Certainly using 1% of the surface area is a reasonable solution, yes? No more burning coal, no more need for biomass, and no more nuclear plants (ironically, their safety record is better than that of coal plants).
Umm, to put this 1% into perspective size wise, That is covering the land mass of all the provinces of Canada west of British Columbia to Quebec (including Labrador) with solar panels.
So no, it isn't a reasonable solution if you also factor in a good chunk of the surface area of the planet does not receive sunlight for an entire month.
That is why I said I had to find the link--the amount of land necessary was ridiculously small and no one wants most of Canada covered with solar panels. Incidentally, the amount of land area not covered by water is about 1.49x10^8 km^2. This isn't the original link but this little blurb from Gizmodo is accurate, even if several years old. My approximation of 1% is far too large--the 2030 projections claim that less than 500,000 km^2 would be needed. 5x10^5/1.49x10^8 = 3.355x10^-3 or about 0.34%.
Certainly using 1% of the surface area is a reasonable solution, yes? No more burning coal, no more need for biomass, and no more nuclear plants (ironically, their safety record is better than that of coal plants).
Umm, to put this 1% into perspective size wise, That is covering the land mass of all the provinces of Canada west of British Columbia to Quebec (including Labrador) with solar panels.
So no, it isn't a reasonable solution if you also factor in a good chunk of the surface area of the planet does not receive sunlight for an entire month.
Yeah, that's quite a lot...altho likely (especially given coverage) the ideal there would be to spread that 1% over every continent as evenly as you could, and obv you'd want wind to help with the load, and oceanic wind farms produce more. I think it's something like 3% of the ocean would need to have wind turbines jutting up out of it? I can't remember exactly though, might've been 5% or something. We've already got an underwater cabling system for telecommunications, it wouldn't be hard to lay the cable for power to reach every shore as well, but 5% of the ocean does seem like quite a lot to erect technological things in and potentially disrupt ecosystems in ways that could be worse than we think.
But geothermal is where it's at IMHO. The Earth's core won't run out of heat just because we drill down to bathe in the warmth so to speak, so it's limitless for as long as the Earth is habitable (and probably beyond that too for a bit lmao) and if we had only a couple of geothermal plants per continent, maybe with one or two more set as backups in the event of an earthquake in the areas the normal ones are in snapping their dangly bits or something, estimates are that we'd yearly be generating, between all of them, roughly four to six times times the amount of energy as the entire planet currently uses yearly. That would make solar and wind (and coal and nuclear and burning fossil fuels and...) kinda drops in the bucket, energy output wise.
Which would also make paying for energy (outside of an amount per person for facility maintenance, upkeep and the employment of staff that would amount to less than a hundred USD a year when it gets started and would drop over time as they recouped costs) kind of a ridiculous idea. It would put energy companies right out of business unless they built them and arbitrarily decided to charge us in a world devoid of any more fossil fuel desposits, which is exactly what'd happen if we actually survived that long without ditching the current economic system. This MIT study even implies that a millennia worth of our current energy needs could easily be squeezed out of geothermal plants if the technology curve goes as expected.
But we'd need a democratic economic system compatible with free global energy in place before we implemented this, or we'd get arbitrary charges for what is in abundance and should be free. And again, even if we implemented this tomorrow, and we hit the tech curve for it tomorrow, we've still already burned too much fossil fuels and have gone past far too many points of no return. We'd be mitigating the end and staving it off for a bit longer, that's all, not solving it. But I must admit, I would really like to have unlimited energy for free for everyone at the end of our species. At least we could have a sci-fi end, even if we couldn't manage to secure a sci-fi future! And hey, with unlimited energy we'd be sure to have the ridiculous amounts of power a mad scientist with a Deus Ex Scientia answer might need to wipe the environmental slate sparkling clean!
Here's the thing, climate change is the CAUSE for many conflicts so if you are serious about wanting to adress those conflicts you can help alleviate the problems by reducing climate change.
You can't be serious, can you? You think the ongoing conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians has anything to do with climate? Between India and Pakistan? Between Shia and Sunni? You think the wave of migrations which have occurred in recent years are based on anything other than political and/or religious differences of opinion?
Doom-and-gloom apocalypse scenarios because of climate problems are boogeymen designed to scare schoolchildren. The rest of us have to deal with *real* problems like militarization of the police--did you know that school districts have received 5.56mm and 7.62mm semi-automatic rifles as hand-me-downs from the Dept. of Homeland Security? Why would school districts need such things? Why would local police departments in small cities need armored vehicles designed to withstand IEDs?--or continued economic disparity--the people in charge of micromanaging the economy game the system to their own benefit or the benefit of their corporate sponsors--or for-profit prisons--to maximize profits the corporations must have a steady influx of "criminals" to fill beds, thus benefiting from other people's misery via incarceration--or ethnic cleansings in Africa, where you risk being killed just because you were born to the "wrong" tribe, or human trafficking. None of these problems are because the climate isn't what it was 500 years ago.
If I sometimes come across as condescending or as if I trivialize climate change...well, that is because I truthfully think it *is* a trivial problem that isn't worth serious consideration. So what if the sea levels rise or green belts change location? Human beings will have the same fundamental choice we have always had--adapt or die. The only chance we have for long-term survival as a species is to get off-planet as quickly as possible. One sufficiently-sized meteor and there won't be a planet left.
I know many people who are concerned about the issue, though, would like for everyone to stop using oil-based products (on a side note, we need to quit calling it "fossil fuel" because most crude oil is created geologically, not as a result of decaying organic matter buried deep in the ground but that is a topic for another thread). I will have to find the link to this source (it exists on another forum where I am the mod) but covering less than 1% of the surface area of the planet with solar panels completely fulfills the energy requirements currently used by the worldwide electric grid. Certainly using 1% of the surface area is a reasonable solution, yes? No more burning coal, no more need for biomass, and no more nuclear plants (ironically, their safety record is better than that of coal plants).
@Skatan didn't say climate change was the only source of conflict, only that if you're worried about conflict and war like you say you are, you should be worried about climate change worsening, and then outlined why using the Syrian conflict as an example. You seem to have misread the comment and assigned a view to @Skatan that they didn't have.
Militarization of the police is a real worry, and one of the reasons for that is that their version of crowd control is going to be used with lethal effect on the waves of climate refugees who are escaping the lethal effects of our anthropogenic climate change. I wouldn't say that's the main reason to be worried about the militarization of police in the United States, but it's definitely one of the reasons, and climate refugees even getting into the U.S. in the first place as things worsen will be quite a struggle even with a Democrat for a President, and the consequences of struggling so hard to survive being filled with live ammunition from those who are supposed to be serving and protecting them is no doubt going to be making all kinds of headlines.
But all that said, people living in places that are about to become uninhabitable by humans (and during certain times of year, that's already starting to happen in places in Africa and the Middle East, it gets so hot they have to evacuate or everyone dies and this has also wiped out a lot of local flora and fauna that can't recover) care about sea levels rising, changing green belts and temperatures reaching points that kill.
You may not care personally because you don't live in one of those places, but that just shows you don't have the empathy and compassion to do anything but trivialize and be dismissive of literally lethal problems. People have already died in those heat waves trying to evacuate. You, your family and your friends aren't feeling the lethal effects yet, so you dismiss it.
