Don't overstate 1.5 degrees C threat, new IPCC head says – DW – 07/30/2023
www.dw.com
Jim Skea, the new head of the UN's IPCC climate panel, said it was not helpful to imply that temperature increases of 1.5 degrees Celsius posed an existential threat to humanity.

In short, we aren’t on track to an apocalyptic extinction, and the new head is concerned that rhetoric that we are is making people apathetic and paralyzes them from making beneficial actions.

He makes it clear too that this doesn’t mean things are perfectly fine. The world is becoming and will be more dangerous with respect to climate. We’re going to still have serious problems to deal with. The problems just aren’t insurmountable and extinction level.

  • MostlyBirds@lemmy.worldEnglish
    71·
    1 year ago

    Exactly. At least 70% of emission are caused directly by corporate and military activity, and that’s just the sanitized, conservative, government/corporate approved statistic. Realistically, the number probably much higher.

    Using paper straws, sorting your recycling, and turning the hallway light off does fuck all for climate change, and it will never make a meaningful difference without a harsh crackdown on, if not a total overthrow of global corporate hegemony in this decade. We all know how likely that is…

    • 999@kbin.social
      51·
      1 year ago

      The 70% that comes from corporations comes from people. The people who use the products that the corporations provide. So, if Exxon is one of those major polluters, that is based largely on the people who purchase Exxon products and use them.

      This 70% number comes from a 2017 study that measured emissions from 1985-2015. So while those corporations are selling the product that pollutes, when we order some stupid shit from Amazon and it has to come from China on a ship to get here, we are responsible for using that product. When we get UberEats delivered, we are responsible. Ordinary people can fight that by not buying stupid shit we don’t need from China and in so many other ways. Yes, the corporations produce those products, but it is US that consumes it and we are ultimately responsible for the emissions. It’s a fun way to try to say “it’s not me, it’s them,” but the fact is, it’s all of us.

      • MostlyBirds@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        1 year ago

        People buy the shit because corporations make it and, at best, tell us we want it, and at worst, design our entire infratstructure and society around it so that we more or less have to buy it.

        Nobody was asking for cars, or at least very few were, until companies started pushing them on people. Same goes for the vast majority of shit we own.

        • 999@kbin.social
          1·
          1 year ago

          Well if everyone is just buying shit because corporations tell them to and the world is that fucking stupid, then we deserve what’s happening.

          • MostlyBirds@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            1 year ago

            It’s got nothing to do with stupidity. We were all born and raised in, and indoctrinated by a society that pushes intense consumerism in every aspect of our lives. That didn’t happen overnight, and it’s not the result of a person making astupid choice. It happened incrementally over centuries, slowly enough that most people take for granted as just the way things are and never really question it.

            That’s why only strong government regulation can fix this, and why “durr just stop buying stuff” is an ignorant, asinine take.

      • trias10@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Probably because people give up

        As opposed to what, Soviet style revolution? People today don’t have the same mettle as their forebearers, it’s not going to happen. Occupy Wall Street and the George Floyd protests showed to the powers at be that people aren’t willing to embrace violent protest for change.