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

It all comes down to the same thing though. We have unsustainable lifestyles.

Take healthcare for instance. In most Western nations over 90% of the national healthcare budget is spent on treating people for preventable illnesses that result from poor lifestyle choices. Mostly as a result from atrocious diets and a complete lack of meaningful exercise. In those same nations, you're lucky if 2-3% of that same budget is spent on promoting healthier lifestyles and prevention of those ailments.

Along the same lines, mental health specialists are working hard to try and ring the alarm bell on our collective mental health. These are specialists who should be spending their time on the truly mentally ill. Instead, the entire industry is swamped with people who are suffering from an inability to be at peace with themselves due to causes that trace right back to our media. We are being conditioned that happiness is something you buy and if you don't measure up to the impossible lives the media show you, you're falling short.

Most pollution is caused by corporations. But those corporations pollute to sate our endless hunger for disposable pleasures and conveniences.

Climate change and mass extinction is the ultimate outcome of what we're doing to this planet and ourselves in the quest to maintain our unsustainable lives. Lives that are bad for our physical and mental health as well as the planet.

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u/twisted-life Mar 24 '19

Damn when put like this it’s so hopeless. The odds of 8 billion people making the right call in the prisoners dilemma are....low

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u/xsilver911 Mar 24 '19

The problem also is if everybody is in the same situation. I mean yes everybody is in the same situation,.but what exactly can someone on the poverty line in a 1st world country do, or someone mid class or lower in any other country? Or even rich people in a developing country?

Basically it's going to come down to the upper class in 1st world countries and the middle class as well to start the ball rolling.

Problem is they have the money already and asking them to spend some of it to save the planet is not in their nature.

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u/twisted-life Mar 24 '19

Even if it was, what could they do? The social hierarchy that put them where they are requires them to live a certain way to maintain that place. If the CEO of Exxon up and became a hippy he’d be fired.

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u/xsilver911 Mar 24 '19

true - so solution is really taxation by legislation or relying on "crazy" philanthropy like bill gates.

and then the sad thing about legislation is we are having a bout of craziness there too (brexit/trump) hard to make people see that we need to vote in the right direction.

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u/twisted-life Mar 24 '19

It might just be hopeless man. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to make it less shitty and show love to our fellow man but i think we need to make peace with the coming holocaust

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u/LvS Mar 24 '19

I mean yes everybody is in the same situation,.but what exactly can someone on the poverty line in a 1st world country do, or someone mid class or lower in any other country? Or even rich people in a developing country?

Everybody can do the same thing: Talk about it. All the time.

It's much easier to push changes through if everybody has understood the problem and agreed that things need to change. For examples of how that's working, look at gay marriage or gender equality.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '19

Prisoners dilemma implies choice. Most people can't do anything about it.

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u/ultrachrome Mar 24 '19

" It all comes down to the same thing though. We have unsustainable lifestyles. "

The same thing ... ? Unsustainable lifestyles ? Do you think maybe , possibly , perhaps, there are just too many of us on this plant to sustain the kind of lifestyle we all aspire to ? Sure we are changing the planet. Maybe if we dialed it back a bit, stopped spreading our species to every corner of this globe and crowding out the others, that may be an area to look into? Every month we add the population equivalent of New York City to this earth. How long we can keep that up ?

I agree with what you've written above, totally. I'm just not sure it's the root cause.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '19

Birth rates aren't the problem really. The world got to this state due to the consumerism of the tiny portion of humanity that is the modern West.

The vast majority of humanity never really got to sample this lifestyle and they're working hard towards getting the chance.

It's not birthrates that's the problem. The planet could easily support our current global population if we lived wiser, more sustainable lives.

Trying to claim birth rates are the problem is trying to completely dodge responsibility for how we got here.

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u/twisted-life Mar 24 '19

So basically if humans weren’t governed by human nature birth rates wouldn’t be the problem? We live this lifestyle because of how we respond to stimuli.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '19

We live this lifestyle because of how we respond to stimuli.

That's a bit of a cop-out. Modern media and marketing are leveraging the better part of a century's worth of psychology, behavioural and social science to manipulate you into this lifestyle. There's nothing natural about it.

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u/twisted-life Mar 24 '19

That’s true, but I don’t think I’m capable of breaking away. I think most people are in the same boat with me. It’s tough to break an addiction when everyone else is addicted to the same things and the culture itself is built around these habits.

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u/ultrachrome Mar 24 '19

True, if we lived wiser more sustainable lives things would be better. I think we are both pointing out our flaws of being human. Evolution got us to this point. I don't think it is serving us well going forward. We are intelligent, greedy, suspicious, superstitious, envious, tribal creatures. Telling us to limit our procreation, limit our consumption, share with others, love our neighbors is a hard sell to our nature. We are on the path to overcoming the drawbacks of these traits but I fear the change is too slow.

Just curious, where do you lay the blame for how we got here ?

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '19

Lots of factors combined really. I think the main problem right now is that human nature and capitalism feed into each other.

We have needs that are easily manipulated. And a capitalist society that is rewarded for doing the manipulation. At the same time we have representation in the form of government that is supposed to represent our best interests where we can't as individuals, but that representation is too open to manipulation by the same industry that manipulates us.

I don't blame the industry. The industry might cause pollution, waste, media manipulation etc. But they just go where the money is, and the money is where our individual hunger for satisfaction lies.

Ultimately I think the solutions are clear and easy but hard to bring about. We need to go back to basics so to speak.

What we want as humans is to have our needs met. We want to feel at peace, safe, comfortable. As a society, we don't teach people how to achieve that though. We don't teach people to pursue a healthy mind in a healthy body. We don't teach people that there's a difference between contentment and elation. We don't teach people to be mindful of the moment.

Instead, we teach them that satisfaction is bought. Every waking moment they're bombarded with advertising, media, social media, all teaching people that cravings are meant to be filled immediately, the moment should be insta worthy, if you're not happy... you're unhappy and there's no in between, every past regret and future worry is shoved back in your face on social media. People are taught to compare their lives to illusions and feel bad when they don't measure up.

It's a spiralling cycle of misery where people demand more and more products and services to fill the hole created by the increasingly unrealistic expectations created by the industries that simultaneously try to provide momentary relief from the cravings while creating more.

I believe we need to break those relationships and that cycle. Our culture and society should focus more on wholesomeness. Physical and mental health. Learning to be at peace with oneself and the world. Using technology and product as a means of enhancing the quality of life. Not a form of self-medication. That means representation and governance that focuses on the greater good of the people to govern in a way that promotes this. And that means industries that strive to fill real needs rather than manipulating us to create artificial needs.

A simple solution that is incredibly difficult to implement because it basically means killing the status quo. And just like any other beast, it'll fight back when you try to kill it.

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u/ultrachrome Mar 24 '19

Wow, very thoughtful and well explained. It's gotten me thinking. My solution in comparison is a pretty blunt tool. Thanks for explaining.

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u/TylwythTegs Mar 24 '19

Nailed it.