I think what's really trivial is the opinions of people who can't put themselves into someone else's shoes. Climate refugees are a big part of global refugee stats already, and that's new to this century and on the rise. It will continue to rise.
All the things you think are trivial about all this will, in time, prove themselves far from trivial to you. Something climate scientists have been arguing literally since the 80s en masse, with lone voices trying to warn the rest since the 60s. And people like you will continue to resist seeing what's happening just because you aren't directly experiencing it, which is fine. People like you already doomed us, so you can't do any more harm by being just like them in your dismissive, trivializing attitude to problems that affect real people.
There are lots of things to be concerned about, climate change is one because one of the very real threats we face is cascading ecosystem collapse. If you solve wars while burning fossil fuels and every ecosystem on Earth collapses and causes an extinction event across most species on Earth, we'll have had peace for no reason since we'll all be dead. Ending fossil fuel use and switching to renewable resources will let us have time to deal with some of those things, and may (it's unclear) stave off the worst scenarios like cascading ecosystem collapse and simply give us rising sea levels putting coastal communities underwater and generating climate refugees (and hence conflicts and wars as a result of those massive migrations, considering how huge a chunk of the human population is on the coasts or not far enough in from the coasts to avoid being submerged in the next century), and if the green belts not only change, but thin out and grow poorly as they shift (which is predicted not just by climate scientists, but by people in the environmental sciences and botanists) then we're actually in for some Really Bad Times as masses more people starve to death than those that already do under artificially enforced scarcity, only this time it'll be actual scarcity. Which will also cause conflicts and wars.
Again, if you're really concerned about conflicts and wars, you'd care about climate change, as it'll be a big driver of those forces in the next couple centuries even if we fixed everything we could TODAY.
My opinion on energy consumption, and food consumption, is that the way is to reduce it. Because now an US Citizen consumes the same amount of energy of several hundred Citizens of pour countries and wastes a lot of food resources. And Europe and Japan are close. Half of the population lives in China and India, that are rising as economical powers, the consumption will grow exponentially. We have to ask ourselves if is logical that people use big chunks of metal and plastic, weighting 1 or 2 tons, with a very low efficiency, to move around people, often a single person, at a very low speed, as often in a town a car can not move much faster than a bike. We have to ask ourselves if is logical to waste enormous quantity of energy to warm or cool our houses when there are better ways to do it. We have to ask ourselves what heritage we are preparing for the future generations, as in a very short time, compared to the history of humanity, we have depleted most of the reserves of oil, managed to pollute the planet and greatly spoiled the fertility of the fields we cultivate.
I am not advocating the return to middle age condition, don't get me wrong, I talk of a different use of the knowledge that now we have, to avoid a new middle age.
That is why I said I had to find the link--the amount of land necessary was ridiculously small and no one wants most of Canada covered with solar panels. Incidentally, the amount of land area not covered by water is about 1.49x10^8 km^2. This isn't the original link but this little blurb from Gizmodo is accurate, even if several years old. My approximation of 1% is far too large--the 2030 projections claim that less than 500,000 km^2 would be needed. 5x10^5/1.49x10^8 = 3.355x10^-3 or about 0.34%.
.34% is still a large area.
In my map above, it would be Alberta (AB) and Saskatchewan (SK) with Montana (MT) attached.
Just taking AB and SK (because it is nice and square like), cut it out and put it over Europe or the United States. It is still a huge area of nothing but solar panels. It is unrealistic, and there are other efficient ways to produce energy.
Just taking AB and SK (because it is nice and square like), cut it out and put it over Europe or the United States.
Not a good method, as a map induces distortions, the more far from equator the more the surface appears to be bigger. 500,000 km^2 is still a very large area, but you can not judge how much using that way.
Agriculture, and the world developing western eating style, is the biggest thing contributing to global warming.
The biggest thing anyone can do to regress global warming is to go vegan.
Another symptom of the system of things we live in is this putting on individuals a burden of personal responsibility for these things. If every single household in the Americas and Europe went vegan, it wouldn't make as much of a difference as the energy industry abolishing fossil fuel use and converting everything to renewable energy.
I say this as a vegan: please stop saying that the ecological devastation of entire sectors of industry full of organizations who each outpollute entire continents on their own can be beaten by individual agency of people and households.
The individual agency that would actually matter is people stopping sectors of industry, democratically, from doing things they do without any kind of democratic oversight. Which is pretty damn near impossible without literally forcing the people in charge of those companies, especially the industry leaders of each sector of industry globally, to step down and be replaced with elected representatives whose job it is to do our will, rather than their own will and that of investors/shareholders concerned with profits and maintaining competitiveness in the market vs other companies.
This is especially true when it comes to the big industry leaders (in any industry, not just energy and agribusiness), where these tend to be the biggest investor priorities (profitability, competitiveness, position within the industry at large, etc are sometimes just consolidated under things like "profitability" but some companies do more comprehensive investor surveys), even if the environment or "the consumer" rank at all, they consistently rank under concerns about outcompeting other companies and making more money for them as investors/shareholders, even if they are also investors or shareholders in similar companies (which makes sense if you think of them wanting to be investors in all the industry leaders and profit from whoever is on top no matter who it happens to be...people's lives and the environment just don't factor into those kinds of formulas without hobbling the company's effectiveness at staying at the head of the pack, which in turn means companies whose investors gain a conscience quickly find their stock index giving them frowny faces that once again begin to trump human lives or ecological considerations).
I didn't say that.
I said, if a person wants to make a difference in global warming, it isn't to buy a hybrid car and only do your laundry after midnight and taking 2 minutes less in the shower or take public transit.
It is to stop eating meat. Not only is ot healthier for a person, but it is healthier for the environment. It is a statement in itself, a boycott so you will, to the the world's leading polluters. The main reason why the Amazon is still being clear cut today is for livestock and the food to feed them.
You can keep your vegan cult to yourself, No veganism isn't healthier, you need to take freaking supplements to get B12, not to mention Creatine, Carnosine , Docosahexaenoic Acid, and I don't call it healthy to have to take supplements to maintain a healthy diet. A lot of the health benefits that come from a vegan diet aren't because they "stop eating meat." Its because they also stop eating; Refined sugar, Refined grains, Vegetable Oils, and Transfat but all of them try to play it off as if all the bade things are just meat. On top of a lot of other lies and false information such as "humans aren't designed to eat meat" Veganism is a cult filled with false claims, misinformation, and fear tactics.
One reason vegans are a lot healthier is because they actually do EXERCISE MORE than most meat eater. Which is why a lot of the studies claim that they are, "magically healthier" It is not the diet alone by itself that makes one healthier. @deltago
That is why I said I had to find the link--the amount of land necessary was ridiculously small and no one wants most of Canada covered with solar panels. Incidentally, the amount of land area not covered by water is about 1.49x10^8 km^2. This isn't the original link but this little blurb from Gizmodo is accurate, even if several years old. My approximation of 1% is far too large--the 2030 projections claim that less than 500,000 km^2 would be needed. 5x10^5/1.49x10^8 = 3.355x10^-3 or about 0.34%.
.34% is still a large area.
