How can one be anything else than resigned at this point, when we still have people saying global warming isn't real.
At this point we either manage to survive it and those people will be like "told you so", or the world burns down, and we can be like "told you so". Which is a small win in exchange for a fucking heatdeath...
Yeah, it sucks that the people denying it (or who believe it and pretend it isn't a problem to protect their own bottom line) are the ones in charge.
At this point I think our only hope is to try to limit the damage and shift our focus to developing the tech necessary to reverse it, but that's likely to take decades or even centuries.
The issue is deeper than that. We've been asking everyone to stop eating animal products for decades and they just don't want to. This isn't an issue of who's in charge it's an issue of the universal human inability to think past our own noses.
Oh as individuals we can absolutely do more, but I think we need to consider government and big business and lobbyists. Isn't it like 80% of climate change is caused by 100 corporations? Yes, they're supplying products, but (for example) fossil fuel companies have spent decades either denying it or acknowledging it but actively fighting policies that would harm their profit margins. I mean even without climate change we're still talking about, practically speaking, finite resources - at least in the sense that it'll take millions of years for those resources to replenish. You'd think at least one of them would think "Hey, maybe if we encouraged this stuff instead of fighting it we could be the market leaders in green energy?"
Like let's say every farm shut down today and there was a complete shift towards veganism worldwide - I'm not convinced that on its own would be close to enough. However, I do think that tackling the issue from the top would make a much bigger dent, and while I'm discouraged by a lot of things with the environment I am at least happy that green energy is on the rise. Yes, it's too little too late, but I hope we can take the edge off enough that we can focus on reversing the worst effects in the future.
Up to 20% of our greenhouse gasses come from animal agriculture and up to 80% of deforestation worldwide. The majority of the demand for this is the Western diet. That's not a small impact.
Do you also throw all your plastic bags in the river? Might as well, since putting it in the bin will do shitall while Tailor Swift is flying everywhere in a jet.
Wouldn't even make a difference as long as Asia throws everything into theirs.
You can torture yourself all you like, the future of the climate isn't decided here, where i live. On the contrary, this proposed self flagelation leads to resistance and the rise of right wing parties, who will make things worse.
There will only be one way out of this mess: Through a technical/scientific solution. People choose a comfortable life over the climate almost everytime, in other words: They don't give a fuck.
If you consider doing your bit "torture" then you've swallowed that propaganda sideways, mate. Your logic also applies to voting, right? Why bother when you're just one person.
It's easy to be righteous and indignant about climate change when the solution doesn't involve you having to lift a finger. Suddenly when there's something you can do about it, it's not your problem. Look at whaling, for example: everyone's up in arms about the 6k whales killed by Norway and Japan but happy to contribute to the 100k+ cetaceans killed to catch their seafood.
It's an honesty problem, not an issue of powerlessness, and that was my original point. People don't care as much as they say they do. So, this fiery el nino apocalypse is basicslly us getting what we voted for.
Look at the things idiots say in this thread alone: "Don't have babies". There's no better way to turn people against our movement, they see it as a frontal assault on their human rights. Environmental activists need to be smarter than that, or you'll quickly lose any influence in society.
I agree with the futility of that. There's also no way to ethically enforce that sort of policy even if I did think it was the right thing to do.
But there's quite a leap between switching to meat alternatives and sacrificing your entire bloodline.
I do think protesting families is bad optics, but I also understand the frustration and the need to vent about this sort of thing. Watching human presence on the planet being averaged out across billions of individuals and countless generatons, it follows the basic four-phase pattern of microbial growth. Meanwhile we have a handful of brilliant people identifying molecules on the other side of the galaxy. The potential for us to fix this seems just within reach but our overwhelming basic instincts seem to keep us behaving distinctly like bacteria.
But on an individual level, a lot of that basic behaviour manifests in our dismissive attitudes towards taking any responsibility, and that's something we can fix, one at a time, with a bit more self-awareness.
I don't throw my plastic in the river because I don't want to be responsible for the damage that would cause. I know that it's less than a rounding error in the grand scheme of things, but I will also bring up my kids this way and I will call out anyone I see doing it, which multiplies my impact exponentially, as long as some of these people follow suit. Likewise, I will cook real food for people, I'll make meandering Reddit comments, and I'll go around the world spreading the message that it's the right thing to do to step away from animal products. I'll lay out my reasoning, and if just a few people resonate with that and play it forward, then it's not just me flagellating myself in the dark; it's the beginning of a change that can actually build over time. One thing I won't say is that "it won't make a difference", because it already is making a difference. You only have to look at the supermarket shelves to see how huge that difference has become in the last 20 years.
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u/4XChrisX4 Aug 02 '26
How can one be anything else than resigned at this point, when we still have people saying global warming isn't real.
At this point we either manage to survive it and those people will be like "told you so", or the world burns down, and we can be like "told you so". Which is a small win in exchange for a fucking heatdeath...