• Xcf456@lemmy.nz
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      1 year ago

      I think the worst part of it is that its not actually hopeless, at least not in theory. It’s just that we, or more accurately the people with actual power, refuse to act because it would mean slightly less profit.

      • guriinii@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I fully believe that if the world comes together, a united global effort, it is solvable, but we won’t.

        • Alperto@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Me too, specially when I was younger I thought we could change the world for good if united. I saw cristal clear that the rich wanted to be richer at the expense of the poorer, but as I grew older and saw the reality and stupidity of the world (Like Trump, a massively rich guy being massively voted by the poorest and less educated people) I lost hope. I came to realize that education and stoicism and the best tools the human race has to progress to a healthy society. So that’s what I try to share now when I can.

          • theangryseal@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Though I mostly agree with you, sometimes I feel human nature is just ugly.

            Some very highly educated people have done some very terrible things throughout history.

            (Sorry about submitting the half sentence, I meant to hit cancel and then decided to commit after that blunder.)

            • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Though I mostly agree with you, sometimes I feel human nature is just ugly.

              This is not true. Humans are created by the material conditions they find themselves in. “Human nature” when in an abundant environment is very different, we can see this among remaining hunter gatherer tribes like the Hadza (watch/read the whole thread).

              Living in capitalism is what makes people the way you see them. Competition for resources with your fellow workers and an endless toil for the benefit of someone else enforced by the threat of homelessness and death if you don’t take part.

              Being an asshole under capitalism is as natural as coughing is in a smoke filled burning building. If you don’t know anything different you can’t see that to constantly cough is not the natural way of human beings. When you take people and put them in different material conditions you get a completely different outcome.

              • Piers@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                The biggest issue with our environment that drives these problems is that human brains can only reliably grok a few hundred other humans as being people. Beyond that, to a greater or lesser degree, anyone else just feels like an object (which is why we feel upset when people we know die but the statistics of how many people die each day globally don’t have a similar effect.)

                Some of us cope better than others but fundamentally any environment that requires humans to be reliant on interacting with over a few hundred other people will lead to people treating each other as objects.

                It’s why conservative people often feel it would be inconceivable to mistreat someone they personally know but will casually do profoundly cruel things to people they don’t. If you view their actions towards people outside of their sphere of personhood through the lense of what is and isn’t an appropriate way to treat an object rather than a person they often seem perfectly naturally.

                • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  I know the research you’re talking about here but don’t think it should be viewed as something that makes people incapable of empathy to those outside their core group. It makes it harder, but that hasn’t stopped entire nations of people moving hard left towards extreme vocal empathy among one another as the working class. Unity, solidarity and love for one another is demonstrably possible among very large numbers it just requires the right set of prerequisites to achieve, these prerequisites are what socialists should be working towards ticking off in order to set the stage for a wider revolutionary movement.

                  • Piers@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Nah. Some people have the capacity to have a wider net than others. Some people have the capacity to intellectually overcome the limitations of how we naturally are. Some people put sufficient effort into fulfilling that potential. We all should each do our best to do so.

                    Doesn’t change that even those of us who are especially good at it are still only good at it for a human. We are all terrible at it and it is fundamentally cruel to try to force everyone to live in a society that requires a level of empathic ability that is profoundly beyond what humans are evolved to be able to handle. It’s like expecting everyone on Earth to be able to lift 5 tonnes or outcalculate a supercomputer in their head. It’s a foolish and unreasonable thing to hang the success of society off people’s ability to do.

              • Something_Complex@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Aigh…let’s say you in fact can blame greed and capitalism alone.

                Haven’t we all agreed that extremes are unessential?? It’s capitalism’s fault, it’s comunism fault…world isn’t white and black it’s grey.

                It depends where you are and what it depends how you use it…fuck sake reality is way too complex for you to do these types of statement man.

                If we are going to guess then mine is we need something more in the middle…

                • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  You make a statement about complexity but you’re not actually saying anything. This is all wishy washy.

                  There is no middle between “the workers hold power” and “the bourgeoisie should hold power”. There is no middle between “private property should exist” and “private property should not exist”. There is no middle between “profit should be the driving force of development” and “the human development index should be the driving force of development”.

                  Your wishy washy “we need a middle” is nonsense if you can not put into words what that fundamentally means in terms of actual functioning policy and societal design. Who holds power is THE essential question here. Capitalist society functions as a dictatorship-of-the-bourgeoisie. Socialists want the opposite, a dictatorship-of-the-proletariat. Flipping the power on its head and putting the workers in charge of the outcomes instead of the bourgeoisie.