In my map above, it would be Alberta (AB) and Saskatchewan (SK) with Montana (MT) attached.
Just taking AB and SK (because it is nice and square like), cut it out and put it over Europe or the United States. It is still a huge area of nothing but solar panels. It is unrealistic, and there are other efficient ways to produce energy.
As I said earlier, it's worth noting actual implementation of an idea like that likely wouldn't be one giant place covered in solar panels, but rather spread out over the surface of the Earth between continents evenly, which is really doable. Say every country takes an even share based on their size relative to each other (dunno the math for that one but I'm sure it could be done) and I think you'd find that the surface area wouldn't look quite so huge (although certainly Russia and Canada would get the lion's share of the solar panel coverage responsibility due to their sizes relative to everywhere else...but there's also a lot of uninhabited land in the northern parts of literally every province aside from the Maritime provinces to spread it amongst, to say nothing of the Territories).
Wait all our problems would go away with solar panels on uninhabited Canada?
Nope, as I've reiterated multiple times in this thread not even a bunch of different "solutions" all at once would really "solve" the issues coming down the pipe in terms of environmental issues, just mitigate some of the effects. Each of the posts discussing solar panels in this thread have also gone over that it couldn't all be in one place because you'd need 24/7 coverage on them, which would mean spreading the surface area required over the entire planet, and you would very likely still need to supplement with wind (which is why I suggested geothermal earlier in the thread and linked to an MIT study showing how much more efficient it is than coal, nuclear, wind, solar and fossil fuels combined).
Wait all our problems would go away with solar panels on uninhabited Canada?
Again, a strawman. That's the third in this thread, by my count. @BelleSorciere is right; nobody is making that claim.
Regarding the vegan thing: considering we're developing more advanced genetic engineering and similar technologies, and considering growing meat is less energy efficient than growing plants, I think we're probably going to end up with a primarily vegan diet in the distant future. Not because of moral reasons, necessarily, but because it would be more cost-effective for companies to either (1) grow meat in cultures, or (2) grow plants that are designed to satisfy our cravings for meat, rather than growing entire animals when only a few parts of them are truly valuable. The corporation that can grow steaks in a lab will out-compete the one that raises cattle.
I'm semi-vegetarian (as if that's even a real thing) and I would love to have a burger made of genetically modified meat-tasting veggies. I mean, our existing veggie burger technology mostly involves mashing beans and chickpeas together, and bean burgers are terrible, even slathered with ketchup.
@GenderNihilismGirdle: I hadn't thought of geothermal energy as particularly viable worldwide; I thought it was really limited to places like Iceland, where the vents were already close by. I'm still skeptical. Efficient or no, to open up and use new geothermal vents, you'd need to do a lot of digging in just the right places. That sounds complex and dangerous--and therefore more far-off. It would be a great energy source, though.
And conceptually, it's just cool. We could turn Pittsburgh into Mordor. Using magma as energy is kickass.
If I put words into someone's mouth I apologize--that was not my intent.
Actually, I don't *worry* about *anything*; worry isn't in my nature.
Sadly, you are correct--I don't empathize with other people very much. I admit this freely. I do, though, respect other people. I never mince my words despite sometimes choosing them carefully but I don't purposely step on anyone's toes, either.
On the other hand, my empathy isn't going to do anyone any good--having feelings for people doesn't help them any. I care about helping people, not having feelings for them. I have been advocating clean and/or renewable energy for 15 years on a variety of discussion boards and I think I have covered them all in that time--geothermal, solar, wind, sustainable fusion (which has a significantly reduced side effect of radiation as compared to fission, which can be downright filthy if done sloppily). I have advocated holding governments accountable for not taking care of their citizens--I don't mean by giving them handouts or free stuff, no, I mean by making sure that they have access to clean water, fresh food, decent schools, etc.
The point is that I, like most of us here, have really good ideas which could dramatically improve the quality of life in the world but I don't have any power to implement those changes. That gets to be very frustrating after a number of years, I assure you.
Just out of curiosity, though, if we are past the point of no return then why bother thinking about it at all? Wouldn't it make more sense to spend that energy adapting to the new norm?
When the ice melts off Antarctica, I am moving down there and declaring independence.
Generally speaking, those "handouts" or "free stuff" are things people need. I mean sure, it's politically loaded to call them either handouts or free stuff, and suggests that they're in some way illegitimate or based on meeting an undeserved sense of entitlement, but for what they're intended to do they are a godsend.
Like SNAP/food stamps helps insure people have food to eat at all. Subsidized housing helps keep people from being homeless. Disability benefits help people who simply can't support themselves with work. TANF helps single mothers. If anything, these benefits are often not enough to provide for what people need, and in the US at least often come with regulations, rules, and laws that mandate poverty for people on those benefits.
So, if governments are to take care of all of their citizens, then those "handouts" and that "free stuff?" A necessary course of action.
Agriculture, and the world developing western eating style, is the biggest thing contributing to global warming.
The biggest thing anyone can do to regress global warming is to go vegan.
Another symptom of the system of things we live in is this putting on individuals a burden of personal responsibility for these things. If every single household in the Americas and Europe went vegan, it wouldn't make as much of a difference as the energy industry abolishing fossil fuel use and converting everything to renewable energy.
I say this as a vegan: please stop saying that the ecological devastation of entire sectors of industry full of organizations who each outpollute entire continents on their own can be beaten by individual agency of people and households.
The individual agency that would actually matter is people stopping sectors of industry, democratically, from doing things they do without any kind of democratic oversight. Which is pretty damn near impossible without literally forcing the people in charge of those companies, especially the industry leaders of each sector of industry globally, to step down and be replaced with elected representatives whose job it is to do our will, rather than their own will and that of investors/shareholders concerned with profits and maintaining competitiveness in the market vs other companies.
This is especially true when it comes to the big industry leaders (in any industry, not just energy and agribusiness), where these tend to be the biggest investor priorities (profitability, competitiveness, position within the industry at large, etc are sometimes just consolidated under things like "profitability" but some companies do more comprehensive investor surveys), even if the environment or "the consumer" rank at all, they consistently rank under concerns about outcompeting other companies and making more money for them as investors/shareholders, even if they are also investors or shareholders in similar companies (which makes sense if you think of them wanting to be investors in all the industry leaders and profit from whoever is on top no matter who it happens to be...people's lives and the environment just don't factor into those kinds of formulas without hobbling the company's effectiveness at staying at the head of the pack, which in turn means companies whose investors gain a conscience quickly find their stock index giving them frowny faces that once again begin to trump human lives or ecological considerations).
I didn't say that.
I said, if a person wants to make a difference in global warming, it isn't to buy a hybrid car and only do your laundry after midnight and taking 2 minutes less in the shower or take public transit.
It is to stop eating meat. Not only is ot healthier for a person, but it is healthier for the environment. It is a statement in itself, a boycott so you will, to the the world's leading polluters. The main reason why the Amazon is still being clear cut today is for livestock and the food to feed them.
