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This comic is TERRORISM according to Trump’s Republican Party!
“WE ARE ALL DOMESTIC TERRORISTS” -CPAC 2022
This comment is anticapitalist and therefore terrorist…
Lemmy is anticapitalist and therefore blocked by the Great American Firewall.
Dissidents will be reported.
Hopefully Trump will die of a stroke before before his third term
The problem is, there are egotistical maniacs with nukes trying to enslave society for the benefit of the 1% or to satisfy their own ideals while sacrificing everybody else’s needs/safety. If they decide to nuke everything, there won’t be a world left to protect against even this.
Yes, lets blame GenXers, who despite being in their late 40s and 50s, have almost ZERO power because the boomers wont fucking retire already. We’ve been fighting with boomers over climate change (and everything else) since it was called “global warming” back in the 90s. Don’t put this shit on us when the majority of us don’t want this.
I mean, in us terms, genxers broke the most heavily for trump. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/20/cherie-westrich-alt-rock-gen-x-maga-00033769
Sorry, I guess that was a bit unearned. I slipped it in there because I was trying to work out the age of the teacher and he seemed too young to be a boomer, plus Space Jam is too young for boomers.
Eh I tried to make a funny, failed
Yes… But only because we have bills to pay… Also, fuck you
deleted by creator
Ironically, the ‘ozone hole’ crisis is a perfect template for how climate change should’ve been handled.
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Scientists identified an existential problem.
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World leaders got together and agreed on a solution (banning CFCs).
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It was inconvenient (screwing up refrigeration and other industry at the time), but the public nodded and went along.
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Problem solved.
As it should be, with everyone staying in their lanes. Lifelong specialists analyzing the problem, leaders acting on what experts say, the general public humbly recognizing their civic duty and deference to experts.
…Then those roles broke.
Apparently, boomers and others concluded “well that was awful. Why did we do that? Let’s not listen to scientists anymore, question them, and complain very loudly the next time this happens,” as if they’re the experts now. Leaders took advantage, and I suppose scientists turned to public activism which only fed the trolls inflaming it.
Not to discount the effect of Big Oil lobbying/propaganda. I suspect that wasn’t such a thing back in ‘ozone hole’ times.
Acid rain is another great example.
You are missing the step where the experts weighted in and created an alternative capable of maintaining the same societal benefits with minimum losses. It’s between steps 1 and 2.
That’s a good point TBH.
To add up, we are close to that now with solar and batteries. But we are still not there.
And you can see the revolution going up all over the world. The US is resisting it a bit, but even there solar is gaining space.
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The ozone hole was caused by a different man-made chemical. After 10 years of use, which caused 3 generations of problems, the ozone holes are slowly, very slowly, closing.
Has nothing to do with greenhouse gasses, however. And Earth’s global temperature is still rising.
You’re…you’re kidding, right?
Because we all know the ozone hole is what is causing global warming right?
Looking at this more benevolently, the teacher might be wishing that this kid’s generation will end up being more conscious and willing to act than his own.
Yah I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the message in the context it’s presented. It’s a fucking teacher. They are already doing not just the most they can, but also doing something far more effective than butting heads with a corporate-driven world at a time when environmentalism was seen as fringe and ludicrous by most people on Earth.
It would be different if it was some wealthy corporate CEO saying “I’m leaving this for the next generation to solve.”
I remember a time that even a teacher saying this to a student would be considered inappropriate activism about a controversial topic.
I remember a time that even a teacher saying this to a student would be considered inappropriate activism about a controversial topic.
…Like right now?
From my perspective (millenial) raised in a conservative area, climate change discussion went from ‘kinda iffy in the past’ to approved to expected, then suddenly lurched to more taboo than I’ve ever seen.
I can’t even discuss it with my college-educated older relatives without them ranting about it. It’s a total taboo; they think I’m nuts for even bringing it up as an existential problem.
I can only imagine what parents would say if teachers said that now.
I’m sure it varies a lot from area to area, in the US especially, but having grown up in the olden times, there was in fact a time when the idea of climate change was about as fringe as flat-earth and aliens, and even talking about it like it’s a serious issue would get most people removed from their positions or laughed at by the population broadly.
