what specific actions would it take to avert the impending 'doom'?
If you think destroying the Earth is bad for the Earth, you can feel better knowing that Earth wouldn't blink if humanity were wiped out tomorrow. It's been here 4.5 billion years and hominids have been here approximately one tenth of one percent of that time. All of recorded history is approximately one thousandth of one thousandth of one percent of that time, and for the vast majority of that tiny sliver we hadn't discovered fossil fuels. On the scale of the planet, all of humanity thus far is basically an instantaneous event.
Sol - I adore you. If we were choosing teams I'd volunteer to be on yours. Gotta say, though, this quoted response is the one that annoys me unlike any other. It feels intentionally obtuse. I mean, I realize you're trying to take me to a higher altitude view, but trust me, I've visited that observation many times already. I understand the earth is ~4.5B years old in a universe that's approx ~13B years old, and that the earth will go on without humans.
I'm talking about us going into overshoot and killing ourselves off by altering our environment to a point that makes life impossible. This, despite recognizing our situation and having the capability to possibly avoid it.
I have kids, and nieces and nephews. But even if I didn't, well, call me sentimental, but I
care about our species and our fellow earthlings. I don't want to wipe them all out because we're too stupid to 'not touch the principal'.
By focusing on this one huge existential problem, I'm not saying other problems don't exist or don't matter. Shit, I founded a 501c3 organization to pay teachers so that Rohingya refugees on the Island of Penang have a place to go and learn and have a chance to transcend their situations. I recognize there's daily awfulness everywhere. (by the way, I'm raising $6k to pay a teacher this year you can donate at
www.rohyingyafund.org (heh)).
When you write things like this I feel you're missing my point.
It's not rising sea levels that bothers me. That's a problem, but it's manageable. It's not the slow-descent collapse that bothers me. I mean it does bother me, but in a manageable way. I think many of us have a fighting chance of navigating that with our chosen teams. No - it's the dozens of possible one-way cascades of events we might trigger - from permafrost melting to killing off oceanic phytoplankton due to ocean acidification - to goodness knows what else - that could END us in short order. I don't want to END us, when we have the power and capability to survive.
A year ago I figured that we were facing a long slow boil collapse like you describe - maybe in ten years, maybe in 50, hell, maybe long after you and I are dead. (this is the 'us being algae' scenario). But the more I've been reading about ecology, and the more I observe the fat headed conversations amongst our leaders, the more I'm coming to realize we're stepping on the accelerator. It may not be a slow boil decline afterall. It may be that we hit a wall all at once (this is the 'us being fermenting yeast' scenario). I can store as many months of beans and oats in my pantry as I want, and that's not going to help if all the plankton die off over the course of months and within a few years, no one outside of $3M hermetically sealed and well stocked bomb shelters can breathe .
I'm just working through the acceptance of it all. It's spilling out onto the forums.
But I'm not saying I don't want to hear your wisdom. I've learned quite a lot from you on this and other topics. e.g. what you've written about your solar panels, even what you said about Al Gore. So I'm sorry if I'm coming off as if I'm asking you to sit down and shut up - I'm not. It's just that I've been working through so many of these perspectives that some of them feel trite, obvious, and obtuse at this point. But I'll acknowledge that most people we come across in the world aren't thinking about our predicament much at all, so shifting perspectives is a great tool to pull the rug out and jolt people into seeing the situation. But - the 'earth will go on without us' comment usually comes from people who advocate 'burn baby burn' policy and use that line of discussion to undermine the competence of anyone discussing doing better with the environment. So that makes it doubly annoying.
Maybe 'doom' was too a loaded word. I was simply borrowing Bicycle_B's terminology. I guess I'm asking, what can we do to alleviate our predicament and improve the chances of we earthlings surviving this mass extinction event? Because making individual choices doesn't accomplish much beyond making choosey individuals feel better. I'm not at a point where I'm comfortable saying 'whatevs'. But that's the point I'm prolly gonna need to work my way toward.
And yes, the ice caps are totally going to melt and the polar bears are all going to die, but let's not forget that there are only a few thousand polar bears anyway and we literally slaughter 40 million cows every single year, just because they are pleasingly delicious. So are we really worried about animal welfare?
Yes. I'm also worried about animal welfare. Industrialized animal ag factory farming needs to end. If we all transitioned to whole food veganism over the next 5 years, we'd definitely alleviate our predicament with fossil fuels, return to a much more sustainable terrestrial vertebrate biomass, and end enormous daily suffering of our fellow earthlings. We should slaughter the cows we have, and stop breeding new ones. Yes -we should do that.
You seem to be arguing that we have to pick just one thing ("so are we really worried about animal welfare"?), but also arguing that by picking one thing we're being hypocrites because there are so many other things to care about ("a child of 6 was raped today"). ???? the fuck man???? I mean that in the most respectful, I-adore-you sort of way, of course.