You can keep your vegan cult to yourself, No veganism isn't healthier, you need to take freaking supplements to get B12, not to mention Creatine, Carnosine , Docosahexaenoic Acid, and I don't call it healthy to have to take supplements to maintain a healthy diet. A lot of the health benefits that come from a vegan diet aren't because they "stop eating meat." Its because they also stop eating; Refined sugar, Refined grains, Vegetable Oils, and Transfat but all of them try to play it off as if all the bade things are just meat. On top of a lot of other lies and false information such as "humans aren't designed to eat meat" Veganism is a cult filled with false claims, misinformation, and fear tactics.
One reason vegans are a lot healthier is because they actually do EXERCISE MORE than most meat eater. Which is why a lot of the studies claim that they are, "magically healthier" It is not the diet alone by itself that makes one healthier. deltago
You can believe what you will. I am not here to change your mind on anything.
All I am saying, is the number one contributor to global warming is agriculture.
And that is the part of the problem of global warming (among other things) is that everyone adopts their own theories, then finds the science to prove that theory. Information gets muddled, the general population gets confused, and it eventually develops an apathetic attitude towards the issue.
Tidal energy could supplement wind and solar to be fair if appropriate research funding was supplied.
Unfortunately, as has been previously stated, the factor holding humanity back isn't human ingenuity. It's billionaire corporations with huge influence who rely on finite resources to make profit (oil).
It's funny. During the last election in Australia over 90% of the Great Barrier Reef bleached (it's since turned out about 35% of it died) and it wasn't an election issue in the slightest, despite that nominally both major parties are headed by people who aren't climate denialists. The reaction at the time was some mutterings, round denials that the problem was "that bad", and then some scientists taking out ads in a desperate attempt to convince people that yes, this was actually a big deal. Then nothing, really. The Greens didn't even make a big issue out of it (and didn't do nearly as well in the election as they could have, given how unpopular both major parties and leaders are).
I dived on the reef a couple of years ago; it was one of my biggest bucket list items while I was here. I'm glad I managed to see it while it was still around. Nobody born in the future is going to.
Corporations aren't the only entities to blame for the myopia and lack of interest in taking strong action against climate change. The incentives and motives they exist under contributed, but so too did the incentives and motives that politicians live under, that the media lives under, and that people in general live under.
The fact that it's too late to stop a lot of damage (the Great Barrier Reef is doomed even if the world suddenly woke up and did its utmost to stop further damage tomorrow, many species are just as doomed by irreversible warming, coastal areas especially though not exclusively in the Third World are going to spawn a refugee crisis that dwarfs anything seen today) doesn't mean it isn't worth trying, however. It's going to be bad, that doesn't mean it can't be worse.
Corporations aren't the only entities to blame for the myopia and lack of interest in taking strong action against climate change. The incentives and motives they exist under contributed, but so too did the incentives and motives that politicians live under, that the media lives under, and that people in general live under.
That is why I talk of collective hypnotism, who really controls the media, not who is worming in them, are the hypnotizers. That is why I talk of expanding our consciousness, to get rid of the hypnotism, as the only hope that we have, for us and for the generations that will follow us.
I imagine people who want to know what the thread says. I mean I guess there's some value from reading only part of a discussion but it strikes me as odd.
You can't be serious, can you? You think the ongoing conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians has anything to do with climate? Between India and Pakistan? Between Shia and Sunni? You think the wave of migrations which have occurred in recent years are based on anything other than political and/or religious differences of opinion?
I'm late to the party and @GenderNihilismGirdle has already replied for me, but yeah I used Syria only as an example of how climate change can be a cause for the conflicts you think has higher priority to stop before addressing the issue of climate change. Cause and effect. I always think of the Merovingian scene in Matrix 2 when discussing it.
Doom-and-gloom apocalypse scenarios because of climate problems are boogeymen designed to scare schoolchildren. The rest of us have to deal with *real* problems like militarization of the police--did you know that school districts have received 5.56mm and 7.62mm semi-automatic rifles as hand-me-downs from the Dept. of Homeland Security? Why would school districts need such things? Why would local police departments in small cities need armored vehicles designed to withstand IEDs?--or continued economic disparity--the people in charge of micromanaging the economy game the system to their own benefit or the benefit of their corporate sponsors--or for-profit prisons--to maximize profits the corporations must have a steady influx of "criminals" to fill beds, thus benefiting from other people's misery via incarceration....
So, you're obviously american since the first examples of things higher up on your agenda are mainly american and could be considered 'trivial' by anyone outside your country. I don't think they are trivial, however, since what happens in america have a tendency to spread to other countries as well. Though, the difference between you and me is that I try think on a more global level when considering threats to the future of the human kind rather than regional or even local.
I dare say it's IMPOSSIBLE to argue that more firearms in USA will have a bigger impact on the future of humankind than the climate change. Sure, it's a fricking scary evolution that USA is experiencing now. Gun freaks have been in control of the media for a long time and to the rest of the world that gun obsession is really crazy, but that's still fairly local. What can happen though is that, as @GenderNihilismGirdle, argues, that these kind of increased militarization will lay the ground work for really nasty increased conflicts in the future when the bigger waves of immigration start to knock on the doors to US. Trump-walls or not, the US will of course experience huge increases in migrations, just as ALL countries in the tempered zone of the planet will.
My little country received an increase of our population with almost 2% 2015. It was doable, but difficult. I can't even imagine what will happen when that figure is increased tenfold. It will be mayhem, and I sure hope the number of guns are limited before then.
--or ethnic cleansings in Africa, where you risk being killed just because you were born to the "wrong" tribe, or human trafficking. None of these problems are because the climate isn't what it was 500 years ago.
That is surely true, but so what? It's like saying there's no point in researching a cure for cancer since smallpox and the plague has existed for hundreds of years and ppl will die anyways. Not trying to create strawmen here, but I don't understand your logic at all to be frank.
If I sometimes come across as condescending or as if I trivialize climate change...well, that is because I truthfully think it *is* a trivial problem that isn't worth serious consideration. So what if the sea levels rise or green belts change location? Human beings will have the same fundamental choice we have always had--adapt or die. The only chance we have for long-term survival as a species is to get off-planet as quickly as possible. One sufficiently-sized meteor and there won't be a planet left.
Again, I don't understand. First you argue about wanting to solve the conflicts between warring nations/religions before adressing climate change issues, then you say you don't care of billions die because it's the survival of the fittest and people need to adapt or die. This argument is.. weird.
I know many people who are concerned about the issue, though, would like for everyone to stop using oil-based products (on a side note, we need to quit calling it "fossil fuel" because most crude oil is created geologically, not as a result of decaying organic matter buried deep in the ground but that is a topic for another thread). I will have to find the link to this source (it exists on another forum where I am the mod) but covering less than 1% of the surface area of the planet with solar panels completely fulfills the energy requirements currently used by the worldwide electric grid. Certainly using 1% of the surface area is a reasonable solution, yes? No more burning coal, no more need for biomass, and no more nuclear plants (ironically, their safety record is better than that of coal plants).
I agree that we should do this, but it will have to be incrementally and gradually. It has to be combined with more though, like reduced meat production, heavily increased tax on companies who rape the earth for the shortterm profits etc. Individuals need to be stopped from making huge profits on the sake of earth's longterm survival and health. I know I sound like some hippie commu now, but I am actually a right-wing liberal (the real kind, not the american version where liberals are oddly enough considered lefties) and this is most definitely in line with my ideology as well.
