Do You Think Climate Change Can/Will Actually Be Resolved?

[Moonface]

I've had this in my mind since it came up in UCT between a few of us over how hot the weather has been recently and @Maniakkid25 mentioning climate change.

Resolving climate change to any degree has been a discussion for as long as I can remember, what with the whole recycling your plastics and banning plastic straws, etc. but it's clear none of the stuff a regular consumer does will ever make any positive change to the problem. It requires change from a lot of countries and companies if we hope to see climate change being positively tackled at all, but whatever it takes, do you think the world will ever actually manage to do something positive about climate change? Doesn't necessarily have to be soon or in our lifetimes (although I expect if it's still an issue after we're all dead it's absolutely too late anyway I imagine), but just at any time in the future.

The optimist in me would like to see it dealt with to some extent, but the realist in me says it'll never happen. By the time enough people with the power to change things care, it'll be when it's too late and the problems climate change brings are devastating enough on their door step to no longer brush it off or offer empty gestures. I wouldn't even be shocked if climate change only gets better when it gets bad enough to wipe out the human race so that the problem causing it is entirely eliminated, kinda like how Earth only recovers in Wall-E after centuries of humanity no longer being on the planet.

[Maniakkid25]

Do I think climate change will be resolved before it can do any more damagr than it has done? No. Simply put, "human needs" has it's grip on the world far beyond anything else. However, I do have a small optimism about life on Earth. While we may be going through an extinction event entirely caused by us existing (the Holocene Extinction Event), I do have great hopes that life will, as the great movie says, "find a way" to continue on. After all, one of the most devastating man-made disasters, Chernobyl, has created an exclusion zone that wildlife doesn't just live in, but THRIVES vibrantly (edit: I wanted to check this to make sure, but no joke, there is a fungus that grows in the power plant that creates its food from gamma radiation from the plant!)! And I do believe that man can overcome the challenges it will face caused by this extinction event we have caused. But, sadly, that optimism is tempered by the fact that we have to live with the knowledge that our species is the reason it all happened.

[Karo]

I personally think the people in the power that could actually change something don't care and would rather just keep taking the money that various companies give them to keep letting them do whatever they want so in conclusions we are doomed.

[Mr EliteL]

I have no hope for climate change. I myself isn't "green" but just knowing what's out there and has been/has happened has the potential to happen again that it won't be anytime soon and agree it'll likely be too late once there is some kind of Movement/more attention and people actually following a solution. After the human race has gone and wildlife takes back the planet? Yeah perhaps, as Maniak just mentioned with that fungus as proof. Either once we're extinct ourselves or leave the planet, but we'll just start all over again on wherever the race ends up.

[Moonface]

Do I think climate change will be resolved before it can do any more damagr than it has done? No. Simply put, "human needs" has it's grip on the world far beyond anything else. However, I do have a small optimism about life on Earth. While we may be going through an extinction event entirely caused by us existing (the Holocene Extinction Event), I do have great hopes that life will, as the great movie says, "find a way" to continue on. After all, one of the most devastating man-made disasters, Chernobyl, has created an exclusion zone that wildlife doesn't just live in, but THRIVES vibrantly (edit: I wanted to check this to make sure, but no joke, there is a fungus that grows in the power plant that creates its food from gamma radiation from the plant!)! And I do believe that man can overcome the challenges it will face caused by this extinction event we have caused. But, sadly, that optimism is tempered by the fact that we have to live with the knowledge that our species is the reason it all happened.

I've never heard of the term Holocene Extinction Event before. I looked it up and learned that Holocene is just the current age, which I didn't know before.
As for that fungus, that's the one that's eating what is known as the "elephants foot" right? I wonder if that fungus could ever be utilized to deal with radioactive waste rather than just wrapping it in a ton of concrete and burying it or dumping it somewhere.

On the thought of radiation, I imagine Japan's ecosystem was practically non-existent after the nukes, but (while likely not perfect) has managed to recover from that, which is probably a much harsher circumstance to spring back from compared to whatever climate change can do, given the awful stuff radiation can cause. So if my assumption on that is correct then I would expect the environment to survive through climate change and make a comeback over time as conditions slowly improve and/or life adapts to the new conditions.

I personally think the people in the power that could actually change something don't care and would rather just keep taking the money that various companies give them to keep letting them do whatever they want so in conclusions we are doomed.

Yeah, but even if one continent were to care, that still leaves so many other areas that could continue screwing the planet that the end result would still arrive, but maybe just a bit slower. I also know some developing countries feel they shouldn't be forced to not take advantage of the methods used by already developed countries to reach the level of power they currently hold in the world.

Either once we're extinct ourselves or leave the planet, but we'll just start all over again on wherever the race ends up.

Oh god if we left the planet to go somewhere else we'd absolutely ruin wherever we go unless every means to do so was removed from us. Either way I'd hate that option because we all know it would be the rich assholes that contribute a lot to climate change who would be the ones to go off-planet for a do-over.

[Karo]

I feel like we should potentially be trying to find other renewable sources of energy, but with the gas industry lobbying to not stop. I don't think that going to happen. I don't really mind if countries that are behind in industrialization use a bit cause obviously they aren't on the same scale, but I do think countries that already have and are still not looking toward other energy sources really should be looking for alternative and fast! But since most of them are ancients that are going to die before the world get turned into a hellhole why should they care?

I guess after their dead they will be mocked for generations to comes as they rightly deserve by those of us that do survive and we will have less land to live on conservatives will try to cage those whose homes are destroyed by climate change as they flee from the devastation and worst weather events.

Honestly it really is sad that none of us really has any hopes for this.

