Report Suggests 'High Likelihood of Human Civilization Coming to an End' in 2050 - Sensationalist Headlines

Right, in certain areas of Europe. I live in the US. I don't see the US becoming European in terms of infrastructure in my lifetime.

People in my city have been asking for better transpo for, oh, I don't know, 30 years. It hasn't happened. We've had all sorts of protests, walk outs, and other events, but governments don't listen, and even putting new politicians in place isn't always going to work. I would love to not drive to work, but that won't happen for me anytime soon. And that's not in my control. It's in the hand of 4 different municipalities, only one of which I can vote in.

even as i make lifestyle changes, i'm not going to pretend that me, or even a million other people, is going to have done nearly enough to reverse climate change by ourselves. ignoring corporations and shifting blame onto the consumer does make you feel more powerful as an individual, but is unfortunately also great for the corporations, because they don't have to worry about their profits being stifled any time soon.

Where is the peer review?

You still don't get it. Mathematically, unless all combined individual reductions all over the world are less than the difference in CO2 levels between the last two consecutive thresholds, then based on pure logic, the individuals that contributed can be credited for avoiding the latter threshold. Here, look at this shitty graph: https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/211575/bb6c607e-bb27-4721-a908-06800c0af320/image.png Let's assume that each letter corresponds to a threshold, the crossing of which would trigger a major event that would kill a substantial amount of people. The further right they go, the more CO2 it requires in the atmosphere to trigger. I've scattered them randomly and put a random number of them since, as far as I know, you haven't made a comprehensive list of them nor given any quantitative information as to how much CO2 triggers them. This is for the sake of illustration. The part colored in red is the total increase in atmospheric CO2 due to man's activity, if no individual made any effort to reduce their consumption. It is, too, random, since we don't know at which point the thresholds trigger anyway. Now, you can only argue that individual contribution to reducing CO2 emission is worthless if, and only if, the difference between the concentration of CO2 that would occur without individual reduction and the last threshold it triggers is greater than the total reduction attributed to individual efforts. Meaning that if the combined global individual reduction is greater than this in comparison to total emissions that would've otherwise occured: https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/211575/f75c3f5d-2350-4acf-840d-d557e1507863/image.png Then you can't possibly claim that reducing your individual impact is worthless. Now, the burden of proof is on you, you need to provide evidence that we have a good chance of heading towards CO2 levels that specifically fall short of a threshold and is significantly higher than the last threshold enough for combined individual contributions to not suffice to avoid it. Literally any other scenario, and your point is moot. The less specific a possibility is, the more probable it is. I have no reason to believe that there's no point in contributing individually. As for this: Literally just read the post above you: You can only blame those in charge of those corporations for emissions that would've been avoided by 1.funding R&D to improve efficiency and lessen the environmental impact of their product and their manufacture and 2.not cutting corners in a way that fucks up the environment. That's a significant chunk of corporate emissions, meaning those individuals have a drastically higher carbon footprint than the average Joe, and as such they should receive immense legal and popular pressure to force them to change their ways. But even in an ideal world with nothing but philanthropic CEOs, those companies would still emit huge amounts of CO2 because it's simply necessary to satisfy consumer demand. The consumer has a non-negligible share of responsibility, to argue otherwise is asinine. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Irrelevant to the original point, but you're most likely referring to this shitty-ass study that overestimates the additional carbon footprint by a FUCKING HUGE margin:

