90% of the population can’t do anything because they’re not organized. Collectively, we have power.

I think most of us are resigned to this situation.

We’re not good at popular organizing. We’re very good at finding ways of othering factions, which the elite are glad to utilize.

We’re good at consolidating power. We’re not good at utilizing that power to serve the public. Hence billionaires don’t even think of charity work except as a means to preserve power.

The human species may be doomed to extinction or a cap on technological progress. We may just be tribal hunters too attached to dominance hierarchy to reach into space and colonize other worlds.

Or we may be stuck in a perpetual cycle where we just form feudal empires that poison the world for another epoch.

The solution — if there is one — is sociological. We figure out a way to diffuse political power so it can’t be consolidated. We fix dominance hierarchy and tragedy of the commons. We figure out a way to teach people that everybody (even the ones that disgust us) are part of the community and deserve regard.

Until we find it, we’ll continue to let elites hold all the resources and poison the earth with impunity.

If you follow this, this is the “give up” argument. Fuck that. I’m not giving up.

I get into this headspace often, but try to remember that all human systems are subject to being disrupted and dismantled, no matter their power or influence.

This is also implying that common everyday people actually have control or can influence the situation.

Here’s why I take issue with this statement:

• this ignores collective/mass action
• this disregards the few government entities that actually do serve public interests, albeit imperfectly

An example of an individual creating meaningful positive change is teachers. Most people have had a great teacher, and larger schools have greater reach and influence, thus an individual with many students over a period of time can make a big difference at the local level. And one of those students can rise to prominence and do further good.

Another is some benevolent nonprofits that seek government funding to maximize their reach and support of the community. Often they’re run by one or a small handful of folks. If they’re lucky, and prepared, they can affect positive change for many, like community garden organizers.

There can be a large volume of good change from a single person’s actions because of influence. Not saying that it’s a fast mechanism for change, but I refuse to abandon it. Because although it’s likely the only solution we have, it’s still one that is fueled by will and daily choice, which most everyone can enact in small and big ways.

Frankly, if we could just put solidarity of the working class first, we outnumber them.

90% of the population wants to do something

I always thought a significant majority wanted change, but I recently learned that a surpassingly large amount of people are against it outside of my social bubble. Even young people (about 20yo).

A lot of people seem to make up their minds about these topics with very little information. They blindly repeat the things some politicians spout, even though it’s complete BS. And when I question them about it they seem to actually know very little about it. They get uncomfortable and try to avoid the discussion, but their opinions still mostly stay the same.

It’s frustrating, and it has given me a lot less hope that we will be able to deal with it.

This is also implying that common everyday people actually have control or can influence the situation.

They can, but the trouble is they have to be willing to go to prison (or be killed by police) for eco-terrorism.

Common everyday people can influence the situation. For example, we can build bombs and set them off inside gas plants.

No, I don’t expect you to become a suicide bomber. But this is the truth: how much change you can accomplish is directly proportional to how much effort you put in. I’m putting in effort.

To me the saddest part is that it’s more like 99.99% of us want and know how to fix things, but 0.01% control everything. There are something like around 3000 billionaires worldwide…

Despite the fediverse’s reputation for leaning leftist, I feel like such a stranger with how often I find myself arguing that the collective action and solidarity of the working class can and has improved the material outcomes of nations, with or without the capital of the owner class, and with or without the approval of the government.

Fight in whatever way makes sense to you. Some people will carpool or use less hot water. Some will put peer pressure on wealthy acquaintances. Some will alter design requirements or RFQs. Some will [redacted] a pipeline. It all works towards the same end.

Yes, this is the fault of the owner class, but who do you think is going to force them to change if we all sit on our hands and say, “I dunno, man, that sounds like someone else’s responsibility.”

People are also realizing that it’s not going to be the literal end of civilization though either.

Climate change and the crisis is happening as we speak. Tornados in February in Wisconsin. Temperatures rising. Jet streams changing.

But that doesn’t mean everyone dies. It mostly means huge impacts on mostly impoverished nations creating a larger refugee a crisis others don’t even want to handle.

People joke constantly that Earth will be fine, humans won’t be.

The reality is that humans and anything we absolutely need will be fine. Almost every other thing we can’t or don’t want to conserve will die.

Nothing will take us out short of a stray meteor large enough to make the globe molten or enough nukes regularly to send us into winter for decades. Even average nuclear winter humanity will get around.

The point though isn’t just survival. It’s striving to be as good as a shepherd as possible to our home planet and others we share it with.

That’s hard when 1% destroys it for profits to keep peoples retirements going because they refuse to pay a decent wage.

I’m not advocating violence.

