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Climate nears point of no return as land, sea temperatures break records, experts say
(www.reuters.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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I think it's funny that you can't really prep for this. It's going to be a slow collapse, slowly churning and making it impossible for anyone to survive. As critical infrastructure fails, food, water sources dry up, and the only solution anyone is capable of giving: "Try biking to work". Realistically it should be "get ready for an apocalypse." No amount of prep will leave you untouched.
I am not so sure about that.
For the vast majority of humanities existence we have been one bad harvest away from famine.
Many countries rely on food imports to feed their people.
Failed harvests in two or three of the major food exporters at the same time grows more likely each year.
One very hungry year around the world will cause chaos we have not seen since WW2.
I hate this so much, too. We keep seeing these pushes for individuals to reduce their carbon footprint, but it's not the individuals who are responsible for climate change; it's the corporations who continuously skirt emissions laws and lobby for looser regulations on their industries who are polluting the planet en masse. We could all bike to work for a year, and it wouldn't even make a dent to offset the environmental damage caused by a single luxury cruise ship in that same span of time.
This isn't my area of expertise, but as I understand the present climate crisis, it's actually misleading to say we're "nearing the point of no return" as so many of these kinds of articles do.
Every single day we pass a brand new point of no return because every day we keep pumping fuel into positive feedback loops that are already in motion. Not only will biking to work not do shit; but even if humans just went extinct right now and all industry/pollution/etc came to a 100% stop, the climate will still continue to (albeit more slowly) spiral into new extremes. What we're feeling today is the 'find out' stage of climate inaction decades ago; and the damage we're doing today won't be be tangible for decades to come.
Best case scenario is the coolest of an array of hellscapes - we're in damage control mode. Rather, we should be in damage control mode; what we're actually in is grind-away-at-our-9-to-5-while-we-watch-oligarchs-consume-our-planet mode.
actually the largest source of emissions in the US is personal vehicles. I have no idea where everyone got twisted around thinking their emissions amount to nothing.
That's true but it's not like most cities are safe to bike.
Right, so we make them safe to bike like other countries did.
I didn't think this was true, but according to the EPA in 2021 it is
~~Personal transport~~ road vehicles are the largest category of transportation which is the largest source of greenhouse emissions, accounting for roughly 15% of total us emissions.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#transportation
There is nuance!
Heavy duty trucks is broad, and includes semi trucks, buses, tractors, etc
I'd be curious to see those commercial vehicles broken out, and the question answered for how much impact personal transport has on us emissions
https://fleetnetamerica.com/blog/post/classifying-medium-and-heavy-duty-trucks
All that info is further down that EPA link
Read further down and it breaks down transportation emissions too. 58% from personal vehicles. Transport is the largest source of emissions, and personal vehicles are the largest source of transport emissions. Especially all our damn trucks.
I mean I don't think it's useless. I just think we all fucking know who the biggest polluters are. And how we still don't have carbon caps is insane to me. Edit: fair enough check blazers comments
I just told you, personal vehicles.
It's terrifying. I think one of the problems we face in getting people to demand change is that the collapse so terrifying and unthinkable that people don't allow their minds to dwell on it for long.
Why do you think the Saudis are pouring so much resources into these experimental line cities? Even they know that the system they helped create and benefited from is unsustainable, and building a self contained city in the middle of the desert is them testing the hypothesis of, can you build a habitable zone for humans in the worst case scenario of environments?
It also ties into why there are so many billionaires who are obsessed in advancing space travel as quickly as possible. Even they are starting to get nervous about the Earth they have created and will have to live in.
"well we tried nothing, its every man for himself now"
Good news everybody! MIT researchers showed that we expect societal collapse soon, and further studies into this confirm we’re on track.
Nature always starts out slow and then the slowball turns into an avalanche.