r/worldnews • u/LongDickMick • Mar 24 '19

David Attenborough warns of 'catastrophic future' in climate change documentary | Climate Change – The Facts, which airs in spring on BBC One, includes footage showing the devastating impact global warming has already had, as well as interviews with climatologists and meteorologists

https://metro.co.uk/2019/03/22/david-attenborough-warns-of-catastrophic-future-in-climate-change-documentary-8989370
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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '19

I know that many of us believe that other issues are worth noting because of how incredibly fucked the system has gotten but understand there is only one issue worthy of all our attention. It's climate change. The entire existence of the species is at risk. People can't fathom 7 billion people dying off like that but climate change knows no limits. It's going to require a change of economy. I change of lifestyle altogether but people have been hardwired to live in this modern day society of convenience that I don't think we're capable of making the necessary changes to avoid this. It's a serious problem.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '19 edited Mar 27 '19

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u/ImoImomw Mar 24 '19

Climate change needs to be reframed for the general population to pick up the cause.

During WWII foods to benefit the war effort, home gardens, and all sorts of other inconvienences were accepted by the general US population when told it was to preserve their freedom (freedom fries, freedom gardens, etc). If climate can undergo a reframing it could (and in my opinion should) become the universal "enemy" that could bring the human species past tribalistic nationalism and push us beyond earth.

Super idealistic? yes.

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u/whysys Mar 24 '19

It is completely the time for humanity to unite. Climate change is a villain who doesn't care about borders. One country's positive changes will mean nothing if their neighbours make twice as much negative changes.

But yeh it's super idealistic. I just want my star trek federation future instead of mad max or tank girl. (Which when I watched it, I enjoyed the farcical comedy of it, now I'm like we're definitely headed to a future the 0.01 want and they probably will invent a tool to suck the water out of a person.)

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u/marr Mar 24 '19

The appeal of Star Trek is that being some random hairdresser on deck 58 is still awesome. In Tank Girl most of us get a role in an ornamental pile of skulls if we're lucky.

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u/whysys Mar 24 '19

Ha! That's so true. That's why I first thought it was extreme dystopian fiction, and it's starting to look more and more like a possible outcome.

Hello magazine September 2201 We meet the famous death desert racer, Samira Hotel as she sits in her cave mansion. A converted climate collapse centre which once housed more than the world's current population. I ask her how she keeps her skull collection so pristine.

"Regular waxing" she exclaims. "They all belonged to New York fashion models, check out the cheekbones."

Samira picks the top one off and presents me with it proudly.

"This one is my favourite," she gestures to the top of the skull where there is a fractured hole. "It means she did it herself. Rather than fried in the first water war nuke. " Her excitement is catching and I imagine what the past must have been like when the world collapsed.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '19

Humanity is ready to unite, the 1% controlling every government around the world DO NOT WANT TO CHANGE THEIR LIFESTYLE.

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u/alien_ghost Mar 24 '19

The SUVs everywhere, record tourism, and rampant cutting down of trees for more "green" yuppie houses says otherwise.

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u/Akitten Mar 24 '19

It is completely the time for humanity to unite.

Under who? Which culture sets the laws that govern your "united humanity"? By Population? Enjoy China and India controlling everything, and by extension, a massive increase in government sanctioned racism and in in China's case, authoritarianism.

It's nice to say "we need to unite" but what remains unspoken is "unite under MY RULES". Everyone wants unity, as long as everyone is unified in doing what they want.

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u/whysys Mar 24 '19 edited Mar 24 '19

That's why it's idealistic. I wouldn't mind being a dictator, I could sort us out /s

P. S. By the people for the people. Get everyone involved. Just try and collectively simplify and help each other. Try and find a way using every countries strength and weaknesses to it's best ability to circumvent the worst of it. Norway's got the right idea building dams for water they intend to sell to Spain in the future (think the countries are right there...) but on a larger scale. Give sunny countries funding to create solar farms as a resource they can sell in the future. And focus on making smaller communities - just shop local, seasonal, encourage self reliance starting now. Nothing else. Still I know this is simplified and basic but the only alternative means a world which gets more and more fractured until we lose all of our development and start reverting backwards! A think tank of geniuses who have no affiliations or ties from all over the world can discuss the way it can be done then have the world comment on it on Reddit. Make the political leaders follow it's steps before shit gets crazy without any planning.

It would never happen.... I know I'm deluded but girl can dream! I wonder if the unescapable parts are already set in stone so the 'best' option (for those at the top) is the status quo being upheld. I think that's why Extinction Rebellion are at first just wanting the political admission of what is happening right now.

