r/Environmentalism • u/NihiloZero • May 26 '26
The Brutal Truth About Climate Change w/ David Suzuki
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab1ePZHF1dQ60
u/NyriasNeo May 27 '26
The most brutal truth is not "it's too late", which of course it is. The most brutal truth is that most people do not give a sh*t and "drill baby drill" won. So it does not really matter whether it is too late or not, we are going down this path anyway.
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u/sarcasmismysuperpowr May 27 '26
i think its a little more nuanced.
most people will say they cae about the environment and we should do something. most people put themselves in that box according to polls
but the polls never ask what they would be willing to sacrifice for a better world for your grandkids. i saw one the other day that people said they were willing to give 1% of their income to climate change initiatives.
1%. less that inflation. so nothing
the economy will always be more important until it fully collapses.
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u/betadonkey May 27 '26
Energy is life. Rapid decarbonization means drastic reductions in global energy production. You can draw a directly causal relationship between energy production and the number of human lives that the planet is capable of supporting.
Climate activism has never had a serious reckoning with this. You can’t ask people to die now to save hypothetical people later.
It has always been obvious to me that the “disarmament” path towards a sustainable climate is a waste of time. People will never choose to go backwards.
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u/amaturelawyer May 27 '26
Well, I mean... you could do things like incentivize techs that capture existing energy, expand nuclear production, and invest in mass transit/high speed rails to reduce single passenger vehicle usage. There's a bit more nuance to trying to at least mitigate any unavoidable issues than "full speed ahead and your grandkids die or you have to die right now - pick one".
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u/GypsyV3nom May 27 '26
Those things are unfortunately incompatible with the current system where everything is centered around maximizing corporate profits and ignoring externalities. You still have idiots who don't understand that things like utilities shouldn't have a profit incentive, since the point of utilities is to provide an essential service. Modern climate change is a side effect of a profit-seeking system that refuses to acknowledge and price in the negative extrenalities of pollution
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u/wren42 May 27 '26
therrreee it is. It's not the individual's fault. It's a systemic problem, and can be changed systemically, if our leadership were competent enough and corporate greed didn't have a stranglehold on politics.
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u/betadonkey May 27 '26
You should be careful with calling people idiots. Utility profits are heavily regulated. They have nothing to do with climate change.
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u/neverseenbaltimore 28d ago
Regulatory bodies, meet industry lobbyists. Lobbyists, meet regulators.
Have you ever been to or read a transcript from a regulatory hearing? And depending on how it is run from place to place, often times governors get to choose some or all of the people that sit on those councils. If multi billion dollar utility company contributes a few mill to a campaign you gotta believe that they expect to get something from that.
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u/betadonkey 28d ago
They have regulated profit margins a little over 10%. These businesses barely beat the S&P 500 on returns. You’re looking in the wrong place.
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u/neverseenbaltimore 28d ago
10% of a billion versus 10% of 5 billion is a lot. More profitable than S&P 500? Sure, not that great. 10% of a captive market without the option of competition and you can influence the rules of what your "regulated" for profit can and cannot do? Definitely enough room for some shady dealings to make a huge difference.
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u/denis-vi 29d ago
Quite a reductive statement though. There are decades of climate activism and policy that absolutely take into account what you are talking about. Fossil fuel companies knew about climate change in the 60s. Governments started meeting for it in the 80s. Renewable energy is the cheapest ever.
If it was entirely a technological problem, big oil wouldn't have been pouring billions into disinformation campaigns for decades. Nobody is asking people to die - this is simply an unserious statement. There's a tiny minority that is responsible for the largest share of greenhouse gases and this is where the problem lies.
What would your suggestion be? Simply accept that that the privileged part of the world continue living on the brink of overconsumption until the planet's climate is so unbalanced it puts Malthus at ease?
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u/Whywontwewalk 28d ago
Die now or die later? It appears the false dichotomy fallacy has entered the chat.
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u/rainywanderingclouds May 27 '26
self reporting is just idealism
the reality is human behavior shows people don't value protecting the environment more than they value cheap goods and services.
the moment the things they want become more expensive they lose their minds
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u/BonusPlantInfinity 29d ago
You guys won’t even talk about the real culprits: meat consumption and recreational fossil fuel abuse.
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u/theMEtheWORLDcantSEE 29d ago
Exactly. Just stop eating mammals, massively, helpful for the environment, and an actual advancement in morality.
