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elshankar t1_j9cz4s9 wrote

We past the threshold for taking action on climate change several years, if not decades, ago. Meaning that even if we had zero emissions starting tomorrow we are already doomed to face wars over food and water. We can do everything within our power, but melting ice caps, thawing tundra, and wild fires will displace so much CO2 that nothing we can presently do will help.

We'd be better off focusing on new technologies for producing food and drinking water rather than focusing on climate actions. Carbon capture might be a potential solution, but not until we get rid of the idea of carbon offsets, as those are just a worthless ploy to allow polluters to continue to pollute.

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hibelly t1_j9d1u6g wrote

I'm so fucking glad I didn't have children.

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funwithtentacles t1_j9d5tli wrote

Same here and thank whatever deity you subscribe to for that!

I do worry about all the young nieces and nephews I have that are born into this crap and will just have to suffer through it.

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dofffman t1_j9glk8r wrote

yeah. my one brothers kids are super young too.

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FrodoBagHodler t1_j9edlyo wrote

Every night I feel more guilt about having kids

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MedicalFoundation149 t1_j9fnw48 wrote

Don't, life is beautiful and bringing more of it into the world is a good thing. Besides, overpopulation isn't the problem anymore, it's aging. More kids will help with that problem.

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dofffman t1_j9glq4s wrote

Its oftentimes happenstance. If I had went a different career path that had gained traction quickly enough I might have had kids in the late 90's before I realized how messed up things were. Late 90's me thought recycling was being recycled and we had a handle on things and would only work harder to do more as a society for the environment.

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eliser58 t1_j9d1xvw wrote

And focusing on population reduction. Our planet can not support the ever burgeoning population.

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[deleted] t1_j9d362w wrote

What do you mean by population reduction

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funwithtentacles t1_j9d5j5k wrote

We really don't have to do anything...

Diseases like Covid will eventually take care of overpopulation.

It's nothing new either... Even I 30+ years ago in basic high school biology we were taught that monoculture invites disease...

None of what we're going through now is anything we didn't know 40-50 years ago.

As a species we're just experts at complacency and ignoring everything that doesn't impact us directly...

It's going to catch up to us one way or the other...

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JustinVieber t1_j9dd6df wrote

Education and available contraception, with those our population will plateau to a manageable level rather than overshoot and crash in massive death.

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eliser58 t1_j9djw9c wrote

Reducing population by not reproducing with such blatant disregard for the future. In my opinion humans who feel the need to procreate could be satisfied with one child, for the good of the planet. Down vote away!!

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MustLovePunk t1_j9dnbj0 wrote

Free vasectomies / TL (and other birth control) for all humans would help

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Eveleyn t1_j9dzxp1 wrote

Look man, i get your thinking, but we share the world with humans. Like Bert from Congo would care.

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Trance354 t1_j9g23ao wrote

There's a certain irony in our population hitting the point where a disease carried by one of our major food stocks is on the verge of killing off a good chunk of our population, mostly because we are denying the fact that the threat exists, denying the lifesaving powers of the vaccines we could save ourselves with, and in so doing, prolonging the current pandemic, which is just a warmup for what's coming.

Vaccines are my friend, but if my friend isn't embraced by everyone, a single mutation could doom us all.

Evolution in practice.

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user_dan t1_j9ds8kh wrote

The solution in the 2017 IPCC report was stop putting CO2 in the atmosphere, CO2 capture and refreeze the poles (throwing up particles to deflect sunlight). CO2 capture alone is not enough.

The reason to continue moving to renewable is that they are cheaper and less resource intensive. Lots of logistics involved in fossil fuel discovery extraction, refining, transport, among other things.

Even if we started today, we have to deal with destabilized climate. More disasters. Etc. Eventually, we will have refugee crisis. A proposal is to start building cities now (or soonish) in the north to make the process easier.

Not sure we are dealing with a doomsday this century, but we will be dealing with a mess from wilder and wilder weather.

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tahlyn t1_j9d3ipl wrote

We've entered the realm of positive feedback loops... Warming begets more warning and it cannot be stopped.

Enjoy life while life is still worth living.

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[deleted] t1_j9ekczf wrote

I remember reading "the sixth extinction" and "field notes from a catastrophe" several years ago and just immediately thinking "oh ok cool so we're totally fucked".

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Trance354 t1_j9g2o9y wrote

Yeah. Sums it up rather well.

We keep passing the buck to the next generations, they may not exist to pass the buck to, in the near future.

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Trance354 t1_j9g120m wrote

What's worse is that we can't do shit about what's coming. We are, at best, 20 years behind the environmental curve. What we did 20 years ago is haunting us right now. What we will be dealing with in 20 years, we are doing right now.

The glaciers will melt. The resulting sea level rise will cause more warming(snow/ice reflects solar radiation, the dark ocean absorbs it), causing more glacial erosion, causing more sea level rise.

It won't be Water World, and it won't be The Day After Tomorrow, but the result will be somewhere in the middle of that and what we have now.

What the world will look like will be anyone's guess. It isn't just sea level rise. Desalination, warmer oceans, more powerful storms, the breakdown of the North Atlantic current, followed by breakdowns in other currents, will all effect where humans will be able to live, what crops will survive, and what we will be able to live through.

You think the sudden invention of space tourism is odd? Companies want to put a base on the moon. A self-sustaining base. Where do you think the ultra rich will go hide, when they've finished extracting everything from earth?

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tahlyn t1_j9d3h0c wrote

We've entered the realm of positive feedback loops... Warming begets more warning and it cannot be stopped.

Enjoy life while life is still worth living.

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