There was a finding that all males have microplastic particles in our testes.
It became a meme.
Everybody laughed.
New meme overtakes old meme.
We forget about our plastic testes and move on.
But, is there any issues going forward, that anyone is aware of?
Can something be done? Possibly, who knows?
Will something be done? I wouldn't hold my breath.
This isn't the only potentially human civilization-ending event I first heard about this past month, and that doesn't include climate change that we've known about for literally decades, which many of the major players involved including the USA and China still don't seem to care much about even now.
There is a saying: "put your money where your mouth is", meaning that if people want to truly "care" about something - e.g. to be Pro-Life - then we need to actually get up off the couch and do something about what we otherwise claim to but don't really care. For instance we could... I dunno, wear masks when we feel the slightest hint of a respiratory illness coming on - cheap, trivially easy, and can save literal lives. And not to trivialize this, some people truly do care - even as I type this I'm listening to a livestream talking about restoration taking much more effort but yielding much greater results than merely shaming people by pointing out something bad.
However, and a bit ironically, Big Tobacco and Big Oil and Big Sugar and Big Tech and Big Plastic etc. all do this, investing great efforts into stopping efforts to try to stop them. Without equal or greater efforts in opposition... well, like I said, I would not hold my breath.
Thanks for sharing the link - TIL something!:-)
without a matching drop in emissions, any country/business who participates in "green energy" is just doing propaganda
I would hardly call creating measured plans then executing the key steps towards making a stable jump to green energy propaganda, unless you're of the mind that risking severe damage an entire country's energy grid and in turn threatening possibly the lives of millions in premature actions is much more preferable. But I'm sure you're smarter than advocating for that
I'm just saying that creating green energy sources is not sufficient evidence that someone actually cares about climate change issues unless it has results
Is having lots more green energy not a result?
only if america does it
If you were pointing at literally any of the western nations I would agree, especially with regards to their naked hypocrisy in the fact that they've been further expanding their emmitive energy sources these past few years. But pointing out that China, while having large emissions due to both its large population and due to international Capital moving massive amounts of manufacturing to China over the past few decades, has not only been making its internationally promised goals towards decoupling from emmitive energy sources and switching to a green energy network but has been rapidly surpassing them to the point its leaving the entirety of the G7 nations in the dust.
The fact is that currently it is very difficult for China to lower its emissions as doing so effects not only its own country's economic productivity but the productivity of nations around the world. We saw an economic slump during covid due to China's anti-covid measures disrupting the production of commodities across all industries. Performing premature theatrical gestures would objectively harm more people than it would help, therefor holding such a criteria is ultimately idealistic and ethereally utopian in its logical process
alright that's fair, i was being too bitter and critical, perfect shouldn't be the enemy of good, and it certainly shouldn't accuse good of being propaganda
To be fair, every damn headline is framed as civilisation-ending for clicks. Nuclear war is the only one I can think of that's both fairly plausible and could actually end it. Others are at various significant but lower levels of suck, or are just geologically rare.
In particular, climate change is going to suck hard, and I'll miss coral reefs, but some form of civilisation will endure. I know, someone's going to argue with me, and I look forward to making you move around the goalposts on what "end of civilisation" means.
Otherwise, yeah, you're just right. Humanity runs on apathy.
Yeah, the increasing likelihood of Russia or China using nukes to get their way was what I was thinking, especially with talk that the Western nations might be giving Ukraine the go-ahead to use those weapons to strike within Russia itself.
The plastic sperm issue actually doesn't sound so bad in comparison, bc fertilization treatments might work even if needing to extract outside of the body first. Overall, it still sounds less dangerous to me than e.g. a young woman living in Florida these days without access to money to leave the state for medical care.
I frankly have no idea what to expect about climate change at this point - we've blown far past all the targets and seem now to be in uncharted territory, according to what little I understand. I do notice far fewer birds, bees and other insect life, and I recall hearing how in the Antarctic a few months back there was a single day where the temperature spiked by +70 degrees F (~40°C). I can only imagine what that would do to e.g. Texas if it went from already 100 to then 170 degrees, even if only for a few hours. "Coral" is the least of the issue iirc, they were (by virtue of being sensitive) mainly indicators of the actual events, which we won't know until we see it, but scientists are saying that it's no bueno. Anyway, it seems like the changes could wipe out all mammalian life on the planet, but then again maybe not!?:-P i.e. it could be really bad, but it could be less so, we just don't know, and as you said, we mostly barely care ("we" meaning voters, so chiefly Boomers & evangelical Christians, as Trump and the Republican party's biggest bases).
And yet we seem to care a great deal about tHe EcOnOmY tHo - so it's a choice of prioritization to pick what "matters" to us.
Yeah, I've noticed the lack of insects, and also different plants growing than I remember from when I was a kid, not all too long ago. Every once in a while someone will be talking to me about the weather and how freakish it is, and they'll suddenly get quiet if I use the word "climate" instead of just weather, because they were (and maybe still are?) denialists.
The thing about mammals is that at least some - ourselves included - can migrate. If we have to, we'll set up banana plantations on Antarctica, and there's no known scenario where it gets that bad. Others are not so lucky, though.
Right, civilization might survive... maybe, possibly, hopefully, just like if we all were to play Russian Roulette. Still doesn't sound like a smart idea to me to mess with something known to be so dangerous.
At the absolute minimum the changes will be cruel, and hundreds of thousands of people are already dying from each of many individual events like hurricanes outside of their normal seasons, at intensities never before seen in a particular area.
So my thought: at the very least we could care? Except I was wrong - we can go lower, so much lower. We do have the satisfaction though that whatever comes, we brought it upon ourselves.