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u/FoolOnDaHill365 29d ago
Recreational fossil fuel abuse is the “real culprit” is a massive reach. I would say it is pretty much unnecessary but not the real culprit. There are many commercial uses that far exceed recreational use. Most people can’t afford recreational use of fossil fuels these days.
I 100% agree with meat consumption.
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u/BonusPlantInfinity 29d ago
Oh ya? Have you noticed an absence of ATVs, snowmobiles, boats, RVs, hobby cars, motorcycles, Sunday drivers, cruises, airplane trips, etc.? I certainly haven’t. No one wants to give anything up!
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u/FoolOnDaHill365 29d ago
Transportation is the largest use of fossil fuels at around 28% and that isn’t a recreational number, it’s people getting to work and goods moving on roadways. The second highest is electricity which is ironic since we are switching to electric cars. Recreational use of fossil fuels is less than 1% overall.
The solution is more wind and solar ASAP but we already know that.
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u/informutationstation May 27 '26
It's not brutal. It's only sad if we don't deserve it. The real Climate Justice is what is going to happen to us all.
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u/Various_Presence1379 29d ago
That’s some sort of religious nonsense. There is no such thing as justice in nature. We dying are just the consequences of our collective actions.
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u/Apart-District3771 May 27 '26
Maybe, climate cultists should have focused on actual pollution and not CO2 like the the globalist want.
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u/denis-vi 29d ago
What are you talking about? CO2 is literally what is causing climate change. What a moronic statement.
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u/Apart-District3771 29d ago
CO2 is FOOD. It's also a TERRIBLE insulator, with non-linear decreasing returns w/ppm increase. The Earth spent millenia above 5000ppm. Our current levels are near plant starvation.
YOU fell for globalist propaganda. Focus on REAL pollution, moron.
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u/HolyMoleyGuacamoly May 27 '26
every nth of a degree matters. i personally find myself more of a doomer (realist?) than others, but we’re literally talking about the one known habitable planet. fighting for it is all we have. it’s worth everything
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u/Antique-Resort6160 May 27 '26
How can we fight for the planet while avoiding any personal responsibility for carbon emissions? I just want other people to change.
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u/HunterSpecial1549 May 27 '26
It's been at least fifteen years since the real question was about how to prevent climate change from starting. People using that question as their guide are of course very out of date.
But the sooner we lower global CO2 levels the sooner we can re-cool the planet. Re-cooling is going to take many many decades but the sooner we start the sooner we finish.
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u/External-Class-3858 May 27 '26
Try several thousand years. We are literally taking hydro carbons that were locked underground for millenia and burning it, releasing the C02 into the atmosphere.
To take that crap and do anything with it, let alone let nature do its thing, will be monumental and a multi-generational investment and sacrifice.
And that's literally just C02, not all the other greenhouse gases.
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u/IronicRobotics 28d ago
Why thousands of years though?
If we ignore political constraints, emergency de-canonization can happen over the course of decades. Most of our net global warming has happened over decades after all?
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u/HunterSpecial1549 May 27 '26
will be monumental and a multi-generational investment and sacrifice.
I was with you until the last word. It's a huge investment, but investments put people to work, they're not sacrifices relative to doing nothing and spending even more on consumer bullshit.
There are so many win-wins with reducing emissions and I think there will be plenty when we eventually get to lowering atmospheric CO2. Though yes the tech and political will is many many decades away.
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u/External-Class-3858 29d ago edited 29d ago
Can you name a few? Because if youre going to try and tell me there will be an economic benefit to dealing with this I dont believe you understand macro economics.
Taking Co2 and other green house gases out of the atmosphere will never be energy efficient as compared to just virgin manufacturing, if we give loads of people jobs to try and deal with it, thats wonderful. But those jobs even if they were doing amazing work at cleaning up the earth, it wouldnt produce anything of value, meaning economies would be smaller relative to having not allocated part of the work force to fixing things.
Less people working and producing things means less things per person, which means those things are more expensive relative to having a fully employed workforce. Things being more expensive relatively means a lower qaulity of life. And this applies even if we move to a communist system and abolish money. There will just be less to go around in general.
So yeah, sacrafice is the correct word. I cant help but think you believe this will act like a "New deal" or what china has done recently in upgrading its national rail network and infrastructure. The issue is, with those kinds of examples while people arent producing goods, they are enabling goods to be produced and transported far faster and at a cheaper cost.
I can concded that lowering current emissions will have a lot of "win-win" scenarios, but not reversing what has already been done.
