Yesterday, planet Earth took its first step over the 2.0 degrees Celsius barrier
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This level of idiocy creeped me out. Climate change has been known since the 1970's. Everybody with half a braincell knows the IPCC reports are underestimating things badly, even if they were correct we were going in for a rough ride, political investments are below what these reports require from us, and the small amount of money spent is badly mismanaged.
I can't blame her alone personally. She's a child of her political generation. But that generation has only seen good times and is completely incapable of doing anything in a crisis. They'll keep going trough the same old motions, and feel very sorry for us when disaster inevitably strikes.
Unfortunately, the average voter agrees with her. 'Eco realism' is the preferred course, and even the Belgian green parties care more about integration than climate.
Flanders is a small region, and climate change is so huge and multi facetted that no nation on its own can do it. Its the ultimate case of death by a thousand papercuts.
But we are a rich region with a lot of industry and research. We should be able to develop and deploy partial solutions locally. In fact, we should be able to get richer by exporting these solutions.
We're also owning Antwerp, one of the biggest ports in Europe, so we partially decide what Europe does or doesn't buy. Brussels is next to our border and a lot of us work there. Flanders has an outsized impact on the EU. We could put our thumbs on that scale if we wanted.
And in particular, Soylent Green.
I'm not ready to call "we're doomed" (yet), and it is probably just natural variation, but it's scary none the less.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/16/world/middlee...
I have no dog in this fight, but integrating someone from a very similar culture is just so much more easier. Also, let’s not pretend that a huge percent of random people just joined the war refugees. I still think that taking in refugees was/is a good idea — but they should have done what Canada did, send a military plane directly to Syria, pack it full a few times, and that’t it. Every country should have done the same depending on their capabilities, put those people into some rural areas so they have to integrate with the locals (which also would have helped greatly as rural areas are dying out due to not enough children being born/younger people moving to bigger cities), and call it a day.
I'm sure the US had nothing to do with it. They just came later to exploit some abandoned oil fields. /s
And don't do "/s", which I see you post often. This is HN, not Reddit, and sarcasm is considered poor form here.
In the last 5 years I became convinced that unless some very very very strong and forceful measures are taken by governments all over the world to be more eco, we are in for something that people can't fathom.
Unfortunately, moderate steps would be too late now, and when governments and people become ready for less moderate steps in tackling climate change, it will be irreversible. I am atm convinced we already passed that threshold, but I still would like to see much more green change, maybe there is still some chance...
Now what's your point ?
Hardly. Higher temps in temperate climate zones, and higher CO2 in atmosphere help, yes.
But many warmer areas will become too warm for almost anything to grow. Let alone agriculture.
Increased rainfall is a blessing in some areas. But (increased) floodings are a curse elsewhere.
Agricultural zones will move towards the poles. See how that works out on a globe: smaller area.
And quickly changing climate + more regular weather extremes increase the chance of crop failures. Not to mention collapse of ecosystems. Or spread of diseases & pests. Or that a tree killed in a drought (or wildfire!), takes 50+ years to regrow.
All in all: bad news.