361–370 of 525 posts
One thing that I fail to wrap my mind around: aren’t all those corporations executives, politicians, and poachers living on the same planet Earth as all of us? Don’t they ever think that they’re actually destroying our planet and there’s no other place to live? I can imagine that they don’t believe pro-climate change people, but they could simply hire an independent group of researchers, don’t they? And I mean actual…
Serious question: what things/science/technology should you work on that can impact this and compound positively over time (outside of just changing your own personal habits, but not to say you shouldn’t do this as well)?
It could become an issue of technology if we discover some breakthrough, but wishing for that to happen isn't enough. We need to make use of the tools we have available today. And it needs to be done via legal means, because individuals alone cannot fix The Tragedy of the Commons.
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It would be far better for the planet for vegetarians to eat chicken than to continue to support the fishing industry.
Fish farms are more environmentally sustainable than chicken farms. Overfishing is a problem but it's not the only way to get fish
[1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa273/...
I have a theory, and I have no evidence to back this theory up. The increases in anxiety in the general public over the last decade or so is in large part to people knowing we're on an unsustainable path. We're all collectively marching towards the edge of the cliff to jump off together. More people than ever have anxiety because we subconsciously (or consciously) know this. We're unsustainable with how we pollute an…
There was an absolutely phenomenal piece written recently: "How the news took over reality" [1] It goes into some degree of depth about why it is exactly that ever more people are increasingly feeling every pulse of every issue. And why it's not necessarily a great thing. Consider something. Today, by most metrics, is by far the most stable and safe time that we've ever lived in during humanity's existence. This seem…
Climate Change is irreversible if we don't act ahead of time.
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It would be more accurate if you replaced "greedy capitalists" with "humanity". I have been all over the world and materialism that is so denounced as a US/capitalist vice is actually prevalent EVERYWHERE. The desire to improve ones life and acquire material is universal to all people regardless of the ruling structure of their country. It is my opinion that what we need to focus on is a reduction of consumerism that…
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What you are saying is true. However never before have we humans been on the cusp of ecological collapse.
Check out the global temperature record. [1] In particular this [2] is the temperature from ice core readings for the past 800k years. Modern humans evolved sometime around 300k years ago. Can you imagine going through such sharp changes with negligible technology? They were surviving through these changes with little more than furs and basic woodworking. Consider the first evidence of something as trivial as metalwo…
Climate change isn't a religious doomsday prophecy. Since modern humans evolved 300k years ago, we've industrialized and created technologies that are accelerating the pace of the destruction of Earth. The claims in the article are based on verifiable science.
Serious question: what things/science/technology should you work on that can impact this and compound positively over time (outside of just changing your own personal habits, but not to say you shouldn’t do this as well)?
This is an issue of politics, not technology. Same with climate change. It could become an issue of technology if we discover some breakthrough, but wishing for that to happen isn't enough. We need to make use of the tools we have available today. And it needs to be done via legal means, because individuals alone cannot fix The Tragedy of the Commons.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a related theory, that rather than our rise in anxiety being because of an analytic understanding of doom, we are more anxious because the environment is becoming unfamiliar, and we as animals still are not comfortable with such a fundamental shift in the world around us.
Since we’re trading theories, I’ll jump in! My theory is that we are destroying the environment because of our anxiety. It leads us to want to control things and accumulate safety in tangible, physical and dollar form. And the more we do that, the more we destroy the environment. And of course, that also leads to further anxiety as you’ve all pointed out. So, therapy for everyone - heal people’s desperate fears and t…
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…
That is not how humanity solved it’s previous major challenges.
The challenges we did mostly overcome (many horrific diseases, feeding more people, reducing lives lost to war) were all because of active actions taken towards outcomes we wished for.
On an individual level, if you can afford it, get solar panels, drive electric cars, buy food grown on the certified farms, etc.