[Moonface]

I feel like we should potentially be trying to find other renewable sources of energy, but with the gas industry lobbying to not stop. I don't think that going to happen.

Not every country has the degree of lobbying that the US does, and even then it also comes down to exports and imports. In 2020, the US exported more petroleum than any other export, coming in at $58.4B. That doesn't even include all the other oil based exports they do. The trouble is the US can't just stop that export, because it gives so much value when trading with other countries for whatever it wants to import from them. In comparison, $144B in cars were imported in the same year to the US, and $71B in crude oil was imported, which is more than the value of the refined petroleum the US exported.

By no means am I claiming to know how world commerce works between countries, but when the US is importing more than it exports in oil products and it brings so much value to whatever countries are selling it, I can't blame those countries for selling it. I know some places like Saudi Arabia basically have oil as their #1 export by a long shot, and while they could cut off the oil exports for the sake of the climate it comes at the expense of financial prosperity for their country and the ability to import things with the money earned from exporting.

[ShiraNoMai]

Capitalism prevents any progress that could potentially be made towards climate re-adjustment. It's already fucked, and as long as capitalism triumphs across the board on all the developed countries, there's next to 0% chance there will be any--even remotely--significant change towards fixing our already fucked current state of being. There's just no financial benefit SHORT-TERM for this to make sense for worldly powers to care. The disaster movies do have that thing straight: even when things are heading towards eminent disaster, the powers that be will STILL deny/continue to push for "haha big number". It's just how it is, sadly.

[Moonface]

There's just no financial benefit SHORT-TERM for this to make sense for worldly powers to care. The disaster movies do have that thing straight: even when things are heading towards eminent disaster, the powers that be will STILL deny/continue to push for "haha big number". It's just how it is, sadly.

What irks me most about this is how many powers seem to know that openly not caring is a bad look and instead come together for something like the Paris Climate Agreement, which to my understanding is about as worthless as the paper it's written on. Then again, I doubt a country leader openly saying "fuck the climate" would be political suicide for them, since I get the feeling that a large percentage of the general populace just don't care enough about it for anyone who does that to get kicked out the door on the next election.

It also never helped that "global warming" was the key term for climate change, which led to a lot of people questioning the validity of it when cold conditions were staying just as harsh as ever or getting worse. I've had to explain to my parents that it's a bad term to use and even I can admit when that was the only term I knew I would question how there's global warming when England had one of the worst winters I've experienced in my life in 2010, because going by the term at face value it would imply the winter would be warmer and have less snow.
That and many other things in recent history i.e. Covid have shown that changing terms or facts about scientific matters tends to be received poorly by a good chunk of people and results in the entire thing being dismissed or just downplayed.

[Karo]

I feel like the political position of most countries sadly tend to be, "IT sucks about the planet, but I need to increase my finances" which seem to be the very dominant global position so I think Nikki is right as long as Capitalism is the dominant system we won't see any meaningful change because most countries are capitalist in the world and the few that aren't? They can't really change the game and if you don't play along your country will suffer.

[Moonface]

The only way capitalism would be used to deal with climate change notably is if it became profitable to deal with it. If electric vehicles became a notably large market companies would start to put more and more focus on it because of the money to be made. It's why a lot of companies don't tend to use recycled plastics, because it costs more to use that for say, a new bottle of Coca-Cola than to just make a brand new plastic bottle from scratch.

[ShiraNoMai]

Yeah that's exactly what I mean. And like, a lot of those greener solutions, even if profitable, are profitable LONG-term, which was why I emphasized "short term" before; if it doesn't benefit them immediately, they have no impetus to go forward with a long-term investment unless they feel compelled to sacrifice short-term by some stretch of luck/insight to jump the gun on it. Unfortunately, in our current economic climate, there's a close to 0% chance of that happening--it's all about making safe investments at the moment cuz of our turbulent economy.

There's a chance we can hold out long enough for millennial and generation Z business owners to start making a shift in the economic playing field to make any of this viable, but chances are, the Earth is gonna collapse under our current conditions.

[Moonface]

Well, the Supreme Court has ruled on limiting the power the EPA has on regulating carbon emissions from power plants, at which point I wonder why the EPA continues to exist because I feel like any time I see it in the news something negative is happening to it. Still, pretty much shows there's not going to be anything to encourage companies to do better. I'm sure I'll still be expected to recycle a plastic bottle to do my part though.

[Maniakkid25]

Which is rather ironic, given that recycling plastic is one of the biggest scams the oil companies ever pulled on us, and I'm including how Standard Oil became a global monopoly! See, there are several problems with recycling plastics. Just to name a few:

• Plastics have a life cycle, and cannot be recycled past a certain point (unlike aluminum and glass)
  
• Recycled plastics take more energy to create than to simply make new plastics (therefore being further carbon-negative than new plastics, given that most power plants in the US are coal)
  
• Recycled plastics are not profitable, has never been profitable, and was invented in the hopes that one day it would become profitable
  
• Certain plastics, once they are made, cannot be redesigned or recycled without heinous byproducts forming (PVC, I'm looking at you)
  

The whole thing was designed to put the blame on US for USING single-use plastics, and not THEM for DESIGNING them in the first place! It's bulls***, no matter how you slice it.

[Moonface]

And I assume aluminum and glass are both more expensive to produce than plastic?

It's stupid though because a main reason everyone buys stuff in plastic is because that's how it gets sold to us. I will never forget in my previous job receiving a case containing packs of ice cream bars in a cardboard box, but when I opened the box to stock those packs they were also in a plastic wrap. So they had wrapped 8 packs in plastic, then placed that inside a cardboard box and shipped it. Completely unnecessary.