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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday October 27 2019, @11:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the or-not dept.

A story notes that

[...] according to a new U.S. Army report, Americans could face a horrifically grim future from climate change involving blackouts, disease, thirst, starvation and war. The study found that the US military itself might also collapse. This could all happen over the next two decades, the report notes.

[...] The report paints a frightening portrait of a country falling apart over the next 20 years due to the impacts of climate change on "natural systems such as oceans, lakes, rivers, ground water, reefs, and forests.

Current infrastructure in the US, the report says, is woefully underprepared: "Most of the critical infrastructures identified by the Department of Homeland Security are not built to withstand these altered conditions."


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by julian on Monday October 28 2019, @03:59AM (10 children)

    by julian (6003) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 28 2019, @03:59AM (#912637)

    I'm always amazed when I see these sorts of comments because they're wrong on several levels, and at least one should be obvious to everyone. The most glaring flaw is that someone's personal actions have almost no baring on the truth value of their statements. A doctor telling his patient that smoking is unhealthy is true advice; the advice is no less true, nor the consequences less dire, for the doctor being a smoker himself. Putting carbon into the atmosphere is causing global warming, and that true statement remains true no matter how much carbon I personally contributed today.

    Then there's the more subtle problem which deals with a sort of tragedy of the commons scenario, and the ultimate impact of a single person. If someone asks me what individual action they can take to fight climate change my answer is to vote, and vote for candidates who accept that AGW is real and prioritize addressing it. If someone asks me if there's anything else they can personally do to fight global warming, the answer is, well...not much. Go vegan, stop driving, and don't use air travel if you feel like it. But there's really nothing an individual can do as an individual that will solve this problem. It's too big, too complicated, too multifaceted. What we need are systemic changes at the national and international level. That's the only way to get billions of people to efficiently modify their behavior, which is what it's going to take to move the needle on carbon emissions.

    For further reading you can start with David Wallace-Wells's excellent recent book, The Uninhabitable Earth. He addresses the flaws in the argument you and others make along these lines. It's fitting that you mentioned the depth and breadth of the war effort during the last century. Mobilization on the scale of WWII is, conservatively, the level of effort we would need to stop warming above 2.0C--which will still result in catastrophic warming and environmental change for millions of people.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by mhajicek on Monday October 28 2019, @04:10AM (7 children)

    by mhajicek (51) on Monday October 28 2019, @04:10AM (#912640)

    Thing is, an individual can influence global warming just as much as they can influence a national election. That is, hardly at all. But in both cases, it's critical that each person does what they can, for the collective effect.

    --
    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @04:30AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @04:30AM (#912646)

      Wooooooosh

      I mean you get it, but at the same time you don't. Very strange.

      • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @09:41AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @09:41AM (#912726)

        Or someone has used reason to come to a conclusion you didn't. Whoosh.

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @04:11PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @04:11PM (#912865)

          Nope, go look at the actual stats on pollution. Hint: the biggest polluters are not individuals.

          Also, hard to get individuals on board when a significant percentage actively work against advocacy campaigns cuz "muh straws!!"

          Keep running away from the problems, sure it'll hurt me and mine but yours as well.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday October 28 2019, @05:56AM (3 children)

      by bzipitidoo (4388) on Monday October 28 2019, @05:56AM (#912671) Journal

      Here's some things we can all do:

      Don't mow the lawn as often. Even tell the local politicians you want lawn care ordinances softened or repealed. Losers: sellers of lawn care equipment and services. Winners: Everyone else, and the environment.

      Push for smarter traffic lights. Losers: red light camera enforcement businesses. Winners: Everyone else, and the environment.

      Trade up to a more fuel efficient car. Or an electric car. Improve the aerodynamics, as exemplified with the Aerocivic: https://aerocivic.com/ [aerocivic.com]

      Add solar to your rooftop.

      What is so exasperating are these spiteful people who would rather waste their own money and call conservation gay, than accept improvements in energy efficiency.

      • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday October 28 2019, @02:21PM (2 children)

        by mhajicek (51) on Monday October 28 2019, @02:21PM (#912804)

        Move closer to work, or get a job closer to home. I'm about to close on a house that will bring my commute from 20 minutes down to 8. That will have more of an effect than getting a more efficient vehicle.

        --
        The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
        • (Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Monday October 28 2019, @07:19PM (1 child)

          by Osamabobama (5842) on Monday October 28 2019, @07:19PM (#912921)

          I just started riding the bus to work, raising my commute time from 45 minutes to 65 minutes. My costs have come down, though, as has my overall effect on the environment. I'm keeping my (non-hybrid) car because it's paid for.