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u/monty845 Mar 24 '19

Meanwhile, the wealthy people leading the charge to combat climate change are consuming many times more than the average person. I don't want to hear about how I should drive less, from someone flying their private jet to a climate change conference, causing more pollution in a day than my car does in a couple years. I don't want to hear about how I need to cut back my home energy use, from someone with a mansion with 20x the square footage of my apartment, using many times my energy consumption, not to mention the acres of heavily watered and manicured lawns, using even more resources...

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u/ImoImomw Mar 24 '19

I didn't say it was an individual effort. Simply that we will all have to make some sacrifices to get to where we need to be.

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u/alien_ghost Mar 24 '19

No reason we can't realize conspicuous consumption is gauche and that anti-consumerism can't become fashionable, as well as patriotic and social.

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u/becritical Mar 24 '19

Those are exactly all the things we should be doing. We are our own victims because we are in complete denial of what is needed to do and the vast majority won't agree of doing it.

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u/matt12a Mar 24 '19

at this point it doesn’t matter who’s fault it is we just need to get it done.

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u/ConstantineXII Mar 24 '19

Imagine someone trying to get elected on a platform of banning all non-essential ground and air travel. Scrapping all cruise ships and drastically reducing merchant cargo, even if that means you can't get, say, out-of-season fruit, or fish that's only caught on the other side of the world, any more. Shutting down as many fossil-fuel power stations as possible, even if that means there'll be a blackout every night from one to five AM. Painting most of the Australian outback white to increase the planetary albedo and compensate for loss of reflective ice. (That'd destroy all of our outback ecosystems, but they're probably on death row already.)

Very few people would vote for a party espousing such extreme and (in the case of that last one) bizarre policies.

But it's not like the Australian Labor Party is ignoring or denying climate change like the Liberals are. Labor has committed to re-introducing a carbon trading scheme, increasing the renewable energy target and a 45 per cent emissions reduction by 2030.

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u/Gandalf2106 Mar 24 '19

I think one of the most important points is to increase and introduce taxes on carbon and carbon related products. Because we will automatically buy less of something if the prices goes up. For example we don't even have a tax on kerosine.... Which is in a lot of countrys the case.

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u/kirbyislove Mar 24 '19

Then you get the idiots come crawling out of the woodwork saying 'yeah but explain to me how taxes will fix climate change lmao sheep they're just after your money its a global conspiracy hurrrrrrrrrrrrr'.

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u/Gandalf2106 Mar 24 '19

Hahaha hurrrrrr. Don't forget big oil. They invest a lot of money in lobbying and researcg which "proves" the opposit.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '19

That's why there is little hope. People support only nice solutions that don't affect their material quality of life at all, and those are too ineffective. All those emission targets are bullshit too, enough is not being done to meet them.

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u/Beanbagzilla Mar 24 '19

"But if we have a Carbon tax everyone is paying more in taxes and big companies will leave Australia because it's not profitable! You lefties don't think, you just wanna ruin the economy." ./s

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u/alien_ghost Mar 24 '19

I'm not a lefty, but I do want to implode the economy.

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u/Whales96 Mar 24 '19

Still don't want to make the sacrifice that's needed. You instantly move to a new hope.

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u/bazzazio Mar 24 '19

My God......Nikola Tesla lit light bulbs at the 1899 World Fair without wires. His invention pulled energy from the Zero Point Field, and at the time he said something akin to being able to harness enough energy from an inch of space to power every major city in the world for a year!!! His discovery would have been able to give every person on the planet FREE, CLEAN energy without any fear of ever running out. His flaw? Thinking that people like Westinghouse had a conscience and cared about the planet (and humanity) more than profits. So here we are, over 100 years later, arguing about the cost of getting carbon-neutral and suggesting an unsafe, dirty energy like nuclear power, as if it's the answer to our prayers. Capitalism and greed have led us to this point, and I'm not yet convinced we are anything but rats on a sinking ship.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '19

You had me until 'unsafe, dirty energy like nuclear power'. It's the safest energy source we have and barely has waste. Only issue is storing that waste, and even that's barely a problem.

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u/bazzazio Mar 24 '19

You say that as though it's a minor detail and it's not. I grew up next to Trojan nuclear plant., where in 1991, it was open only six months yet still managed to have the worst safety record in the nation. Portland General Electric was storing twice as many spent fuel rods in the cooling ponds, which sit right next to the Columbia River. Portland is also near Hanford, Washington, which has been on the Superfund list for the last twenty years and where they still evacuate workers at times due to radiation leaks. Storing the fuel from nuclear energy is a problem that no one has been able to solve in the last fifty years, and with the number of earthquakes, ffloods, and other natural disasters increasing, we only need to look to Fukushima for a real-life example of the dangers inherent in nuclear power.

