this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024
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That's not what I said, I said it's too late, we missed the exit. Fossil fuel companies hid the research for decades, and I've heard nothing my entire life except how we need to act and change the ways we live and interact with the world.
I'm almost 30, and our dependency on fossil fuels hasn't changed, I've yet to see a meaningful societal shift away from the consumerism that drives the majority of climate change.
And ok, we keep driving emissions down, what about biodiversity loss across the planet? How many plants and animals are currently on the brink of extinction?
Let's bring up developing countries, who are increasing their use of fossil fuels. Where is the international agreement to help modernize these countries with renewable energies? Who's going to pay for it? We can't get the countries of the world to agree we've overfished the oceans and they're on the brink of collapse, where's the international agreement to reverse that?
I would argue I'm giving people a pessimistic reality of the future, sure, but at least it's based in the current reality. Climate change extends far beyond the overall global temperature, and I'm sure climate and environmental scientists will be the first to say that there are a lot of pieces and variables we don't fully understand, or haven't even accounted for, because that's just how science works.
What is this crap? EVs are all over the place and so is renewable energy. Emmissions are falling. We haven't opened a new coal plant in a generation.
Ok? It's bad and we're working to fix it. That's very different than "we're all doomed and should stop doing anything".
https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement
Ok, and how environmentally friendly is it to dig up the minerals to make the batteries, ship them to the plants in massive container ships, process them through polluting means, put them into cars that were also built from resources ripped from the earth using machines billowing CO2, and then shipped across the globe in container ships that pollute more than all cars combined on Earth?
And ok, we haven't opened a coal plant in a generation, maybe in the US. China is still building them, as are a good chunk of the world. In fact, the IEA estimates to China's use of coal will be up about 6% total from 2023, while India's is an increase of 10% of coal use. They estimate global coal use will be down next year, 2025, the first time since 2016, and it's estimated to drop 0.3%.
Do you understand how biodiversity works? You can't just run a population down to a handful of that species, and then they'll make a comeback as if nothing ever happened. There is not enough genetic diversity for a healthy and sustainable population to grow and repair itself from that. 69% of all life on earth has been wiped out, bud, we're not fixing that.
Lmfao, "a legally binding international agreement," yeah, ok. That's why a single President unilaterally removed us from the agreement, right? Because it's legally binding? And that's why all of these countries are taking it seriously and making huge efforts to reduce global emissions, right? They've only had since adopting them in 2015/2016 to start making progress, almost a decade, and... Omg... Omg you're right!!! We're doing it!!!
Just kidding, from September 2024:
Wow, so the countries that are supposed to be leading the charge aren't even on track to stop 2°C temperature rise, nevermind the 1.5°C we're supposed to be aiming for.
But we've got more electric cars, and we're still consuming and ordering things from across the globe, so it'll probably all work out if we just believe hard enough.
Edit: Switching to electric cars doesn't prevent the pollution of microplastics from tires, btw, another massive part of climate change everyone seems to just be covering their eyes and pretending they can't see. We found microplastics in the clouds, ffs, nevermind in our own blood and bodies.
Nor do electric cars stop the glaciers that have already retreated way further than they should from retreating further. Where's all that methane gas, y'know, the more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, remind me, where is all that methane that was trapped in the ice going? Oh, right, it's feeding into the climate cycle, making things rapidly worse while we twiddle our thumbs and tell ourselves science will fix this for us, nothing else needs to be done.
Ah shit what are those goalposts doing way over there? I swear they were right here a second ago.
The goal was always 1.5°C as long as I've been alive, and we aren't hitting it. In fact, we're not even on track to hit the 2°C.
The goal posts didn't move, buddy, we just already kicked the ball into the stands, and you're screaming that we can still win. Sorry, we lost, but at least we made the obscenely wealthy even wealthier in the meantime.
Oh, and all of the things I'm bringing up, those "shifting goalposts," are the things I was talking about us not understanding and rapidly building on top of each other year over year. You only keep talking about emissions: ok, cool, they're important, but they're not all that's involved, and even then, we're still** not hitting our own goals, so we deserve a pat on the back and a cake?
And while we're at it, how are the millions of people in America alone who can't afford a $400 car repair going to afford a $30k+ electric vehicle? Or are we going to overhaul our entire public transportation system overnight so people don't need to rely on cars at all? But then what about all the old ICE vehicles thrown in junkyards, leaching chemicals into the ground?
What about the Ogalala Aquifer and how we're pumping the water out of it way too quickly for it to naturally replenish? Y'know, the aquifer that essentially waters our entire crop growing landmass in the Midwest. We know pumping all of this groundwater out of the ground out in places like Nevada, Arizona, etc is terrible, yet I don't see any politicians banning the practice at the local, state, or federal level. What are emissions going to do about that, and what, are we just gonna pump the water back in to the underground aquifers that took millennia to naturally form?
How are emissions going to stop the soil erosion we've witnessed since the Dust Bowl? What emissions and electric car policies are stopping the growing of monoculture crops that need too much water to be grown where they are? How are fractionally dropping emissions going to reduce the use of fertilizers to grow the same crop over and over in the same place, not giving the soil time to naturally replenish, and further running freshwater supplies with pesticide runoff? Explain to me what laws regarding emissions and electric cars are going to address that?
While we're on the topic of food, who's ready to have the conversation about how you should only be able to buy and eat food that can be grown locally to your region? It is not environmentally responsible or sustainable, especially with current metrics, to ship millions of tons of food stuffs all over the globe, and this isn't even me trying to be a smartass: you should not be able to buy avocados in Minnesota, you shouldn't be able to buy chocolate in the Netherlands, etc. It's not sustainable, and the ships we use to move them are burning millions of tons of CO2 per trip.
Have you taken into account any of the economic factors of what it will take to upgrade our grid to handle that? Or to even get our infrastructure to be more energy efficient in general? Not our driving infrastructure, our actual buildings and dwellings, what's the plan there to make all of the dwellings in the US more energy efficient?
It's not just emissions, my man, there are millions of moving parts all feeding into each other in different ways, made even more complicated by our global interconnectedness and vastly varying priorities. But the goalposts never moved, we just didn't realize there were more of them than we initially thought, and focusing on one or two metrics that we're not even close to meeting, while also continuing to not also address anything else... Gore was our last shot, and it was robbed from us.
You are a fool if you truly believe we are moving in the right direction and do not require radical change to save our future.