Merge Break as requested

As for the rest: Who said that you need to 100% eradicate car use for it to have any effect? If two people reduce their use of cars by 50%, it's as if one people simply stopped using their car. Ride-sharing? Not using a car unless you actually need it? Biking for short distances? Yeah infrastructure and public transportation overhaul would help drastically reduce those emissions, but it's ridiculous to suggest that you can't do anything to make a significant difference on your own. Next. Tourism accounts for around 8 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study that marks the first attempt to quantify the industry’s total carbon footprint. [...] Air travel was the main culprit, and the researchers suggested the high-polluting industry would become increasingly problematic as the world gets richer and there is more demand for luxury travel. Source Doesn't look like business trips are the main culprit to me here, mate. Literally just go on vacation locally, either in a neighboring country or your own. Go by train, bus, or even on a road trip with friends. That'll cost a heck of a lot less environmentally. Next. Total emissions from global livestock: 7.1 Gigatonnes of Co2-equiv per year, representing 14.5 percent of all anthropogenic GHG emissions. Source No need to be vegan or even vegetarian. Eat meat 2 times a week. That's enough to be healthy, nothing more is required to get the necessary nutrients. Congrats, you've cut off 86% of your meat-related emissions. If everyone did the same, we'd have 12.5% less GHG emissions globally. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Since your list seems somewhat anemic, let me enrich it a little: This is not exhaustive. TL:DR, to claim that we as individuals are powerless to combat climate change is absolutely BONKERS, and is nothing but denial of the highest order. Sure, by all means, light some hellfire under the powerful's asses so that we can get out of this predicament quicker and hold them responsible for the significant CO2 emissions they could easily avoid. But don't use their responsibility as an shield to ignore your own and do jack shit.

aren't we basically just reiterating the idea of ethical consumption under capitalism? we've been aware of sweatshops and child labor for decades and "voting with our wallets" hasn't done them any favors. nobody is saying individuals are literally powerless to combat climate change, but primarily advocating for changes on an individual level is pretty futile. people don't think this because they're secretly too lazy to change their lifestyle and they just want to feel smug on the internet. there's a reason why the media narrative is "here's how every individual can do these things to save the environment and if you don't do them you're a horrible person" without even a mention of the impact corporations have. there's a big financial incentive to shifting the blame to the consumer so the corporations can continue uninhibited.

Which do you think is more effective in the limited timespan we have to un-fuck our society: A: Force companies to produce the shit we consume for significantly less CO2 (aka get innovation and science going) B: Gradually start changing minds so people voluntarily start switching over, which will then eventually lead to companies slowly weaning off CO2 (aka hope for the best I guess???) I'm of the opinion that A is the only viable option we have in the timeframe we have. Yes, your personal contribution does have an objective effect, you converting people does have an objective effect. It's still not fast enough, and this problem should be approached top down. Fuck the free market, restrict that shit heavily.

Why. The fuck. Not both? Seriously, why do so many people here still believe this is an either/or situation? Is voting such an exhausting task that you can't make individual efforts to curb your carbon footprint because of it? Do you literally attend climate protests 24/7? I've been saying extensively that you need to both address the issue individually and legislatively. Can't we just put that non-debate to rest? You ought to take a look at the post I'm replying to then. Literally nobody said it's enough. What we were discussing is .Ducky's claim that if not enough people do it, then it serves no purpose at all to do it. I've thoroughly disproved that assertion. Regardless of how many people do it, reducing your carbon consumption saves lives.

Uh, I am supporting both. Please read what I said carefully with a bit more nuance. My question was "which is MORE effective" not "Which of these two is the binary action we should take". Nothing really wrong with it? Again, you seem to be overreacting, since that post, while incorrect on many points, isn't childish. Take a step back, please. I mean realtalk both of you are just throwing around platitudes (like everyone else in this thread) and very few actual numbers. Ouch, strong words talking about a paper that's well researched, peer reviewed, then cited by other scientists. Seems like the scientific community doesn't agree with your assessment of the paper. You're getting off the rails in your rebuttal too, though. Their methodology, premise and timeframes are clear, since they're talking very clearly about carbon legacy. The paper's premise is that a person is responsible for a portion of the emissions of their children. It doesn't talk about timeframes in the way you seem to think it does. The correct way to look at the idea is, and I'll quote another paper: "the lifelong climate-stabilizing efforts (vegetarianism , use of local products, (re)cycling, good isolation, electric cars, solarpanels, windmills, no air miles, etc.) of twenty people are cancelled out by the birth of one extra child" Nothing more, nothing less. No moral judgements or anything. I mean shit, the paper itself even practically says it for you: " This is not to say that lifestyle changes are unimportant; in fact, they are essential, since immediate reductions in emissions worldwide are needed to limit the damaging effects of climate change that are already being documented (Kerr, 2007; Moriarty and Honnery, 2008). The amplifying effect of an individual’s reproduction documented here implies that such lifestyle changes must propagate through future generations in order to be fully effective, and that enormous future benefits can be gained by immediate changes in reproductive behavior. [...] Clearly, an individual’s reproductive choices can have a dramatic effect on the total carbon emissions ultimately attributable to his or her genetic lineage. Understanding the ways that an individual’s daily activities influence emissions and explain the huge disparities in per capita emissions among countries (Table 1) is obviously essential, but ignoring the consequences of reproduction can lead to serious underestimation of an individual’s long-term impact on the global environment. " Check the words "future benefits", "total ultimately attributable", "long-term impact" It's not like they're hiding any of this either, their fig. 6 paper is pretty much just an ancestor-perspective view of their attributable lineage's emissions rate, which is basically just a more concise and on-topic version of the graph in your rebuttal post. Right, now I'm confused. "Regardless of how many people do it"?

