It's just too expensive to save the planet. I'm glad that our governments were making the tough Choices, to continue burning coal and other fossil fuels because the economy just couldn't handle the burden of not growing by another 5% every year.
That's a fair complaint for developed countries, but I feel like it's less fair for developing countries where each point of GDP growth has a tangible effect on poverty rates, education, health, economic mobility, and overall wellbeing. Hell, an increase in economic resources will probably even offset the decrease in crop yield from climate change. For countries that are still developing, these things improve the lives of citizens more than the impact of climate change would hurt them.
Living in a developed country, we have a disproportionate responsibility for both reducing our own emissions and developing the technology and infrastructure to reduce emissions for everyone else. We should have led the charge towards ever cheaper solar and ever cheaper wind. We should have given the world clean and cheap technologies they can use to fuel their industrialization to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels. We haven't, but looking towards the future there's still a lot we can do.
Remember that you can influence global emissions far more than by bringing your personal emissions down to zero.
Also worth remembering that governments are subsidizing the fossil fuel industry. What should happen is that this industry should be nationalized and the profits should be used to build out clean energy infrastructure.
None of the countries historically responsible for the most CO2 emissions is growing at anywhere near 5%. If anything, we're burning our only home for 1% year on year.
Had the misfortune of listening to State Department and White House policy ghouls talk to a class recently. They don't believe moving to less fossil fuels quickly is viable because we'd become "dangerously dependent on Chinese minerals for batteries and solar cells" ignoring the fact that the entire globe is "dangerously dependent" on a liveable climate
Scorching hot take, heard this week offline
"Climate change is actually a good thing because necessity is the mother of invention. If you have any faith in humans at all, climate change is just what we need to make humans an interplanetary species!"
Dark Logic. Can't be wrong, don't wanna be right. Fuck yeah did we ever get better at war!
It's also a great way for mother Earth to teach us a hard lesson. How else are we to learn that we can't have whole species on one "basket". No, a good planet to start off on could mars. Now all we need is to invent, invest and grow the smart ones. It's just so hard to do so with so many yachts for sale.
I barely caught the sarcasm; I've seen takes like yours non-sarcastically before so I had to squint hard.
cultists have radioactive takes.
get in the bazinga rocket — we're solving climate change by fucking off to a planet we've never even set foot on!
Earth is the most hospitable planet to human life in the entire universe, and we seemingly can't even put in the meager effort to keep it habitable. What makes you think we'll be any better at making Mars habitable? Not just keeping it habitable as we've failed to do on Earth, but making it habitable in the first place.
Saving humanity by expecting a dead planet to be the refuge, under the leadership of the same monsters destroying the planet we're still on.
That's capitalism efficiency for you right there, climate apocalypse is ahead of schedule.
can we please fucking kill oil and gas executives now? i know it's not gonna save us but we deserve something
Okay but that image goes hard. Literally looks like they're holding fire in their hand.
Even without optical illusions, drip torches are pretty fun to work with.
*removed externally hosted image*
Look at this beauty! If we work together me can get to 3°C or may be more
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