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Geoffrey Deihl's avatar

Most people don't get it. They're either unaware or believe there's a miracle solution.

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The counter-intuitive 🐿️'s avatar

F&ck David Suzuki. F*ck your settler colonial doom! F*ck your first world emissions (+18 tons of manifest destiny) and f*ck capitalism and f*ck this pathetic Global Green Scare. No amount of doom and or green colored reform will save your A$$ … Every pathetic 1st world green toad (of capitalist exuberance) is crying like Suzuki is.

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Keith Wells's avatar

That part is true, but the other part and I think it’s the biggest part is that humans can’t accept the fact that they’re responsible for the damage. Some internal mechanism prevents us from processing that. Whether it’s the hoarding of possessions for survival, combined with the outright denial that nature is not ours to repeatedly rape with no consequences then people completely shut down when the kitchen gets too hot regarding their actions

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Geoffrey Deihl's avatar

There are many factors for denial, culture and demographics among them, but the biggest problem to my mind is an irresponsible, wealthy owned media, and the fact that the "better" party is an abject failure as bought by money as the other. Lobbyists write bills, literally. The tragedy we're experiencing was predicted by Big Oil 50 years ago.

That hoarding? We're brainwashed to consume which is why degrowth calls for the abolition of advertising.

Hitler was a far more obvious enemy than the insidious build up of climate change or realities of overshoot, but we rallied to defeat the Nazis (late to the fight, but we got there). It showed with the right leadership we could be galvanized into unified action. We have almost none of that leadership now, and in fact a crackdown on speech and protest for the basics of calling out the destruction of the planet and genocide. Speaking truth to power grows more dangerous by the day, but not doing so is surely death, even likely extinction for Homo sapiens.

This situation is going to result in deaths in the billions ultimately.

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Stan's avatar

At this late stage any solution would be a miracle.

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Geoffrey Deihl's avatar

Yup. Nearly four years into this project. Whatever ability we have had to avoid the worst is likely lost. It's not about new technology, that's all a pack of lies. It's about scaling down and getting off of FFs as quickly as possible. The oil industry knew his 50 years ago, but still they obfuscate.

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Sara Hourez's avatar

My response to people declaring that David Suzuki was a 'doomer' and thus 'dooming' on SM (substack seems the only thinking space) -

Suzuki didn't say give up rather he said prepare, plan, wake up, stop praying and wishing and hoping and get active in ensuring your and your community's survival. Protests & demonstrations screaming for action are just a waste of valuable time because it is too late to do anything. Mitigation may reduce the worse effects but adaptation needs to be a focus not a side-thought. Same as declaring a certain % of the population care about climate change while they live, spend, travel, eat, pollute and buy exactly as always. Few are actually revising the choices they are making, they aren't even reflecting on the possible changes they could be actively making in their daily life. I look around me and think until their pants are on fire they will do nothing. All the immediate concerns of comfort, shelter, education, costs, transport, status, health, can hardly be cast aside but they will be as the direct economic threats appear, the clashes over natural resource access, the mass migration of desperate populations, food shortages,... but although we can see it coming in the headlights we aren't really feeling it. We see it on the now daily disasters; things are changing that's for sure but really it's all in some dim distant future. Won't really affect me - you think. You need to start to plan, prepare, make adaptations & talk to those around you.

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Sarah Connor's avatar

"10 years to save " means 10 years to do something meaningful to prevent collapse. It never meant 10 years to collapse. Even that 10 yr period is optimistic. If we wanted to prevent collapse we should have started 50 years ago.

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Sarah Connor's avatar

Collapse is and was always inevitable. We are an all-consuming species.

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Sarah Connor's avatar

Humanity's End Was Determined from the Start https://www.collapse2050.com/the-great-filter/

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Richard McKenzie's avatar

Sad to see that the discussion below degenerated into name-calling session. We have to do better than that. I think the 10 years grace mentioned below may have referred to comments made by James Hansen in his 1988 Senate Hearing. With the eruption of Mt Pinatubo, it turned out we had a few more years than he stated. The point he was making was that if we hadn't started to do something about then (around the turn of the century), we may already have passed some tipping points. The jury is still out on whether we have, but current signs are not good. We're currently experiencing the highest global air temperatures, the greatest ocean heat content, and greatest ice-melt in recorded history. The current rate of temperature increase is unprecedented. And, in the decades ahead it will increasing even faster, at around 0.3celsius per decade. The solutions are at hand and have been for years. They're now much cheaper than fossil fuels. Its only the power of vested interests that's holding us back. At UV & You I write mainly about UV radiation and Health, but I occasionally digress into these murky areas. This recent post on this topic is relevant to the discussion. See https://uv.substack.com/p/things-looking-up.