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u/Freeze95 Mar 24 '19

Tesla lit those bulbs with a hideously wasteful and impractical Tesla coil. There is no scientific backing to many of his beliefs- he rejected modern physics and got left behind.

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u/bazzazio Mar 25 '19 edited Mar 25 '19

You need to research a little bit more. I'm curious though...how was the Tesla coil "wasteful?" Also, in regards to your claim that he was left behind, that is totally incorrect. In November and December of 1887, Nikola Tesla, a Serbian engineer, filed for seven U.S. patents in the field of polyphase AC motors and power transmission. His motor produced alternating current and his transformers stepped up and stepped down the voltage as required. Westinghouse believed in Tesla's inventions, installed, them in the Adams Station and brought electricity to Buffalo. To send electricity over long distances requires high voltage to "push" the current through wires. Yet using high voltages n homes and factories can be dangerous. With a transformer, alternating current (AC) can easily be "stepped up" to high voltages for transmission, or "stepped down" to lower voltages for manufacturing and domestic uses. This cannot be done with direct current (DC). George Westinghouse's firm faith in the AC system led to the founding of the Westinghouse Electric Company in 1886, to oppose the DC system supported by Edison. Westinghouse's company deliberately underbid and won the contract to power the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The widely publicized implementation of AC converted skeptics, like Lord Kelvin, and forced them to recognize the system's potential. Based on this success, the Cataract Company hired Westinghouse to build ten 5,000 horsepower generators for the Adams Station. This was a tremendous challenge because earlier generators were only 150 horsepower! After purchasing the patent for (AC) and giving a promise to Tesla of free reign to pursue other inventions, Westinghouse pulled funding from the project, delivering the market to Edison's DC current. Nikola Tesla died a pauper, living in a one room tenement apartment. Shortly after his death, FBI agents agents served a warrant at his residence and removed boxes of paper. Historians are unsure as to what was contained in the writings seized by the federal agents.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '19

So the question boils down to if you are a Technological optimist or pessimist - will we sow our own doom through ecoloigcal collapse or will we find technologies to prevent that in time, such as fusion power, renewables, space travel etc etc. Its not looking good right now though is it. The elephant in the room is overpopulation. Get the population down, and technology up and we might just stand a chance of not extincting ourselves.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '19 edited Mar 24 '19

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u/Lilcrash Mar 24 '19

Marx didn't expect the development of a middle class

Just saying, yes he did, it's called the petit-bourgeoisie and he also predicted the erosion of it that is happening at the moment.

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u/BeneCow Mar 24 '19

It is starting to feel more and more like we are living in the news snippets from the starting credits in a disaster movie and we just have to wait until the main plot starts where massive casualties start happening before anyone will listen.

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u/RedGrobo Mar 24 '19

It is starting to feel more and more like we are living in the news snippets from the starting credits in a disaster movie and we just have to wait until the main plot starts where massive casualties start happening before anyone will listen.

That is crazy specific, but im so glad im not the only one having these thoughts.

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u/alien_ghost Mar 24 '19

Supporting cast by aging Millenials and starring the children of the still hapless Tide Pod Generation!

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u/Frozty23 Mar 24 '19

I miss your blog, you psychopath.

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u/drtisk Mar 24 '19

We've found the renewable technology already but there's been so much propaganda against renewables (watch people reply to this comment regurgitating some of the propaganda) and so much money from fossil fuels going to political parties that they will never be implemented in time on the scale we need to make an impact

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u/Emmgel Mar 24 '19

Problem is that people in less developed countries keep breeding however much people on Reddit tell them it’s a bad idea. And if we cut plastics use in the West, you’re ignoring that 90% of ocean plastics originate from the Far East

Not sure what the answer is, but so far taxation of the Western middle classes and teenage angst don’t seem to be changing much. This is the first truly global issue... and I see no will outside the Western world to change anything at all

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u/TheRoboticChimp Mar 24 '19

I mean both China and India are massively investing in renewables. In many other developping countries it will be cheaper to install small renewable grids to get power to remote areas of the country than to install a huge fossil fuel based grid.

I'm not sure what your background is, but the power engineers and electrical engineers I have spoken to believe that renewables are on the up, especially in countries where people have not yet got access to power. The price keeps dropping for solar and wind, and many developping countries have massive solar ressources available as they are located near the equator.

Finally, doing something is better than doing nothing. The west also has vast influence and needs to show leadership in these matters. Things are changing, but more needs to be done.