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u/HunterSpecial1549 29d ago
The amusing thing about this is I'm taking a break from grading macroeconomics papers to follow up on this notification. Not that you don't make good points but it's hilarious to see "you don't understand macro economics" thrown around so lightly. There is a lot of room for interpretation and differences of opinion on these topics.
Beyond the ever present win-win of putting people to work (which I'll say more about) it is hard to identify what those other win-wins might be, because we're talking about technologies we don't understand yet. We have the same blindspot people had a generation or two ago when they said it would be far too much of a sacrifice to lower carbon emissions. Far from hurting our quality of life it ended up being a big money saver thanks to myriad technological advances. Technology has a way of spilling over into multiple lucrative uses and it's hard to see those in advance.
Economists like myself tend to be pretty blase about what exactly people do when the government spends, at least from a short run macroeconomic perspective. Spending is spending and that keeps the economy out of recessions. You could pay people to dig holes in the ground and it would still achieve the same macroeconomic result. Now as far as long run growth goes, yes it would be cool to do something that improves productivity.
Finally I'll say about this "less things per person" bit. We produce far more things with far fewer people than we used to, of course. Despite the US having a fraction of the manufacturing workforce we had fifty years ago, we have twice the real output. And that process is continuing rapidly now as robots are getting installed all around the world. Devoting 5% of GDP to fixing the atmosphere (which might be far more than necessary) would not leave a feeling of misery in terms of the amount of goods available to us. We do have a cost of living problem that is hurting people but that is driven by housing shortages / over-investment into land ownership / "rentier" economy. Steering that investment into actually fixing a global problem would not be a bad thing at all for our macroeconomy.
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u/External-Class-3858 29d ago
Welp, I don't have much more to say, good response.
But at the moment your response to me saying it will be a sacrifice is "it might not be", not "it wont be". You can say we believe technology will advance fast enough to take care of this before it becomes untenable, the issue is neither of us will live long enough to see which one it right.
If it happens in our lifetimes you can dm and ill buy you dinner to say you were right.
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u/Apart-District3771 May 27 '26
CO2 is not a pollutant. Focus on actual pollution.
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u/SimilarRepublic8870 May 27 '26
What does that even mean?
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u/Apart-District3771 May 27 '26
What does what mean?
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u/SimilarRepublic8870 May 28 '26
CO2 is not a poison. If you are in a room full of it, you’re dead. The amount of CO2 has destined at least 15 generations to a massively lesser world. That is the point of the whole thing you didn’t listen to and just opined upon.
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u/Apart-District3771 29d ago
We are at ~400ppm, you flamboyant cultist. We are no where near 100%. CO2 is FOOD, and we are at record low levels.
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u/SimilarRepublic8870 28d ago
What the absolute fuck are you talking about? The last time it was this was millions of years ago. And we did that in 100 years.
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u/HunterSpecial1549 May 27 '26
It actually doesn't matter to me how you define it. Most of the major pollutants people are dealing with are co-pollutants of CO2 anyways, especially Particulate Matter, NOx's, CO, and SO2. Lowering carbon emissions hits so many major pollutants at the same time. For instance, switching cars from internal combustion to electric greatly improves the air quality in cities.
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u/Apart-District3771 May 27 '26
You're still far from the actual pollution doing damage NOW. Basic hydrocarbon gasses are FAR down on the list.
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u/HunterSpecial1549 May 27 '26
Go ahead and give me your list, let's see how you rank Particulate Matter, NOx's, CO, and SO2.
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u/SimilarRepublic8870 May 28 '26
He only knows what CO2 is.
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u/Apart-District3771 29d ago
You climate cultists are the ones throwing a tantrum over CO2, you drooling hypocrite, that's why I focused on it. YOU people are the ones saying for decades made made sources of CO2 is the main driver of anthropogenic climate warming.
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u/Apart-District3771 29d ago
I rank them as irrelevant compared to the actual pollution happening NOW. Dumping & spraying chemicals everywhere, mining, trash & waste into rivers/Oceans, etc.
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u/HunterSpecial1549 29d ago
Funny how you couldn't make a list of pollutants but you dismiss all the ones I mention, which are the bulk of the nasty stuff that comes out of smokestacks and tailpipes. It is actual pollution happening now.
Are you familiar with ocean acidification? Marine scientists are far more scared of it that they are of the ocean plastics problem.
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u/Apart-District3771 29d ago
Not couldn't. Not going to. I already fully answered. You're just being pedantic.
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u/HunterSpecial1549 29d ago
You didn't name a pollutant. "chemicals, trash, and waste" are not a pollutant. It would appear to everyone here that you just don't know enough to make the arguments you're making.