                  If you can not fundamentally describe in absolute terminology what you think society needs to do in order to change the current situation then all you are doing in your opposition to people who do want change is supporting keeping it the way it currently is. That puts you on the side of the climate death cult driving us towards the inevitable end.

                  • Something_Complex@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Oh yes I’m the one who simplified a complex problem… literally said it’s more complex then that. That’s it, is it simple enough for you to understand now?mm

                    Dude: “tErhe aRE nO MIdDLe tHeRM”

                    Is the most simplistic shit ever, just quoting slogans and not actually recognizing the complexity of everything.

                    You are very smart

            • Alperto@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              yeah, it’s true that some humans are really bad, but they’re nothing without (poorly educated) followers, and their followers are the one that give those humans the power to do evil things. Critical thinking is something that should be taught more often to avoid history from repeating.

          • Historical_General@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’m going to gently remind you that Drumpf’s base is actually on avg. wealthier than the opposition’s base. That’s why you get those obnoxious trucks, flags and infinite merchandise (courtesy of Chinese workers).

            No need to smear the common people, it’s simply a fact that democracy is not a real tool for change.

            • Something_Complex@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Nono look at the 10 poorest states in America(with worse living conditions). They all voted majority Trump, some of the porest counties in the USA are literally voting 80% for trump

              • Historical_General@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                If you listen to Obama on that podcast recently (whom those people probably voted for too), paraphrasing: he says economic anxiety makes people prone to risk taking, emotional voting and feel racial resentment.

            • BigNote@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Yes but that’s only true due to a suite of nefarious influences having to do with things like voter suppression, gerrymandering, dark money and manufactured voter apathy.

              • Historical_General@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                We have to accept that democracy is too easy to ‘manage’ and has been since its inception. We need local democracy badly.

                • BigNote@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  There are various versions of democracy. Some are far more effective at implementing the will of their constituents than others.

                  In my opinion the problem isn’t democracy itself, but rather, has to do with the many various ways in which it’s implemented.

                  The US version of democracy, for example, is very old, clunky and buggy as fuck because it was created by 18th century white men, some of whom were slave owners, and all of whom were terrified of the possibility that in creating a new (to them) form of governance they might accidentally create a new mechanism for tyranny.

                  Accordingly, they deliberately created a system that by design would be almost impossible to change short of massive civil unrest and that to this day is very unresponsive to real public sentiment.

                  The key is that they designed it that way not because they wanted an efficient democracy, but rather, because they wanted to protect themselves and their rights against the rise of a possible tyrant.

                  What they created was very stable, but again, it wasn’t responsive, nor was it meant to be responsive, to public opinion.

                  Since then, political scientists have figured out much better ways to run democracies.

                  One of my favorites is the Irish Republic which, in the 1920s, instituted a suite of reforms to the US model in creating its government with the result that Ireland has gone from being the last third-world country in western Europe, to now being a thriving and economically developed western European nation with a highly-educated English-speaking population that isn’t obliged to take orders from any of the world’s great powers.

                  Ireland did this by having a high-functioning modern-style democracy.

            • halferect@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Median income is BS though. If me and Elon musk make up the test then it would show we have a median income of billions. …I don’t have anywhere close to billions. So a bunch of poor people vote trump and ten billionaires vote trump so trump voters are better off on a average? That’s a joke

              • Historical_General@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                They used exit polls, so I doubt the data includes that. It’s likely that anomalies are cut out too if the data is processed this way - they also compare the median to the state median to make the comparison more meaningful, which is how we ‘know’ that his base is wealthier.

                Apologies for using Nat Sliver as a source.

        • Nezgul@reddthat.com
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          1 year ago

          I am fully convinced that won’t materialize until a major Western city or province/state/territory/[insert administrative unit here] gets catastrophically and irreparably fucked up.

        • PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Neoliberals won’t (nor will the reactionaries they’ve carefully trained) and unfortunatly we’ve let them infest all major political parties and media outlets across most of the globe.

          With these managed democracies, they’re able to delay actual progress until the mining and oil execs are satisified with their obscene wealth (which is never going to happen).

          Until these people are pried from their positions of power, everybody “coming together” is meaningless.

          The solution is going to require immediate, strict, drastic regulations and billions of dollars of research and investment that will never turn into profits, with much of it financed through taxing the rich appropriately.

          Neoliberals hate every one of those ideas and have positioned themselves so they can veto all of them.

          Voting genuine progressives and ensuring they keep their promises is the only way out because the best we’ll ever get out of this neoliberal psuedo-left is “Maybe we can find a way to save the world that’s more profitable than just letting everyone die”.

