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

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

#231

Post by shrimp_emoji »

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…

>No flying, no cars. Buying solar panels. Insulating your home. No meat. No imported foodstuffs. How much sacrifice and cost is that for 1 person? Multiply that by everyone, it's INSANE.

That's far from what sustainability can mean, but it's not even that insane. It's only "insane" by the arbitrary consensus culture we've forged and grown up in.

Imagine what "insanity" we might have to adjust to if we don't do anything. Pseudomilitary lifestyles in communal arcology dwellings with (necessarily) authoritarian regimes. Striving for efficiencies that have been unnecessary since the Paleolithic but through the tools of modernity: rigid, normalized discipline, rationing, eugenics, jumpsuits, nutrient slurry.[0]

Even that would be far preferable to extinction, and it might be what space colonizers might have to endure even with a decadent, present day-style Earth civilization they can never return to.

And it might not be far from what we have to eventually endure either way; even in the best case, Earth has a shelf-life.[1]

0: https://youtu.be/6ilJcs7JL4M

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future#Fut...

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

#233

Post by kingkawn »

kilroy123 wrote: post #120

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…

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.

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

#234

Post by perfunctory »

jlokier wrote: post #168
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…

> - Start working part time, and part of that part time remotely. With the number of people currently having to work more than one job, it's hard to see how they can switch to part-time. I know some people who pay >50% of their income towards rent, and their rent isn't especially high. It's that their income per job isn't very high, and housing is set by competitive demand in areas with jobs, not by cost of provision…

> With the number of people currently having to work more than one job, it's hard to see how they can switch to part-time.

"I don't know the circumstances of every person on the planet and therefor don't know what they can do. But I think I know what HN crowd could do."

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

#235

Post by matz1 »

inflatableDodo wrote: post #229
matz1 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, must it be paintbrush ? Is it crazy to think that human can't invent some kind of automation/technology to solve this ?

The simplest version would be a drone holding a paintbrush. Could do that now. China is one of the cheapest places to make suitable drones. Yet Chinese farmers are currently using paintbrushes.

I suspect that the reason is cost or just not good enough, but overtime it can be improve and price can go lower.

So at least for me, I don't see reason to not just let bee extinct.

Keep in mind that the cost to keep bee not extinct might be higher and higher.

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

#236

Post by rjf72 »

jlokier wrote: post #190
perfunctory wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I wasn't very clear. I am not against systemic change. Surely we need to keep pushing for it. It's not either/or. We should use every method we can. On the other hand, recently I've been thinking about this. According to some theory it takes about 3.5% of the population to take part in active resistance to cause change ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=YJSehRlU34w ). Now, 3.5% is clearly not a m…

> According to some theory it takes about 3.5% of the population to take part in active resistance to cause change If that's true, it should be made more widely known. I think that would be cause for hope for many people who despair at democracy and collective idiocy, and it would change their behaviour because of hope and belief in the effect of personal actions. If the 3.5% is actually true, that change of behaviou…

Consider the very foreseeable 'unforeseen consequences' of suggestions such as this. Think of all the views you may find undesirable. Now how many of them do you think could round up 3.5% of people to engage in disruptive behavior if they believed it would let them 'win'?

You end up in a situation where you want people you agree with to engage in disruptive behavior, but not people you disagree with. Yet messaging like this would fully motivate everybody. It seems likely to ultimately do little more than encourage fringe extremism because you have to remember everybody always seems themselves as the good guy. Let them think they can win with a negligible minority of disruption, and you're strongly motivating extreme behavior from fringe groups. For that matter you even motivate people who like to play puppeteer. Imagine you're a billionaire and you now believe you can achieve near anything you want if you can just get 3.5% of people to start misbehaving.

Getting your way by misbehavior is exactly what we aimed to move away from with democracy. And I completely agree with you on the failings of democracy which does seem to be trending towards idiocracy. At the same time, I think this is the sort of solution where the cure is far worse than the disease. You keep the same idiocracy, but now you convince them that they can get whatever they want if they start trying to break down normal civil order. And the current establishment in politics would use it, similar to 9/11, as an excuse to greatly expand domestic surveillance and further strip away privacy and various civil rights. You know, for 'your' protection.

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

#237

Post by DoctorOetker »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #37
ptah wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that is already happening yet people are still not moved to action http://climatemigration.org.uk/

They won't until the border pressure will be so hard the nations will start shooting people trying to cross them.

I'm afraid that would have the potential to increase the "it's every man for himself" atmosphere...

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

#238

Post by kingkawn »

wazoox wrote: post #221
C14L wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "Club of Rome" report[1] was published in the early 1970s. We've known for a long time. Still, most people probably still don't know, because they are too busy shopping for the latest shoes or cars. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth

Gaël Giraud (Chief economist of the French Agency for Development) said something along these lines: In economy, usually when someone builds a model that predicts the future for 18 months they later get the Nobel. The World III model from the Meadows Report almost exactly described the world for more than 45 years. If we may think that it's still modelling our world exactly enough, complete civilisational collapse wi…

Might be transformation rather than collapse, not a done deal

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

#239

Post by jlokier »

Redoubts wrote: post #48
perfunctory wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of the point. Stop thinking about "most people". Do it for yourself. If you believe in the climate emergency that is. You might be pleasantly surprised to see your friends around you follow the suit.

I can’t even get my friends and coworkers to vote.

Perhaps they might be persuaded to do other things, whose effects they can see more directly.

Also, encourage children in their activism. They are good at making complacent parents take notice at least, if only for social signalling :-) and hopefully some of it sticks when they grow up.

Voting shouldn't be seen as the basic thing, which people need to do to show they care in the world. Many people see voting as mostly pointless, and they might even be right compared with other things they can do.

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

#240

Post by kingkawn »

ivanhoe wrote: post #209
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…

Individual actions in this context are like trying to put down the fire with a single glass of water. It will certainly not hurt if you do it, but for it to have any significant effect you need everybody else to do the same at the same time. And the best way to have everyone do it is to push politicians to commit to it and create public policies to enforce it. The huge problem with individual actions is that they mak…

Everything matters.
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