The target of keeping long-term global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) is moving out of reach, climate experts say, with nations failing to set more ambitious goals.
I think it’s funny that you can’t really prep for this. It’s going to be a slow collapse, slowly churning and making it impossible for anyone to survive. As critical infrastructure fails, food, water sources dry up, and the only solution anyone is capable of giving: “Try biking to work”. Realistically it should be “get ready for an apocalypse.” No amount of prep will leave you untouched.
It’s going to be a slow collapse
I am not so sure about that.
For the vast majority of humanities existence we have been one bad harvest away from famine.
Many countries rely on food imports to feed their people.
Failed harvests in two or three of the major food exporters at the same time grows more likely each year.
One very hungry year around the world will cause chaos we have not seen since WW2.
It’s terrifying. I think one of the problems we face in getting people to demand change is that the collapse so terrifying and unthinkable that people don’t allow their minds to dwell on it for long.
the only solution anyone is capable of giving: “Try biking to work”
I hate this so much, too. We keep seeing these pushes for individuals to reduce their carbon footprint, but it’s not the individuals who are responsible for climate change; it’s the corporations who continuously skirt emissions laws and lobby for looser regulations on their industries who are polluting the planet en masse. We could all bike to work for a year, and it wouldn’t even make a dent to offset the environmental damage caused by a single luxury cruise ship in that same span of time.
This isn’t my area of expertise, but as I understand the present climate crisis, it’s actually misleading to say we’re “nearing the point of no return” as so many of these kinds of articles do.
Every single day we pass a brand new point of no return because every day we keep pumping fuel into positive feedback loops that are already in motion. Not only will biking to work not do shit; but even if humans just went extinct right now and all industry/pollution/etc came to a 100% stop, the climate will still continue to (albeit more slowly) spiral into new extremes. What we’re feeling today is the ‘find out’ stage of climate inaction decades ago; and the damage we’re doing today won’t be be tangible for decades to come.
Best case scenario is the coolest of an array of hellscapes - we’re in damage control mode. Rather, we should be in damage control mode; what we’re actually in is grind-away-at-our-9-to-5-while-we-watch-oligarchs-consume-our-planet mode.
Nature always starts out slow and then the slowball turns into an avalanche.
Why do you think the Saudis are pouring so much resources into these experimental line cities? Even they know that the system they helped create and benefited from is unsustainable, and building a self contained city in the middle of the desert is them testing the hypothesis of, can you build a habitable zone for humans in the worst case scenario of environments?
It also ties into why there are so many billionaires who are obsessed in advancing space travel as quickly as possible. Even they are starting to get nervous about the Earth they have created and will have to live in.
“well we tried nothing, its every man for himself now”
This type of reporting is super counterproductive imo. When people read “the planet’s fucked, no way to fix it now” a lot of them either give up and stop caring or become violent extremists. The right way is cautious optimism and busting myths - “here’s why public transport doesn’t suck” or “we need to build more solar panels” or “nuclear plants aren’t dangerous”.
Nobody wants to listen.
When it happens it’s basically overnight. Like stretching a rubberband that you pull and pull and think it’s fine. Then you pull just a little bit too hard and it snaps. It will be impossible to put it together again.
We are no more than a few years, maybe a decade away from the hottest countries being completely unlivable. We are talking about 2+ Billion people that needs to move in a very short time. It’s coming and coming quickly. We’re not ready. Billions will die.
“The planet will be fine, it’s us humans that are fucked.” /Slightly paraphrased George Carlin.
We’ve run out of time because change takes time
I think this is misleading at best. Change needs money.
Huge banks still investing in fossil fuel projects is shortsighted.
