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It Is No Longer Possible to Escape What We Have Done to Ourselves
(www.nytimes.com)
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
I find articles like this so frustrating. It feels like it is aimed at being a wake-up call to the reader, but at the same time offers no solutions, no advice and still lays the blame at the feet of the average person for not doing enough. "What we have done to ourselves" is not advocate enough I guess?
Perhaps I'm not the target audience for the article. I grew up in an environmentally conscious home we'll before it was trendy and have been worried about climate change for as long as I can remember. It's hard to see an article like this as anything other than an effort to drive traffic...
I'd be happy to hear what others got out of the article if it was more positive than my read of it.
Climate despair is the new climate denial, and these doomer editorials are oil industry propaganda pivoting.
If we can't do anything about it then nothing has to change and rich people keep getting everything they want.
I'm honestly super sick of this take. I keep seeing people say that the oil industry is responsible for doomers, and it's as bad as climate denial.
Is it though? Of all the people I know, the only ones that take the situation at all seriously are the ones that actually truly believe we are in serious trouble. Only those people are voting primarly based on climate issues, taking part in protests, or making changes to lifestyle. The vast majority of people don't actually believe we are in serious trouble. The vast majority of media is still feeding us the line that things are basically going to be fine with some incremental changes.
Oil companies are advocating for market solutions to the problem and continuing the status quo as long as possible. The idea they are trying to cause the greater population to actually believe they are doomed is insane. A population that actually believes they are doomed might take drastic action.
I dunno, I have the unfortunate experience of association with a lot of libertarian types. All of them believe we're in serious danger, all of them believe it's too late, and all of them are leaning hard into that "fuck you I got mine" mentality because it's too late for anything else.
They do nothing to help except vote libertarian or green.