          • icepuncher69@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Nah, imo voting is kinda like giving your little brother an unpluged controler and pretending he is playing video games with you so that he doesnt riot. Of course we are the little brother. It changes nothing and the candidate that wins just makes everyone feel beter abbout themselves for believing they contributed when the candidate does or says something that they agree with or viseversa, the one that won and the people that didnt vote for him, when it does or say something it just makes them feel that this country is diyng cuz i dont agree with that guy, and then will blame the majority of the voters for voting on the guy while the fault is on the sistem itself.

            I say burn everything to the ground, their corrupt institutions, goverment and private/bussines, mainly banks amd administrative burecratical government institutions, make sure rich people (mainly oligarchs and corrupt politicians) cannot get influence nor voice on any kind of venture or decicion on the big picture or the world order or whatever you wannna call it and when we get the chance, replace leadership with A.I. Because at the scale the world is headed right now it will probably be the only way to purge corruption from the actions of human kind and keep everything as morally correct as posible, and im talking morally as in everyone lives as pleasantly as humanlly posible and no mass murders and rehabilitating instead of punishing and susteinability, not that dumb culture wars b.s. that americans are so obssesed with.

      • 4ce@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Not sure if this will give you hope or not, but one thing to consider is that we could still make it far worse, or put differently, that it’s still in our power to stop that from happening. We can’t change the fact that climate change already has noticeable negative consequences today, nor that global temperatures will rise by at least 1.5° towards the end of the century (compared to 1950-1980), probably more. But we do have a somewhat realistic chance of keeping it at around 2° or below (see e.g. here or here for easy simulations in your browser). The point is that every tenth of a degree counts, and our action or lack thereof now might well make the difference between it “just” getting bad with regular droughts, crop failures, some regions becoming temporarily uninhabitable due to wet bulb temperatures and so on on the one hand, or all of that at a much larger scale leading to societal collapse if we don’t act at all. We live in the worst extinction event the earth has seen since the asteroid that killed the non-bird dinosaurs, but we can still keep it at that instead of turning it into the worst extinction event the earth has ever seen. Luckily, governments (and industry) largely have at least accepted that climate change is a thing, and in Europe and the Americas green-house gas emission have actually already been sinking for the last 15 years or so. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not great, and these governments still should do much more, but it could also be worse, and the fact that we’re lowering emissions despite our politicians generally being very friendly with industry could give at least a sliver of hope. The emissions of China and India (and the rest of Asia) are still rising, but show signs of decelerated growth at least, and in Africa emissions are still fairly low and rising rather slowly, with a chance that some less developed countries might more or less just skip a big chunk of carbon-based industrialisation in favour of renewables. Altogether this means that we’re already on a way to avoid the worst possible scenarios, and still have the power to keep it towards the lower end of the scale as far as terrible outcomes are concerned.

        In addition, while individuals have always less power than whole governments or industries, there are nevertheless things anyone reading this could do, e.g.:

        • Voting for parties that favour stronger climate action, and perhaps even more importantly, not supporting those who do less or even nothing. You can also protest or try to influence your government in some other ways.
        • Reduce your personal impact by not consuming animal products (in particular meat and dairy), not flying if you can avoid it, not buying stuff you don’t really need, and not having (more) kids.
        • Tell other people you know who might listen to do those things. Many people favour climate action in principle, but are too lazy, scared or just otherwise preoccupied to actually start doing stuff on their own. You kicking them in the butt or leading by example can motivate them and in turn other people they might now.

        If you’re reading this and whether or not you’re already doing some of those things, I’m sure you can find at least some things you could do (I know I can, and I’m trying to put it into practice), which might in turn also make you feel less depressed about the situation. As mentioned before, I’m not saying that we’re in a great situation, but whining about it helps nobody, and we’re still in a situation where we have the power to stop things from getting even worse.

    • 4ce@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Not sure if this will give you hope or not, but one thing to consider is that we could still make it far worse, or put differently, that it’s still in our power to stop that from happening. We can’t change the fact that climate change already has noticeable negative consequences today, nor that global temperatures will rise by at least 1.5° towards the end of the century (compared to 1950-1980), probably more. But we do have a somewhat realistic chance of keeping it at around 2° or below (see e.g. here or here for easy simulations in your browser). The point is that every tenth of a degree counts, and our action or lack thereof now might well make the difference between it “just” getting bad with regular droughts, crop failures, some regions becoming temporarily uninhabitable due to wet bulb temperatures and so on on the one hand, or all of that on a much larger scale leading to societal collapse if we don’t act at all. We live in the worst extinction event the earth has seen since the asteroid that killed the non-bird dinosaurs, but we can still keep it at that instead of turning it into the worst extinction event the earth has ever seen. Luckily, governments (and industry) largely have at least accepted that climate change is a thing, and in Europe and the Americas green-house gas emission have actually already been sinking for the last 15 years or so. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not great, and these governments still should do much more, but it could also be worse, and the fact that we’re lowering emissions despite our politicians generally being very friendly with industry could give at least a sliver of hope. The emissions of China and India (and the rest of Asia) are still rising, but show signs of decelerated growth at least, and in Africa emissions are still fairly low and rising rather slowly, with a chance that some less developed countries might more or less just skip a big chunk of carbon-based industrialisation in favour of renewables. Altogether this means that we’re already on a way to avoid the worst possible scenarios, and still have the power to keep it towards the lower end of the scale as far as terrible outcomes are concerned.