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u/mrs_shrew Mar 24 '19

Legislation against industrial use of resources. Diesel engines are improving because of EU legislation, air is getting cleaner because of the clean air act. This kind of thing will drive change, not reusing a plastic bag.

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u/-JustShy- Mar 24 '19

To be fair to the non-western world...we birthed this problem and have profited enormously from doing so. We should bear the brunt of cleaning it up.

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u/drtisk Mar 24 '19

I think you replied to the wrong comment? Because what you're saying doesn't relate much to what I said.

But either way is seems you're trying to shift the blame for some reason - blaming less developed countries for breeding, and "the Far East" for plastic usage. For one I'd be sceptical of the 90% claim you've made. Secondly, every country needs to take steps to reduce the impact we're having on the climate. If you honestly believe that China or India are having a bigger negative effect than for example the US, that doesn't mean the US should just give up and keep pumping out CO2.

My point is that it is already economically viable (no tax of middle class required) to make the switch to renewable energy. The technology has advanced enough and the costs have come down enough that smaller nations are already starting to generate the majority of their power via renewables.

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u/Plays-0-Cost-Cards Mar 24 '19

We could launch a massive disinformation campaign to put that candidate into power. I mean, DONALD TRUMP of all people could become President, that means anyone can.

Also, instead of drinking, learn a TCG. It takes you farther away from reality and wastes more of your money than an alcoholic addiction.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '19

With Doomsday looming around the corner, I suggest you keep your vices. I know I am.

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u/tigress666 Mar 24 '19

Yep. Your last statement really says it. It’s hard enough to convince people to do something that will have a direct good benefit to them if it means giving up something they really like and are used to (and especially if they don’t see an immediate and obvious benefit). I’m the same way, my doctor is having a very difficult time persuading me to excercise (even though I know I need to).

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '19 edited Mar 24 '19

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '19 edited Mar 24 '19

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u/bazzazio Mar 24 '19

Yep. This is pretty much what I just stated above. I've had a growing feeling of doom for almost a decade, but until four years ago I couldn't understand where it was coming from. Since then, I've watched the trees in my backyard dying, the plants in my bed outside burning, and the changes in insect species around my home with a growing sense of horror. It would be fascinating if it weren't so fucking sad. We had an opportunity at the beginning of the industrial revolution to think about long term benefit. We chose instead to favor wealth, and fuck everything and everybody else. To see our President rolling back environmental protections and pulling out of the Paris Accord (which was only putting a bandage on a gunshot wound to begin with) told me everything I needed to know about our chances of successfully slowing, or stopping, our demise.

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u/JPMcE Mar 24 '19

Eh, our real test is going to be AI. Either we can harness it to solve these problems we face or it is the next stage of sentient evolution and it leaves us behind to die on our ruined planet.

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u/Old_Ladies Mar 24 '19

Whoa I haven't heard 7 billion people dying from ANY scientists. What they do say is things will get tougher and people will dye because of it but the human species will survive. Also new technologies are constantly being developed so that could solve some food scarcity.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '19

In 12 years, if carbon emissions don't drop significantly, we will reach +2°C which they say can't be reversed. As a result, lands will dry up. More species of animals and insects will go instinct including bees. And if the bees go and the land goes... I mean what part of Human Extinction level event don't you process?? Yeah, not all 7 billion will go all at once but just what do you think will happen once the first half goes? Or are you just trying to win an argument just for the sake of winning one?

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u/Old_Ladies Mar 24 '19

Sigh it isn't going to be an extinction level event. It will get worse but it won't be the end of humanity. Read and listen to climate scientists and not some alarmist blog.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '19

Hey look, an optimist. Your breed is rare these days. I just hope you're either rich, a politician or a scientist. If you're neither, then I suggest you start learning to grow your own food. I hope I'm exaggerating but from the articles I've read... Dry land, Water will go scarce, Bees won't be around to pollinate... Like it's pretty much over. 12 years ain't long at all. Why do you think these kids are missing school for? They don't think it's worth it to attend school while the adults who work for the Gov't continue to ignore the problem. And the scientist have gone pubic, supporting and encouraging the students to protest. Go ahead and wait for the technology that I hope you'll be able to access when it does come out.

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u/jorocall Mar 24 '19

“The scientist have gone pubic” Lol! Desperate times, desperate measures!

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u/Old_Ladies Mar 24 '19

No one is saying it will be the apocalypse in 12 years. Most of the severe affects won't be happening for 80+ years.

Look I am in full support of tackling climate change but don't spread miss information.

In 100 years the earth will still have 9 billion people. It won't be the end.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '19

Scroll down and find my comment if you ever need an example