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Stop Calling Each New Disaster “The New Normal”

thewalrus.ca

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Re: Stop Calling Each New Disaster “The New Normal”

#141

Post by hermannj314 »

pixl97 wrote: post #120
hermannj314 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can do it gradually or nature will do it violently. Every species needs population control. If we want air conditioning, commercial jets, and bottled water, then we need to get global population under a billion people.

>We can do it gradually Good news, we already are. Most countries now are below population replacement level. Many countries like Japan are near panic because the population is going to drop very quickly in the next 20 to 40 years.

Capitalism is a pyramid scheme that feeds on population growth, but dealing with a shrinking population once is better than dealing with a large population forever.

Re: Stop Calling Each New Disaster “The New Normal”

#142

Post by tourmalinetaco »

zokier wrote: post #95
tourmalinetaco wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that any good I, as an individual, can produce is far outweighed by the damage a multi-trillion dollar businesses can cause. This isn’t to say that individuals should do nothing, this is to say we need to deconstruct and limit those who actively harm the environment, starting from the largest and working down.

Vast majority of those businesses ultimately serve consumers in one way or another. Some are deeper in the supply chain networks than others, but still you shouldn't pretend that industy somehow exists as completely isolated sector.

I don’t believe that Microsoft was serving customers when they made Windows 10 or 11. I also don’t believe Apple is serving customers when it makes its devices nearly impossible to sustain. Companies are certainly not serving customers when they package products in unsustainable packaging that is meant to be discarded.

While businesses may produce products/services for individuals to buy, you shouldn’t pretend that industry doesn’t make their own decisions. It’s not my fault bottling companies moved from glass to plastic, that was decided against my will. All I can do is recycle and pray they don’t chuck that plastic in the ocean on “accident”.

As I’ve said at the start, this is not to minimize the individual’s role in this, but to highlight the fact that for every piece of plastic I recycle thousands of pounds of it are produced, and that was not my decision. That was decided by billionaires with little care for anything but optics and their bottom line.

Re: Stop Calling Each New Disaster “The New Normal”

#143

Post by ravenstine »

btbuildem wrote: post #112
ravenstine wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why must there be an alternative? There's no utility in communicating "this is the new normal" other than to persuade others in a prescriptive manner. It's completely unnecessary unless one has some ulterior motive. It's the new normal, bro. Get with it. What are you, stuck in the past? /s

When you're criticizing something, you must present an alternative for your criticisms to hold any weight. If you're unable to say "let's build that" after shouting "let's tear this down" it tells me you don't understand the situation well enough to speak about it to others.

No, one mustn't necessarily. A thing can be criticized in isolation while an alternative is pending. Inaction is also an alternative in and of itself. In this case, alternative messaging or any persuasive messaging is not a requirement.

Re: Stop Calling Each New Disaster “The New Normal”

#144

Post by sfeaster »

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #127
sfeaster wrote: post #124

This is an "old man yells at clouds moment." Eventually you either give up on expecting the media to be a purveyor of good or, at a minimum, frame an argument such that laymen have a thoughtful view on an issue OR be perpetually frustrated - yelling at clouds, so to speak. I realized I had to choose the former for my own mental health. The incentives of 24 news cycle media in no way align with a healthy society. Best…

And how do you move on?

With systems (and the media is a system) incentives are destiny. Unless you can change the dynamics and incentives of the news/media market, I'm not sure what choice one has. Again, you can keep hoping but reality will win out.

I mean, go ahead, write your articles like this but the incentives will win out and the broader media will keep writing according to what perverse incentives say gets the most eyeballs.

Re: Stop Calling Each New Disaster “The New Normal”

#145

Post by SoftTalker »

runarberg wrote: post #131
holbrad wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn't be spewing bullshit like this... It's going to get worse, but trying to spin climate change as some apocalyptic event where we all die is just silly.

I remember a time when this was phrased as an “inconvenient truth” or that “we can all do our part to make the world a better place” . Honestly I prefer the alarmist hyperbole. The truth is that a lot of us are going to die, more of us will have our lives uprooted. Keeping calm and pretending otherwise seems like a greater bullshit and I at least am not gonna take it. The world is worse, it is gonna be worse. Some ri…

When I was growing up in the 1980s everyone was convinced we would have a huge nuclear World War III and it would be the end of civilization, and that at best living under that threat was "the new normal." The same alarmist hyperbole was used. TV movies were made. Now it's hardly something anyone thinks about.