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Ken Barber's avatar

Uh huh. Back in 1988, we only had ten years left to save the planet.

There is a reason why no one listens to you anymore.

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Martin Jones's avatar

You are an idiot sir.

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Bea Sharpe's avatar

We had a ten-year window to change course for the best-case scenario, a 20-year window for a compromised middle ground, and have had a 30-year window for rock-bottom. It looks as though the power brokers, knowing full well it was overcrowded, have foundered the slave ship, and plan to escape into the wild waters in a dinghy. Don’t know if you’re in the hold, or on the dinghy, but it is assumptions that keep us shackled to sinking systems.

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Ken Barber's avatar

You are trying to change the narrative after the prediction has failed.

No, none of them ever said anything about ten years for a best-case scenario, more time for others.

Besides, 1988 was more than 30 years ago, and there is still no rock bottom.

NONE of the predictions made by the climate alarmists have happened. Every one of them has failed.

Your sailing ship metaphor is caca.

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Beth Strom's avatar

Where are all the birds Ken? The bees, butterflies, frogs?

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Ken Barber's avatar

I see them everywhere. Every day.

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Bea Sharpe's avatar

My bees did not survive the winter.

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Bea Sharpe's avatar

Bill McKibben did. And from the time I was a reporter in the ‘90s, covering agriculture, and crop damages in a temperate climate, and wildfires here and elsewhere, I have had this discussion with too many educated people. The predictions have actually understated the reality. Sadly, there is little to convince you if you don’t want to connect the dots. We are past the point of meaningful political action changing the course we have set. We are going to have to rely on our immediate communities to survive whatever localized effects are rolled on the climate dice. It’s too bad you don’t like the ship metaphor. It’s one of many metaphors we could use, and will use, to cope.

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Ken Barber's avatar

Oh yeah, Bill McKibben. Environmentalist wacko extraordinaire.

ZERO scientific credentials. Hell, I have more scientific credentials than he does, and mine come from a school science project I did in eighth grade...

Can you get a source that is any more biased?

Show me when and where he said that. It's a safe bet that he never said any such thing until AFTER the prediction had already failed.

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Richard McKenzie's avatar

Could you please provide a link to the 1988 reference you mentioned?.I think you might be confused (spoiler alert. I’m an old climate scientist).

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Ken Barber's avatar

On the artwork of ZZ Top’s Recycler album is a meme stating that “we have ten years to save the planet.”

It is the earliest invocation of that meme that I am aware of.

I read somewhere, a long time ago, that that album was released in 1988. Upon re-checking, I see that it was released in 1990.

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Richard McKenzie's avatar

Thank you. Probably ascribable to James Hansen in 1988. See my comment above and at uv.substack.com (free)

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Bea Sharpe's avatar

Oh, clearly ZZ Top are the experts McKibben and Suzuki are not. Here’s the thing, Ken, the predictions were about time left to act. Because climate change itself is a sprawling beast with seven heads, we don’t have a countdown to “zero hour.” Zero hour is going to look different where you live. So call it the four horsemen, seven trumpets, seven seals, bowls of God’s wrath, or melting ice sheets, shutdown of North Atlantic current, 25% loss of biodiversity, release of Siberian methane, waves of climate migrants; we can argue about the accuracy of prediction and launch ad hominems, or focus on what we’re going to need to respond to the nearest crisis.

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Ken Barber's avatar

OBVIOUSLY, ZZ Top are NOT climate experts. Obviously, they did not make up that claim themselves: they copied it from somewhere.

This factoid puts a date on when the "Ten years left to save the planet" lie was first being spread.

DUH

I have proved that the fearmongers have been saying "We only have ten years to save the planet" for thirty-five years. The rest of your post is a red herring. Now quit trying to change the subject.

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The counter-intuitive 🐿️'s avatar

F&ck David Suzuki. F*ck your settler colonial doom! F*ck your first world emissions (+18 tons of manifest destiny) and f*ck capitalism and f*ck this pathetic Global Green Scare. No amount of doom and or green colored reform will save your A$$ … Every pathetic 1st world green toad (of capitalist exuberance) is crying like Suzuki is.

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ArtDeco's avatar

First, I am looking for a transcript of this video if anyone knows of one on the net.

Second, the fact that there are only 2 comments on this article says a lot about people's interest now. Maybe they have already decided Suzuki is correct and just don't want to think about climate change now that it's started to impact them at home, instead of just some tropical islands and glaciers.

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