Edit: Btw, my post may come across as a bit offensive towards you @Mathsorcerer. That is not the intent, I am merely discussing your points made, not you as a person.
No worries @Skatan -- your words cannot be offensive towards me because I take offense at things only when I choose to.
Picture, if you will, that your house has just been through a hurricane or typhoon. The windows are all smashed, a tree has fallen through the roof, the furniture is all scattered, there is debris everywhere, etc. You can make a checklist of all the problems which need to be addressed and, yes, they are all important, but some of the problems need to be solved more than others--it does little good to replace the carpet in the living room when the electricity is still out and there is a hole in the roof. "Regional wars" is an important problem that needs to be addressed with more urgency; "climate change" is not an important problem and can be addressed later, in my opinion.
Deaths from regional conflicts are preventable, if the people in charge would order their people to stand down. Deaths from things like meteor strikes are not preventable because we have no control over that event.
It is one of my personality quirks that I do look forward to statistically anomalous events like a meteor strike. Although it would be disastrous on a global scale, it would also shake things up quite a bit and remind us of how fragile and insignificant we actually are, as well as reminding us of the things which are of real importance.
Events like a meteor strike are the most important things to address, as they can have the deepest consequences on the chance of survival of the human specie. If in the future we manage to build some autonomous colony elsewhere we can rise the chances of survival of the humanity. To move even a small part of the population on an other planet for now is only sci-fi.
Events like global men inducted environmental changes that can affect the whole humanity and risk to destroy the civilization as we know it, leading us to a new middle age, in a world polluted also by radioactivity as we have no warranty that someone will take care of nuclear plants and nuclear waste or continue to cover what remains of the Chernobyl nuclear plant with concrete (there the core is still melting and it will continue for generations) came second place.
Things like regional wars, unless we don't reach the point where the nuclear arsenals are used and a large part of the planet becomes radioactive, are really less important, empires had risen, empires had fallen, and too many people died by the hands of other people trough all the history. Even if I am one of the people that think that war make men like beasts and that is not a good way to strengthen humanity I would say that no war had great impact on civilization, sure if Persians would have won over Greeks at Thermopylae the civilization would have been different, but that is a different thing.
Things like what is happening in the USA, that used to be called the land of freedom and now is having deep changes in privacy, information freedom, human rights and militarization of police are the least important.
As we are talking of the future of humanity.
I am deeply worried about how the USA is preparing to become a dictatorship, with a big brother that looks into everybody's life and privacy, media controlled and directed by who has the real power and a very militarized police, but I don't think that that will affect so much the destiny of humanity.
Also no one here told that local conflicts or the fight that is happening between western civilization and Muslim one are not important or have not to be addressed. Is very important to find a solution at those problems, people is dying for that problems. But the fact that those problems are real and need a solution don't change the fact that the environmental changes that are happening will affect the destine of humanity to a greater extent and for a very long time.
Picture, if you will, that your house has just been through a hurricane or typhoon. The windows are all smashed, a tree has fallen through the roof, the furniture is all scattered, there is debris everywhere, etc. You can make a checklist of all the problems which need to be addressed and, yes, they are all important, but some of the problems need to be solved more than others--it does little good to replace the carpet in the living room when the electricity is still out and there is a hole in the roof. "Regional wars" is an important problem that needs to be addressed with more urgency; "climate change" is not an important problem and can be addressed later, in my opinion.
And if you picture a whole town, a whole region struck by hurricanes and typhoons on an greatly increasing scale due to some weird, weather effects. Should we as a race help each individual to rebuild their houses, first the electricity, then the hole in the roof and lastly the carpets in their rooms or should we address the weather effects and try to find the cause for them increasing, setting a new course for the whole region to try to diminish the effects our society has on the weather? Maybe if what those people in those houses has that effect but in another region instead? Is it then better to focus on the carpets being a bit dusty in houses in our own region when the houses are swept away by tsunamis in other regions?
Deaths from regional conflicts are preventable, if the people in charge would order their people to stand down. Deaths from things like meteor strikes are not preventable because we have no control over that event.
Your comparison fails since the climate change is not a random occurrence on which we have no control over, it's very much likely our behavior that is the cause for it and we have all the control we need to halt it. We just lack the motivation apparently, probably because so many, like you, don't see the problem. Our politicians in democracies cater to the needs of the masses and until those masses cry out for a change on a massive scale, there won't be one since it would probably mean you won't remain in power and secure the next election.
It is one of my personality quirks that I do look forward to statistically anomalous events like a meteor strike. Although it would be disastrous on a global scale, it would also shake things up quite a bit and remind us of how fragile and insignificant we actually are, as well as reminding us of the things which are of real importance.
I'm sure the people of ie New Orleans was reminded on what's important in life. Do you by any chance live slightly more north by that?
It is one of my personality quirks that I do look forward to statistically anomalous events like a meteor strike. Although it would be disastrous on a global scale, it would also shake things up quite a bit and remind us of how fragile and insignificant we actually are, as well as reminding us of the things which are of real importance.
Really, really not worth it. If my family got killed in a natural disaster, my reaction wouldn't be to reflect on the importance of life or the fragility of existence. I'd just miss all the people I just lost.
It's funny. During the last election in Australia over 90% of the Great Barrier Reef bleached (it's since turned out about 35% of it died) and it wasn't an election issue in the slightest, despite that nominally both major parties are headed by people who aren't climate denialists. The reaction at the time was some mutterings, round denials that the problem was "that bad", and then some scientists taking out ads in a desperate attempt to convince people that yes, this was actually a big deal. Then nothing, really. The Greens didn't even make a big issue out of it (and didn't do nearly as well in the election as they could have, given how unpopular both major parties and leaders are).
I dived on the reef a couple of years ago; it was one of my biggest bucket list items while I was here. I'm glad I managed to see it while it was still around. Nobody born in the future is going to.
Corporations aren't the only entities to blame for the myopia and lack of interest in taking strong action against climate change. The incentives and motives they exist under contributed, but so too did the incentives and motives that politicians live under, that the media lives under, and that people in general live under.
The fact that it's too late to stop a lot of damage (the Great Barrier Reef is doomed even if the world suddenly woke up and did its utmost to stop further damage tomorrow, many species are just as doomed by irreversible warming, coastal areas especially though not exclusively in the Third World are going to spawn a refugee crisis that dwarfs anything seen today) doesn't mean it isn't worth trying, however. It's going to be bad, that doesn't mean it can't be worse.
Corporations, or more broadly capitalism as an economic system, is what is to blame for politicians being incentivized to care more about corporate lobbyists contributing to their party and their individual candidates (especially their candidates for higher offices).
On the individual level, fat paycheque corporate world jobs to retire to after politics, which we see time and time again in politics in ever one of the capitalist "democracies" of the world and then the lightbulb clicks on why they made the policy decisions they did in office: a backroom agreement for post-election $$ and power that doesn't require an election...and where I live in B.C., our current Premier has the eco-rhetoric down pat but acts in favour of companies she used to work for, and will no doubt work for again after she's done in very predictable ways).
