In conversation w a friend, she was surprised when I said we won't have electricity after social collapse. She asked "why? What happens to electricity?"
I had to then explain that infrastructure needs people to maintain and if things fall apart, nobody will keep the generators going or the wires in check. She seemed surprised by this.
Is this why people don't seem worried about what's coming? They have no idea???
I was trying to hide my shock that I had to explain this to someone who isn't a child. I think I take too much for granted and assume too much of people's ability to be logical.
Now her obsession with social issues at the expense of #ClimateCrisis makes sense. I was always wondering how someone on the left would not care about collapse. I have tried to explain before that as much as I share her concerns about the many dire issues that do need dealing with, none of it matters if climate change causes collapse. Then we won't have social housing, or equity, or any of the other things she cares about. (she was even part of a group that protested demanding "affordable gas")
Her look of shock finally helped me realize that she has absolutely no idea what #ClimateCollapse means. No idea. I've been arguing with her all these years and she's had no idea.
I don't even know what to say.
There's no way she's the only one. Lots of well intentioned people say "yes climate is important but....".
I am here to tell you that none of those other issues will even exist in the face of climate and social collapse.
I don't know if the average person can even imagine the number of deaths that we are facing when the society we built loses electricity.
I'm finding it a little hard to work today with this in my head.
Antarctic ice extent is now 6.4 standard deviations below the mean. That is, I'm reliably told, a one in 13 billion year event.
We're about to see a lot of shit hit a lot of fans. And we are far from ready.
Business as usual is over. Politics as usual is over. We need to be putting our effort into building systems that can help us survive what greed and power and wilful blindness have wrought.
Bullshit. Constantly referring to results published nowhere from a study that never took place remains bullshit.
Reduce ocean swells, killing surfing.
Bullshit. You would have to build a literal wall of turbine towers to stop ocean swell, which developes over hundreds of kilometres. The best surf involves ocean swell and offshore winds, which simply can't be affected by offshore wind turbines.
Reduce onshore winds by 40%.
Bullshit. There is no indication that wind turbines reduce onshore winds. The wind continues past the turbine blades, they don't block it; they don't even slow it down by any reasonable measure. A couple of hundred metres past the turbine you can't measure any effect at all.
Reduce fishing catches.
Bullshit. The tower bases, buried in the ocean bed, provide safe places for fish nurseries and coral growth, increasing the local fish population.
Don't buy into the disinformation being spread in order to stop offshore wind turbine installations. Look at who benefits from them not going ahead.
Holy crap. In the EU, fuel consumption monitoring devices are required on new cars. They studied over 10% of all cars sold in 2021 and turns out they use way more fuel, and generate way more CO2, than anybody thought. Nearly a quarter more. Plug-in Hybrids do poorly too.
This means our projections about getting cars off the road for the climate crisis is hugely undercounting the effects. More rail, more e-bikes, more electric, faster.
Why are so many climate scientists so scared and so angry?
Maybe it's because they know better than most of us how bad our situation today truly is, and how horribly we've been betrayed by our so-called leaders.
Here's an excerpt from an excellent piece on this subject by Alan Urban...
Even if the planet stopped getting warmer right now, we would still be in big trouble. The ice caps would keep melting and sea levels would keep rising.
Look at what’s happening at a mere 1.2°C of warming. We’re already seeing some of the worst heat waves in human history, not to mention record-breaking floods, droughts, wildfires, and water shortages.
But of course, warming isn’t going to stop at 1.2°C. Because of the heat we’ve already trapped in the atmosphere, and because we continue to emit huge amounts of greenhouse gases every year, the climate is warming exponentially.
All of these climate-related crises are stretching farms to the limit, yet this is just the beginning. As crop yields decline and the population grows, we will see food insecurity get worse and worse until we’re in a global famine.
And that right there is why climate scientists are scared. They understand that human civilization was born during the Holocene, when global temperatures were very stable and stayed within a range of about 1°C.
As we push the planet out of that range and raise the temperature about 50 times faster than would occur naturally, it will become harder and harder to produce enough food to feed everyone, and this will lead to social instability, political upheaval, the worst migration crisis ever, and wars over resources.
Disasters that weren’t supposed to happen until we reached 1.5°C are happening now, so we can only imagine what will happen when we hit 2° or 3°C.
This is why top scientists from around the world are warning us that we face a ghastly future filled with untold suffering. They’ve been telling us over and over, year after year, summit after summit, that we have to stop burning fossil fuels as quickly as possible. But as you can see [below], the world keeps ignoring them.
If you live in the European Union, I would ask, as a personal favour, that you consider signing this petition for a tax on great wealth. It is reasonable; it would have major impact if put into place; it is very feasible (no revision of the Treaties needed). It is the brainchild of French economist Thomas Piketty, a leading scholar of inequality. https://tax-the-rich.eu#economics#ClimateCrisis
If you care about the planet, please make sure you sit down before you start reading this post about ExxonMobil.
So.
The CEO of ExxonMobil just said this in an interview: "We’ve waited too long to open the aperture on the solution sets in terms of what we need, as a society, to start reducing emissions."
Who's the most influential voice on climate change? Who's to blame for inaction on climate change?
According to the CEO of ExxonMobil, it's environmental activists.
No, really:
"Frankly, society, and the activist—the dominant voice in this discussion—has tried to exclude the industry that has the most capacity and the highest potential for helping with some of the technologies."
Oh, and the CEO of ExxonMobil also apparently thinks consumers are to blame for climate inaction:
"Today we have opportunities to make fuels with lower carbon, but people aren’t willing to spend the money to do that."
Gets better.
He thinks unnamed 'people who generate emissions' should pay for it. (Rather than, say, major transnational oil companies.)
