i normally never post here in the current events forum (or make a thread in the forums for that matter) but i figured it wouldn't hurt to share this here on subeta: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48964736

found this through ig and found it quite alarming. debates over whether climate change is real or not aside, some lifestyle changes in society are really going to need to be changed in order to really do anything about this

some ways you can help fight (big or small any bit counts!):

• act.for.the.earth on instagram
• https://davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/top-10-ways-can-stop-climate-change/
• https://www.50waystohelp.com/
• https://greatist.com/happiness/ways-help-environment

the issue is much bigger than us, though with more people doing small stuff like this it could really help. of course there are some people who simply can't afford to change some of the ways they live which is understandable and should be respected.

thoughts on all this? please feel free to share any other info that could help <3

Yikes.

My thoughts on this are more to the tone of: The multi-million dollar corporations that are hugely responsible for spewing pollutants out into our atmosphere aren't going to do anything more than point fingers and blame the little person, while pocketing the money of killing of us.

That said, I'll do my part. I might not have kids myself but it doesn't mean I want someone else's kids to inherit a potentially uninhabitable planet. Because let's face it - the Earth will outlast all of us, one way or another.

My thoughts exactly. I'm sorry, but even if every human being on the planet lived as sustainably as possible unless and until we do something about the big corporations and their pollution we will not stop climate change. The best thing we can do is join political movements to advocate that change, and force politicians to do something about them rather than putting it all on the individuals.

In my opinion, this is the earth's way of defending herself from us. The human race as a larger whole is destroying the planet, and she'll be better off when we're all extinct.

yeah, i largely agree with the corporation thing as well. thats the one thing that'll be hard to get through to them sadly. still doesn't mean i won't try to do my part though. people have been planting thousands upon thousands of trees but even that won't help unless we try to do something about the pollution they make cutting them down. (amongst other things) i don't want to spend the rest of my lifetime in a world that is near uninhabitable or ravaged by pollution. that's the one thing motivating me.

Well, I guess this time got a bit diminished by the Amazon rainforest fires... :(

I guess my thoughts are climate change is akin to the Titanic ... everyone was like nah, it's unsinkable, and then when shit does hit the fan, some are still in denial, some people get left behind because they're in third class, some people manage to migrate, and some can ultimately escape because they're first class (like space exploration, underground bunkers, etc though I guess that's uh.. questionable in terms of longer term survival as it would be like getting away from the sinking of the Titanic and being stuck on a lifeboat for a looong time, hoping you have somewhere to escape to like a rescue ship, cause you can forget about land)

anyway, the point is, I'm pretty pessimistic about how we are handling the issue as a whole species I think the human species will survive planet earth through space exploration but to what degree of time? who knows

I don't think we have the infrastructures to make significant changes, and while some people can make a change, it's too little too late

and speaking of corporations, while I'm all for taking down the big man, we have to remember there's a thing called supply and demand

big corporations like H&M wouldn't exist if disposable, "fast" fashion wasn't a thing but it is car corporations? wouldn't be needed if people used bikes en masse and so on and so on

big change won't happen because we're too used to comfort and the status quo, we're still in the industrial age mentality of ooh shinier things, shinier technologies, must have the newest _____ or _____

and for big changes and impositions to occur we'd need something akin to dictatorship to implement changes and everyone loves democracy and their own personal freedom

I mean look at the refugee crisis at the moment and think how bad it will get when places like India run out of water quoting a fairly recent cnn article - "Demand for water will reach twice the available supply by 2030, the UN report said -- placing hundreds of millions of lives in danger." ""We risk a 'climate apartheid' scenario where the wealthy pay to escape overheating, hunger and conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer.""

and if anyone thinks people are going to stay in one spot and not migrate to try to get out of dire conditions then think again

so, yeah, rest in peace, mother earth, it was nice knowing you

I agree with many of your points. I believe big corporations, consumerism, the global movement of goods and the rushed movement of the world are to blame for climate change and global warming. I am definitely pessimistic about the state of our planet. We are experiencing a mass extinction event, the Amazon rain forest is burning, Greenland is melting and not much is being done to change any of how we have been living. We have more people living now than have ever lived, we are living longer and continuing to have kids. We have to realize at some point human population growth is out of control and unviable, but nobody will accept being told that they can't have kids.