But, some people are saying that it won’t take a milita but only a small amount of brave individuals acting separately and willing to sacrifice their own freedom to agressively disempower a tiny set of billionaires. One at a time and as a surprise.

I’m in the United States. Conservatives are currently pivoting to their new “climate change is inevitable, and therefore we must seal our borders to protect America from climate migrants and give more subsidies to big corporations and fossil fuel companies whose technology will maintain our standard of living” talking point.

The more people panic about climate change, the more persuasive that argument becomes.

Human rights are one of the first things to vanish in disasters. When people are scared, they agree to give up their rights. When people are scared, they close their eyes as the government violates other people’s rights.

And the more frightened people are about climate change, the more they’ll turn to authoritarian demagogues who promise them safety.

Hope is vital. Because once people give up hope of saving the planet, all that’s left is an ever more vicious scramble for ever fewer resources. And once you decide that’s an inevitability, the only logical thing to do is get vicious as fast as possible.

Panic without hope does nothing but accelerating issues

Good thing human population growth seems to level off and start dropping after awhile.

Population growth is not the biggest factor, that is just fascist/racist propaganda. We are just used to overconsuming

human population growth is the biggest driver by far

I argue that the biggest driver for CO₂ emissions at the moment is not population growth, but rather the rise of the quality of living in high population low income regions such as China, India, etc.

preserving quality of life should be the stated objectives

Does that mean you also want the many inequalities to remain? CO₂ emissions per person are spread as unequal as wealth. Demanding that people are allowed to continue living far above the carrying capacity of the Earth while others live far below is not a solution to the problem.

People argue something along the lines of “spending a lot of energy gives a good quality of life” and to some extend this is true. Though when people spend an hour or two to drive to work in a private car 5 days a week that doesn’t seem like a good quality of living to me.

To fight climate change without having to miss out on a good quality of living it’s important that people get the most “bang for their buck” as far as CO₂ emmissions are concerned. I argue that things like watching Formula 1 drivers, owning private jets or even just doing long communes to work by car are among the WORST bang for your CO₂-buck anybody can get. Riding a bike, having a picnic in a local park or commuting via public transportation (which lets you do other things like playing on your phone, reading a book or chatting with people while waiting) seem to be way better options.

In that case, why are Chinas emissions hoing up, when its population is shrinking?

Population growth matters, but the real issue is consumption. Intresstingly people have fewer children in urbaized socitied, when they have all basic material needs meet and womens rights are improved. So we just have to meet everybodies needs to a reasonable level and have to reduce emissions. Population is solving itsrlf at that point. If we did that global population would peak before 2050 and fall to about 6billion by the end of the century.

You’re not going to get the people who can affect change to care by putting forth quality of life and life on the planet as driving factors.

The carbon footprint propaganda was invented by BP. Just a friendly reminder.

No, we should all take bath salts so we’re more likely to literally eat the rich. That’ll speed it up overnight.

How do you get that?

Too late: fuck it we’re all dead, burn petrol!

We’ll be fine: we’re good, Earth will be fine, burn petrol as you need.

Essentially saying it’s ‘too late’ tends to make someone care less about the climate, which is actually worse in practice than straight up denial because of the behavior it encourages.

This is the most Lemmy take lol

You need hope.

If you have no hope, why would you try to fix something? If people don’t try to fix something, it’ll never get done.

So ask yourself, do you want a better world?

That’s worrysome, and is indeed an enormous problem - probably the biggest problem humanity has ever faced.

What bothers me about this situation is that it makes easy measures that “buy time” look like a good idea. Like dimming the sky with particulates, or increasing sulfur emissions. Both of which will cause environmental damage on their own, and screw with renewable solar and wind, but it’ll keep the global solar gain down. I’m not a fan of these kinds of approaches either and would love to see everyone do a hard pivot to dramatically less fossil fuel and more renewable, fission, and (eventually) fusion power.

Meanwhile, short of converting CO2 into carbonates, graphite, and diamond, I don’t know of any sequestration methods that seem anywhere near as permanent. What’s kind of sad is that even gaseous sequestration would probably work okay-ish in old gas wells that aren’t fracked, but there’s probably not nearly enough such storage to make the difference.

This ignores exponential scaling. Most of the marginal carbon in the atmosphere was added recently; the early Industrial Revolution is a rounding error compared to what we’re pumping out now.

Similarly, with exponentially scaling technologies, capturing the carbon (somehow) could also accelerate incredibly quickly, with the right technologies and investment.

Even ignoring fusion, the Earth gets a lot of energy from the Sun. We could solve this problem within a decade once we figure out the technology and political will to get it done.