> For the last 30 years governments and politicians have proven incapable to do anything about global heating. That's just disingenuous. Climate change has been a major point for numerous governments, there have been huge pushes towards renewable energy sources through subsidies, legislation, international treaties, etc. Yes, much more could be done, but claiming that nothing has been done is just polemics. It's disi…

> It's disingenuous to claim that 2019 is basically 1989.

Yes, it's much worth. Sorry, the governments might be doing something, but I just look at the PPM and global emissions charts and they just keep going up.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#96

Post by discreteevent »

Two anecdotes:

1) There was an area of marshland close to where I live. A small part of it was drained for agriculture. Immediately after this, the insect population in the area went way down. You didn't have to measure it. We were swamped with insects, then there were virtually none. Habitat seems to be a big thing but I'm not sure how it compares with pesticides.

2) I saw a documentary once about a guy in India growing roses on an industrial scale. But he didn't use pesticides or herbicides. His roses were the best and he could command a high price. It took a lot of work, but more importantly, he emphasized, it took a lot of knowledge. Just listening to him your had no trouble appreciating his intelligence. Unfortunately this may not scale up that well as there are not enough people of his calibre in agriculture. It's just not as sexy as tech or finance or law or whatever.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#97

Post by bryanlarsen »

dragonwriter wrote: post #87
tenpies wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it's also not. As a continent, Asia is the largest polluter by far. What's worst, they're exporting those practices to Africa. Meanwhile, the Anglo-West is hyper-focused on the US because there's a president they don't like. This has been a blessing (now the average Anglo-Westerner at least pretends to care about the environment), but also a curse (they think the US is the only country that can save humanity).

> Except it's also not. As a continent, Asia is the largest polluter by far. That doesn't mean that US policy can't address the problem; US policy—on climate as well as most other things—need not be limited to domestic policy.

Exactly. For example the US could collect a "carbon duty" at the border on all imports. If the source nation has already collected a carbon tax or equivalent, it avoids the carbon duty.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#98

Post by MiroF »

zpeti wrote: post #18
perfunctory wrote: post #11

We keep hearing that individual actions don't matter and that we need a system change instead. I used to hold the same opinion for the very long time. However, since recently I started to turn around. For the last 30 years governments and politicians have proven incapable to do anything about global heating. What makes us think it will be any different in the coming years. Scientists keep producing report after repor…

This. And also: The environment is an awesome way for people to virtue signal how much they care. But the fact is the real world consequences of what most environmentalists ask for would seriously affect the way of life they have. Politicians know this. Any serious attempt to change anything will not get you votes and out of government. That is not the governments fault. That is not the corporations fault. That is ev…

I think this take is largely true. I think there is a path to saving the climate even when so many are completely unwilling to sacrifice any bit of their livelihood for a sustainable climate for future generation.

That path consists of heavy, heavy investment in geo-engineering and low-cost nuclear right now. As soon as we have perfected solar geo-engineering, we need to put it in place to prevent catastrophic runaway/positive feedback loops, while we work to replace the infrastructure in developing (and developed) countries with low cost nuclear.

This is politically unpopular, but I think that irrational opposition to nuclear (and somewhat rational opposition to geo-engineering) can be overcome more easily than people's unwillingness to sacrifice their own wealth.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#99

Post by sailingparrot »

navigatesol wrote: post #86
MiroF wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a bunch of bullshit. I'm not a vegan, even though I'm sure you'll label me as having an "anti-meat agenda." I have substantially cut down on my own meat consumption due to the environmental impact. > industrial agriculture as a whole is not sustainable, not just meat, and switching to a plants-based diet won’t save the planet. Just because two things both cause emissions doesn't mean one isn't much, much worse t…

> What a bunch of bullshit. I'm not a vegan, even though I'm sure you'll label me as having an "anti-meat agenda." I have substantially cut down on my own meat consumption due to the environmental impact. Do you fly less? Drive less or carpool? Recycle? Live in a small home? Did you decide to not to have children? Wear only used clothing? Do you track your trash and food waste? Do you eat less? Shower less? Do you do…

There is a drastic difference between saying: I still want to eat meat because I like it and I don't care about it's impact (or I offset the impact some other way like you say you do), and saying: vegan diet is not healthy or sustainable and thus no one should do it, and here are a bunch of pseudo-scientific facts to back my made up claims.

The former is honest, the latter is a bunch of BS.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#100

Post by MiroF »

komaromy wrote: post #55
TeMPOraL wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We could perhaps 3 or 4 decades ago have made a collective decision to gradually reduce consumption and allow our home to survive in decent enough shape to sustain us. One thing we know about humans is that, as a species, we were never and are not currently capable of making such collective decisions or otherwise coordinating at this scale. This is probably the root of most problems we have, except death and diseas…

Collective action has worked in the past. We did it with CFCs.

We're talking many, many orders of magnitude difference in change.
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