I think we invested in green technology far too late, especially when you consider the fact that solar technology existed before oil. I think human short-sightedness on this issue will haunt us for years if it doesn't outright kill us. The planet will be fine.

I try to do my part to help even though I don't think it will ever be enough to have an impact.

I think the kid thing is a red herring. A lot of first world countries are noticing a decline in their birth rate, because of advances in economy/technology, the disintegration of "traditional" family values, etc. I don't necessarily think it's just the population count that's the main crux, but I see what you mean, population count sure could use a reduction through lowered birth rates as a whole!

Yeah, it's really sad, isn't it? D: Green technology just never picked up. I agree, it's short-sightedness and greed. How about we all eat in moderation, no meat, no dessert, go eco / solar with energy like utilise bikes to make energy for our homes, walk or cycle to work, stop ordering one day shipping for our packages which is inefficient etc? because it's too difficult, too radical, too expensive of a transition D:

then you have certain politicians who say things like wind technology is ugly and ruining the landscape /facepalm

People who should be caring, the people at the top, aren't doing their parts either, because they don't need to care, because they know when shit hits the fan, they will either be a) dead b) rich enough to escape to a more pleasant environment

Reminds me of when the Royals took a private jet to visit Elton John or something and he was defending them by saying he paid for it and he paid for the carbon footprint it caused, well, the issue here is that simply PAYING doesn't erase the carbon footprint, it takes time (like planting trees, etc. good load that will do when we see what's happening with deforestation lmao), and that's what the rich and famous fail to comprehend, they can't just pay to make the problem go away, they can't pay to erase their contribution because it already happened

I went to look up underground bunker offers, they got a place in America which is taking applications, I guess they failed to say you have to get to the middle of nowhere in time before things happen lmao. Wishful thinking, much.

On the glass half-empty side, big corporations ruin the planet and we as "the little people" help make that possible with our consumerism and comfort-aimed mindsets.

On the glass half-full, a company in the UK already invented an environment friendly fuel replacement, all it needs is to be implemented and mass-produced to replace regular fuel. A young man in his twenties made it his job to invent a machine with which he cleans up the ocean of the trash that us humans have polluted it with.

There are shitty people who think only about money and comfort and fuck the planet, yes. BUT there are also genuinely good and amazing people who have made it their actual jobs to heal the planet.

So I suppose what I'm trying to say is, instead of focussing on taking down the shitty people, because let's face it there will always be another shitty person to fall into their footsteps, let's focus on what we can do about it ourselves and how we can proactively restore the planet through our actions and devotion.

I know we all have bills to pay and have to make a living somehow, and we don't all have the ingenuity to invent planet-saving approaches, but until you try you don't know. And if you are stuck in your job because you need money just to scrape by and have no family to fall back to when you're broke, then all you can do is sign petitions of causes and let your voice be heard, and decrease your own footprint as mentioned in the OP.

If you however are lucky enough to live with your wealthy supportive family who will always physically and mentally support you, and you are physically and mentally healthy enough to work, then you have no excuse to not go out there and try to make the world a better place: invent something, nobody is going to do it for you, it starts with you.

Don’t forget to be active politically!!! This is the best way any one individual can help. Be an open voice in choosing your political leaders, and not just the main ones but the local as well. Never stop paying attention to your local politics and make sure your leaders know the environment is important. They have more power than we do, they can make change that the corporations have to listen to. It is only hopeless if we do nothing.

CLIMATE CHANGE: ARE WE ALL F*CKED?

This is a really good video on the subject. I'd also recommend people follow BuildSoil on Twitter.

I do think individual choices matter. Who you vote for or what you do politically matters a lot, of course, and a lot of large companies would have less of an incentive if people didn't give them their money. If you buy something that's bad for the environment on some level, you're sending the message that it's a profitable product that they should keep making. Of course, we're always going to be imperfect because it's very hard to live with a 0 carbon footprint and for many people it's impossible, but I think we should at least make an effort to put our money where our mouth is.

There's a thing as social tipping point, which means not most people must be doing something / having the same opinion, but only a small part ( 10 - 20 % , it's difficult to estimate) because most are like "meh" and will follow the herd. So, if you and your friend try to create a new norm, you might actually succeed, your whole friend group might change and they will change their relatives and co-workers. :)

Once it was normal to just dump your trash in the forest here where I live, today someone doing it would seem absurd. It was normal to throw your batteries in the trash can, now those doing it are embarrassed to admit it. Things change!

