we fixed acid rain! we fixed the ozone layer! we beat polio! we’ve rescued scores of species from the brink of extinction! the despair many of us feel about climate change isn’t that it’s too big to fix. it’s that we know it is fixable but we’re being thwarted by greedy ghouls at every turn.
Reposted from
Swapna Krishna
The other day I was like “you know something we heard a lot about as kids was acid rain, why don’t we hear about it anymore”
TURNS OUT we fixed it???
TURNS OUT we fixed it???
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A week? in the window here and the bright red colour was GONE!
Sorry to not know this, where exactly is Aotearoa? My maps app isn't making it clear.
We can start colonizing the solar system AND save earth at the same time. How? Build an orbital solar shade at Earth-Sun Lagrange point 1 (between the sun and the earth).
Lots of rockets needed, but the same rockets can also build colonies elsewhere.
It's still able to be mitigated, it just means a couple billion dead instead of everyone
But we also evolved to hoard resources and that can cause problems as well as fix them.
(alt text in next post)
Graph titled "Limiting warming to 1.5C is increasingly difficult without large-scale negative emissions"
Graph shows time on the X axis and CO2 emissions on the Y axis. Lines are superimposed each showing a pathway to 1.5C warming if action is taken at a certain time.
3 plots are important:
1. shows action starting in 2000 and a shallow path reducing emissions to under 5 Gigatons of CO2 by 2060
2. shows a very steep path from 2020 to under 5Gt CO2 by 2035
3. shows a vertical line from 2024 to under 5Gt CO2 by 2026
The answer is that the lines show the *rate* of emissions and by waiting you have exacerbated the problem and need to cut much harder and faster to compensate
We just stopped discussing it.
Scientists estimate the hole won't be "healed" until 2066.
Nothing will change until shareholder return takes second place to co2 reduction/minimisation
Only that's based on a misunderstanding of a 1919 MI Supreme Court decision, DODGE V FORD MOTOR COMPANY:
https://legislate.ai/blog/does-the-law-require-public-companies-to-maximise-shareholder-value
We just have to actually apply those solutions.
We have the science and technology; let's use it.
*sad David Suzuki noises*
And acid rain and ozone depletion were both orders of magnitude simpler to solve than our global reliance on CO2
(and if you actually manage to build an effective opposition to the ghouls you get murdered)
& Stupid Fools!!
https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/topics/in-depth/climate-change-mitigation-reducing-emissions/current-state-of-the-ozone-layer
As I remember it was laws that forced the industry to change things. “We” did exactly nothing. If laws were passed now that forced "us" to change, "we" would take to the streets and scream "freedom"
Sad.
+this already brought "let's reduce other labor protections for other aerosol hazards" rustling in the bushes so
not unlikely🙃
The despair is indeed caused by our rulers' refusal to do anything but make it worse
So when we fixed it (as we should have) we indirectly CAUSED some additional global warming
Any problem that has a slow progression also leaves room for solving it—but only if we make it a priority to solve it.
(Seriously though, the replacements we came up with for ozone-depleting chemicals ended up being much worse for climate change)
That’s me being pedantic, though. The 1970s were a time when environmental protection wasn’t a joke and I want to go back to that
Conservatives cannot let people believe that the government can solve problems.
We FIX the numbers! 🎉
Climate change you see not. You see the weather and that is "similar" to last year.
Humans are bad at remembering what they had for dinnet on Monday. And a lot worse of how the weather was 10 years ago