this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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A lot of people want you to be fearful. Fearful people make for very avid readers and sharers of media. Fearful people spend a lot of their precious time convincing other people to be fearful. Fearful people often don't make the most rational decisions.
I'm not downplaying the problem or saying climate change is some sort of fairy story, but I am saying that it is almost impossible to have a 100% impartial birds-eye-view of what is a tremendously complex problem, especially if you just ingest whatever random media crosses your door.
There is no point beyond which the entire game is lost and we should just lie down and rot. Things can always get better, and things can always get worse. So act, get involved in local action and put pressure on government to make the right calls. Act with the hope of a better future in your heart, and save the despair for when the end is known beyond all doubt. It's just another day at the office.
I also think it's important to have hope for technological advancements. Carbon capture technology exists and is improving rapidly. We need to get to net zero, of course, but we can also go negative and cool the planet to pre-industrial levels.
The world is changing rapidly, both for the worse and for the better.
Yes, there is going to be a mass extinction event. But mass extinctions have happened before and biodiversity recovered. We also have technology to save species and reintroduce them later, too. A hundred years from now, when CO2 is back under control, who knows; maybe we'll be able to "print" extinct species' zygotes from saved DNA code.
The problem with carbon capture is that yes it exists, but is not nearly close to good enough for our needs. Add to that the fact that we physically do not have enough materials on Earth to implement it on the scale required and that becomes a tough pill to swallow.
I'm hopeful that some farming techniques may be promising and that not everyone's going to die, but relying on technology that doesn't really work yet seems foolish.
At any rate I'm not gonna sit around and twiddle my thumbs, I'm probably going to become an activist this summer instead and see where that takes me
Well put. My personal litmus test for any piece of media is this: if it makes you scared, angry, or horny, your red flags should be raised. It's likely that the article/video/whatever is trying to manipulate you. The fact that OP mentioned a political rant tells me the video might be using climate change as a tool to make people angry in a political direction. Acknowledging this doesn't take anything away from legitimate political criticism or climate research. But anger and fear are tools to bypass your reason.