          --
          Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
          • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday October 29 2019, @10:18PM

            by bzipitidoo (4388) on Tuesday October 29 2019, @10:18PM (#913464) Journal

            Yes, good ones, use public transport, and live closer to work.

            Can you telecommute, maybe 1 or 2 days a week if not all 5? Lot of companies are too paranoid about employees goofing off when not under the watchful eye of a slavedriving manager. I very much liked not having to spend an extra hour every work day fighting rush hour traffic. Rush hour makes commute times 50% longer, and flex time to avoid the peak is the least a company can offer for a desk job.

            Then there's suburban sprawl. A lawn is supposed to be some personal green space for you and your family, not a reason for a damned city to hammer you in yet another revenue extraction scheme, turning lawn care into a miserable chore rather than something relaxing. I'd rather not have a lawn at all and live closer to everything than have a postage stamp sized lot that city inspectors and busybody neighbors are watching constantly for violations.

  • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @05:39AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @05:39AM (#912665)

    I think you're missing the point here. If people genuinely believed that the world was going to end unless 'a sufficient number' of people naked with a chicken on their hand screaming To Cthulu We Praise - then you'd see a shortage of chickens because you'd damn sure see the world suddenly overrun with people running around naked screaming about cthulu. If they didn't really believe it, but wanted to signal their faith to Cthulu they probably wouldn't do anything themselves, because who wants to run around screaming naked with a chicken on their head? But they'd certainly signal their Cthulu virtue by making sure to encourage everybody else to do something.

    I think one of the clearest examples is on the coast. Most coastal areas tend to be urban areas. Many of these areas with absurdly high costs of living are ultra-liberal -- places like San Francisco, Palm Beach, etc. And indeed the hyper-wealthy in those areas are disproportionately you hyperactive pro-climate change folk. But isn't that kind of weird...? Spending, collectively, billions -likely trillions- of dollars on coastal properties that you're claiming will be destroyed within 50 years? And it's not like they'll be able to get out - once the real devastation hits and people see what's happening, the property values there will hit the gutter in a very short period of time. Yet not only is there no emigration from these coastal areas, there is an active migration towards them with an ever inflating coastal land value. This makes no sense if these people actually believe what they claim to believe.

    Ultimately, I think a salient issue is that humans seem wired to need conflict. As absurd as that sounds, it's probably a big part of what drove our evolutionary success. When you're never content, you will always continue to grow - even long after you've become the most dominant force. The "problem" with this is that the developed world has entered into an unprecedented era of peace and stability. And that seems to be driving many people quite literally insane. It could, for instance, even go some way towards explaining the skyrocketing rates of mental illness in developed nations. Peace and stability is incredibly boring. We need to an enemy, we need a cause. An invisible ever-present enemy that can only be defeated by completely revolutionizing the entire world? Why, you'd make Sir Don Quixote himself blush!

  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 29 2019, @05:37AM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday October 29 2019, @05:37AM (#913143) Journal

    But there's really nothing an individual can do as an individual that will solve this problem.

    And yet as you say this, others who are running around with their hair on fire are imploring us as individuals to stop using plastic straws and to stop eating meat.

    See, I rather subscribe to the "Be the Change You Want to See in the World" school of thought. You are correct that individually we can't do much to change what governments or the climate do, but we can certainly change what we as individuals do. At the very least we can refuse to be odious hypocrites.

    So if there are people out there who believe that eating a vegan diet is the best thing they can do for the environment, then they should do that. Good for them. But those motherfuckers better not try to take my steak away from me.

    If there are people who believe the world is overpopulated, then they should go have themselves sterilized or just refuse to have kids. I admire those who can practice what they preach. But goddamn them if they tell the rest of us we will be sterilized while they go have themselves 10 kids.

    In other words, "big systemic changes" that are forced on everyone, top-down, sounds like every dystopian nightmare I have ever read of or every dystopian reality that has ever been. Remember collectivization under Stalin? That was a big systemic change. The Great Leap Forward was also. Or Lebensraum and the Tausend-Jahre Reich.

    I believe in sustainable economies, and renewable energy. I believe in living lightly on the land. I have fought for those things my whole life. But what I abhor is how those noble things have been recently subverted by crypto-Marxists and proto-Gaians whose rhetoric is too chillingly close to the fervor last exhibited by the Red Guards.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.