- cross-posted to:
- climate@slrpnk.net
Wolfgang Cramer’s first involvement with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was in the 90s. He worked on the second assessment report, delivered in 1995, which affirmed the science of anthropogenic climate breakdown. At that point, no one could say they did not know what was happening.
Almost three decades on, Cramer was part of the international scientific team that prepared the sixth IPCC report. Its conclusion, delivered in March, issued human civilisation a bleak “final warning” – the biosphere stands on the brink of irrevocable damage.
Now, as diplomats meet in Dubai for the 28th round of the Cop climate talks, in a year predicted to be the hottest on record, and as carbon emissions continue to rise, Cramer is one of 33 IPCC authors among 1,447 scientists and academics in signing an open letter calling on the public to take collective action to avert climate breakdown.
“We are terrified,” they warn. “We need you.”
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If you want to see aggressive activists, look no further than car drivers. The moment a city starts talking about pedestrianizing a road, an angry violent mob of car drivers burns tires and vandalizes. Car drivers are easily triggered the moment they think their life will lose the slightest convenience.
Whereas with climate activists, there are not generally many singular impacting events to get outraged about… in part because of the constant tiring slew of non-stop bad news that has a continuous numbing effect.
Many actions that are needed will inherently piss off car drivers. We need personal cars to become unaffordable. Public streetside parking for 1 year should cost $3000, not $30. In California, a democrat in a democrat-stronghold area got voted out of office for trying to levy a fuel tax. Although republicans are worse than dems on climate, dems will turn on each other whenever cars are on the chopping block.
@activistPnk @GreyShuck I am waiting to see the results of the next experiment here. On Monday, we’re getting a new high speed bus in its own bus lane that controls the traffic lights all along its route to have priority over cars. How the drivers react should be interesting.
Sounds like a great move. I hope as well that medics and fire trucks can override the signal with higher priority.
BTW, did you get a notification @GreyShuck? I just wonder if @'ing a user actually works in Lemmy. Since you only gave the nick without domain, I would not think that would work. (I got a notification myself but that’s because it’s built into Lemmy when replying)
@activistPnk here in France I think First Responders always have been able to change the lights, or ignore them with sirens blazing.
It just feels hopeless. Activism, protests, hell, even irrefutable scientific evidence aren’t enough to convince anyone in a position to enact actual positive change. It all comes down to the almighty bottom line.
Until environmentalism becomes more profitable than raping the planet, nothing is going to change. I try my best, but there’s only so much I can do as an individual. Its pretty depressing.
Climate stress is a thing now. A good de-stressor IMO is to take individual actions. E.g.
- go !vegan@slrpnk.net (or at least make progress in that direction)
- ditch the car; get a bicycle (move to a cyclable region if needed)
- boycott Chevron and Exxon/Mobil specifically, if you still buy fuel
- boycott all ALEC corps (e.g. Sony, Motorola, American Express, FedEx)
- boycott palm oil abusers (e.g. Pepsi)
- keep an eye on !climate_action_individual@slrpnk.net for further actions.
- vote against climate denying politicians like Trump
Note that individual actions are obviously not a replacement for activism against systemic problems. It just gives stress relief to eliminate reasons to blame yourself while still pursuing collective climate action.
Protests are just asking people who have a vested interest in keeping things going to change. They haven’t really worked since occupy got smashed, because people in power know they can just get away with deploying tanks and bulldozers.
However, one person’s actions can make it much more expensive to keep going in the wrong direction. Direct action gets the goods. Google “monkeywrenching.” There’s a long history of people saving themselves when people on power refuse.