Smoke’s finally hit us. Really hard breathing outside. I was out and about and now smell really offensively of smoke. If this doesn’t get ppl onboard the importance of the environment I don’t know what will. Get fucked ScoMo!!!
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https://mobile.twitter.com/jscarto/status/1212933241231069184
My aunts in Canberra with my 4 cousins, 2 married with kids and there now all freaking out… And tbh they say its all the smoke as the actual fire has not hit them at all.
Circa 2014.
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Inb4 my brother says it’s all just natural fluctuations.
View from my Sydney office today. Another poor air quality alert from smoke haze. Office is handing out free respiratory masks.
https://twitter.com/OliverJPocock/status/1214827739619852289
Scotty from Marketing is doing a bang-up job winning over the people…
*edit just in case someone skims this - the two losses mentioned in this tweet are just in that particular region of Australia. ChrisV’s post immediately after this has an article which has a lot more detail on the scope of the tragedy and quotes at least 24 human lives as being lost thus far.
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This was a good read. Well, horrifying, but a good summary.
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List of warmest decades in recorded history:
- The 2010s
- The 2000s
- The 1990s
- The 1980s
Man I remember being a precocious youngster in the early 90’s and being interested in environmental science as a career because it’s incredibly important but also realizing that the problem of climate change was too big and the political will to do anything meaningful about any of it was too small. And I was completely right; an entire continent is on fire now and like 70% of America thinks climate change is a hoax made up by Marxists to take away people’s SUVs. I would legit go bonkers if I were an EPA scientist who wasn’t allowed to talk about any of this shit.
I’m kind of selfish in many ways, but man, being an environmental scientist has to be the most depressing career ever. It’s like, even a middle-schooler can recognize what we need to do but human society is never going to do that.
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It really is fucking batshit
In sane world we would be discussing the right wing solution vs the left wing solution to climate change
Yet somehow the right wing is fingers in the ears saying not happening
And the right wing is winning doing that…fucking batshit
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This is powerful shit.
Im also reconsidering having kids. Although that is partly pure selfishness.
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Agreed.
Thr right wing solution has, however, always been “screw everyone”.
Its just that consolidation of wealth and globalization has allowed them to get away with it even more.
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Humans are basically incapable of taking any threat that is 5+ years out seriously. Because realistically a hunter gatherer has absolutely no need to think that far ahead, and that’s what our brains are evolved to do.
That’s why people take an obvious hoax like an approaching ‘end of civilization’ date from some ancient culture semi seriously but ignore climate change.
The good news is that we have now reached the point where the effects of climate change are happening in real time, and the fact that suddenly everyone is taking it relatively seriously vs even a couple of years ago is not an accident.
I think a lot of people ITT are going to be shocked with how fast humans can handle climate change once they decide to be serious about it. It’s really not that much money, and it’s really not that effort, particularly if you get creative about solutions… which we absolutely will.
Unfortunately we’ve baked in some pretty ugly stuff at this point, and most of that is still going to happen. There’s very little doubt in my mind that we’ve all already experienced the most pleasant weather of our lives.
The ecological impacts will of course be absolutely massive. Then again that’s nothing new for humanity. We caused our first round of mass extinctions when we discovered fire, and have caused a few since I suspect. The world we live in has already been changed dramatically by our presence in it… and was already irrevocably changed long before we became modern. Hopefully we haven’t finally triggered the thing that will cause our own semi extinction yet.
I gotta say though… I think there’s a reason why we haven’t met any aliens yet. It’s probably because of some combination of 1) light speed+ travel is actually impossible 2) advanced species always extinct themselves and fairly quickly from a geological perspective. Neither of these is an original thought LDO I just find them extremely persuasive.
Corporations are unable to think 5 years out - at least at this point they aren’t. Maybe they could back in the 60s when companies like IBM and ATT had huge research facilities. With everything about stock prices, mergers, selling off divisions, etc, 2 years is a long time.
But, for a long time people have done things like build equity in homes and save things to pass on to their children. Olive farming has been a thing for 6-8000 years, but olive trees take a long time to be +EV. You know the saying, “you plant an olive tree for your grandchildren”. And probably some of the “this mountain (or tree or animal or whatever) is sacred” thing that is common around the world and has probably been so for 100000 years has to do with preserving resources - probably from lessons learned the hard way and passed down.
It’s possible that we’ve lost something, perhaps something irrational, that helped groups of people preserve things and care about their legacy and nature and the void has left humanity short-sighted. But, corporations and financialization are certainly part of it and are some combination of causing it and taking advantage of it. And the problem here is the problem of the special interest. It’s worth a fair amount to everyone to curb CO2 emissions, but maybe it’s not an existential threat to most people in the near future. Curbing CO2 emissions though is absolutely an existential threat to the FF industry and in a world where corporations are legally people, where people who work for corporations are legally bound to subordinate all interests to their employer’s, and where this special interest in particular is one of the wealthiest and most powerful the world has ever known - it’s a hard fight.
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I’m pretty skeptical right now that this will ever happen, or at least I can imagine things getting a lot worse before it does.
This stuff makes me tear up. Now looking for a good place to donate to help the animals there.
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