So when we talk about people who talk about their concern for the environment and belief in climate change to get votes and then don't act on it at all, we're talking about the undue influence in supposedly democratic politics of authoritarian economics which has been lacking in transparency, unelected and top-down in direct opposition to bottom up democratic politics for so long we sort of forgot they were an enemy (as the working class unions of the 19th century and early 20th knew well and the modern union bureaucracy has forgot in their rush to emulate corporate models internally and sign documents with them instead of shutting down cities with solidarity strikes) and now just see them as a big brother to chide and try to shame (which they aptly play the sad repentant clown for while not making actual changes, they know their PR strategies).
They know they're winning by miles and miles, and they're perfectly content to feed the image that we don't live under oligarchic conditions so we can delude ourselves into thinking bottom-up people power has equal say to their top-down corporate power and money. It shouldn't even be "equal between democratic power and authoritarian power", it should be the power of the people alone or it's not democracy at all, you don't compromise with authoritarians and call that a democracy unless you know nothing about what a democracy is (which most people arguing for the reform rather than abolition of capitalism don't), and we're very far from a compromise position in any case, global and national corporate power (and often the power of a single corporation if it's an industry leader in any particular industry) has way outsized influence compared to the entire voting population of any given country, and we see that term after term after term no matter what party's in office while captialism's still around.
The myopia isn't a shrugging of the shoulders and a lack of interest, it's an active greater interest for personal careers and wealth and influence post-"politics" (which they can funnel back to the party that placed them where an industry would court them, something the party itself is always fully aware of and complicit in) where they hope to enter the world of REAL power that is the economy, and that's not under democratic control so we can see why they lean heavily toward courting the favour of the top-down economic world rather than the bottom-up political one they're supposed to serve if we understand them as people seeking power and influence, which even the "best" politicians often are (if only for the misguided reason of wanting to have the power to effect change and recognizing where that is under capitalism...but that's deeply naive, given the way capitalism is structured so that the only change supported is optimizing and maximizing profit and anything else doesn't contribute to the capital accumulation that nets you the power to be the biggest force of change, which in turn means the biggest forces for change are those that prioritize profits over environmental issues over human lives).
There's a picture somewhere of our Canadian ex-PM Stephen Harper bowing low in the middle of a crowd of applauding Conservatives to one of his first couple Ministers of Finance. The occasion? That Minister was bowing out of politics to become a Director on the Board of a major Canadian bank. Sometimes it's all in plain sight like that, y'know? It's not like anyone pissed off about that kinda thing is actually going to foment a successful anti-capitalist revolution so they know they can flaunt it at this point.
tl;dr the incentives and motives politicians, and all of us, live under that contribute to these things with regard to capitalism are capitalism's fault more than anything.
and @Mathsorcerer I was gonna reply to you but it seems @Skatan and @semiticgod said everything I would've (especially that last one from @semiticgod since I never consider the life of my loved ones worth some "historic lesson" and find it frankly horrifying to suggest the loved ones of anyone else on Earth paying that price is somehow justified by the results).
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So no, it isn't a reasonable solution if you also factor in a good chunk of the surface area of the planet does not receive sunlight for an entire month.
But geothermal is where it's at IMHO. The Earth's core won't run out of heat just because we drill down to bathe in the warmth so to speak, so it's limitless for as long as the Earth is habitable (and probably beyond that too for a bit lmao) and if we had only a couple of geothermal plants per continent, maybe with one or two more set as backups in the event of an earthquake in the areas the normal ones are in snapping their dangly bits or something, estimates are that we'd yearly be generating, between all of them, roughly four to six times times the amount of energy as the entire planet currently uses yearly. That would make solar and wind (and coal and nuclear and burning fossil fuels and...) kinda drops in the bucket, energy output wise.
Which would also make paying for energy (outside of an amount per person for facility maintenance, upkeep and the employment of staff that would amount to less than a hundred USD a year when it gets started and would drop over time as they recouped costs) kind of a ridiculous idea. It would put energy companies right out of business unless they built them and arbitrarily decided to charge us in a world devoid of any more fossil fuel desposits, which is exactly what'd happen if we actually survived that long without ditching the current economic system. This MIT study even implies that a millennia worth of our current energy needs could easily be squeezed out of geothermal plants if the technology curve goes as expected.
But we'd need a democratic economic system compatible with free global energy in place before we implemented this, or we'd get arbitrary charges for what is in abundance and should be free. And again, even if we implemented this tomorrow, and we hit the tech curve for it tomorrow, we've still already burned too much fossil fuels and have gone past far too many points of no return. We'd be mitigating the end and staving it off for a bit longer, that's all, not solving it. But I must admit, I would really like to have unlimited energy for free for everyone at the end of our species. At least we could have a sci-fi end, even if we couldn't manage to secure a sci-fi future! And hey, with unlimited energy we'd be sure to have the ridiculous amounts of power a mad scientist with a Deus Ex Scientia answer might need to wipe the environmental slate sparkling clean!
Militarization of the police is a real worry, and one of the reasons for that is that their version of crowd control is going to be used with lethal effect on the waves of climate refugees who are escaping the lethal effects of our anthropogenic climate change. I wouldn't say that's the main reason to be worried about the militarization of police in the United States, but it's definitely one of the reasons, and climate refugees even getting into the U.S. in the first place as things worsen will be quite a struggle even with a Democrat for a President, and the consequences of struggling so hard to survive being filled with live ammunition from those who are supposed to be serving and protecting them is no doubt going to be making all kinds of headlines.
But all that said, people living in places that are about to become uninhabitable by humans (and during certain times of year, that's already starting to happen in places in Africa and the Middle East, it gets so hot they have to evacuate or everyone dies and this has also wiped out a lot of local flora and fauna that can't recover) care about sea levels rising, changing green belts and temperatures reaching points that kill.
You may not care personally because you don't live in one of those places, but that just shows you don't have the empathy and compassion to do anything but trivialize and be dismissive of literally lethal problems. People have already died in those heat waves trying to evacuate. You, your family and your friends aren't feeling the lethal effects yet, so you dismiss it.
I think what's really trivial is the opinions of people who can't put themselves into someone else's shoes. Climate refugees are a big part of global refugee stats already, and that's new to this century and on the rise. It will continue to rise.
All the things you think are trivial about all this will, in time, prove themselves far from trivial to you. Something climate scientists have been arguing literally since the 80s en masse, with lone voices trying to warn the rest since the 60s. And people like you will continue to resist seeing what's happening just because you aren't directly experiencing it, which is fine. People like you already doomed us, so you can't do any more harm by being just like them in your dismissive, trivializing attitude to problems that affect real people.
There are lots of things to be concerned about, climate change is one because one of the very real threats we face is cascading ecosystem collapse. If you solve wars while burning fossil fuels and every ecosystem on Earth collapses and causes an extinction event across most species on Earth, we'll have had peace for no reason since we'll all be dead. Ending fossil fuel use and switching to renewable resources will let us have time to deal with some of those things, and may (it's unclear) stave off the worst scenarios like cascading ecosystem collapse and simply give us rising sea levels putting coastal communities underwater and generating climate refugees (and hence conflicts and wars as a result of those massive migrations, considering how huge a chunk of the human population is on the coasts or not far enough in from the coasts to avoid being submerged in the next century), and if the green belts not only change, but thin out and grow poorly as they shift (which is predicted not just by climate scientists, but by people in the environmental sciences and botanists) then we're actually in for some Really Bad Times as masses more people starve to death than those that already do under artificially enforced scarcity, only this time it'll be actual scarcity. Which will also cause conflicts and wars.