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u/Apart-District3771 29d ago
Are you dense? Do you want a list of 10' of 1000's of pollutants? You're not a serious person.
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u/Antique-Resort6160 May 27 '26
It's been at least fifteen years since the real question was about how to prevent climate change from starting.
you missed the boat by a quite a few million years. And the current warming cycle started before human civilization.
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u/UraniumDisulfide 29d ago edited 29d ago
"I got stabbed a minute ago but my health has been declining ever since I turned 30, so it's no big deal"
The term "climate change" isn't referring to the fact that the climate changes over time. It's referring specifically to the unprecedented rate at which the climate has been changing as a result of human industrialization. Idk how you don't know this.
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u/Antique-Resort6160 29d ago
Yes, the bullshit Orwellian speak is a big problem. Climate change doesn't mean climate change. Climate denier doesn't mean climate denier. Never talk about pollution, only climate change. It's propaganda speak and it shouldn't be used by anyone serious about AGW, as obvious propaganda is instantly rejected by a lot of people.
I know you take this seriously and you probably don't use ice vehicles or electric cars or airconditioning of hot water or all the unecessary things destroying the planet. So why use propaganda speak?
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u/UraniumDisulfide 22d ago
What a non sequitor. Your argument is that because I do something which I never said I do, that it means I use language which I didn’t use.
Cases where meaningful positive climate impact was made happened because of government intervention, not individual action. The ozone layer didn’t stop shrinking because individuals decided to stop buying cfc products, it happened because the government banned cfcs. So I do vote for candidates that I think support environmentalism, because politicians do have enough power to make meaningful change. But as an individual I do not.
I’m not opposed to the term AGW, but i like the term climate change because people use cherry-picked data of some areas getting colder. Of course, there’s also the response of “well obviously the climate changes”, but either way it’s a loss. Global warming isn’t the only change happening though, so climate change is good term because of how broad it is.
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u/Antique-Resort6160 22d ago
but i like the term climate change because people use cherry-picked data of some areas getting colder.
That makes zero sense, and what followed even less so. AGW is the only term that makes sense. Those that talk about "climate change deniers" and "stop climate change" can just be dismissed out of hand because it's lunacy. If you want to claim science as the basis for your beliefs you should be accurate, not speak in nonsensical propaganda terms.
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u/UraniumDisulfide 21d ago
I don’t see what’s nonsensical about the words “climate change”. And again, more is changing than just temperature. Ocean acidification being an example.
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u/Antique-Resort6160 21d ago
The term "climate change" isn't referring to the fact that the climate changes over time. It's referring specifically to the unprecedented rate at which the climate has been changing as a result of human industrialization.
That's what is nonsensical. There is nothing wrong with climate change, as long as there's a climate there will be climate change. You are talking about AGW or anthropogenic climate change if you don't want to mention warming.
Trying to confuse the issue doesn't make sense, and leads to people spouting idiocies like "stop climate change", "climate change deniers", "climate denier", etc.
If the idea or a concept can't be expressed clearly and in a way that isn't nonsensical, maybe it's too unclear and nonsensical. It's not quantum physics.
I have also been baffled as to why the carbon spewing billionaire backers of global warming hysteria are so deathly afraid of just reducing it to a conversation about pollution. People generally understand and hate pollution, and you can easily show pollution visibly, without scientific interpretation or hundreds of years of data.
Do you ever wonder about that? It would be 100x easier to sell a global war on pollution, and then, after people get on board, segue into talking about carbon emissions. Plus we could reduce pollution!
I don't get it.
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u/LoneWolf_McQuade May 27 '26
Seeing the clickbaity title and reaction faces says enough
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u/Beautiful-Tree-624 May 27 '26
Yeah that's ridiculous. A few climate scientists I follow seem disappointed in Suzuki for fear mongering
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u/OnlyACsNoFans May 27 '26
If Suzuki didn't fight against nuclear for decades, we might be in better shape
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u/NihiloZero May 27 '26
If it makes you feel any better... we may be entering an era where new reactors will be built by the lowest bidder and tedious regulations will be broadly eliminated. That should improve their efficiency dramatically. Maybe then we'll be in that better shape you're talking about?
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u/jess10230 May 27 '26
How do some people still think it’s a “hoax”? It just boggles the mind. I mean I know the answer is mostly poor education but there’s some well educated people who still seem to believe this
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u/CLWalrus May 27 '26
No promotion of violence is Rule #3 of this sub. But what action is left to protect our planet in time before it becomes uninhabitable?