It seems that somehow people took my post of "stop buying shit corporations are making that pollute the world" as "this is the only way to make corporations change". Please learn to read clearly.

We are the generation that is watching the world die. This isn't a future thing. It's happening right now.

Too busy waiting for the silver bullet, can't be bothered with multi-pronged attack.

Live the change. I went vegetarian 3 years ago and stopped consuming tourism as a temporary like " went to take a vacation, now back to normal times" Now my family is starting to change, so are friends.

If I had to guess, I'd say that the people who promote lifestyle changes to help fight climate change on an individual basis are also probably going to vote for people who have similar environmental policy.

I want to emphasize that the individual impact does not only have a DIRECT effect, its MOST IMPORTANT EFFECT IS THE ONE IT HAS ON OTHER HUMANS! Live the change!

So the poster I'm quoting saying "next" after each half-assed rebuttal isn't childish but me doing the exact same thing is? Maybe you ought to take a step back yourself. I don't need to provide numbers to disprove an assertion that has no tangible basis whatsoever. If numbers are what you're interested in, I've brought up a couple in my second part. So what exactly is your point there? My entire point is that the way people use this paper is incredibly misleading. Saying shit like "having a child negates the carbon footprint reduction of 20 other people" completely ignores the fact that 80% of additional emissions as a direct and indirect consequence of having a child occurs after 2100. Not to mention that it assumes that the average US carbon footprint will remain strictly identical for the entirety of the millennium. Not exactly very representative of reality. I'm not sure why we should give a shit about the potential emissions of your descendants in the year 2379, when human society will be radically different in a way this study can't possibly hope to model, when we're talking about adverting a crisis that the very article of this thread says could bring an end to civilization by 2050. The figure of "58.2 additional tons of CO2 per year" that .Ducky brings up is just completely false. It's taking additional emissions that occur over a millennium (and that the study most likely overestimates in the first place) and acts as if it's all released within the parent's lifespan. Of course you're going to end up with an astronomical number using such a "methodology". Sure, if you're interested of what your potential carbon legacy can be (which is independent from your carbon footprint), then it's an interesting study even if very basic and rough around the edges. But don't use it to do stupid shit, if you're going to average it to get yearly emissions then divide the total amount of emissions by the entire duration of those emissions. Not a tiny timespan. This is middle school level maths. Depending on how many lives the consequences of climate change would claim otherwise, then yeah, it may. Refer to my previous posts starting with this one if you don't get it:

Not sure if anyone noticed, but the article changed its title to clarify that civil strife will begin around 2050, not be around by 2050.

It is already happening though. Just look at the river Jordan.

That's not "end of human civilization" civil strife yet. It's definitely a preamble, but not quite the "50+ million refugees" they're predicting. Europe couldn't handle just one million Syrian refugees. Imagine the world with 50,000,000

The thing is, could we had prevented this coming? We had been so reliant on fossil fuel for so long, and the technology still isn't enough to replace them earlier on (aside from nuclear energy)

From my anecdotal/layman's understanding, yeah - we could've switched to Nuclear and/or Green Energy much earlier. People try to push this narrative that going green would "do nothing", but that isn't really true.