4 ms·

It is going to be a rough rest of your life, buckle up.

echelon 6y ago
For us, not really. The generations that come after us? Probably. And therein lies the problem. The people making the rules and pulling the strings don't have a bleeding, burning pressure to change course. And they won't until it's too late. Complain all you want about climate and biodiversity and pollution, but nothing is going to be done until we've stunted the lives of the people at the top. That's just how the short-sighted, hill climbing algorithm called humanity works. We're like an ant colony, and we can't optimize for things happening outside of an N x (human lifespan), where 0 < N < 1. A better solution might be to increase human lifespan to the point where people begin to worry about a hundred years from now. Because they're just not going to care enough to act otherwise. Everything else is more immediate, more pressing. When's the last time you turned off your electricity? Or started a coup to remove the policy makers? Humans aren't equipped to solve this. It's because of the algorithm of society. Maybe that's the Great Filter.
- dustinmoris 6y ago
  I started to change my bevahiour. I stopped buying fruit and vegetables in plastic wrapping. I buy milk in glass or paper containers. In my household I pay super close attention to how much water is running when we do dishes. We fill up the sink and wash it there. We turn off lights wherever possible and use energy efficient devices. I only bought A++ electrical kitchen appliances, we invested in a new energy efficient boiler and have a smart metre where we track our gas and electricity usage. I also switched our energy provider who uses 100% renewable energy. I also stopped worrying about COVID and wearing masks and keeping social distance. If humans are weak and die from a begnin virus then it's part of the circle of life. Keeping everyone alive through unsustainable measures only harms our planet due to over population and further exploitation. I stopped eating meat in 2018, don't own a car and I've started to book 15h train journeys when I travel to Europe instead of going on a 3 hour plane. There is a lot we can do, but I agree the most effective way would be to start civil unrest and force leaders into their knees to enforce more measures to everyone and not rely on people's good will like myself.
  - myvoiceismypass 6y ago
    Wait what? “I also stopped worrying about COVID and wearing masks and keeping social distance. If humans are weak and die from a begnin virus then it's part of the circle of life. Keeping everyone alive through unsustainable measures only harms our planet due to over population and further exploitation.” Benign?
    - ajkdhcb2 6y ago
      Yes, humans in previous generations wouldn't even bat an eyelid at the death rates. it wasn't long ago that people used to willingly go on boat journeys even though 10% of the passengers would typically die on the way
      - devit 6y ago
        > on boat journeys even though 10% of the passengers would typically die on the way Source? Seems highly implausible (in general).
        dredmorbius 6y ago
        The "middle passage" portion of the slave trade saw ~15% mortality, though that would have been high for non-slave passenger travel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Passage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Passage Deaths at sea definitely occurred. Credible accurate records don't seem to be available however, as this article's abstract notes: Farley Grubb, "Morbidity and Mortality on the North Atlantic Passage: Eighteenth-Century German Immigration" (1987). https://www.jstor.org/stable/204611 https://www.jstor.org/stable/204611
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        Yeah, the only kind of boat where that was probably true was the kind where the majority of "passengers" definitely weren't going willingly.
        inglor_cz 6y ago
- graeme 6y ago
  There’s a lot to what you say, but: if you’re under 40-50 or so, I also expect a rough life. Assume you’re 30 and live to 85: 55 more years is until 2075. There’s a lot of time to do damage by then.
- itsoktocry 6y ago
  >but nothing is going to be done until we've stunted the lives of the people at the top Do people honestly believe "nothing" is being done? We are chipping away at these problems, otherwise you wouldn't be reading about it in a mainstream newspaper article. People (especially younger people) are more conscious about these issues than at any time in my lifetime. It's not like you can flip a switch and change a society that has developed over millennia.
  - rcxdude 6y ago
    The concern is that compared to what's necessary to change the apparent course of the planet, what has been done so far is basically nothing. On a global scale the amount of change necessary is orders of magnitude larger than what has changed so far, and it needs to happen fast (and the problem is getting worse: the second derivative isn't even in the right direction in that carbon emissions per year are still increasing globally. Given what we know about the climate it's not clear if we would avoid substantial shifts even if we reset the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to the levels from the start of the century). And the fact is much more action could be easily taken even right now, but some governments are still in denial that there's even a problem in the first place (and the fact is this is a problem which needs government action: individual consumers do not have the power to change the behaviour of industry, even if well organised).
  - baron_harkonnen 6y ago
    > "nothing" is being done? What is being done? Nearly every "green" initiative is much more marketing than reality when you look at the details. Renewable energy sources are widely supplementing not replacing hydrocarbons. Decreased emissions are largely from a financial switch from coal to natural gas and offloading your CO2 production to somewhere else. Global emissions are still rising. Consumer capitalism is the largest driver of our CO2 usage and we have done worse than nothing about changing the way our economies operate. Consumer spending has been a perpetually increasing part of the US GDP. Currently 70% of the US GDP is consumer spending. We have a pandemic which has forced that to drop and everyone with political power is doing everything they can to get that back up. > It's not like you can flip a switch... Well unfortunately we don't have time. Historically every major sudden climate change period seems to have reached a tipping point where positive feedbacks initiated rapid temperature increases. We don't entirely know what these feedback are (we have some guesses that they might be methane hydrates and melting permafrost) but once we hit these it's over, it doesn't matter if you reduce CO2 emission to 0. It's worth noting that IPCC projections typically do not include feedbacks, which may explain why 'faster than expected' is the new norm. We might see a blue ocean event before the decade is out. That will have immediate impact on the entire global climate.