There are a lot of teachers who now encourage and promote climate science. How much of that is actually heard and accepted? That’s a whole other issue as our education system is now eroding well below whatever standards we had or should have had.
In most of the developed world climate change is now being accepted broadly by even many conservatives, but the new argument is if the change is human-caused or if it’s even harmful (literally, there is a oft-recycled argument on the right that higher carbon levels will mean healthier plants and forests.)
There is a current narrative regression going on right now simply because of Trump and entirely because of Trump, giving people the validation and support to pretend climate change isn’t real, but it’s temporary. I’ve seen how leadership influences societies and how radically the figurehead of our country changes how people think and feel. It doesn’t matter what he says or makes other people think though, the world is broadly preparing the best we can anyway, with many coastal cities and the Navy creating plans for giant infrastructure projects.
Humanity’s carbon footprint has been a distraction. All that money and effort (green energy legislation, carbon caps, etc) could’ve been funneled into geoengineering for proper long-term solutions.
Even if humans were eradicated, the habitability of Earth would only be prolonged a bit. So the idea that we just need to emit less carbon is just kicking the can.
I’m no subject matter expert, but I imagine, if there was scientific consensus as to what’s a sensible geoengineering change to make, then we would be on that immediately. Oil companies could invest a fortune into that and it would still be beneficial for them.
You’re right, and there is no consensus. Companies, and even current governments, are ill-equipped for solving long-term problems. Especially a problem that won’t be a net harm for like 60 years.
My point was that all that money could’ve gone to a real long-term solution which requires a lot of research (and which humanity will need to finance eventually anyways). Reminds me of people who spend more money on car repairs than what the car is worth. They see a mechanic bill of $400 and think it’s cheaper than buying another vehicle. It gets it running for another 4 months. Then a dozen bills later…
“Another 4 months” for current climate change policies is like “another 50 years”… being generous.
Reducing carbon emissions is a temporary solution, buying a couple thousand more years. Taken to its most extreme, it requires human industry to ultimately cease and thus make it even more difficult to solve the problem permanently.
Personally, I don’t think that more research will particularly change our outlook on that. Anything “geo-” is incredibly political.
Even if we find a solution that genuinely just reverses the effects of climate change, there’s gonna be some regions that see short-term disadvantages from that. Or even regions that merely imagine some catastrophic weather events were caused by making the planet cooler, even if they would’ve been hit by worse on a warmer planet.
Those regions may go against all reason to stop the geoengineering from happening.
It also has to be said that the CO2 in the atmosphere isn’t just pumping up the temperature, it’s also causing ocean acidification. Corals get dissolved by the sea water getting less alkaline. And corals are the basis for a whole lot of life on Earth.
Which is again one of those points, where I just don’t see research finding much better of a solution than algae and trees. You can hardly beat or improve the efficiency of just letting nature happen.
I guess, we could start pouring lye into the ocean instead, but we’d need quite a lot of it. So, I’m also not particularly convinced that it’s more cost-effective than letting nature happen, even leaving aside the problems we could cause with lye build-ups.
Where did you hear that nonsense?
It’s common knowledge that humans are accelerating climate change, they’re not the sole source of it. 🤷
Cynical take from today’s fucked up point of view: The teacher was woke and entirely wrong. The proof is that climate change is still not happening today. Caring for the environment is economic terrorism. There never was anything to worry about in the first place. Drill baby drill.
But climate change IS happening, and already observable.
You don’t say. It’s almost as if I was deliberately obtuse.
Yes.
… next question?
When you’re young you experience the world, when you get older you keep the world working for the young to experience it, and when you’re old you wish you’d made it work better so you could’ve really experienced it.
Yep. And your generation will do the same, and it will go on like this until it can’t be ignored anymore, because that’s what humans do, whatever the age.
until it can’t be ignored anymore
At which point the fascist governments people have voted into power will keep on going as they were while murdering some convenient scapegoats, until mass scale industrialised human society collapses, never to recover because we used up all our resources.
