Let’s not forget the horrors that will greet the thawing of the permafrost. Methane. Mosquitos. Whatever dormant viruses lurk.
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Humans are an oddity of evolution that has failed. Say goodbye. The planet, and some sort of life, will go on.
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No.
I do NOT go gentle.
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Touching, and noble. I wish you, and us all, well. I, however, have no hope, and expect to die by violence when the time comes, likely by my own hand, like the wife in “The Road”.
Welp, whether you end up in the Waterworld parts or the Mad Max parts of the planet, I think at the very least we can all agree we’re definitely going to be drinking our own pee. ¡Salud!
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Then I do genuinely pity you.
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Humans may be an oddity of evolution, but it has given us a giant population on every continent except one. If we used the terms on ourselves, we’re both extremely generalist and invasive, like beautiful weeds. Species come and go, but ours is considered least concern for a good reason.
While we’re here, it would also be nice to save civilization and look after one another instead of abandoning untold millions who don’t need to be abandoned. It’s a shame so many aren’t interested in putting in the work for one reason or another.
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Have I posted this before? Because I think I’ve posted this before.
Consider it my personal theme song.
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I hear you.
Working on it where I am.1,2 With you all the way.
I’m tryin’ not to lose my head.
“The earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.”
– Utah Phillips
ETA:
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No, humans are not an oddity of evolution. That’s how evolution works. That might be a great filter of the Fermi paradox.
Humans are also the ones on this planet most likely to culturally change their behavior in a significant way.
While nothing lasts forever, we have a shot. We are not the only part of the system that will adapt. The planet may have stabilizing mechanisms we don’t know about yet.
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“Their report is the first major review of the science of climate change since 2013.”
Really? There haven’t been ANY major reviews of the science since the last IPCC review? If true, this is seriously worrying.
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Exactly. The posters here who talk about the twenty global corporations that are ruining the planet probably don’t hear the lunchroom talk I hear about how it sucks that gas went up from $2.60 to $3.00 a gallon. Few of the people in that lunchroom make more than $20 an hour.
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That kind of hopelessness is an excuse for not doing anything to remedy or mitigate an undeniably bad situation or avoid its worst externalities. It’s a common mindset, but it’s not one that serious and thoughtful people – pessimists and realists included – are going to respect.
It sucks, but that’s more because they likely don’t have clean, reliable, safe, and frequent public transit options to and from their workplaces for under $3 a ride. Which (I’ll assume North American) situation brings us back to some of those global corporations and their bought-and-paid-for politicians who established and preserved post-war transit policy (the same ones who’ve also ensured the buying power of the minimum wage has actually fallen since the early 1970s).
So – privileged though I am – I’m still not going to put the blame for global warming on the people in the lunchroom who complain about gas prices, and will still focus on the global corporations and institutions that do the bulk of the polluting while trying to pretend that it’s the fault of the individual consumer to whom they’ve denied more sustainable choices.
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What really gets my goat is how much effort in the past there was made efforts to mitigate human damage to the environment but now it’s become the issue to oppose with regard to one side of the political dance. George HW Bush was the last bipartisan president on environmental issues from the Republican/conservative side. Now it’s like Spock v Kirk to get even the slightest environmental regulation done. It’s absurd beyond belief. I can’t believe anyone on the other side is that fatalistic as to let their grandkids suffer and die horribly from climate related disasters. But I assuming there’s a rationality or empathy left in them, I’m not so sure anymore.
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At least you have a plan to improve things?
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Additionally, we still fight idiotic wars over idiotic religion or to honor idiotic dictators.
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From the IPCC report there is a lot in there that is going to be inevitable. And a good deal of other things are as well, unless we (collectively) take action, pretty much now. We will have to fight to move those upcoming tipping points.
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There is hope. It’s going to be a hard fight to get enough of the world on-board; but this can be done. It’s not impossible, just hard, and as a species, we can do hard things.
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