For us, not really. The generations that come after us? Probably. And therein lies the problem. The people making the rules and pulling the strings don't have a bleeding, burning pressure to change course. And they won't until it's too late. Complain all you want about climate and biodiversity and pollution, but nothing is going to be done until we've stunted the lives of the people at the top. That's just how the short-sighted, hill climbing algorithm called humanity works. We're like an ant colony, and we can't optimize for things happening outside of an N x (human lifespan), where 0 < N < 1. A better solution might be to increase human lifespan to the point where people begin to worry about a hundred years from now. Because they're just not going to care enough to act otherwise. Everything else is more immediate, more pressing. When's the last time you turned off your electricity? Or started a coup to remove the policy makers? Humans aren't equipped to solve this. It's because of the algorithm of society. Maybe that's the Great Filter.

dustinmoris 6y ago
I started to change my bevahiour. I stopped buying fruit and vegetables in plastic wrapping. I buy milk in glass or paper containers. In my household I pay super close attention to how much water is running when we do dishes. We fill up the sink and wash it there. We turn off lights wherever possible and use energy efficient devices. I only bought A++ electrical kitchen appliances, we invested in a new energy efficient boiler and have a smart metre where we track our gas and electricity usage. I also switched our energy provider who uses 100% renewable energy. I also stopped worrying about COVID and wearing masks and keeping social distance. If humans are weak and die from a begnin virus then it's part of the circle of life. Keeping everyone alive through unsustainable measures only harms our planet due to over population and further exploitation. I stopped eating meat in 2018, don't own a car and I've started to book 15h train journeys when I travel to Europe instead of going on a 3 hour plane. There is a lot we can do, but I agree the most effective way would be to start civil unrest and force leaders into their knees to enforce more measures to everyone and not rely on people's good will like myself.
- myvoiceismypass 6y ago
  Wait what? “I also stopped worrying about COVID and wearing masks and keeping social distance. If humans are weak and die from a begnin virus then it's part of the circle of life. Keeping everyone alive through unsustainable measures only harms our planet due to over population and further exploitation.” Benign?
  - ajkdhcb2 6y ago
    Yes, humans in previous generations wouldn't even bat an eyelid at the death rates. it wasn't long ago that people used to willingly go on boat journeys even though 10% of the passengers would typically die on the way
    - devit 6y ago
      > on boat journeys even though 10% of the passengers would typically die on the way Source? Seems highly implausible (in general).
      - dredmorbius 6y ago
        The "middle passage" portion of the slave trade saw ~15% mortality, though that would have been high for non-slave passenger travel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Passage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Passage Deaths at sea definitely occurred. Credible accurate records don't seem to be available however, as this article's abstract notes: Farley Grubb, "Morbidity and Mortality on the North Atlantic Passage: Eighteenth-Century German Immigration" (1987). https://www.jstor.org/stable/204611 https://www.jstor.org/stable/204611
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        Yeah, the only kind of boat where that was probably true was the kind where the majority of "passengers" definitely weren't going willingly.
      - inglor_cz 6y ago
graeme 6y ago
There’s a lot to what you say, but: if you’re under 40-50 or so, I also expect a rough life. Assume you’re 30 and live to 85: 55 more years is until 2075. There’s a lot of time to do damage by then.
itsoktocry 6y ago
>but nothing is going to be done until we've stunted the lives of the people at the top Do people honestly believe "nothing" is being done? We are chipping away at these problems, otherwise you wouldn't be reading about it in a mainstream newspaper article. People (especially younger people) are more conscious about these issues than at any time in my lifetime. It's not like you can flip a switch and change a society that has developed over millennia.
- rcxdude 6y ago
  The concern is that compared to what's necessary to change the apparent course of the planet, what has been done so far is basically nothing. On a global scale the amount of change necessary is orders of magnitude larger than what has changed so far, and it needs to happen fast (and the problem is getting worse: the second derivative isn't even in the right direction in that carbon emissions per year are still increasing globally. Given what we know about the climate it's not clear if we would avoid substantial shifts even if we reset the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to the levels from the start of the century). And the fact is much more action could be easily taken even right now, but some governments are still in denial that there's even a problem in the first place (and the fact is this is a problem which needs government action: individual consumers do not have the power to change the behaviour of industry, even if well organised).
- baron_harkonnen 6y ago
  > "nothing" is being done? What is being done? Nearly every "green" initiative is much more marketing than reality when you look at the details. Renewable energy sources are widely supplementing not replacing hydrocarbons. Decreased emissions are largely from a financial switch from coal to natural gas and offloading your CO2 production to somewhere else. Global emissions are still rising. Consumer capitalism is the largest driver of our CO2 usage and we have done worse than nothing about changing the way our economies operate. Consumer spending has been a perpetually increasing part of the US GDP. Currently 70% of the US GDP is consumer spending. We have a pandemic which has forced that to drop and everyone with political power is doing everything they can to get that back up. > It's not like you can flip a switch... Well unfortunately we don't have time. Historically every major sudden climate change period seems to have reached a tipping point where positive feedbacks initiated rapid temperature increases. We don't entirely know what these feedback are (we have some guesses that they might be methane hydrates and melting permafrost) but once we hit these it's over, it doesn't matter if you reduce CO2 emission to 0. It's worth noting that IPCC projections typically do not include feedbacks, which may explain why 'faster than expected' is the new norm. We might see a blue ocean event before the decade is out. That will have immediate impact on the entire global climate.