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We don't have "50 to 100 years". Our unrestrained greed and obsession with growth and profit is well on its way to cause a Permian-Triassic style extinction eve

We don't have "50 to 100 years". Our unrestrained greed and obsession with growth and profit is well on its way to cause a Permian-Triassic style extinction event. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/ https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fossil-fuels https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fos... https://www.thenation.com/article/climate-disaster-is-upon-us/ https://www.thenation.com/article/climate-disaster-is-upon-u... https://nplusonemag.com/issue-33/the-intellectual-situation/the-best-of-a-bad-situation/ https://nplusonemag.com/issue-33/the-intellectual-situation/... The absurd accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few individuals is just a symptom of the disease human society is to the environment. To have any hope of even slightly halting this trend, we have to completely restructure society and put an end to fossil fuel extraction, and to our entire culture of consumerism. Capitalism does not have a solution to this problem, there is no gentle gradual market-based solution. We need a hard stop and at the very least massive carbon taxes on industry.

jordanbeiber 8y ago
Yeah, I'm thinking about this every time I see puffs of smoke from exhaust or airplanes pass by... It probably took the earth a few hundred thousand years to bind that carbon, and here we are puffing it off in a matter of decades. Human short-sightedness never ceases to amaze. It's an evolutionary problem I believe as we're to smart in a micro-sense, but as a whole we fail to take the holistic approach. A bit like driving at 100MPH -- the human brain is not evolved for that scenario and perspective gets skewed.
- KozmoNau7 8y ago
  The human brain has remarkable plasticity, though. Most people can train themselves to competently drive and react to inputs at 100MPH. The issue is that most people won't put in the necessary effort, either because they're unaware of the risks and consequences, or because they prioritize other things. Similarly, we can adapt to realize and adequately visualize our impact on the environment, and collectively act to lessen our impact, but most people consider it irrelevant or even downright unpleasant to even think about, so they don't.
  - jordanbeiber 8y ago
    The fact that we prioritise different things is a testament to this evolutionary vs. smarts discrepancy IMHO. We can train and mould our brains, true, but at what scale does this actually have a noticeable impact and and how to achieve this at scale? It's either through some form of enlightenment or through a totalitarian regime. The former at scale can, again IMHO, only happen through reaching a point of resonable equality, so at this point the latter with China spearheading the way seems most plausible, which is terrifying.
  - james_s_tayler 8y ago
    If we follow the metaphor of driving at 100MPH then we are in agreement that it is a skill we learn to do, however I would like to add the caveat that you cannot learn to drive around a hairpin bend at 100MPH because you cannot drive around a hairpin bend at 100MPH and it may well be the case that we are approaching the bend and are going too fast and cannot muster the necessary coordination to successfully navigate the turn. It would be nice if this weren't the case, but it might be.
james_s_tayler 8y ago
It's almost as if ecology will keep us in check if we wont do it ourselves. We aren't causing a perversion of nature, we are part of it and it is responding to us. I'm ok with that. And human society being a disease on the environment will be cleansed and fought off by the auto-immune response of a warmed planet. There isn't a problem.
- KozmoNau7 8y ago
  Unless you're perfectly OK with all of humanity and possibly the only sentient intelligent life in the universe dying off, we actually do have a very serious problem. As far as we know, we are the only life in the universe that actually cares about other life, that actually cares about cataloguing the world and the universe and exploring it. We are (as far as we know) the universe's consciousness. I don't buy into your defeatism. We can save ourselves, but it requires us to take the threat seriously and requires us to act, rather than just twiddling our thumbs and perpetuating the status quo.
  - james_s_tayler 8y ago
    Good luck saving yourself from the heat death of the universe. Edit: I am ok with all humanity dying out. I don't think that is either here nor there. I have the same self-preservation tendencies as you and the others and in public and private I actually try to do my bit as I'm philosophically a defeatist/nihilist because that's ultimately where extreme macro timescale conclusions lead me, but in the micro timescale we live on I don't in practice actually act or live like a defeatist. I'm just ultimately not precious about the human race any more than I am about anything else. I love us, and want us to have a good a run as we can and one day we will run out of steam or do the cosmic equivalent of jumping off a wharf, hitting the rocks, snapping our neck and be snuffed out accidentally. You, nor anyone else can or will stop that.

jordanbeiber 8y ago

Yeah, I'm thinking about this every time I see puffs of smoke from exhaust or airplanes pass by... It probably took the earth a few hundred thousand years to bind that carbon, and here we are puffing it off in a matter of decades. Human short-sightedness never ceases to amaze. It's an evolutionary problem I believe as we're to smart in a micro-sense, but as a whole we fail to take the holistic approach. A bit like driving at 100MPH -- the human brain is not evolved for that scenario and perspective gets skewed.

KozmoNau7 8y ago
The human brain has remarkable plasticity, though. Most people can train themselves to competently drive and react to inputs at 100MPH. The issue is that most people won't put in the necessary effort, either because they're unaware of the risks and consequences, or because they prioritize other things. Similarly, we can adapt to realize and adequately visualize our impact on the environment, and collectively act to lessen our impact, but most people consider it irrelevant or even downright unpleasant to even think about, so they don't.
- jordanbeiber 8y ago
  The fact that we prioritise different things is a testament to this evolutionary vs. smarts discrepancy IMHO. We can train and mould our brains, true, but at what scale does this actually have a noticeable impact and and how to achieve this at scale? It's either through some form of enlightenment or through a totalitarian regime. The former at scale can, again IMHO, only happen through reaching a point of resonable equality, so at this point the latter with China spearheading the way seems most plausible, which is terrifying.
- james_s_tayler 8y ago
  If we follow the metaphor of driving at 100MPH then we are in agreement that it is a skill we learn to do, however I would like to add the caveat that you cannot learn to drive around a hairpin bend at 100MPH because you cannot drive around a hairpin bend at 100MPH and it may well be the case that we are approaching the bend and are going too fast and cannot muster the necessary coordination to successfully navigate the turn. It would be nice if this weren't the case, but it might be.

james_s_tayler 8y ago

It's almost as if ecology will keep us in check if we wont do it ourselves. We aren't causing a perversion of nature, we are part of it and it is responding to us. I'm ok with that. And human society being a disease on the environment will be cleansed and fought off by the auto-immune response of a warmed planet. There isn't a problem.

KozmoNau7 8y ago
Unless you're perfectly OK with all of humanity and possibly the only sentient intelligent life in the universe dying off, we actually do have a very serious problem. As far as we know, we are the only life in the universe that actually cares about other life, that actually cares about cataloguing the world and the universe and exploring it. We are (as far as we know) the universe's consciousness. I don't buy into your defeatism. We can save ourselves, but it requires us to take the threat seriously and requires us to act, rather than just twiddling our thumbs and perpetuating the status quo.
- james_s_tayler 8y ago
  Good luck saving yourself from the heat death of the universe. Edit: I am ok with all humanity dying out. I don't think that is either here nor there. I have the same self-preservation tendencies as you and the others and in public and private I actually try to do my bit as I'm philosophically a defeatist/nihilist because that's ultimately where extreme macro timescale conclusions lead me, but in the micro timescale we live on I don't in practice actually act or live like a defeatist. I'm just ultimately not precious about the human race any more than I am about anything else. I love us, and want us to have a good a run as we can and one day we will run out of steam or do the cosmic equivalent of jumping off a wharf, hitting the rocks, snapping our neck and be snuffed out accidentally. You, nor anyone else can or will stop that.