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:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
It isn't possible under capitalism. We need global cooperation, not competition. So, we are riding this horse off that cliff. We will evolve through crisis, rather than proactive change.
It's cute they think there's still a window. We're too busy doing a reboot of the entire 20th century
Just keep dangling that carrot, I'm certain it's already gone.
In the midterms, we need to vote in young people that will dump a shit ton of funding into Direct Air Capture of CO2, we can just take it from ICE and the excessive and exorbitant amounts we waste in the military. Also young people who will imediately reinstate the climate policys the gop got rid of.
US: "Right, right - we need representatives who actually have their own lives on the line, and will act according to their and our best inter--"
MAGA: "We're going to kill trans people."
US: "It's not like they're going to kill trans people - I think we got bigger short-term fish to fry: for example, there are still trans people left to kill. Let's give extreme right-wing authoritarian theocracy a shot for now, we can worry about the climate later!" votes for more Nazis
To be clear: DAC is at best a small and expensive part of what needs doing right now. Its basically an R&D project at this point, which gets marketed as the One True Solution by the fossil fuels industry because that marketing creates social permission to keep on extracting and burning.
Rapidly closing or not, keep fighting the good fight people. Buy less, plant some trees, avoid cars and planes and think before you vote.
We done. Any faint hope that was left is gone with Trump 2.0. This is what you voted for protest-non-voters.
Every tenth of a degree matters. We can't achieve no big visible changes. We can however limit how many we get and how bad it is. I'll be there fighting every tonne of emissions
That point was passed decades ago.
This isn’t just doomerism, this is ahistorical and unscientific. Changing course in 2005 or earlier would have us in a completely different world.
Feeling despair when the planet is burning is understandable and normal, but this is a prime example of a cognitive distortion. Every ton of greenhouse gases that doesn’t enter the atmosphere is harm reduced. 2.9 degrees C is better than 3.0, which is better than 3.1, and on and on.
Most importantly, the message being given out by actual climate scientists in this very article is that action is most important now, in the next decade, not that everything is already over. Insisting we’re already cooked is like laying down to die when you can see the end of the tunnel.
Completely different world, yes. Preventing irreversible climate impacts, no.
Of course the most important thing we can do from now on is always action now rather than looking back on what could have been, but IMO it's critical to the credibility of climate scientists to be honest about the damage that has already been done. Articles like these make it sound like it's all made up because the window has been "rapidly closing" since 1960.
The average life expectancy will drop by a decade compared to where it is now in 2025. It is too late to prevent that. Over a billion people will die from famine, climate disaster, or the disease and war that result from people trying to escape hunger and climate disaster. We have to make peace with that and make clear that these deaths are the result of people's inaction.
If we continue the current course for even just the next decade, life expectancy will drop by another two decades. Billions more will die. That is worth fighting to prevent with every fiber of our being.