this post was submitted on 12 May 2024
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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It’s not all doom and gloom when it comes to the climate (slrpnk.net)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

We will not be able to reduce the impact unless we completely dismantle capitalism. And we frankly don't have a long time to do it if the goal is to reduce the impact before we're all dead.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

That's completely not true. Yes, dismantling capitalism is the most important thing we can do to reduce the impact. But you're using some really strong words there. If I ride my bike to work instead of taking a car for one day, that'll reduce the CO2 emitted by about a kilogram. That one kilogram might reduce the severity of some hurricane enough to save a life. And yeah, it probably won't. But what about a year of riding my bike? What about a lifetime? What about installing solar panels at my house? What about not taking a flight? What about eating a vegan diet? Put all that together, I can probably save a couple lives in my lifetime compared to if I just consoomed. And yeah, in between all that, I'm on the streets volunteering for anarchist orgs and building systems to dismantle capitalism.

But the way I see it, fighting capitalism is like trying to win the lottery. It probably won't work in my lifetime. It almost certainly won't stop the climate crisis in its tracks right now. Making these changes in my own life makes me a healthier person with more money and a lighter conscience, and it's guaranteed lives saved. So I'm gonna do both. I'm not gonna bet on achieving communism and only then going through the degrowth that's inevitable anyway. I'm going to degrow my own life right now, so at the very least I'm ready when the communist revolution is complete and it's time to ban cars, and if communism doesn't happen before I die, I can still say with certainty, "I was part of the solution".