Natural world close to collapse

Plans don't suit me. I go where the wind takes me.

Chicago?

Really?

Isn't that exactly what "complete ecological collapse" means?

Translation: this makes a good lever to institute the reality-impaired economic and political policies I want, therefore we'll use it that way. We need to have the Right People (of which I, obviously, am one) in charge to rule over the masses. For their own good, of course.

Tell me more. Especially about option B.

Curiosity.

What level of evidence would you require before you acknowledged there is a problem and it is of our own making?

You misunderstand. I already know that it's a huge problem and it's human-made. What I object to is using the crisis as an excuse to mash everyone's rights and liberties. Better to address the issue by motivating change rather than draconian World Domination schemes.

Where I know humans will want to survive I also would like to hear more about option B. I am not going to go around trying to kill anyone, but if humans are so stupid they shit their habitat to death the universe goes on. I am not terribly concerned. The warning has been given and if society wants to let Donald trump lead us into an ecological Hell I am probably not going to see much of it. If we are going to turn things around I am not going to go buy a pickup truck and put a coal burner on it, but if the world is not turning around so be it.

Fair enough, but what happens if our current systems just don't cut the mustard so to speak? What happens if we find the societies we have created simply won't support the changes that are required?

I have no idea if that's genuinely the case, but so far we do seem to be paddling in a tidal wave. The questions which we really will be forced to ask at some point may require us to have those conversations and weigh up what compromises we can justify making in the face of necessity.

Would you, I'm guessing, be in the first instance opposed to any compromise on our current values?

Well, not unlike Dayton, you've jumped to a rather significant conclusion without actually reading the thing first, haven't you?

Also, define "motivating change". Is that translation for "do nothing" and hope that the same governments and corporations that are - in full knowledge of the fact - causing us to hurtle ever faster towards disaster, simply decide to do things differently?

If anything is to be done isn't it those governments and corporations that have to decide to do things differently?

You don't have to "choose to be poor" to be conscious of what's happening around the world.

If anything, it's the wealthy corporations that are responsible for most of the pillaging and destruction. And sure environmentalists like to scream at I dividuals that purchase Brazilian hardwood, but the fact is you can't purchase it if government ban the sale of such items period.

By your own admission, you struggled to understand what it was you even fucking read.

No, I'm not going to do your homework for you or engage in your bullshit any further.

No, it mean public awareness campaigns, education, pilot programs, presenting the science, that sort of thing. If people are too fuckin' stupid to see the trainwreck approaching, then they deserve to go extinct.

Yep. QI (Brit comedy quiz show but which deals in "Quite Interesting" facts) recently pointed out that a cup of tea (milk, two sugars) - which is usually about 250ml, takes 52 litres of water to produce in terms of the agriculture behind it (growing the tea bush, raising the cow, the sugarcane, transport costs....).

Cows make a LOT of methane because their ability to convert grass into meat/milk protein is low. My university does a lot of work on breeding forage grass that has a higher sugar content to give more energy to the gut bacteria in the cow, thus reducing this waste nitrogen.

As people demand more Westernized diets, this gets worse. More plant-based diets are better, but meat is SOOOOO good. But we could eat more chicken and less larger livestock.

You're right.

Welcome to what we've been TRYING to do for the last few decades.

Fuckers don't WANT to be motivated, or like to be lied to by assholes who are too invested in profit to give a shit.

At some point, you stop telling the patient to lay off the booze and start considering liver donors.

I'm a really big fan of the environment and improving environmental conditions but these doomsday scenarios make me just roll my eyes

FTFY

They already know and they pay off environmental scientists to lie and manipulate data in the company's favor.

People have been hearing the impending doom message for decades now and have become entirely desensitized to it. So, the alarmist claims have to get bigger--only 12 years left to save the Earth! And as the claims get bigger, so do the demands for power and control.

Because the demands for power and control are what it's really all about.

New ways for governments to get tax revenue too

According to the propaganda, the part in Sweden where I live was supposed to be flooded by the year 2000.

Is there a problem? Sure there is. Part of it is overreliance on fossil fuels and scaremongering about nuclear power. But the motivations behind the "environmentalist" parties are reactionary to a fault.

Which part of the evidence presented do you dispute?

He doesn’t know, he just knows which lines to repeat.

The 30+ years of alarmist claims that failed to materialize.

If you ignore the shit that happening now, sure. The arctic is so melted that the Trump administration is now trying spin it as good thing because ships can go through it. Don’t worry about the planet, there’s profit to be made!

You mean claims like the shrinking of glaciers and polar ice caps that is actually happening, or the bleaching of coral reefs that is really happening, or the increasing acidity of the oceans that's really happening, or the mass die-off of various insect species that's really happening, or the slowly climbing average global temperature that's really happening, or the increasing CO2 levels that are really happening, or the shifting weather patterns that are really happening, or the increasingly violent and damaging storms that are actually happening, or . . . ?

That doesn't answer the question though. Those could be anything, from claims made by cranks, to serious predictions that have since been revised, to things which have happened but which you don't care about.

If you are unable to dispute the evidence then it appears that you simply want to ignore the issue on ideological grounds.

We warned y'all.

Again?!

You know what @RickDeckard ignores is that I actually proposed an international government program to address at least part of this problem in my "If I Were President" thread.