I sometimes feel like I'm taking crazy pills with this whole climate change thing. We are sleep walking into extinction, and there is a large portion of people actively fighting to let it happen.
I mean at one point, even sane people just give up. I was also worrying a lot, then I accepted that the emissions will keep rising for reasons outside of my personal control. That doesn’t mean I start to eat with plastic cutlery at home, and drive a V8 Ford truck to work, but I’m also not going to stop it, unless I go Luigi on oil executives (and even that might be not enough).
Climate change is happening, it will suck (it already does), and humanity will need to adapt to it.
That's true, but we don't have to sleep walking into it. We can fight it, and we can mitigate. I would rather mitigate than adapt. Adaptation is not only expensive (cuz some people only understand dollar signs), but it will also kill a fuck ton of people, and a lot of species on earth. I have to tune this shit lut regularly and pretend it isn't happening or I'll have a mental break down.
Yeah, well, there's multiple perspectives to the climate crisis. You either love humanity enough to want to see us grow as a species or you don't. If you dont, then sit the fuck down and get out of the way.
Right? Advances were made because it made someone money and/or gave them power. There were and probably plenty of formulae or discoveries that languish in dusty storage that nobody will care about unless they’re suddenly found to have an application that grants someone money or power. These giant atom smashers are hard to funs because, again, there’s no money in it. Tokamak and other fusion reactors have a hope of profit, so they get funding. Basic sciences all struggle for funding.
and this is the problem. where would our society be if we had funded solutions to human suffering instead of mechanisms to make a few rich? we have to take the steering wheel back from the owners.
Getting past the Great Filter seems to require a species that is hive minded and with generational memory. Both that are lacking for us outside of that invention of communication that can be overwhelmed by self interest.
JESUS CHRIST THIS THREAD GOT BURIED FAST. I usually just lurk around here but when I saw this, I had to create an account to be able to post. THIS. This is the thread we need to be talking about. Science.
OUR.
ONLY.
FUCKING.
HOPE.
IS SCIENCE.
Letting money outweigh knowledge was where we went wrong, and we can get back there if we just trust in science tempered by the humanities. Please keep talking about this. Please don't let this thread slide off the first page. This should be our rallying cry.
Capital is a red herring. The problem is egoism and closely related tribalism. Those will never be solved as long as life exists.
For example, hippies who claim to be anti-capitalist will ignore those parts of science they don't like e.g modern medicine, but will use biology, chemistry, physics, social studies and many other studies example to underpin their reasoning.
This is why in the immediate wake of great disasters—a flood, a blackout, a revolution or economic collapse—people tend to behave the same way, reverting to a kind of rough-and-ready communism. Hierarchies, markets and the like become luxuries that no one can really afford them. Anyone who has lived through such a moment can speak to the way strangers become sisters and brothers, and human society itself seems to be reborn. We are not just talking about cooperation.
Capital isn't a Red Herring, though, it's the basis of Capitalist production and is what drives further and further exploitation, especially along international and class-based lines. "Egoism* and "tribalism" are just the cultural aspects of such a mode of production being expressed in such a manner.