The climate of the memes of the climate!
Planet is on fire!
mod notice: do not hesitate to report abusive comments, I am not always here.
rules:
no slurs, be polite
don't give an excuse to pollute
no climate denial
and of course: no racism, no homophobia, no antisemitism, no islamophobia, no transphobia
I know. I'm in my early 40ies and have been trying all my life to convince people around me and do what I could. But with time, I learned about the fraud that is plastic recycling and how capitalism is really not interested at all into solving the issue. My city is fining people for putting recyclables in the trash, but the recycling centres are full and they themselves trash the recycling. What matters is short term profits and virtue signalling. What matters is to look green. Just buy electric cars and everything will be good, apparently. Buy green! But don't stop buying!
Then a pandemic happened and people disappointed me en masse. We could see the changes in the environment and in ways we could live, but most people were "EaGeR To GeT BaCk To ThEiR RoUtInE", even if it meant commuting 5 days a week to the office, just to "resume" the economy. What mattered was not other people, it was the economy. Even when they forced us to stay inside with curfews, people couldn't go out to run/walk in the evening, they barred unvaccinated people from stores (I'm vaccinated 4 times but it's still not okay), it was all for the economy and to save the system, not the people. And if you had a minor disagreement with this, you were a grandma killer for wanting to go cycling at night. Then we went back to our routines and nothing will ever change. People are whining because of paper straws and want the plastic back. And all this straw stupidity is not even important on the grand scheme of things. Most people don't want to change anything. Most people will not vote for change. The system does not have any incentive to change.
I never owned a car and everyone around me is telling me how great they are and how I should definitely buy one because it's useful and practical. I would have total absolution! Some people here are vociferously fighting against active and public transit, and the government is actually cutting public transit funding. People are yelling at me when I trash some plastic instead of putting it in the recycle bin, then they drive away in their car that generates literal tons of toxic fumes and greenhouse gases in the air, accusing me of not caring.
I gave up a few years ago. We will deserve most of it.
Don't worry, the rich will eat well and survive, with their private security forces willing to kill others, while the poor will starve and die. We'll have rations and curfews but it will all be for the good of the ~~people~~ economy. Just like in the pandemic, It will be an effort of the poor, to save the rich. That's what we want. You just have to become rich before it happens.
Seconded. It's so baffling to me that we have seemingly forgotten the purpose of the economy. It is supposed to be there to benefit our lives and instead it is costing us everything. Some slave away on their knees building streets and others waste the precious few laps around the sun staring at a light box. We have the technology to give everyone enough such that the average person would only have to work a few hours.
For a comparison in a very real sense:
Prior to the Neolithic revolution, which put an end to our nomadic past and turned our species into agriculturalists, it took more than 50 hours of labor (mostly gathering wood) to “buy” 1,000 lumen hours of light. By 1800, it took about 5.4 hours. By 1900, it took 0.22 hours. By 1992, 1,000 lumen hours required 0.00012 hours of human labor.
We've put the cart before the horse on an unfathomable scale. A good life for all (current humans and future) is within reach but the economic system that has created this bounty has grown out of control and serves nothing but itself anymore.
I’m glad we were able to create plastic for the earth and help set the course for future wonders never before imaginable.
Haha good meme
We should start making clouds in the oceans again. I think they were protecting us.
Yeah I've understood since high school, what the fuck do you want me to do about it when I can barely keep myself and my family alive as is?
Brought to you by billionaires
Kinda feels like karma on a global scale. Humans evolved intelligence just to use it to systematically oppress each other, mostly in the name of feeling powerful. Not sure I’d call that “intelligence” and I think the planet would be better off without us.
The problem with that idea is us colonizers will still reap the rewards while karma exploits the less developed
The planet doesn't give a shit about us. These are just natural processes (yes humans are a part of nature). We are just a particularly anomalous part of the system
While I believe making sure more people are aware that climate change is a big deal, especially people with money that can actually do something about it, I'm hesitant to rely on data in a dire warning from McKensey in what is basically a We're Hiring post.
Some tiny history of who McKensey is:
The firm has been associated with a number of notable scandals, including the collapse of Enron in 2001, the 2007–2008 financial crisis, and facilitating state capture in South Africa. It has also drawn controversy for involvement with Purdue Pharma, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and authoritarian regimes. Michael Forsythe and Walt Bogdanich, reporters for The New York Times, wrote a book entitled When McKinsey Comes to Town about the controversially unethical work history of the company.
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?
I had not anticipated "Oh shit that's a good point I should apply for a job with McKinsey" to be a takeaway that anyone would have to this post, let alone the assumed main takeaway from it.
Lol yeah I goofed pretty hard on that one
All good. I am chuffed that you were good-natured about it.
I even already had my coffee when I made the original comment. There was no excuse for my side fumbling.
Maybe someone needs to give the memo to these assholes, eh?
It's not oil companies that burn the oil they pump, it's their customers. I know it's easy and convenient to point the fingers at this shitty industry and shift all the blame to them, but it's also not how we can solve the problem.
There's a multitude of issues that individual citizens have a very hard time solving or getting around.
In the majority of the US (and the world, really) people have to own cars to get from A to B in order to survive (which coincidentally means we're spending untold billions on the infrastructure to support that habit, at the cost of the liveable environment and citizens wallets, whether they drive or not).
Changing that is an enormous undertaking that will require an equally huge societal shift. In a culture where the car is the obvious choice it is next to impossible to get citizens to see that that choice is fucking them, and I'm sure Big Oil won't ever do anything to change that perception because it will hit their bottom line. So unless you move to a city where you can live without a car and still have the (positive) freedom to go where you need to be you will need to vote and write your congressman to make it possible for you live without the yoke that is the car.
So yes, citizens burn gasoline because they must do so in order to afford a living. Further, as an aside, if people made the amount of money congruent with their productivity then maybe they wouldn't have to commute so much in order to have a roof over their head and food on the table. We could relax production and increase leisure time. Maybe. I'm just some dumb cunt.
...And that's why we should be busting street dealers never direct out outrage at the kingpins providing the fentanyl! It's in no way their fault that people are dying!
/s, just in case.
We are all I this train going to hell. Might as well sit down and get comfy. Either that or get off early. But there are still a few sips of soda in the can.
We are all I this train going to hell. Might as well sit down and get comfy. Either that or get off early. But there are still a few sips of soda in the can.
If only it was a train. We're in a conga line of SUV's.