Again, if you're really concerned about conflicts and wars, you'd care about climate change, as it'll be a big driver of those forces in the next couple centuries even if we fixed everything we could TODAY.
We have to ask ourselves if is logical that people use big chunks of metal and plastic, weighting 1 or 2 tons, with a very low efficiency, to move around people, often a single person, at a very low speed, as often in a town a car can not move much faster than a bike.
We have to ask ourselves if is logical to waste enormous quantity of energy to warm or cool our houses when there are better ways to do it.
We have to ask ourselves what heritage we are preparing for the future generations, as in a very short time, compared to the history of humanity, we have depleted most of the reserves of oil, managed to pollute the planet and greatly spoiled the fertility of the fields we cultivate.
I am not advocating the return to middle age condition, don't get me wrong, I talk of a different use of the knowledge that now we have, to avoid a new middle age.
In my map above, it would be Alberta (AB) and Saskatchewan (SK) with Montana (MT) attached.
Just taking AB and SK (because it is nice and square like), cut it out and put it over Europe or the United States. It is still a huge area of nothing but solar panels. It is unrealistic, and there are other efficient ways to produce energy.
500,000 km^2 is still a very large area, but you can not judge how much using that way.
One reason vegans are a lot healthier is because they actually do EXERCISE MORE than most meat eater. Which is why a lot of the studies claim that they are, "magically healthier" It is not the diet alone by itself that makes one healthier.
@deltago
Regarding the vegan thing: considering we're developing more advanced genetic engineering and similar technologies, and considering growing meat is less energy efficient than growing plants, I think we're probably going to end up with a primarily vegan diet in the distant future. Not because of moral reasons, necessarily, but because it would be more cost-effective for companies to either (1) grow meat in cultures, or (2) grow plants that are designed to satisfy our cravings for meat, rather than growing entire animals when only a few parts of them are truly valuable. The corporation that can grow steaks in a lab will out-compete the one that raises cattle.
I'm semi-vegetarian (as if that's even a real thing) and I would love to have a burger made of genetically modified meat-tasting veggies. I mean, our existing veggie burger technology mostly involves mashing beans and chickpeas together, and bean burgers are terrible, even slathered with ketchup.
@GenderNihilismGirdle: I hadn't thought of geothermal energy as particularly viable worldwide; I thought it was really limited to places like Iceland, where the vents were already close by. I'm still skeptical. Efficient or no, to open up and use new geothermal vents, you'd need to do a lot of digging in just the right places. That sounds complex and dangerous--and therefore more far-off. It would be a great energy source, though.
And conceptually, it's just cool. We could turn Pittsburgh into Mordor. Using magma as energy is kickass.
Actually, I don't *worry* about *anything*; worry isn't in my nature.
Sadly, you are correct--I don't empathize with other people very much. I admit this freely. I do, though, respect other people. I never mince my words despite sometimes choosing them carefully but I don't purposely step on anyone's toes, either.
On the other hand, my empathy isn't going to do anyone any good--having feelings for people doesn't help them any. I care about helping people, not having feelings for them. I have been advocating clean and/or renewable energy for 15 years on a variety of discussion boards and I think I have covered them all in that time--geothermal, solar, wind, sustainable fusion (which has a significantly reduced side effect of radiation as compared to fission, which can be downright filthy if done sloppily). I have advocated holding governments accountable for not taking care of their citizens--I don't mean by giving them handouts or free stuff, no, I mean by making sure that they have access to clean water, fresh food, decent schools, etc.
The point is that I, like most of us here, have really good ideas which could dramatically improve the quality of life in the world but I don't have any power to implement those changes. That gets to be very frustrating after a number of years, I assure you.
Just out of curiosity, though, if we are past the point of no return then why bother thinking about it at all? Wouldn't it make more sense to spend that energy adapting to the new norm?
When the ice melts off Antarctica, I am moving down there and declaring independence.
Like SNAP/food stamps helps insure people have food to eat at all. Subsidized housing helps keep people from being homeless. Disability benefits help people who simply can't support themselves with work. TANF helps single mothers. If anything, these benefits are often not enough to provide for what people need, and in the US at least often come with regulations, rules, and laws that mandate poverty for people on those benefits.
So, if governments are to take care of all of their citizens, then those "handouts" and that "free stuff?" A necessary course of action.
All I am saying, is the number one contributor to global warming is agriculture.
And that is the part of the problem of global warming (among other things) is that everyone adopts their own theories, then finds the science to prove that theory. Information gets muddled, the general population gets confused, and it eventually develops an apathetic attitude towards the issue.
Unfortunately, as has been previously stated, the factor holding humanity back isn't human ingenuity. It's billionaire corporations with huge influence who rely on finite resources to make profit (oil).
I dived on the reef a couple of years ago; it was one of my biggest bucket list items while I was here. I'm glad I managed to see it while it was still around. Nobody born in the future is going to.
Corporations aren't the only entities to blame for the myopia and lack of interest in taking strong action against climate change. The incentives and motives they exist under contributed, but so too did the incentives and motives that politicians live under, that the media lives under, and that people in general live under.
The fact that it's too late to stop a lot of damage (the Great Barrier Reef is doomed even if the world suddenly woke up and did its utmost to stop further damage tomorrow, many species are just as doomed by irreversible warming, coastal areas especially though not exclusively in the Third World are going to spawn a refugee crisis that dwarfs anything seen today) doesn't mean it isn't worth trying, however. It's going to be bad, that doesn't mean it can't be worse.
http://xkcd.com/1732/
It shows very well what the issue is all about.
That is why I talk of expanding our consciousness, to get rid of the hypnotism, as the only hope that we have, for us and for the generations that will follow us.
I dare say it's IMPOSSIBLE to argue that more firearms in USA will have a bigger impact on the future of humankind than the climate change. Sure, it's a fricking scary evolution that USA is experiencing now. Gun freaks have been in control of the media for a long time and to the rest of the world that gun obsession is really crazy, but that's still fairly local. What can happen though is that, as @GenderNihilismGirdle, argues, that these kind of increased militarization will lay the ground work for really nasty increased conflicts in the future when the bigger waves of immigration start to knock on the doors to US. Trump-walls or not, the US will of course experience huge increases in migrations, just as ALL countries in the tempered zone of the planet will.
My little country received an increase of our population with almost 2% 2015. It was doable, but difficult. I can't even imagine what will happen when that figure is increased tenfold. It will be mayhem, and I sure hope the number of guns are limited before then. That is surely true, but so what? It's like saying there's no point in researching a cure for cancer since smallpox and the plague has existed for hundreds of years and ppl will die anyways. Not trying to create strawmen here, but I don't understand your logic at all to be frank.
Again, I don't understand. First you argue about wanting to solve the conflicts between warring nations/religions before adressing climate change issues, then you say you don't care of billions die because it's the survival of the fittest and people need to adapt or die. This argument is.. weird.