Edit: I honestly think people don’t quite understand that once all this bullshit collapses, there will probably never be another high tech civilisation on Earth again: all the easily extractable resources will have been used up, and the amount of energy required to extract more would be higher than what will be available once oil-based hydrocarbons have been more or less used up. Magic batteries that require a ton of resources won’t fix the situation, and we have no large scale replacement for oil.
The large scale replacement for oil is the original source of that energy, the sun. Sure it will take a while, but high technology (read small computers) doesn’t actually require hydrocarbons, it just requires knowledge of physics. Modern society is based on hydrocarbon fuels because they’re so convenient, but that doesn’t mean it’s required for any of our technology to function. We will likely be combusting hydrocarbons for the rest of our existence, they’re just too convenient for energy storage, but the source of those hydrocarbons could easily be specialized cyanobacteria farms or direct chemical synthesis. Both of those technologies already exist, but we have never done any significant investment in them because they would have to compete with basically picking up what’s already lying around. In the absence of significant oil deposits we will be forced to make those technologies work.
All that still requires other resources though, and I’m not convinced that something like direct synthesis would be viable considering the energy use – renewables don’t generate energy from thin air, but the systems usually require eg. rare earth materials (which need to be mined, which currently takes oil, and then the systems need to be produced which requires more energy)
You may not know this but oil comes from cyanobacteria or algae blooming, dieing, and falling to the bottom of ancient lakes. We can farm them better than they could ever grow on their own in nature, just like we do with corn, rice, wheat, and a hundred other crops. The only complex part would be the scale required. We have the technology to industrialize hydrocarbon production that way today. Life isn’t magic, so there’s no reason we couldn’t do direct synthesis with more controlled processes. And yeah it’s going to require resources. Everything does. It’s just pretty fatalistic to think we won’t be able to bootstrap ourselves up to current technologies without oil when we’ve already done it once before. Oil just makes scale possible, not the technology itself.
It literally cannot be ignored anymore.
“You don’t miss the water until the well runs dry” has never been a more true expression. People expect that if something is going wrong here’d be immediate and apparent consequence. It seems like a vast majority of people completely lack the skill of extended foresight, where one can look at a current situation and see how it can accumulate into a worse situation later.
A great example of this was my mom during COVID-19:
“All this pandemic talk is just nonsense. I’m not seeing people dying on the streets, now, am I?”
If the effects of climate change aren’t immediately apparent with some big global disaster happening overnight, then it’s not a big issue or simply not real.
If eating something that causes long term health risks doesn’t immediately make you sick overnight then it’s not a big issue or simply not real.
I agree with everything you’re saying.
And unfortunately as a life-long resident of white suburban america, I know how comfortable life still is for so many people, and how the culture of “ignore that problem and we’ll be fine” continues to pay off for people with a little privilege in their life.
As for your last point, that is literally how I feel because I know for a fact that I will die from water wars before it matters
If water wars start in my lifetime, it’s game over for me. I will not let myself live through that shit.
Check out Ethiopia and Egypt, Pakistan and India, China and Vietnam/Laos.
Some are more hot than others but these are all conflicts over lowering water levels and increasing demand. Even within the USA, there are conflicts between states in the southwest and with Mexico over the Colorado river kind of… Just not existing anymore.
That’s what I’m saying, people don’t deal with problems until they’re forced to.
And climate change, while having effects all over the world, doesn’t affect everyone with the same intensity, so the luckiest among us can afford to ignore the problem longer than the rest. Of course the luckiest usually are also the ones with the most power to deal with these issues.
Keep kicking it down the street.
Humanity doesn’t do shit unless the problem is holding the door open with a foot stuck between the door. Then the rest of humanity who the problem hasn’t gotten to yet will point and laugh at the person experiencing the problem because reasons. At that point nobody will be too eager to jump and help, lest their door get stuck too by the problem.
How did 14 people understand this
Proper punctuation marks at the end of the comment.
I love this art style so much.
Yes.
Well, they are definitely making death more appealing every day. So there is that.
narrator: yes, yes they did.
