Hubbert posted:

why do you hate affordable housing

Stereotype posted:

not just affordable housing, affordable housing for old people. poor old people, like your grandma but with big sad eyes and sleeping on the street. why do you hate this kind lovable grandma???

The End Of Ice posted:

“We’ve screwed ourselves,” he says. “We kicked the bucket. We have gone off the cliff. 93.4 percent of the global warming heat we’ve produced is in the oceans, and half of that went in since just 1997. That is unbelievable. If we’d only gotten hold of this when we knew about it in the ’80s we’d have less than half the problem we have now.” Wanless, who has been watching things go from bad to worse for so long, is taken aback by the business-as-usual mind-set of the general public. “We have to stop doing this,” he continues. “With population increasing, with industrialization ongoing, and with the sad exuberance about opening the Arctic as an opportunity to get more oil and gas, shouldn’t we be thinking, ‘Oh my God, what have we done?’” As grim and sobering as his statements are, they are a breath of fresh air.


Hearing the truth in a society steeped in various degrees of denial, I greet the bad news with relief. The irony is not lost on me.

Lampsacus posted:

cspam on the left, liberal on the right

God Hole posted:

the only thing I'm hoping for is that it;s possible to die

if anything other than the void is in store for me after I stop breathing I'm gonna be so pissed

e:

Deep Dish Fuckfest posted:

sure, human beings are notoriously bad at dealing with issues that get imperceptibly worse in the short term but have drastic long terms consequences and massive momentum. also they're bad at dealing with things that don't have an obvious cause/effect relationship which can be directly observed by individuals, and which have low probabilities of occurring for any given individual and only become significant in aggregate. and sure the globally dominant socio-economic system is geared towards exponential growth at all costs and maximizing externalities to offload costs, and will destroy any individual entity which doesn't operate in this way

and sure covid which operates on a far shorter timescale and has far more direct cause/relationship and can be observed directly by individuals and where mitigations measure have relatively minor economic cost in the short term was dealt in a way which was an abject failure by just about every conceivable metric

but we've got to be optimistic!

Cup Runneth Over posted:

Are human beings bad at that necessarily, or is capitalism?

silicone thrills posted:

The end of Ice writer is so cspam brained I love him so much

White Rock posted:

Both.

Capitalism cannot survive without growth, that's fundamental. However, current human terribleness is comes mostly from the ideology of the individualism, to the disregard to others. Liberals and the capital have cheerleaded this and now it's so ingrained that any sort of collective action that limits your "freedom" is tantamount to stalinist totalitarianism.


Humans are painfully optimistic, sure. But the level of propaganda being broadcast is loving gigantic, if you're not on some dead gay forum there is no loving indication how bad poo poo is, nor how big the problem is. It's not an environment (lol) issue, not a genetic one.

Homocow posted:

liberals loving love toxic positivity

you doomers are the real problem!

JeremoudCorbynejad posted:

What if trees, but we gently caress with them first?

A Bold Idea to Stall the Climate Crisis—by Building Better Trees
Changing the genetic makeup of trees could supercharge their ability to suck up carbon dioxide. But are forests of frankentrees really a good idea?

God Hole posted:

the only thing I'm hoping for is that it;s possible to die

if anything other than the void is in store for me after I stop breathing I'm gonna be so pissed

e:

Enfys posted:

This is something that's really getting to me as I try to deal with my own sense of grief and loss.

You're not allowed to mourn the things we've lost and the things we're going to lose because that is Not Helpful and you must always work harder to solve the problem! Raise awareness! Take action! Expressing grief makes you part of the problem, not the solution! Rage is not productive!

It's hard enough getting up every day and going to work in such a devastating present while facing an even more dire future. At least let me mourn the dying coral reefs and the birds I can no longer find and yet another area of protected habitat illegally cut down by developers who cost the fine into their operations.

The very least we could do in the face of all the life we're destroying is have an honest emotion over it.

Wakko posted:

nobody can tell how much warming we've already locked in as long as we press our eyes closed as hard as we can and shout nananananana when anyone tries to read the most fundamental analysis like i.e.

"the last time the atmospheric CO₂ amounts were this high was more than 3 million years ago, when temperature was 2°–3°C (3.6°–5.4°F) higher than during the pre-industrial era, and sea level was 15–25 meters (50–80 feet) higher than today."

Deep Dish Fuckfest posted:

sure, human beings are notoriously bad at dealing with issues that get imperceptibly worse in the short term but have drastic long terms consequences and massive momentum. also they're bad at dealing with things that don't have an obvious cause/effect relationship which can be directly observed by individuals, and which have low probabilities of occurring for any given individual and only become significant in aggregate. and sure the globally dominant socio-economic system is geared towards exponential growth at all costs and maximizing externalities to offload costs, and will destroy any individual entity which doesn't operate in this way

and sure covid which operates on a far shorter timescale and has far more direct cause/relationship and can be observed directly by individuals and where mitigations measure have relatively minor economic cost in the short term was dealt in a way which was an abject failure by just about every conceivable metric

but we've got to be optimistic!

Lampsacus posted:

doomer vibes from studio newsreader/reporter in this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rR1Ck6jfVo
cspam on the left, liberal on the right

CGI Stardust posted:

increasingly forced and nervous laughter through gritted teeth is no substitute for a hearty lmao

Wakko posted:

humanity stands at the cusp of realizing its grand destiny. tens of thousands of years of consumption have brought us here, and you whine? imagine a tuberculosis bacterium mewling like this as the host's lungs start to fill with fluid. generations have stood on the shoulders of one another, all working together to bring us here. its is only now, at the great dying, that we realize true meaning.

TehSaurus posted:

Did this guy say that the number 2 source of carbon emissions is natural disasters? That's a huge lmao if true!