      In addition, while individuals have always less power than whole governments or industries, there are nevertheless things anyone reading this could do, e.g.:

      • Voting for parties that favour stronger climate action, and perhaps even more importantly, not supporting those who do less or even nothing. You can also protest or try to influence your government in some other ways.
      • Reduce your personal impact by not consuming animal products (in particular meat and dairy), not flying if you can avoid it, not buying stuff you don’t really need, and not having (more) kids. Edit: Also try to favour public transport over driving your own car, and if you need a car, try to use a small, electrical one to reduce emissions.
      • Tell other people you know who might listen to do those things. Many people favour climate action in principle, but are too lazy, scared or just otherwise preoccupied to actually start doing stuff on their own. You kicking them in the butt or leading by example can motivate them and in turn other people they might now.

      If you’re reading this and whether or not you’re already doing some of those things, I’m sure you can find at least some things you could do (I know I can, and I’m trying to put it into practice), which might in turn also make you feel less depressed about the situation. As mentioned before, I’m not saying that we’re in a great situation, but whining about it helps nobody, and we’re still in a situation where we have the power to stop things from getting even worse.

        • trainsaresexy@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I don’t think this is a hot take anymore. Middle/lower class are sick of hearing that everything is our problem. It isn’t.

        • Azzu@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I know this won’t change your mind or anything, but this is probably pretty close to the mindset of some other ~1.5 billion first world countries’ populations’ mindset. And those combined account to currently around ~37% of CO2 emissions. So if all people like you (if you consider first world countries’ people to be people like you) all came together and did more we could have some pretty huge impact. Of course the other ~63% may still fuck things up, but this is a much different comparison than just you against the rest of the world, you’re not very unique in that regard.

          • Piers@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’m so tired of people turning everything into an awful prisoner’s dilemma. Everyone should just aim to be the best person you can be and stop fretting about whether everyone else is trying quite as hard as you. It doesn’t need to be complicated.

            • Azzu@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Right? On a global scale, though, “best person you can be” should be something like, “let’s try to behave in such a way so that if everyone behaved like me, the world would be a good place”. That is hard though, to think like that.

              • Piers@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                What can help is the knowledge that by doing so it is impossible not to on some level inspire others to do the same to some degree by example.

                If you’re a selfish jerk that will cause people around you to be .001% (or something) more selfish and jerky. If you are kind and good that will push the needle the other way similarly.

                Except the amount more those people are better or worse for knowing you then also influences how much better or worse the people they know are etc and so while it is a small effect per person, the diffused effect is meaningful, cumulative and self-reinforcing. It doesn’t take a lot of people within a community either giving up and being the worst or finding enough of a spine to try to be good to start to tip the balance of the whole community in either direction. It also means that as you are better and kinder, your immediate external world gradually becomes a little better and kinder which makes it easier and more rewarding to be that way in an endless virtuous cycle.

          • Sightline@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Ok now apply the fact that at least 45% of the western world is brainwashed by the fossil fuel industry. They’re low IQ repeater bots who would glady kill every single one of us because climate change is a “hoax”.

            • Azzu@lemm.ee
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              I think a very small minority “would gladly kill every single one of us”, not 45%. If it were 45%, there’d already be open civil war all over the west.

      • nyar@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Can also create isolated cells to coordinate … I’m gonna stop before this gets added to my file.

        • 4ce@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Yes, my list is by no means complete. I’m sure there are many more things any of us could do, it’s more meant as a list of some examples to give people starting points for practical things to do.

      • Catpuccino@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        Thank you this was actually really nice to read. I feel like everywhere I look is more bad news about the climate it’s nice to see we can at least still mitigate it

      • zombuey@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I don’t have hope and I have a specific prediction why but since hope is our only chance I won’t share that.

    • Pommel_Knight@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      A morbid solution for it would be an all-out war between China and India, they are about a 1/3 of the world’s population.

      Ghengis Khan proved that with enough murder you can drastically lower global temperature.