Go Australia

Just so we all remember, Mass Extinctions usually don’t mean anything like all species on earth dying. Like, even the big ones killed max like 75% of genera. We won’t end life on earth unless we do a very impressive nuclear war or hit a runaway heating threshold that turns Earth basically into Venus, neither of which is even remotely likely. Possibly more sadly, all signs appear to be pointing towards most stuff staying alive and just suffering.

Only four Republican Senators need to vote no in order to kill the bill. With two—Tillis and Paul—already saying they will oppose it, that leaves just two more Senators. Murkowski and Curtis are considered the most likely to oppose the anti-renewable provisions, according to one Senate staffer we spoke to.

They had better not pass this…

No?

I’m sorry, but if that’s the only route you can imagine, I’m sorry to say that if collapse is the answer, we’re gonna get into the runaway heating zone first and take everyone else out with us.

I don’t think that’s what’s gonna happen. I think we might get close, but I think that at the rate we’re going, we avoid that. Not that we don’t have some civilization collapse, but not total.

I assume you don’t know what the original joke is? The original is, in fact, a graph, this is a joke from a movie called Crocodile Dundee, where a guy pulls a knife on the main character, who proceeds to go “that’s not a knife” and pull out the largest bladed weapon that could still be considered a knife and says “this, is a knife.”

Hope this was helpful and that I’m not explaining something you already know.

That’s insane. No company should be allowed to produce that much waste. Yes, I mean that they should be responsible for the fact that all their clothes get thrown away.

I attended my local no kings protest as well. Glad to be part of it, somewhat disturbed by the amount of pro military messaging I saw though.

Thanks for catching that!

This looked like a pretty reasonable report to me. Not exactly hopeful, but maybe slightly better than my hope was before. My takeaways are the same as they were:

1. The US isn’t going to lead the fight, we need China (and India) to make progress (faster than it is, though this report was somewhat hopeful to me on that front.)
2. Solar and batteries is gonna be the main source, governments need to build that.
3. Individuals help by A. Being active in the political processes of democratic countries. B. Switching to EVs or preferably off cars altogether. C. Limiting or preferably eliminating meat consumption. D. Switching heating devices off of gas. But individual actions won’t be the primary driving force behind any change.
4. General societal shifts towards a reduction in consumption are going to be required.

Epic! I hope to be able to ditch my car in the next two years, and I’ve mostly stopped eating meat too, and I haven’t turned my AC/Heat on since February (and then not for long.) I feel like taking the kind of steps needed to drastically reduce your share of emissions is easier than a lot of people make it out to be. (Though obviously it depends on life circumstances.)

Yeah, obviously you can’t blame one individual. Only a ton of individuals in aggregate. That’s why its important to change the behavior of large swathes of people.

Yeah, this is a big thing. We really should be trying to replace as much air travel as possible with trains (cause they can be electric,) but otherwise there’s not a whole lot we can do in the “making traveling very long distances in a reasonable time energy efficient” space.

Oh stylish!

Yeah, and part of the reason many American cities are car dependent hellscapes is because they ripped out earlier public transit in exchange for “more individual freedom” in the form of being forced to pilot multi-ton death machines through heavy traffic to get to anything that isn’t more houses. (Yes, I am aware that this is a case of hindsight being 20/20, and the people who did that didn’t know all the things we know now and thus were extraordinarily myopic, but many European cities (including Amsterdam IIRC) did similar things, but they mostly had the good sense to put it back.)

(To be clear, you are also correct.)

Hah, imagine a corner store…

TBH, I think we need to bring this back for more remote/low density construction. It sounds awesome and I bet it would be a really good insulator

Party on, party on!

To some degree I agree with you. But it should be noted that poorly regulated capitalism often makes the smart decision for your own best interests to screw with others. Whereas better regulated capitalism (and socialism) theoretically makes that a smart decision less often.

Also, companies do exist, they exist specifically to shunt responsibility off of individuals. (Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because single people having responsibility for massive economic things is probably a recipe for disaster.)

We do need a significant change in culture, we also need to change the system.

Yes, we will. Or we’ll die. We won’t die. A lot of people will die, and it will be horrible. We won’t do enough and we won’t do it fast enough or soon enough. But we will do it.

Yeah, you’re dead on, and believe me, a lot of us know it, and I hope we do fix it. I’m doing as much as I can I guess, and I promise that there are a lot of other people doing what they can, even if its not publicized like the bad stuff. We’ll see if it matters in the end.