"People who are generating the emissions need to be aware of [it] and pay the price. That’s ultimately how you solve the problem."
So, remind me again. Who knew about climate change before most of the public?
"Exxon was aware of climate change, as early as 1977, 11 years before it became a public issue... This knowledge did not prevent the company (now ExxonMobil and the world’s largest oil and gas company) from spending decades refusing to publicly acknowledge climate change and even promoting climate misinformation."
And just who, exactly, stood in the way reducing emissions all these years?
"ExxonMobil executives privately sought to undermine climate science even after the oil and gas giant publicly acknowledged the link between fossil fuel emissions and climate change, according to previously unreported documents...
"The new revelations are based on previously unreported documents subpoenaed by New York’s attorney general as part of an investigation into the company announced in 2015. They add to a slew of documents that record a decades-long misinformation campaign waged by Exxon, which are cited in a growing number of state and municipal lawsuits against big oil."
A group of 18 European Parliament Members have issued a statement officially calling for #Degrowth.
Here is part of what they wrote...
We believe that the current economic model, based on endless growth, has reached its limits.
Firstly, continuous economic growth, especially based on the consumption of fossil fuels, is leading to catastrophic global warming.
Secondly, the infinite pursuit of growth relies on the depletion of natural resources, the destruction of biodiversity, and the accumulation of waste and pollution. This also poses risks to our health, our economies, and our societies writ large.
Thirdly, the current economic model is contributing to social inequality and exclusion. The emphasis on economic growth has not translated into equal distribution of wealth or opportunities. Instead, it has resulted in a concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few leaving many behind.
Fourthly, the current economic model is inherently unstable and prone to crises, as seen, for example, during the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. The pursuit of growth at all costs has created a global economic system that is fragile and vulnerable to shocks.
We need an economic system that prioritises human well-being and ecological sustainability over GDP growth, one that recognises that infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible.
We also believe we need to find new ways of organising our economies without relying on the continuous exploitation of resources and the constant increase in production and consumption.
We call for more pluralism in economic thinking within EU institutions and for its alignment with the scientific evidence of climate, ecological, and social sciences.
We call for economic models and other decision-support tools to be more diverse, more comprehensive, and more readable for citizens.
We call for decision-making processes to be aligned with our common policy objectives rather than on the basis of the variation of GDP figures.
Names of those who signed on as co-authors: Philippe Lamberts (BE), Bas Eickhout (NL), Ville Niinisto (FI), Manuela Ripa (DE), Marie Toussaint (FR), Ernest Urtasun (ES), Kim Van Sparrentak (NL) — Greens/EFA; Manon Aubry (FR), Petros Kokkalis (EL), Marisa Matias (PT), Helmut Scholz (DE) — The Left (GUE/NGL); Pascal Durand (FR), Aurore Lalucq (FR), Pierre Larrouturou (FR) — Socialists & Democrats (S&D); Sirpa Pietikainen (FI), Maria Walsh (IE) — European People’s Party (EPP); Katalin CSEH (HU) — Renew Europe (RE); and Dino GIARRUSSO (IT) — Non-attached (NI).
A perfect (and perfectly scary) title from Jessica Wildfire (@jessicawildfire) —
"If a Cactus Can't Survive This, Neither Can You"
You might’ve seen recent headlines about saguaro cacti keeling over in Arizona after spending nearly a month above 110° Fahrenheit (43°C).
Not even a week later, The Washington Post ran this absurd story: “Your body can build up tolerance to heat. Here’s how.”
I’m not linking to it. That’s how bad it is.
It’s not just getting a little hotter. It’s getting so hot that saguaro cacti are deflating in the desert. They evolved roughly 20,000 years ago. They’ve spent millennia adapting to a hot desert environment. They live up to 200 years in the hottest, driest environments on the planet. These cactuses are saying, “I can’t take it anymore,” and sagging over dead.
And we’re being told we can adapt.
I got curious about what temperature the human body can actually withstand, and it’s somewhere around 108°F (42°C). That’s when your proteins start to denature. A wet bulb temperature beyond 95°F (35°C) can kill a person in about six hours. No amount of heat tolerance can save anyone from that.
It strikes me as just a little ridiculous that out here in reality, parts of the world are becoming absolutely uninhabitable, and wellness writers are just now telling us to start building up our heat tolerance.
It feels like we’re being prepared and conditioned to start blaming heat deaths on someone’s “low heat tolerance,” as if it’s just another precondition that helps them rationalize indifference in the face of mass death.
Climate Activists had this underlying assumption that part of our problem was that there was too much disconnect between action and consequence. We thought it was because people couldn't immediately see #ClimateCrisis or its effect was the main problem.
COVID proved that wrong. Literally friends, family, and neighbours were dying and in order to preserve whatever stupid ideology they wanted to preserve, people started suing coroners to take COVID off of their loved ones' death certificates.
We thought if we could show people evidence, they'll accept it and move on. Now we know that evidence is irrelevant. This is the fight of our lives. We are beyond asking nicely. If they are intent on killing us, we must take action to preserve our lives.
Swedish authorities are threatening Greta Thunberg with a prison sentence — while the real criminals, the owners of the fossil fuel companies and the multinational corporations, are making 💵 millions of dollars 💵 every day by destroying the ecosphere that Greta Thunberg and others are trying to protect.
🤬Study: 58% of world's richest companies quietly lobby against climate policies while publicly claiming to fully support the Paris Climate Agreement….consistently lobbied against worldwide climate efforts, contradicting their own commitments
…most at risk for greenwashing, including Chevron, Delta Air Lines, ExxonMobil, Stellantis, Southern Company, Nippon Steel Corp., and Duke Energy. #ClimateCrisis