Article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75481-z

  • TheCaconym [any]
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    4 years ago

    Indeed, and even if we somehow magically managed to stop that issue (which basically requires magic at this point), it wouldn't stop countless others. Such as topsoil disappearing. Or the biosphere being destroyed fast. And climate change consequences are thus far only a very minor part of what's killing the biosphere, too - ecosystems destruction, overfishing, or the use of pesticides everywhere, to name a few, are doing that on a planetary scale.

    There can be no management of the consequences of climate change without massive degrowth of the global economy, right now. Almost the entire cars and air flight industries should be shut down immediately, among many others; large scale deployment of new agricultural approaches (for example massive decentralized permaculture approaches requiring a large amount of workforce) should be attempted; large scale development of public transport as well; a massive push to produce and consume only locally, too. All of this should've been done decades ago. We should still attempt it, but recognize that all this will accomplish at this point is attempt to soften the blow and avoid human extinction.

    Of course none of this will happen; if we don't die with a long whimper of darkness and suffering (including fascists governments appearing in many countries worldwide and genocides at the borders of various developed countries), we'll probably manage to off ourselves instead through nuclear apocalypse. On that subject, an interesting talk is geopolitics in a hotter world by Gwynne Dyer (that's a transcript, here if you want the video itself). He does a good job, for example, explaining the issue with the Indus Waters treaty and how the quickly melting glacier that feed the Indus are going to cause incredible tensions in that nuclear-armed region of the world. And that's only there - similar likely points of tension exist all over the world due to decreasing resources.

    Personally, I cope with psychedelics. That and the vague hope that after centuries of suffering in a wasteland earth a small amount of still surviving humans might manage to eventually get back up in a sustainable way and remember the lesson. That's likely hopelessly optimistic though, given we're still pumping CO2e gases into the atmosphere like mad year after year and we're already gone over the threshold for many self reinforcing feedback effects.

    • EthicalHumanMeat [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      I like to believe that, as unbelievably horrible as climate change and everything will get, it'll end up forcing the world to adopt communism. I don't think the systems of control that the capitalist class relies on will be enough to keep tens or hundreds of millions of imminently dying proles from open revolt. The imperial core countries that rely on imperialism to prop up their own economies seem like they'll collapse pretty hard, and even the US military won't be able to keep entire continents directly subjugated.

      I dunno, I think the only countries that could remain stable will be the ones with the ability to coordinate large-scale central planning and manage catastrophic disasters (e.g., China).

      Maybe communists should get into prepping.

      • TheCaconym [any]
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        4 years ago

        I'd like to believe that too but I suspect when climate refugees start moving in the tens of millions, dwarfing any so-called "refugee crisis" we've seen in the past, things will sadly probably move in the other direction.

        • EthicalHumanMeat [he/him]
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          4 years ago

          I'm thinking more about domestic unrest. Climate refugees are probably fucked, unfortunately.

          • TheCaconym [any]
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            4 years ago

            My fear is that many countries will go full fascist when such refugees start coming at the borders, rather than full communist.

            • EthicalHumanMeat [he/him]
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              4 years ago

              I mean, in the global south countries where people are just dying in droves, where presumably there won't be many at the borders. And if they're forced to reorganize their economies, I don't think even a fascist US could hold on to the global empire.

              • femboi [they/them, she/her]
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                4 years ago

                I tend to agree with you, it’s sad that things will likely have to get that bad before they can get better, but hopefully a solidly communist global south will be able to if not thrive, at least mitigate the worst parts of the climate apocalypse and keep people alive

    • judgeholden
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      1 year ago

      deleted by creator

      • TheCaconym [any]
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        4 years ago

        We should still care because the stuff that we need to do to try and avoid extinction/tragedy in the megadeaths range - such as the suggestions above - cannot and will not happen in the current capitalist system. And moreover, doing these things would wreck the current planetary economy, hence it would require massive wealth redistribution at the same time to avoid large swathes of misery and poverty.