this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2024
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No it's never 'too late'. The range of potential sea level rise is wide and difficult to predict accurately: https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2018/07/30/how-much-sea-level-rise-is-actually-locked-in/
It's important that we don't give in to defeatism. Every little helps and we can still make a difference for future generations: https://plana.earth/academy/is-it-too-late-for-our-planet
It's pragmatism. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
Oh, I agree that it's not too late to reduce the severity of the impending catastrophes, but it's too late to prevent them.
Do you not mean realism ? perhaps you didn't see the recent election results?
Even if people had voted Labour nothing substantive would have been done, Greta T calling Jacinta out for her bullshit should have been a heads-up there if nothing else. Even the Greens, the only party taking it a little seriously don't have the radical policies necessary because they'd be pariahed if they did BUT a majority vote for them would likely have seen the Overton Window move and a rise in the radical policies needed eg closing airports, cutting back on dairy and forestry, reducing meat consumption, working towards banning personal cars (including ecars, as the IPCC suggests we must), banning meat eating pets after your current one has passed etc
Emissions globally went up last year, as did the use of fossil fuels and everything we do and how we live is base on entitlement, we long ago mistook needs for wants.
Of course but getting it wrong and assuming it will be low and it turns out to be high is catastrophic, so adopting the precautionary principal is the only sensible choice to make.
Being a fantasist and hoping or praying the emissions away isn't helping, (the current strategy) I am not suggesting people go YOLO and using that as a cover to be an arsehole to keep their emissions high so moving away from the ocean, off a flood plain etc, keeping your emissions low so you're not one of the arseholes making it worse and voting Green are all doing the right thing but planning for the worst and hoping for the best is a sensible strategy to ensure you're not at the front of the destruction queue.
Here's an interesting take from a physicists, Tom Muprhy
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/04/distilled-disintegration/
No, I meant defeatism. The post I replied to said
Emphasis mine. That's incorrect. It's not 'too late' and confidently stating it is achieves nothing but guarantee failure. That's not 'realistic'. We need drive, determination and hope to deal with what's coming. Those do not grow in a sea of doomerism, pessimism and defeat.
I'm not a 'fantasist'. I fully understand the scale of the problems we face. Optimism does not mean giving in to ignorance or 'praying the emissions away' it means understanding that pessimism isn't useful, it achieves the opposite of what we need: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23622511/climate-doomerism-optimism-progress-environmentalism
That article you linked is interesting, but as the comments below it allude to, it misses nuance. It is never too late to save humanity, even if our current understanding of what humanity is will need to change: https://andrewbirley1.medium.com/its-already-too-late-for-this-iteration-of-humanity-but-that-is-not-a-reason-to-stop-trying-e93e4b6b6b4
Also, whilst articles like that from your man Tom are fine in moderation, try not to drown yourself in them. Too much bad news is bad for you: https://www.wired.com/story/doomscrolling-bad-news-mental-health/
Don't forget to check out the good stuff to: https://fixthenews.com/
Finally, talking of nuance, whilst you are right that global emissions went up in 2023 by 1.1% what you neglected to mention is that emissions in advanced economies fell to their level of 50 years ago, a record decline: https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissions-in-2023/emissions-in-advanced-economies-fell-to-their-level-of-50-years-ago
And that the growth of clean energy means global energy related CO2 emissions could peak by 2025: https://www.iea.org/news/the-energy-world-is-set-to-change-significantly-by-2030-based-on-today-s-policy-settings-alone
So, I guess I am a optimist, just not in the way people on Lemmy seem to understand the word: https://medium.com/the-ascent/the-magic-that-happens-when-we-stop-equating-pessimism-with-realism-9480a5481540