Become a member of a political party and be there and make decisions on what politics the party should have. Local politics matter, every lake has to be clean for example so your politics on saving the local lake matter, your politics on affecting local companies, local schools etc.

And, if we all changed our live styles we'd show the politicans we are prepared to change, if we don't show them that, the risk is that they won't have the courage to change the laws in the way they have to do to save the enviroment.

Oh and google "agenda 2030" to find some more stuff YOU can do :)

I'm not sure if anyone's still really reading this, but I think it's a very important detail/facet to the "consumer's fault in consumerism": (cough it's propaganda)

Hyperconsumerism wasn't a thing prior to the advent of mega corporate advertising and the development of PR (public relations) as an institution. Corporations have become masters of puppeteer-ing public opinion, and if they're "good" (at the money making machine), they know how to generate demand. When in the business of making money, you don't wait for rando's to come knocking. If you have a product and not enough demand, you create a market for that product. If you want to scrutinize the phenomenon that modern corporations have been taking advantage of this past century, I highly suggest reading one of the books that started it all: Propaganda (1928) by Edward Bernays. Because why bother with waiting for the invisible hand of the market to favor you when you can influence that where that equilibrium stands!

When marketing to children, it's very easy to influence children into thinking they are missing out if they don't have the latest fad toy. And H&M and fast fashion works because they target advertising at young people and tell them "hey look your peers are all fashionable and switch clothes all the time, you need to do it too": and then this idea disseminates enough by peer example (past actual adverts) that it doesn't need to be verbalized and it doesn't really have a specific root to tie into who said it first. Honestly, it's actually quite genius to make money off of parasitizing the adolescent (well, human) drive to find their tribe and try to belong. The advertising and pr is also responsible for normalizing women shaving their body hair in America - all they had to do was insinuate that non-head hair was dirty, and Gilette (and others) just reaped in razor (/depilatory cream) money from a demographic that did not purchase their products previously. And Got Milk has convinced a large portion of an entire American generation that dairy is an essential part of their diet, including overexaggerated claims that milk is beneficial for the human body (it's actually unsurprisingly not that good for you.. higher milk consumption is associated with higher chance of hip fracture when older as well as higher rates of heart disease, diabetes and cancer). Advertising and press relations tend to fall under people's radar because many of these messages become widely disseminated and parroted off by sources that aren't themselves.

Coca-cola is notorious for this thing, too. They used to only distribute in glass bottles, and had a "deposit" system (where the consumer can return the glass bottles to be reused by coca cola). But they thought washing and reusing bottles was getting too expensive so they publicly campaigned about how plastic was better - it was lighter to lift, and less likely to crack/break on the way home - and the public bought into it. Nowadays they put money into organizations like Keep America Beautiful, which was responsible for the "litterbug" campaign - make public opinion about plastic waste that Cola-Cola (and others) are responsible for manufacturing a consumer problem: specifically, convince the public to deal with the trash among themselves by shaming people who "litter", redirecting public rage away from those responsible for extraneous packaging towards end-users of their consumption. They spend their money on these kinds of things INSTEAD OF ACTUALLY FUNDING RECYCLING PROGRAMS (they literally have scheduled "we will increase our % of recycled plastics in our bottles" every 10 or so years, but repeatedly fail to make on those promises and hope nobody notices because it's been years since they said anything about it). '

So, market exploitation via manipulation of public opinion. It's technically a relatively new development for our species, at least as a tool that reaches the masses (the public, the consumer). It's pretty difficult to combat (when propaganda is abused... yes sometimes it's for the greater good like health awareness or getting everyone vaccinated, but it is what it is, a tool, and can be abused), especially when the public isn't given proper tools to judge for themselves without a biased viewpoint - 1. crippled education system & 2. sometimes it takes extraordinary digging to find that widely circulated studies about certain topics were funded by corporations who have a stake in making money off of cherrypicked results. And humans as a species haven't changed all too much in just a hundred years, so succumbing to marketing tools designed to exploit our natural drives shouldn't be victim blamed onto the (mass) (average) consumer. The onus is on corporations calling the shots on what they publicly disseminate, etc, driven by how much greed they can get away with... neoliberal capitalism as it is right now only cares about capital and exploitation of labor, laws, regulations, public opinion and natural resources.