this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

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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: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world.  About 1C of total warming.  Second chart:  about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability.  Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases.  About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 1 week ago (4 children)

8 metres of cars??? What is that these days, one ford f150?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

I exclusively drive strech limos

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 week ago (3 children)

great. but why don't we go double and also take 8m cars off the road?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (10 children)

I didn’t eat meat today so apparently I took 8m cars off the road.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Let's aim for at least a nice billion.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 week ago (26 children)

"I want to help save the earth!"

"Great! Eat less meat."

" . . . . No."

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 week ago (16 children)

I mean, I’m 90% veg for environmental reasons mostly. But every time we share this narrative that the effort needs to be on us while the true culprits are literally upping their consumption is fucking sick. Don’t guilt people for not doing 1% of what is needed while the people/corpos doing the other 99% are pushing this “personal responsibility” narrative and literally created the language to deflect blame. We should be way more upset and spend 20000x the effort shaming and shutting down those organizations.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

It doesn't matter if you put 2000x your effort into something if it has no effect. If you spend all your day shaming these corporations on lemmy that won't do anything. So the question should be what actions can make an effect?

Protests don't really do much. Electoral politics, at least here in the u.s. , are completely captured by these corporations and will never truly challenge them. I doubt what just happened in NYC is a valid tactic either. A revolution or even just a general strike is pretty much out of the picture right now.

The best and only way to get at the mega corporations causing all the climate change is to boycott them. The meat industry is burning the Amazon and emitting tons of methane, boycott them and eat less / no meat. The fossil fuel industry is lobbying congress to deny climate change while increasing production and emitting more every year, boycott them and buy less gas by driving less or taking public transit.

In this capitalist hellscape the only real choice we have is of consumption, and choosing what to consume and more importantly what not to consume is the only real way we can effect the system.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I've seen very few 8 metre cars on the road...

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Visit the US, look for "dualies." 6.5m long trucks and people use them as daily drivers.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

That's too dystopian for my mind to even imagine...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

That's because I ate less meat, duh.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago (3 children)

If eating no meat at all is too hard, from a climate perspective eating no beef will have the biggest impact. Eating no ruminants to be specific, but hardly anyone is eating bison/sheep/goat on the regular.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I went like 90% vegetarian and switched to the meat substitutes. If I can do it, anyone can. I've always had a meat-a-saurus diet until 2-3 years ago.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've only met one person who couldn't go veg, because they had allergies to everything: soy, legumes, nuts.

There's been a lot of obsession with protein in popular culture when in reality unless you're a bodybuilder you don't need a ton and a veg diet will suffice. And there are tons of vegan athletes.

The point I was making is that there is one step even the laziest can take to have an impact: just stop eating beef. Going full veg is better of course.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Lamb is popular in the UK. Beef is actually behind chicken and pork already.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Hey how about you cut down on private jets and I keep eating my burgers

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Yeah right, eating less meat smells awful lot like "calculate your carbon footprint"

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (11 children)

While I support not eating meat, I am also realistic and reducing is good enough.

But the problem is that not every meat is created the same. There is one footprint for meat feom animals that are grazing and are used in regenerative agriculture and much bigger from industrial farming of cows fed with irrigated alfalfa in desert.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

It should certainly be the first step. I've started like this, continuously less meat, your gut-biome slowly adjusts. I'm still not vegan/vegetarian but basically eat no meat anymore (mostly leftovers of others). A good part of it is that I just don't really like meat anymore (tastes kind of rotten?).

I recommend going this route, as I think it's easier to get into a vegan diet.

That said I think we (as a global society) should strive towards eating only vegan long-term. We got the food science and it just feels wrong (moral, inefficiency, health) and isn't sustainable.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

How many cars off the road does a dead executive take?

What about Taylor swift...

I am all about eating less meat for various reasons but this some idiotic thesis.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

You transition out of meat to save the environment.

I transitioned out of meat because of meat recalls and all the chemicals they sneak in a cow, and was ripping the hardest farts that would clear out a room.

We are not the same.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

A bit underwhelming when put into the context of the estimated number of cars being closer to 1.5B, but worthwhile to pursue regardless.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This would be 8 million cars in the UK alone, which has a population of 68 million.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Serves me right for not reading the article. I'll keep my shame up for display in public

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