Egg Moron posted:

Sadbrained 19th/20th century existentialists have nothing on climate doom mindset

"Boo hoo God is not real and social alienation is possible"

Lol

We knowingly mortally wounded the earth and we're laughing at it while it dies in front of us begging for mercy

Stare into the void and the void is loving lmao

Wakko posted:

humanity stands at the cusp of realizing its grand destiny. tens of thousands of years of consumption have brought us here, and you whine? imagine a tuberculosis bacterium mewling like this as the host's lungs start to fill with fluid. generations have stood on the shoulders of one another, all working together to bring us here. its is only now, at the great dying, that we realize true meaning.

JeremoudCorbynejad posted:

What if trees, but we gently caress with them first?

A Bold Idea to Stall the Climate Crisis—by Building Better Trees
Changing the genetic makeup of trees could supercharge their ability to suck up carbon dioxide. But are forests of frankentrees really a good idea?

Rectal Death Adept posted:

Just wait until we need genetically modified woodpeckers to fight the scourge of these trees

Then we get the robotic eagles to fight the woodpeckers

Egg Moron posted:

Sadbrained 19th/20th century existentialists have nothing on climate doom mindset

"Boo hoo God is not real and social alienation is possible"

Lol

We knowingly mortally wounded the earth and we're laughing at it while it dies in front of us begging for mercy

Stare into the void and the void is loving lmao

Andreas Malm, How To Blow Up A Pipeline posted:

[...]

The alpha and omega of the science of the cumulative character of climate change run contrary to the axioms of fatalism. Every gigaton matters, every single plant and terminal and pipeline and SUV and superyacht makes a difference to the aggregate damage done, and this is just as true above 400 ppm and 1°C as it is below. It won’t lose its truth at 500 ppm or 2°C or higher still. The totality of global heating will always be a function of the totality of emissions – less of the latter, less of the former. Positive feedback mechanisms do not cancel out this function, only beef it up. Wallace-Wells has the science behind him when he writes: ‘The fight is, definitely, not yet lost – in fact will never be lost, so long as we avoid extinction, because however warm the planet gets, it will always be the case that the decade that follows could contain more suffering or less.’ If fatalists think that mitigation is meaningful only at a time when damage is yet to be done, they have misunderstood the basics of both climate science and movement.

[...]

No one knows exactly how this crisis will end. No scientist, no activist, no novelist, no modeller or soothsayer knows it, because too many variables of human action determine the outcome. If collectives throw themselves against the switches with sufficient force, there will be no more flipping towards peak torture; the pain might be ameliorated. Within these parameters, one acts or one does not. Like each grain of sand in the pile, an individual joining the counter-collective could boost its capacity on the margin, and the counter-collective could get the better of the enemy. No more is required to maintain a minimum of hope: success is neither certain nor probable, but possible. ‘The context for hope is radical uncertainty’, writes McKinnon; ‘anything could happen, and whether we act or not has everything to do with it’, Rebecca Solnit. ‘Hope is not a door, but a sense that there might be a door somewhere.’ Or, more poignantly still, ‘hope is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency’.

People wielding that axe have always been told that we’re hosed, we’re doomed, we should just try to scrape by, nothing will ever change for the better; from the slave barracks to the Judenräte and onwards, every revolt has been discouraged by the elders of defeatism. But what of the revolts that actually failed? Did they not validate the naysayers? What was the point of Nat Turner or the Warsaw ghetto uprising? Fatalism of the present holds defeated struggles of the past in contempt, and so does strategic pacifism: if someone raised a weapon and lost, it was because she raised that weapon. She shouldn’t have.

Chenoweth and Stephan chide the Palestinians for using rocks and petrol bombs in the first intifada; had they only managed to stay peaceful – had the leadership been able to ‘convince youths to stop throwing rocks’ – they would have won the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Such arrogance may be bred from within the ivory and concrete towers of the empire.

[...]

In the less eschatological conjuncture we still live in, we would be better served by honouring past struggles – including those defeated – than sneering at them, because it would prime us for staying on their path. Defeat also has a pedagogical function, including for the climate movement: without COP15 and the disappointments of early Obama, there might have been no turn towards mass action. Climate fatalism is for the jaded and the deflated; it is a ‘bourgeois luxury’, in the plain language of one Swedish critic.

In a memorable section of We’re Doomed, Scranton enjoys a conversation with Timothy Morton, another acclaimed writer and compulsive luxury emitter. Morton illuminates for Scranton how the climate catastrophe is an epiphany of ‘OMG, I am the destruction. I’m part of it and I’m in it and I’m on it. It’s an aesthetic experience, I’m inside it, I’m involved, I’m implicated.’ The trick is to find enjoyment in this moment. ‘I think that’s how we get to smile, eventually, by fully inhabiting catastrophe space, in the same way that eventually a nightmare can become so horrible that you start laughing.’

You won’t hear anything like this in Dominica. You won’t hear poor people who today actually are at risk of dying in the catastrophe – in the Philippines, in Mozambique, in Peru – say, ‘I am the destruction. It’s an aesthetic experience. I may as well laugh at it.’ Where climate death is a reality, not philosophical chic, programmatic fatalism of the Scranton–Franzen school has zero traction (religious fatalism is another matter). Nor can the guilt that animates it be found on the vulnerable peripheries. Nor can the trust in self-reliant adaptation.

Climate fatalism is for those on top; its sole contribution is spoilage. The most religiously Gandhian climate activist, the most starry-eyed renewable energy entrepreneur, the most self-righteous believer in veganism as panacea, the most compromise-prone parliamentarian is infinitely preferable to the white man [see: rich person] of the North who says, ‘We’re doomed – fall in peace.’ Within the range of positions this side of climate denial, none is more despicable.

[...]

Hubbert posted: