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Covid-19 has exposed how almost all world leaders are useless when faced with big challenges - any action taken will be far too late; too little and often times

by jarym 6y ago

Covid-19 has exposed how almost all world leaders are useless when faced with big challenges - any action taken will be far too late; too little and often times plain wrong. So as I read about Greenland’s ice sheets I can only conclude that we are all doomed. Raising awareness won’t really help; the leaders who could do something about it simply won’t. It’s sad and it’s depressing and I’ve no idea what any of us can do to actually prevent this next global catastrophe.

gxon 6y ago
Nothing we can do. Brace for impact and setup a flexible lifestyle so you can rapidly move and adapt depending on what hits first/hardest. Obviously still support any possible measures to mitigate the damage. Maybe we can still work together to avoid complete catastrophe.
- pipermerriam 6y ago
  Do you have any reading recommendations on what additional things someone can do to be better prepared for the next 5/10/20/30 years?
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    Heavily depends on where you live.
  - gxon 6y ago
    Get rich. Don't vote for morons.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- korantu 6y ago
  France got its industry decarbonised in 10 years with nuclear. There are some providers in Russia, China and South Korea who do deliver on time and on buget. With energy less dependent on climate, we can further proceed to atmospheric CO2 capture and reuse [1] Putting it here for another direction of hope... [1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/01/22/climate-change-solution-nuclear-energy-our-best-hope-column/2821183001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/01/22/climate-ch...
  - gxon 6y ago
    Hope and possible solutions are awesome! BUT, this is a hair on fire emergency. We are fully and truly fucked and until enough people wake up to this reality, we'll continue with the glacial pace we've had addressing the problem for the past several decades and wake up one day realizing there really is nothing we can do fast enough to matter. It's entirely possible we've already passed this threshold and we're already dead.
mhh__ 6y ago
In the case of the US I think useless is being kind. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/trumps-war-on-blue-states-is-worse-than-previously-thought.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/trumps-war-on-blue-s... Even if the linked article is a complete fabrication, the actions of the Trump administration so far have been deliberately harmful let alone useless. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/covid-forecasts/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/covid-forecasts/ Hopefully the American Electorate are tired of winning at this stage. Edit: downvotes but no counterargument?
082349872349872 6y ago
The Old World is making noises about a "greener" recovery as long as we have to make adjustments for Covid. If that happens or not remains to be seen. Personally, I spend most of the year between 250-1'750 metres over sea level, in a country that (at least in the past) has prized food security over cheap eats, and (until Fukushima) ran our rail system on mostly nuke+hydro power. That said, our glaciers have also retreated noticeably over my lifetime. (I had thought eliminating Covid would be a good warm-up exercise for tackling climate change, but it appears that even though when it comes to clothing fashions, humans herd like sheep, when it comes to effective concerted effort, humans herd like cats.)
ImaCake 6y ago
>Covid-19 has exposed how almost all world leaders are useless when faced with big challenges Many countries have done pretty well coordinating a useful response against this virus. The US has done terribly, but there are plenty of examples of other nations responding well to it.
- jarym 6y ago
  I think you’re mistaken. No one started to care until Italy happened weeks after the WHO warnings. China locking down 11m people didn’t ring any alarm bells in the west. Even when Italy happened not all countries reacted, instead thinking ‘oh we don’t have that problem we’re fine’ And then as cases did go up other countries for ‘creative’ with their handling - the UK totally gave up on testing in March and was secretly thinking to ‘ride it out’ and go for herd immunity. So the few examples where it was handled well (say Taiwan and South Korea) are irrelevant when considering the strength of the overall global response. Now, for dealing with melting ice sheets we need more than a majority of countries working together to prevent an event that will displace millions of people but right now the response is similar to how we responded to COVID - but imo the stakes are higher now.
  - ImaCake 6y ago
    My point is that not all countries did bad. Many countries did poorly, but many others responded well to the crisis and have either kept cases down, had very few deaths, or managed to suppress their outbreaks. > China locking down 11m people didn’t ring any alarm bells in the west. Yes it did. Australia and NZ started preparing very early for this outbreak. The results are very evident. The US and the UK responded terribly, and their people should be very angry.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
elihu 6y ago
I don't think Covid-19 has shown that. A lot of world leaders maybe took a bit longer to react than they should have, but once it was clear that the virus was spreading they acted sensibly to prevent widespread contagion and those countries now have rather low infection rates. Some other leaders (i.e. Bolansaro, Modi, Putin, Trump, and probably some other leaders of countries where we don't even know how bad the situation is) have reacted poorly, leading to less good results. Even in places like the United States which has been doing a terrible job, I am amazed at the scope of sacrifice that has been made to prevent the potential of millions of deaths, and by the generally high level of compliance with social distancing. It's not good enough, mind you, and those sacrifices will be for naught if we don't eventually get things under control, but having 90% of people in stores wearing masks is a lot higher than just about anyone would have guessed if one were to suggest this scenario as a hypothetical a year ago. I think most health experts expected about 50%. Really, the whole world has been quite united I think on average despite poor leadership when you look at the actions of individual people. On the other hand, as pandemic fatigue sets in that early solidarity seems to be getting weaker.
- jarym 6y ago
  > but once it was clear that the virus was spreading Yes, once it was ostensibly too late to prevent a huge economic hit and significant loss of human life. The European response was atrocious, let’s not rewrite history - Italy happened because no one took action. And while Italy was happening the rest of Europe was debating whether its a violation of Schengen to be closing borders. And then as Spain happened finally other countries started locking down. Yes, once they too could no longer pretend it wouldn’t be a problem for them. If the same approach is taken with ice sheets then no country will care until they’ve lost a city or two. And no other country will care unless the ‘problem’ becomes obvious for them. And by then it will be FAR too late - a vaccine won’t exist to make seas levels fall again and undo all that damage.

