Floods, fires and deadly heat are the alarm bells of a planet on the brink - eviltoast
  • malloc@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Reading climate change articles always reminds me of this monologue from the antagonist in Westworld:

    I think humanity is a thin layer of bacteria on a ball of mud hurtling through the void. I think if there was a God, he would’ve given up on us long ago. He gave us a paradise and we used everything up. We dug up every ounce of energy and burned it. We consume and excrete, use and destroy. Then we sit here on a neat little pile of ashes, having squeezed anything of value out of this planet, and we ask ourselves, “Why are we here?” You want to know what I think your purpose is? It’s obvious. You’re here along with the rest of us to speed the entropic death of this planet. To service the chaos. We’re maggots eating a corpse

    • ummthatguy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      From the late great George Carlin: “The planet is fine. The people are fucked.”

        • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Life on earth has been through far worse than humans and recovered (in a few million years).

          Different species will fill the available ecological niches.

          Life will survive.

          • Event_Horizon5@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Nobody is claiming or worried that all life will go extinct. What sucks is that we are fucking over all the animals that we know and love. If elephants go extinct, there will never be elephants again. Same with whales and koalas and sloths and bees. They will all be gone forever like dinosaurs and dodo birds and thylacines and trilobites.

            • ShakyPerception@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Who is passing blame?

              It’s our fault we are here, it’s our fault this happened, it’s our fault when we are finally gone.

              But life itself will adapt, and overcome this obstacle, just like it has countless times before, and will countless times again.

              Personally I believe that our lasting impact will be plastics, which will get compressed by time and become the “rocket fuel” of the next species to gain full sentience, which will allow them to explore the galaxy.

        • 0101010001110100@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          The jellyfish, mosquitoes, mold, sea urchins, flies, algae, fungi and cockroaches will probably thrive. That’s a good foundation for evolution to start a new ecosystem, isn’t it?
          This is the kind of hope I am clinging to this year.

    • narp@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Or in the words of Agent Smith:

      “You move to another area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure.”

    • Coopa@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This is how I feel with the corporations. As a result of this feeling, I stopped giving a damn. I attempt to live my life the best I can, while still trying to care for the world, even though I know we are doomed. Nothing will change until something catastrophic has happened.

      • andyburke@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Sorry, but this is such fatalistic bs.

        So much has changed.

        I remember acid rain.
        I remember leaded gas.
        I remember 12mpg cars.
        I remember the photos of terrible brown smog floating over Los Angeles.
        I remember before anyone had a recycling bin.
        I remember…

        The list goes on. And I’m only a handful of decades old.

        Can we do more? Yes.
        Should we do more? Absolutely.
        Are more people aware of that than ever before? Yes.

        Humans have technologied their way out of so much shit, I am not ready to give up on us yet.

        • ∟⊔⊤∦∣≶@lemmy.nz
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          1 year ago

          Will we do more? No.

          We have only got so far with technology because it resulted in sales. When the goal is less sales, less industry, less mindless consumption, no innovation is going to happen.

          • ShakyPerception@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Ah, but you forget about the rubber band finally snapping. When it is released there will be push back and things will happen quickly.

            Now the real question becomes, how much more can we take. I believe we are reaching a tipping point where the uber-rich either help, or are removed. And I think they are starting to see that too.

        • The Snark Urge@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Part of the work has to be processing the emotions of our past failures. It’s okay to feel fatalistic for a minute just to sit with those feelings. But we do need to get over it sooner or later and get to work, too.

        • CaptainAniki@lemmy.flight-crew.org
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          1 year ago

          I remember acid rain.

          Still happens just in 3rd world countries.

          I remember leaded gas.

          Which didn’t get fixed until an act of congress.

          I remember 12mpg cars.

          Marginal increases in technology are not to be celebrated when the medium of consumption is still a greenhouse gas.

          I remember the photos of terrible brown smog floating over Los Angeles.

          Those still exist just in 3rd world countries.

          I remember before anyone had a recycling bin.

          Recycling that does nothing???

          I remember…

          Yeah me too – and shit’s still absolutely fucked.

      • ∟⊔⊤∦∣≶@lemmy.nz
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        1 year ago

        Im here with you on this. Ive seen so much fake climate actions from government and corporations, that ive accepted were fucked. Ill do the best i can, so at least i can say it wasnt my fault.

    • Skies5394@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      And that’s the rub.

      A guy with a tall collar needs to appease a bunch of old guys with even taller collars and if that means we’re all doomed as a species and taking everything we know with us in this cycle of earth, then so be it so some people can have a high score on their bank roll.

  • Rocket Raccoon@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I live in the southern state of India called Kerala, we had a huge flood that wreaked havoc in 2018. Just last week, we had these huge floods again, but it was not big as last time. This week it is floods in northern India. This is not normal, and we are noticing these scenarios which are affecting millions of people. The people at the top who are supposed to make rules to mitigate this are making the people fight amongst themselves. I don’t know how much time till we get until it’s too late. I hope we can overcome this.

  • dudebro@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It’s not that I don’t support the sentiment, but I downvote this simply because it is not news.

    Nothing is happening. Nothing is ‘new.’ This is just how things are and someone writing an opinion piece on it.