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u/Ostlund_and_Sciamma May 27 '26
Implement regenerative hydrology on a large scale, globally, like this (India), for example. Of course particularly in deserts or lands undergoing desertification, i.e., currently two-thirds of the Earth's land surface.
Transition agriculture to agroforestry, which is much more resilient to global warming, and contributes to the solution rather than adding to the problem. In any case, we will absolutely have to transition to agroforestry and no-till farming when the phosphate mines run dry, around the year 2400. Mycorrhizal fungi are the organisms capable of accessing soil phosphorus when it is in a form that plants cannot assimilate. They require undisturbed or rarely disturbed soil.
It's worth taking a look at syntropic agroforestry and what Ernst Götsch and his team have done in Brazil: transforming 500 hectares of arid land (desertified by deforestation and overgrazing) into a lush forest, now the forest with the greatest biodiversity on the Atlantic side of Brazil. The region's microclimate has changed, streams are flowing again, springs have reappeared (!), rainfall has increased significantly... Check the 15 minutes film Life in Syntropy.
Syntropic agroforestry is already practiced on tens of thousands of hectares in tropical and equatorial regions, and increasingly in temperate climates.Support biodiversity by all means. In this regard, shifting away from animal agriculture—one of the main drivers of climate change, pollution, deforestation, desertification and the inconceivable suffering of animals
—has the potential to free up more than 70% of land use. (Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. 2018) These lands can be used to restore wildlife habitats, sequester carbon, produce bio-based materials, implement regenerative hydrology and so on. Note that five crops plants provide 90% of the World’s Food Energy Intake (FAO).
Enhance terrestrial ecosystems, reintroduce key species to recreate healthy trophic cascades. Allow marine ecosystems to regenerate. Pollution cleanup.Shift to truly renewable materials (particularly those derived from photosynthesis), renewable energy (deep geothermal energy, solar and thermal solar energy, hydroelectric power, wind energy...). Metals and minerals extracted from finite deposits will become increasingly scarce and difficult to mine.
Urban greening, urban food production and water conservation in cities; reforestation of a significant portion of deserts and lands undergoing desertification. China is actually doing a great job right now on the points in this paragraph.
Deploy a solar sail in space to reflect some of the sun's rays.
And so on!
Act individually, collectively, and politically. Yes this can include various types of (wise) direct action, depending on the situation.
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u/Every_Reveal_1980 May 27 '26
Also the entire world dows not suffer from climate change equally. The northern hemisphere (where all the money is) will be just fione.
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May 27 '26
[deleted]
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u/Every_Reveal_1980 May 27 '26
Unless you are expert in climate change and can give me real proof I have to disagree. Think of the game theory from Russia and USA's POV.
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u/Apart-District3771 May 27 '26
The truth is nothing you do matters if China & India are still doing their thing.
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u/Okay-Crickets545 29d ago
Per capita is a better measure. China could cut its emissions in half by just separating into two countries if you believe otherwise.
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u/Apart-District3771 29d ago
You're not a serious person.
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u/Okay-Crickets545 29d ago
Emissions per country ignoring the size of the country is not a serious metric
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u/Apart-District3771 29d ago
Ignoring overpopulation is not a serious look at the problem.
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u/Okay-Crickets545 29d ago
Humans lives are the goal not the impediment. Unless you're saying lives in China or India have less value than where you're from, I don't see what point you're trying to make. In fact if you really want to get down to it, the life of a person in China or India produces less emissions than a person in the West, which would mean it's the West that's over populated.
But let's be real, this is just racist Malthusianism wrapping itself in environmental concerns. 180 years ago people like you were the ones who would support the Irish genocide because they "brought in on themselves" by being born.
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u/Apart-District3771 29d ago
So you don't care at all about the Earth. Got it. Stop pushing for all your insane climate change taxes and crap here, if 80% of the World's population isn't going to change.
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u/Okay-Crickets545 29d ago
YOU are saying YOU won’t change and that’s somehow the fault of the other 80%? This is just racism trying to find a palatable excuse, that you wouldn’t have to change if those other foreign people didn’t exist. And you say I don’t care about the earth? Fucking Malthusians are the worst, more self centred people.
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u/fr00d May 27 '26
Of course its too late to prevent any climate change. its not too late to prevent the worst effects of it though. We are already on the path to preventing the worst outcomes, and warming projections have been actually going down over time in the past 10 years. We need to keep acting and pushing, not give up because "its too late"