by jarym 6y ago

gxon 6y ago

Nothing we can do. Brace for impact and setup a flexible lifestyle so you can rapidly move and adapt depending on what hits first/hardest. Obviously still support any possible measures to mitigate the damage. Maybe we can still work together to avoid complete catastrophe.

pipermerriam 6y ago
Do you have any reading recommendations on what additional things someone can do to be better prepared for the next 5/10/20/30 years?
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  Heavily depends on where you live.
- gxon 6y ago
  Get rich. Don't vote for morons.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
korantu 6y ago
France got its industry decarbonised in 10 years with nuclear. There are some providers in Russia, China and South Korea who do deliver on time and on buget. With energy less dependent on climate, we can further proceed to atmospheric CO2 capture and reuse [1] Putting it here for another direction of hope... [1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/01/22/climate-change-solution-nuclear-energy-our-best-hope-column/2821183001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/01/22/climate-ch...
- gxon 6y ago
  Hope and possible solutions are awesome! BUT, this is a hair on fire emergency. We are fully and truly fucked and until enough people wake up to this reality, we'll continue with the glacial pace we've had addressing the problem for the past several decades and wake up one day realizing there really is nothing we can do fast enough to matter. It's entirely possible we've already passed this threshold and we're already dead.

mhh__ 6y ago

In the case of the US I think useless is being kind. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/trumps-war-on-blue-states-is-worse-than-previously-thought.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/trumps-war-on-blue-s... Even if the linked article is a complete fabrication, the actions of the Trump administration so far have been deliberately harmful let alone useless. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/covid-forecasts/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/covid-forecasts/ Hopefully the American Electorate are tired of winning at this stage. Edit: downvotes but no counterargument?

082349872349872 6y ago

The Old World is making noises about a "greener" recovery as long as we have to make adjustments for Covid. If that happens or not remains to be seen. Personally, I spend most of the year between 250-1'750 metres over sea level, in a country that (at least in the past) has prized food security over cheap eats, and (until Fukushima) ran our rail system on mostly nuke+hydro power. That said, our glaciers have also retreated noticeably over my lifetime. (I had thought eliminating Covid would be a good warm-up exercise for tackling climate change, but it appears that even though when it comes to clothing fashions, humans herd like sheep, when it comes to effective concerted effort, humans herd like cats.)

ImaCake 6y ago

>Covid-19 has exposed how almost all world leaders are useless when faced with big challenges Many countries have done pretty well coordinating a useful response against this virus. The US has done terribly, but there are plenty of examples of other nations responding well to it.

jarym 6y ago
I think you’re mistaken. No one started to care until Italy happened weeks after the WHO warnings. China locking down 11m people didn’t ring any alarm bells in the west. Even when Italy happened not all countries reacted, instead thinking ‘oh we don’t have that problem we’re fine’ And then as cases did go up other countries for ‘creative’ with their handling - the UK totally gave up on testing in March and was secretly thinking to ‘ride it out’ and go for herd immunity. So the few examples where it was handled well (say Taiwan and South Korea) are irrelevant when considering the strength of the overall global response. Now, for dealing with melting ice sheets we need more than a majority of countries working together to prevent an event that will displace millions of people but right now the response is similar to how we responded to COVID - but imo the stakes are higher now.
- ImaCake 6y ago
  My point is that not all countries did bad. Many countries did poorly, but many others responded well to the crisis and have either kept cases down, had very few deaths, or managed to suppress their outbreaks. > China locking down 11m people didn’t ring any alarm bells in the west. Yes it did. Australia and NZ started preparing very early for this outbreak. The results are very evident. The US and the UK responded terribly, and their people should be very angry.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

elihu 6y ago

I don't think Covid-19 has shown that. A lot of world leaders maybe took a bit longer to react than they should have, but once it was clear that the virus was spreading they acted sensibly to prevent widespread contagion and those countries now have rather low infection rates. Some other leaders (i.e. Bolansaro, Modi, Putin, Trump, and probably some other leaders of countries where we don't even know how bad the situation is) have reacted poorly, leading to less good results. Even in places like the United States which has been doing a terrible job, I am amazed at the scope of sacrifice that has been made to prevent the potential of millions of deaths, and by the generally high level of compliance with social distancing. It's not good enough, mind you, and those sacrifices will be for naught if we don't eventually get things under control, but having 90% of people in stores wearing masks is a lot higher than just about anyone would have guessed if one were to suggest this scenario as a hypothetical a year ago. I think most health experts expected about 50%. Really, the whole world has been quite united I think on average despite poor leadership when you look at the actions of individual people. On the other hand, as pandemic fatigue sets in that early solidarity seems to be getting weaker.

jarym 6y ago
> but once it was clear that the virus was spreading Yes, once it was ostensibly too late to prevent a huge economic hit and significant loss of human life. The European response was atrocious, let’s not rewrite history - Italy happened because no one took action. And while Italy was happening the rest of Europe was debating whether its a violation of Schengen to be closing borders. And then as Spain happened finally other countries started locking down. Yes, once they too could no longer pretend it wouldn’t be a problem for them. If the same approach is taken with ice sheets then no country will care until they’ve lost a city or two. And no other country will care unless the ‘problem’ becomes obvious for them. And by then it will be FAR too late - a vaccine won’t exist to make seas levels fall again and undo all that damage.