this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
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The lack of action on this is evidence of mankind's selfishness and shortsightedness. I hope a technological solution is forthcoming, because political solutions have failed spectacularly. The oil industry has invested so much in disinformation that they may destroy our habitat forever for some temporary shareholder value.
At 1.5 degrees C, sea levels are expected to rise up to ~30 inches, which would put huge parts of New Orleans, Corpus Christie, Key west, Southern Florida, SF's south bay, and Miami underwater. See what goes underwater using this NOAA map.
I think we will be saved just in time by nuclear fusion and nobody will learn from this, just like nobody learned from COVID. The majority will probably shrug and go "see, wasn't that bad".
I wish I shared your optimism. A deus ex machina solution is extremely unlikely. It would be more effective to attempt to forcibly sieze control of the mechanisms of pollution than to hope for surprise salvation. When you are being actively killed, sometimes violence really is the answer.
Yep, "violence is never the answer" are words of those who will end up dead at the hands of violent people. Violence is the last option and should only be used when all other avenues have been exhausted, but to say it's never an option is just naive.
Even if we did develop fusion, how long would it take to switch to it and would it even be economical? A ton of places still use coal and other fossil fuels simply because they're cheap or were already built. It's hard to make assumptions about how much fusion would cost when we still don't have it. Nuclear fission's fuel is cheap (cause so little is needed), yet nuclear is still insanely expensive because building the plants is a difficult task mired in red tape and the general public is afraid of it (on that note, I'm not sure how many people even have a concept of fusion beyond perhaps what Spiderman 2 made them believe).
There's also the divide in the world. Even if the rich western countries got fusion, would everyone? The west also got covid vaccines early while much of the rest of the world had to wait. And further drawing on the covid analogy, some countries pretended there wasn't an issue, which already is going on with climate change.
If we haven't learned by the time we get fusion that climate is global and should be tackled globally, we deserve extinction.
Maybe God will save us.
Thots and prayers
Good one.
He will sort us out