And people were warning about the alarmist talk about COVID-19. They were just shouted down, for the most part, or canceled.

Re: Stop Calling Each New Disaster “The New Normal”

#146

Post by zokier »

tourmalinetaco wrote: post #142
zokier wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vast majority of those businesses ultimately serve consumers in one way or another. Some are deeper in the supply chain networks than others, but still you shouldn't pretend that industy somehow exists as completely isolated sector.

I don’t believe that Microsoft was serving customers when they made Windows 10 or 11. I also don’t believe Apple is serving customers when it makes its devices nearly impossible to sustain. Companies are certainly not serving customers when they package products in unsustainable packaging that is meant to be discarded. While businesses may produce products/services for individuals to buy, you shouldn’t pretend that i…

Companies exist to make money and the money comes from consumers, either less or more directly.

> every piece of plastic I recycle thousands of pounds of it are produced, and that was not my decision.

Not your decision individually, but it the collective decision of consumers to give money to companies that produce plastics

Re: Stop Calling Each New Disaster “The New Normal”

#147

Post by CalRobert »

version_five wrote: post #117
CalRobert wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EV's are a half-assed patch and meant to be a drop-in replacement for ICE's until we can do something better, but sadly they've mostly been an excuse for even bigger, faster, heavier, more dangerous vehicles. I just want to ride my bike and take the train for most of my daily needs, maybe using an hourly car hire for the other trips.

> I just want to ride my bike and take the train for most of my daily needs, maybe using an hourly car hire for the other trips. If that's what you want, cool, you almost certainly can find a life situation where it's possible. It's people who want to forcibly make everyone live that way that are the problem.

"you almost certainly can find a life situation where it's possible"

The opposite, really. Car-dependence is the default and being able to live well without a car, especially as a family, is very challenging. Sadly we've forcibly made everyone live that way (imagine that!) except for the few who can afford well designed places.

Re: Stop Calling Each New Disaster “The New Normal”

#148

Post by CalRobert »

ianai wrote: post #139
version_five wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just want to ride my bike and take the train for most of my daily needs, maybe using an hourly car hire for the other trips. If that's what you want, cool, you almost certainly can find a life situation where it's possible. It's people who want to forcibly make everyone live that way that are the problem.

Yeah to re-make public spaces across the cities and towns in that image would require probably a 10s to 100s of trillions in infrastructure spending. Enough to make my personal dream of an aqueduct in to the southwest from the Pacific and associated desalination projects (and mineral separation) a pittance.

We already spent trillions bulldozing cities for cars and building speedways everywhere.

Re: Stop Calling Each New Disaster “The New Normal”

#149

Post by CleaveIt2Beaver »

swader999 wrote: post #63
Timon3 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are hard limits on how much heat a human can take. We cannot adapt beyond, except for literally never going outside again.

Which is the norm and always has been in places like Arizona in the summer. I didn't go out for more than an hour at a time in Tucson in the summer when I lived there. Anything longer and you seriously thought about and prepared for it. This has always been the way humans lived in these areas.

What crops do you grow in those conditions?

Re: Stop Calling Each New Disaster “The New Normal”

#150

Post by notabee »

swader999 wrote: post #11
exitb wrote: post #9

While I support the efforts to prevent and reverse the environmental damage we're causing, personally I don't believe they'll really succeed. It seems that human society is fundamentally incapable of acting in a coordinated way against a global, long term threat. So at a certain point convincing people to take the bus instead of a car, specifically because that will save the planet, starts to seem like a lie. It's no…

We dealt with the ozone hole fairly well. There hasn't been total nuclear war. The Netherlands is ten feet under sea level and does fine. Polar bears and all other bears are absolutely thriving.

We dealt with one threat to the ozone layer, which is still recovering to its prior state and will take decades longer to do so all other things being equal. Except that all other things will not be equal due to the climate changing, and we may yet see it degraded from other processes to create a hole over the Arctic soon. A hole over the Arctic would have a much larger effect on human populations.

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...

https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/topics/in-depth/climate-change-...

And a little explainer video on the complexities of differing temperatures at different layers of the atmosphere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y35Lzgc9iJk

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