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David Attenborough at 99: 'I will not see how the story ends'

thetimes.com

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Re: David Attenborough at 99: 'I will not see how the story ends'

#31

Post by idiotsecant »

malux85 wrote: post #4

Nobody sees how the story ends

Someone might. I think we stand a reasonable chance of self-selecting for extinction in the next few centuries. It's not the end of the story, but it's the end of our story. Someone will be the one who shuts off the lights on the way out.

Re: David Attenborough at 99: 'I will not see how the story ends'

#32

Post by arp242 »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #18
bayarearefugee wrote: post #2

I think that not seeing how the story ends will be a blessing in disguise. (I do not share his optimism that we fix this, the forces of Line Must Go Up are going to win... at least until we all rapidly lose)

My theory: The forces of Line Must Go Up are going to keep winning. Mitigating the impact of climate change will be part of Line Goes Up. Whether it will be cheaper or more expensive than avoiding it in the first place will remain to be seen (but won't really matter in the end), but we will be facing whatever impacts we will be facing, and we will face them, and we will deal with them. If you have any doubt, look at…

Entire companies have been wrecked by "line must go up" thinking. I see no reason why it should preserve the planet when it can't even preserve its own livelihood. Never underestimate the complete destructive nihilism some are willing to engage just to earn some status and/or dollars. The feedback mechanism from climate change is far too slow. This kind of "ah it'll be grand like" attitude is completely naïve.

Re: David Attenborough at 99: 'I will not see how the story ends'

#33

Post by ropable »

hermitcrab wrote: post #20

I watched David Attenborough's recent film 'Ocean' on a big screen. The footage of bottom trawling was really shocking. I don't understand how that has been allowed to continue in UK coastal waters, let alone to be subsidised in marine protected areas. Madness. It's like napalming a forest to get a few deer. Thankfully things may be changing: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-proposes-to-ex... Don't know…

I watched this film last night, and it was stunning and horrifying all at once. It really brings home the impact of industrial-scale trawling on the marine environment. It's literally like bulldozing a garden to harvest the fruit.

Re: David Attenborough at 99: 'I will not see how the story ends'

#34

Post by ropable »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #18
bayarearefugee wrote: post #2

I think that not seeing how the story ends will be a blessing in disguise. (I do not share his optimism that we fix this, the forces of Line Must Go Up are going to win... at least until we all rapidly lose)

My theory: The forces of Line Must Go Up are going to keep winning. Mitigating the impact of climate change will be part of Line Goes Up. Whether it will be cheaper or more expensive than avoiding it in the first place will remain to be seen (but won't really matter in the end), but we will be facing whatever impacts we will be facing, and we will face them, and we will deal with them. If you have any doubt, look at…

Relying on market forces to mitigate/address the impact of climate change will require us to collectively impose actual market pressure (i.e. regulation, constraints) to do so. Not seeing much sign of that among the major contributors of emissions right at the moment.

Re: David Attenborough at 99: 'I will not see how the story ends'

#35

Post by recursivecaveat »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #18
bayarearefugee wrote: post #2

I think that not seeing how the story ends will be a blessing in disguise. (I do not share his optimism that we fix this, the forces of Line Must Go Up are going to win... at least until we all rapidly lose)

My theory: The forces of Line Must Go Up are going to keep winning. Mitigating the impact of climate change will be part of Line Goes Up. Whether it will be cheaper or more expensive than avoiding it in the first place will remain to be seen (but won't really matter in the end), but we will be facing whatever impacts we will be facing, and we will face them, and we will deal with them. If you have any doubt, look at…

For the Netherlands, the entity that pays the cost is the same that benefits from preparedness. For climate change, the plastic doohickey plant in misc country who would have to pay the cost of losing their asset, is entirely divorced from the entities who will benefit from CO2 reduction: everyone in the world. It's a prisoner's dilemma played at every level from the individual to the corporation to the region, and country. I'm not optimistic about our ability to coordinate the entire species to all suddenly start spending a bunch of money on each other instead of our own groups. Especially when basically every existing business in the world will fight it tooth and nail. We got lucky with solar that its naturally cheaper than coal power, but there's no law that has to be the case with anything else.

Re: David Attenborough at 99: 'I will not see how the story ends'

#36

Post by marssaxman »

jcgrillo wrote: post #27
bayarearefugee wrote: post #2

I think that not seeing how the story ends will be a blessing in disguise. (I do not share his optimism that we fix this, the forces of Line Must Go Up are going to win... at least until we all rapidly lose)

If we keep at it like we have been maybe there's light at the end of the tunnel for Earth, ecologically. In say 100k or 1M years, after we're long gone and things have started to repair themselves.

This is where I find hope: ten million years from now we'll all be gone, and the earth will be a beautiful, thriving place once again.

The short term doesn't look so good, but at least I will only have to watch a few more decades of it.

Re: David Attenborough at 99: 'I will not see how the story ends'

#39

Post by jfengel »

Silhouette wrote: post #16

None of us see the end of the story but I do fear that the story could change when we inevitably lose a passionate advocate in Sir David whose credibility on this issue has been unchallengeable. I take some comfort from the younger generations who are now growing up with a much greater awareness of the natural environment and the damage we humans can do to it and a much lower tolerance for political sophistry and cap…

Here's the good news: we've done basically nothing about climate change even with him, so losing such an esteemed spokesman won't actually make it worse.

Admittedly that's only "good" in the sense that things are maximally bad and cannot get worse. But we might as well fake a smile because that's all we're going to get. I'd say we won't act until it's too late, but it is already too late.

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