“What everyone is missing about climate change is that it’s not about saving the planet or about science: it’s about people. Earth will survive – it’ll be different, but it will carry on. Humans are the ones at risk.”
Do you get this uneasy feeling that people know? Like they know they aren’t in that 2/3 and that they are kind of racist enough that they sort of want that 2/3 gone? Like people call it “complacency” among the 1% nations but I just got this feeling sometimes.
100%. I often hear the argument “we’re not where it will happen first” when people don’t want to take any action. Implicitly they know and even welcome climate change mowing down the global south. When asked if billions of climate refugees fit in their plan they handwave it away.
Yeah, I think they know that basically the refugees are going to be met with a military (maybe that’s why the fear of refugees is brewing), but I think the thing they don’t really understand is that those billions actually make all the things they / we use. At some point the 1% societies get to “peak buying power” and nothing will ever cause it to go up, wages be damned.
Also, we need those wages / taxes for the military they’re counting on.
Earth will survive – it’ll be different, but it will carry on.
I hate how glib some people are handling an extinction of not only human life. Countless species, ecosystems and individual animals will die.
But yes, life will continue. You’re technically correct. The best kind of correct. /s
“Another species will die” does not spur action quite like “you and everyone you love will die”. To be entirely fair, this behaviour is not uniquely human. We aren’t that special.
I get the motivational part. It’s just the “earth will move on, lol” part that’s unnecessarily cruel and pisses me off.
I think the fatalism comes from a place of helplessness. Who is going to survive? The rich. How does a normal person survive or help stave off the worst? They can’t. They’re busy trying to figure out rent and food for next week, while trying to ignore the chronic condition their healthcare system won’t let them fix.
Now, if we all rise up and eat the rich, we might have something. Not sure how one inspires such a necessary movement these days. Especially planet-wide. Plus, it would likely lead to violence, which many are not a fan of, I’d prefer not, myself.
Now, if we all rise up and eat the rich, we might have something.
One of the challenges here is simply organizing such a moevement. The communication platforms needed for that simply will not allow users to plan a revolution.
Plus, it would likely lead to violence, which many are not a fan of, I’d prefer not, myself.
You’re ignoring the inherent violence that’s already prevalent in the current trajectory things are heading towards.
Humans, sure, and millions of other species. Think penguins will survive? Nope. Jellyfish? Nope.
I heard of a specific species that was dying en masse, anyway. Maybe other species are handling it better.
Humans are cancer.
Shut up, ecofascist.
“Humans are a cancer…” is a statement of fact. It is the solution that determines if someone is an ecofascist:
… so we should kill off humans and cure the world
is an ecofascist statement and is a problem.
… and we are going to kill our host
is still in the declarative form. Is is apparently defeatist/fatalist and may or may not be a problem depending on the other views of the person
… so we should stop being cancerous.
is more optimistic of human determinism. I think it is the most hopeful and helpful to our situation, but it is not inherently good, and not coming to this conclusion is not inherently bad.
A cancer can’t just stop being cancerous. Calling humans a cancer inherently implies that they should be exterminated, saying “humans are a cancer so maybe they should stop doing cancer stuff” is just incoherent.
Humans aren’t a cancer and saying that is ecofascist bullshit. Capitalism is a cancer and it should be exterminated.
Preach, comrade!
So cancerous of you
Do you think human greed will just evaporate with capitalism? That whomever takes control of socialism will insta-do whatever’s necessary to save the planet?
I’ve just accepted that destruction of the natural world is an inevitability for humanity. I view our efforts like shuffling deck chairs around the titanic. Good luck, though!
“Human greed” is a lie sold to you by capitalists to convince you that nothing can be better. Read Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
Additionally, even if “human greed” were some kind of absolute constant, the worst thing we can possibly do is structure our society to reward it. If humans were perfectly greedy and selfish, then the ideal society would be one in which the selfish and greedy course of action is also the one that benefits society as a whole. In other words, a socialist one.
“Human greed” is a lie sold to you by capitalists to convince you that nothing can be better. Read *Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution*
Sure, champ! I’ll just ignore thousands of years of human history and the entire world around me because of some book some guy wrote. Mammals, rearing of offspring, social groups, cooperation — it’s all a recent exception to the other 99% of our evolutionary history.
You became much more reasonable in the second paragraph, but this is dumb
If humans were perfectly greedy and selfish. You need to cut all the extremist revolutionary crap and focus on logical changes that are remotely plausible to the average joe. The average person doesn’t want a revolution, and they aren’t gonna magically forget a lifetime of anti-socialist propaganda because you comment crazy shit at them. Focus on changes that can be made within capitalism first (e.g. worker coops, mandatory profit/ownership share, wealth caps, UBI) … Man tankies really are just as mentally ill as the far right. How is the left ever supposed to succeed when we have to combat your mental illness aswell?
♋ 🦀🦀
Humans can still be a cancer without killing them all. We can CURE cancer cells (maybe in the future). We can MANAGE cancer cells, stopping their destructive appetite for more and more energy (uncontrolled capitalism). Opting for killing the worst of them, but not all + the host. We can PREVENT spread of cancer to other cells (countries), stopping the opportunity of the cancer to live in the future. Eventually the cancer will die out a natural death.
Cancerous might be a hyperbole of our built in greed though. Humankind is a pest on the planet though. We consume too much and adapt our surroundings to us, not us adapting to our surroundings.
I’m not fond of this unusual-views-of-single-scientist kind of article. You can always find, for example, a gravity-denying physicist.
It takes more than that to be definitive.
See ya wouldn’t want to be ya