I agree that we should do this, but it will have to be incrementally and gradually. It has to be combined with more though, like reduced meat production, heavily increased tax on companies who rape the earth for the shortterm profits etc. Individuals need to be stopped from making huge profits on the sake of earth's longterm survival and health. I know I sound like some hippie commu now, but I am actually a right-wing liberal (the real kind, not the american version where liberals are oddly enough considered lefties) and this is most definitely in line with my ideology as well.
Edit: Btw, my post may come across as a bit offensive towards you @Mathsorcerer. That is not the intent, I am merely discussing your points made, not you as a person.
Picture, if you will, that your house has just been through a hurricane or typhoon. The windows are all smashed, a tree has fallen through the roof, the furniture is all scattered, there is debris everywhere, etc. You can make a checklist of all the problems which need to be addressed and, yes, they are all important, but some of the problems need to be solved more than others--it does little good to replace the carpet in the living room when the electricity is still out and there is a hole in the roof. "Regional wars" is an important problem that needs to be addressed with more urgency; "climate change" is not an important problem and can be addressed later, in my opinion.
Deaths from regional conflicts are preventable, if the people in charge would order their people to stand down. Deaths from things like meteor strikes are not preventable because we have no control over that event.
It is one of my personality quirks that I do look forward to statistically anomalous events like a meteor strike. Although it would be disastrous on a global scale, it would also shake things up quite a bit and remind us of how fragile and insignificant we actually are, as well as reminding us of the things which are of real importance.
To move even a small part of the population on an other planet for now is only sci-fi.
Events like global men inducted environmental changes that can affect the whole humanity and risk to destroy the civilization as we know it, leading us to a new middle age, in a world polluted also by radioactivity as we have no warranty that someone will take care of nuclear plants and nuclear waste or continue to cover what remains of the Chernobyl nuclear plant with concrete (there the core is still melting and it will continue for generations) came second place.
Things like regional wars, unless we don't reach the point where the nuclear arsenals are used and a large part of the planet becomes radioactive, are really less important, empires had risen, empires had fallen, and too many people died by the hands of other people trough all the history. Even if I am one of the people that think that war make men like beasts and that is not a good way to strengthen humanity I would say that no war had great impact on civilization, sure if Persians would have won over Greeks at Thermopylae the civilization would have been different, but that is a different thing.
Things like what is happening in the USA, that used to be called the land of freedom and now is having deep changes in privacy, information freedom, human rights and militarization of police are the least important.
As we are talking of the future of humanity.
I am deeply worried about how the USA is preparing to become a dictatorship, with a big brother that looks into everybody's life and privacy, media controlled and directed by who has the real power and a very militarized police, but I don't think that that will affect so much the destiny of humanity.
Also no one here told that local conflicts or the fight that is happening between western civilization and Muslim one are not important or have not to be addressed. Is very important to find a solution at those problems, people is dying for that problems. But the fact that those problems are real and need a solution don't change the fact that the environmental changes that are happening will affect the destine of humanity to a greater extent and for a very long time.
And if you picture a whole town, a whole region struck by hurricanes and typhoons on an greatly increasing scale due to some weird, weather effects. Should we as a race help each individual to rebuild their houses, first the electricity, then the hole in the roof and lastly the carpets in their rooms or should we address the weather effects and try to find the cause for them increasing, setting a new course for the whole region to try to diminish the effects our society has on the weather? Maybe if what those people in those houses has that effect but in another region instead? Is it then better to focus on the carpets being a bit dusty in houses in our own region when the houses are swept away by tsunamis in other regions? Your comparison fails since the climate change is not a random occurrence on which we have no control over, it's very much likely our behavior that is the cause for it and we have all the control we need to halt it. We just lack the motivation apparently, probably because so many, like you, don't see the problem. Our politicians in democracies cater to the needs of the masses and until those masses cry out for a change on a massive scale, there won't be one since it would probably mean you won't remain in power and secure the next election. I'm sure the people of ie New Orleans was reminded on what's important in life. Do you by any chance live slightly more north by that?
No reminder or "shake up" is worth my mom's life.
Not even remotely close.
On the individual level, fat paycheque corporate world jobs to retire to after politics, which we see time and time again in politics in ever one of the capitalist "democracies" of the world and then the lightbulb clicks on why they made the policy decisions they did in office: a backroom agreement for post-election $$ and power that doesn't require an election...and where I live in B.C., our current Premier has the eco-rhetoric down pat but acts in favour of companies she used to work for, and will no doubt work for again after she's done in very predictable ways).
So when we talk about people who talk about their concern for the environment and belief in climate change to get votes and then don't act on it at all, we're talking about the undue influence in supposedly democratic politics of authoritarian economics which has been lacking in transparency, unelected and top-down in direct opposition to bottom up democratic politics for so long we sort of forgot they were an enemy (as the working class unions of the 19th century and early 20th knew well and the modern union bureaucracy has forgot in their rush to emulate corporate models internally and sign documents with them instead of shutting down cities with solidarity strikes) and now just see them as a big brother to chide and try to shame (which they aptly play the sad repentant clown for while not making actual changes, they know their PR strategies).
They know they're winning by miles and miles, and they're perfectly content to feed the image that we don't live under oligarchic conditions so we can delude ourselves into thinking bottom-up people power has equal say to their top-down corporate power and money. It shouldn't even be "equal between democratic power and authoritarian power", it should be the power of the people alone or it's not democracy at all, you don't compromise with authoritarians and call that a democracy unless you know nothing about what a democracy is (which most people arguing for the reform rather than abolition of capitalism don't), and we're very far from a compromise position in any case, global and national corporate power (and often the power of a single corporation if it's an industry leader in any particular industry) has way outsized influence compared to the entire voting population of any given country, and we see that term after term after term no matter what party's in office while captialism's still around.
The myopia isn't a shrugging of the shoulders and a lack of interest, it's an active greater interest for personal careers and wealth and influence post-"politics" (which they can funnel back to the party that placed them where an industry would court them, something the party itself is always fully aware of and complicit in) where they hope to enter the world of REAL power that is the economy, and that's not under democratic control so we can see why they lean heavily toward courting the favour of the top-down economic world rather than the bottom-up political one they're supposed to serve if we understand them as people seeking power and influence, which even the "best" politicians often are (if only for the misguided reason of wanting to have the power to effect change and recognizing where that is under capitalism...but that's deeply naive, given the way capitalism is structured so that the only change supported is optimizing and maximizing profit and anything else doesn't contribute to the capital accumulation that nets you the power to be the biggest force of change, which in turn means the biggest forces for change are those that prioritize profits over environmental issues over human lives).
There's a picture somewhere of our Canadian ex-PM Stephen Harper bowing low in the middle of a crowd of applauding Conservatives to one of his first couple Ministers of Finance. The occasion? That Minister was bowing out of politics to become a Director on the Board of a major Canadian bank. Sometimes it's all in plain sight like that, y'know? It's not like anyone pissed off about that kinda thing is actually going to foment a successful anti-capitalist revolution so they know they can flaunt it at this point.
tl;dr the incentives and motives politicians, and all of us, live under that contribute to these things with regard to capitalism are capitalism's fault more than anything.