this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2023
349 points (97.5% liked)
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
5392 readers
312 users here now
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Unwillingness not inability.
A meaningless distinction. Assuming for the sake of argument that there are actions we can take that would solve our predicament, we are unable to persuade the people, governments, and various powers that be to take these actions. That is inability.
To suggest that is not inability reminds me of the joke where the mathematician sees his room on fire, and sees the fire extinguisher, and declares the solution obvious and goes back to sleep. Politics is real.
The distinction is a meaningful one.
I didn't stop the Holocaust - I couldn't. I wish I could have, but that's not on me. On the other hand, if I was able stop it and chose not to, that'd be evil.
Now scale up from what seems like an extreme example of millions of people to billions of people and a huge chunk of all the life on earth.
Inability to defeat republiQans then. We can address climate change in 1000 ways. We are able.
It’s not a meaningless distinction, it’s a key distinction. If the headline said “2023 is when republiQans publicly agreed to destroy the planet” it’d have a very different effect. It’s hardly meaningless.