timst4

How about we find a way ti stop our atmosphere from turning into Mars’ first?

Reading the first chapters about the American Chestnut made me cry, and I’m not prone to crying. I had to put the book down for a week, and re-examine some of my beliefs about nature and mankind.

Our world will burn up to a crisp before anything like this comes to pass. Human Nature is borne in selfishness, and anytime I read the words ‘Save the Planet’ I begin to twitch.

Humans will continue to travel at the fastest speed to the most desired locations that they can afford as often as possible. Altruism is great as a neighborhood-level practice but as public policy, it is leading us to an extinction event.

Carbon needs to be priced at true cost upstream for any changes to happen. If it costs $100,000 to fly to Nice, guess what? You’re going to stay home and find a new appreciation for Vancouver. Or, if your desire is great enough, innovate a means of travel that you can afford.

More importantly, articles like this are deleterious to the actual work of degrowth and drawdown. These are existential problems at scale. We need to get real about human nature and stop imagining we can recycle or electric car our way out of the looming extinction event.

These planes if they ever take off from the ground will be nearly empty of passengers. Oil prices will be cost prohibitive for this sort of travel and they should be. Our energy sector and biosphere are in the midst of a collapse and we are pushing to put more CO2 into the air pps? So the elite can shave precious hours off of commute times?

When you walk down the quai along the Seine in Paris, there are used book kiosks for kilometers. The bouquinistes have been there for many years and maybe they are the true enduring heart of French values. Americans consume TV like the French read books, at least in the capital. It is no surprise the overall awareness of the population is far more attuned to the realities of a modern world. America has outsourced their perception of the world to megacorporations hell bent on profit. Reading is an ethical act, and it is also a necessary one (we are finding out) for Democracy.

Oh I can assure you it’s alive and well. As a Middle School CS teacher it gets annoying. Each time I have a kid declare to the class, “Look, I’m a hacker,” I have to stop what I’m doing and explain to them that no that’s not hacking. It has started some good conversations about how they can hack stuff in their own home, but mostly it’s a bit of a distraction. So, thanks for the teachable moments throughout the years.

Fascinating that his Gaia hypothesis came after his research with Royal Dutch Shell. It’s amazing how early we knew fossil fuels were destabilizing our biosphere.

This man knew we were heading towards an uninhabitable world and screamed at the top of his lungs, but corporate growth was more important. Persephone, indeed.

He may have walked back his prediction of earth being largely uninhabitable by 2050, but I have a feeling he was only slightly off. The sad truth is that 50C is coming faster than you realize, and this man was crystal clear on the subject in the 1990s.

Speaking of disequilibrium, this is almost the same question that is plaguing the American Southwest regarding water. Is there a point that Las Vegas becomes unlivable? Is it when the lake runs dry? Is it when water has to be pipelined from desalination plants? Is it when water costs more than oil? In my opinion there is a fail point here; however, many in the 1% do not believe it’s will happen. The perpetual growth train is still on the tracks and steaming away.

I’m an avid hiker , but I’m also 44. I can hike 8k on a daily basis but occasionally do longer backpacking trips where I hike 20k a day for a few days. These trips tire me out though and it takes a few days to recover. Keep at it. It’s a great way to see Nature

As much as I am for nuclear energy, your question is rather naive. The first mention of CO2 warming was made in the early 1900s and the research was definitive by 1981 [0].

The reality is that there was a coordinated disinformation and obfuscation campaign made by Exxon, Shell, BP, et al. They sacrificed our planets Goldilocks zone for 50 years of corporate profit.

Certainly grab your pitchfork. This is a human atrocity that will soon trump all others. But the ones you should be skewering are sitting in boardrooms right now figuring out how to squeeze the last few dollars from our planet before wet bulb temperatures reach 50C.

[0] https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha04600x.html

Unfortunately we know exactly what’s happening: the climate is warming at a non-linear rate, chemical pollution is at or near extinction levels, fresh water supplies are becoming more scarce and privatized, the few own the majority, and war is on the horizon. What exactly are we doing about this?

The real problem is hyper-normalization. Humans will one day soon normalize their own extinction.

Interactive PFAS contamination map: https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/map/

There was an article on HN recently talking about how Americans spend less per capita on groceries than almost anywhere else. However, this is not the good news it seems to be on the surface. The race to the bottom in groceries and produce (ahem, Walmart) has lowered the nutrient density of produce while at the same time pushing cheap processed foods that provide cheap sugar, fat, and salt. I’d be interested in seeing how many Trump-voting counties also predominantly shop at Wal-Mart and the effect this has on health outcomes.

Climate also plays a part. I was just on Spruce Knob last weekend and saw lightning bugs in late May. Never in my life have I seen them before mid-June and this was at 5000 ft elevation. This disruption to their annual cycle can’t be helping numbers

Yes, this is a big factor. Water is too cheap - similar to carbon. Both need to be priced higher soon or we’re toast.

You should be FAR more worried about PFAS, micro plastics, environmental estrogens, and their links to cancer.

However, DuPont, Dow, 3M, and BASF are very skilled at giving their poisons very innocuous names. Maybe viruses would be wise to have in-house PR teams as well…

Here’s another tip: Grow a Biointensive Garden

-Use raised beds or Hugelkulture to increase yields. -Use sq foot gardening to plant more in less space -Develop a three stage compost pile. Import food waste from others in your neighborhood if needs be. -Grow year round with cold frames -Use cover crops to enrich soil over winter

Thats how you garden to eat my friends

https://www.amazon.com/How-Grow-More-Vegetables-Possible/dp/...

