#Doomerism is both an easy and effective way to resolve the cognitive dissonance related to how you benefit from the destruction of nature.
When you get yourself to believe there is no way to prevent a complete ecological breakdown, you effectively get a carte blanche to not change anything.
If you still get doubts, you can add mental fortification by believing in a hobbesian war of all against all, and reject all hope of cooperation between people.
It's one hell of a drug.
It's long been clear that electrifying cars without also significantly reducing the number of cars, is not nearly good enough.
This study shows just how bad the plan car companies are trying to sell us really is.
"Electrification, including moving the phase out date forward, results in cumulative emissions 7 times greater than the Tyndall carbon budget for the 'well below 2 °C and pursuing 1.5 °C' global temperature target."
I've been uneasy about the way optimism is being used in environmental discussions, but for a long time I couldn't quite put my finger on what exactly is the problem.
Then recently I had a moment of clarity.
In this post I argue that there are two dimensions to optimism, and then apply them to the discussion around the climate and ecological breakdown.
#ClimateCrisis #ClimateChange #optimism #activism #gemini
Homework is like your boss waiting by the exit to give you assignments to do by tomorrow morning. We're essentially teaching our kids they have to do more hours than what they agreed to in order to not get fired.
I believe solidarity between the labour and climate movements is key to building counter-hegemonic power. This is a very promising weak signal that this uniting of forces is beginning to happen.
#ClimateChange #Labour #solidarity
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/first-signs-ecological-class-struggle-germany?s=35
"Deploying [CDR methods] to remove CO2 from the atmosphere is pointless until society has almost completely eliminated its polluting activities."
Can't be overemphasized. #ClimateChange #CarbonCapture
Lex Fridman* proclaims that #AGI is exciting because it will "empower humans to flourish, escape poverty and suffering and to succeed in the pursuit of happiness".
I find these kinds of statements to be extremely baffling. Do they actually think it's not enough intellect that is the reason poverty and suffering is maintained in the world? All we need is better reasoning? Don't they know there are already mountains of rational arguments?
* I know, I shouldn't give him the time of day.
Might it be that the people who believe #ChatGPT (and others) will change "everything" are also people whose own work is pretty darn close to "bullshit/jargon as a service"? And maybe these are also the same people who have the most influence in media?
And perhaps when hearing these prophesies we should all first make sure they aren't just projecting their own experiences to areas they don't know anything about?