Certainly. However it will not change, at least it will not change of its own accord. A Declining birth rate is merely a symptom of cultural anxiety and despair.

The post-war generation is enormous and they living longer than any generation ever has. In nearly every developed country they hold the power and the capital, and they are short term focused in every possible way. They plan to drive the bus into the brick wall at full speed to protect the last few minutes they have to enjoy the ride.

Articles such as are a thinly veiled demand for fealty. Why aren't you having more children? Why aren't you buying into the world order we created?

Not really surprising. Perpetual growth is a myth, and there is no silver bullet to prevent climate change. Permanent warming and its consequences are now a foregone conclusion. Younger people see the writing on the wall, and birthdates in developed countries will continue to fall.

Countries should begin to manage the draw down of population rather than see it as calamity. It will happen either way.

Lots of politically charged comments here, but I actually work with students on a daily basis. It’s not about politics, people.

Social media does play a role, but not in the way most would argue. All those saying it is an addiction are correct, but I would expand it to include most of the teen internet as well.

The thing is they don’t use technology like you do. They are CONSUMED by digital media if they don’t receive boundaries from home. Their lives are dominated by the virtual - memes, tiktok, news, Netflix, YouTube and they have been since an early age. They know this is not a healthy lifestyle and yet they cannot tear themselves away. Many are hopelessly addicted to the point of sacrificing sleep, food, and relationships to technology addiction.

Meanwhile, most teenagers are well aware of the problems they will inherit (climate, political divide, cost of living, etc) from the previous generations. I had to talk 7th graders off of a ledge this week after one student started a discussion about the latest IPCC report. However this alone isn’t the problem.

It is the vast DISJUNCTION between these two worlds that causes them stress. They have been raised by predatory technology into a world full of greed and a collapsing ecosystem. They are caught between virtual consumerist addiction and despair about reality on a daily basis.

Super heavy stuff for anyone to deal with.

You are correct that nature will not wait for politics. I hope I am wrong, but the following seem absolutely certain:

-climate change will happen as Hemingway described going broke: gradually and then all at once. -The Central Valley will fail and there is no plan B. Food prices will be exorbitant and unobtainable for many during the transition. -Over the next 10-20 years direct sunlight will become unbearable. This will make laboring outdoors difficult, dangerous, and costly work. -One side effect of the warming upper atmosphere is the alteration of cloud formation conditions. -Over the next 30 years we will lose cloud cover, in some places almost entirely. This will accelerate the moisture loss in soils and create permanent dust bowl conditions across most of the American West. -Wildfires will begin to propagate in places that traditionally have had few. -Access to abundant fresh water and cloud cover will be the largest determinant of land value in 10 years.

I can’t recommend Maslow’s 1966 Esalen lecture enough.[0] He speaks of the existential purpose that is the driving force behind self-actualization. Of course, Capitalism sees weakness in spiritual rigor and would attempt to exploit such an idea; however, his description of purpose as phenomenon was personally quite inspiring.

[0] https://www.esalen.org/podcasts/abraham-maslows-1966-lecture...

We will look back on this moment in American history as a tipping point. I’ve said this before, but these solar panels are a blazing metaphor in the story of climate change.

A little heavy handed? Possibly, but I very much believe the election of 1980 was the deciding factor in climate change. Jimmy Carter told people to turn down their thermostats and aimed to wean America off of foreign energy. In the fall of 1979, there was still a possibility of a future of renewable energy independence. By January of 1980, that light began to dim. Reagan, dear friend to industry, ruthlessly pursued deregulation across the board and doubled down on petroleum, coal, and gas. By the end of the Reagan Bush era, any chance we had to start the slow painful transition away from fossil fuels was long gone.

There is another reason why this election from 40 years ago meant so much. 1981 was when the first research was released by NASA scientists (James Hansen, et al) showing causation between CO2 release and warming in the upper atmosphere. [0] It’s laughable to imagine this paper hitting Reagan’s desk. Rather than forming energy policy, research like this was buried. Moreover, the cover the Reagan administration provided the coal and gas industry gave them the time they needed to form a robust disinformation campaign. Plastics recycling? SUVS in every garage?

In January of 1980 we were already headed towards 4C of warming by 2100. We just wouldn’t realize it for another 30 years.

[0] https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha04600x.html

I took a class with Nuel Belnap, Logic 1500. He spent an entire 90 minute class explaining the logical implication trees behind an incident where he fell and hit his head while walking his dog. Fascinating mind!

Here’s what’s worked for me - gradual change. I started IF on weekends by skipping breakfast. Then I moved to weekdays too. Now, after 6 months I’m One meal a day.

Same with exercise. Walk a certain amount on weekend days until it’s a habit. Then try weekdays too. Then increase the length.

tldr: play the long game

Drawdown

I’m sure, this wasn’t your intended arena, however, I write for Beanz, a kids coding magazine for the 8-12 year old age group [0]. It’s the best I’ve found for learning the basics of computing.

I was a subscriber before I wrote for them, and it’s articles are far and away more information dense than almost all other kids magazines.

[0] - https://beanzmag.com/

Freedom is a gift that is on loan to you. Use it wisely.