Sure, though there's an avalanche of horrible news too. The non-anthropogenic rise in methane suggests we may have triggered feedback loops we can't stop.

I don't see why you're getting downvoted. There is an ocean of difference between "we're on track to fix things" and "nobody's doing anything at all", yes, but it does nobody any good to pretend we haven't even gotten on the boat yet. They'll just reach the assumption that it's 100% hopeless.

Thanks. I was rather confused as well so I just assumed that it’s people who are so attached to their doomsday conviction they actively block good news.

I've also been surprised by witnessing a bit of that here recently.

I guess the names "last generation" and "extinction rebellion" are sincere.

Fwiw I see the extinction rebellion groups as a beacon of hope (even if they’re way more pessimistic than I am). I live in NL and as far as I can see their work is actually beginning to move the needle.

You don’t go sit on a highway and block all traffic with 200 people for a month straight if you believe it’s all futile anyway.

Good point. I was focussing a bit too much on the "extinction" and not on the "rebellion" part.

No, we haven't gotten on the boat. Who cares how dirty energy is when so much of it is wasted? Who cares if electricity comes from solar or wind, if you're still adding PFAS to any furniture and other dirty chemicals in all food supply chains.

Industrial lobbies (aka "green capitalism") are trying to frame the debate as a question of clean energies, but for decades scientists have known and studied that consuming less, and more durable products is the only way out of this global crisis. Another example, industrial organic agriculture (yes that's a thing) is still very damaging to the environment in many ways (eg. contributing to desertification of soils), while permaculture/agroforestry is good for everyone but less profitable.

So i replied to the original comment in good faith, but such arguments are usually pushed by industrialists who explicitly profit from destroying the environment and silencing the narratives of actual scientists and environmentalists. Capitalism is what destroyed everything (see also scientists naming this geological era "capitalocene"), and nothing it can produce it can fix the inherent death-bringing at its core.

Hey, I don't meet a lot of people like you in real life these days. What's your opinion of the concept of comparative advantage?

To me it's the "real" mathematical law from which capitalism spawns, but it breaks down at the extremes. If the AI paperclip maximizer can produce 10^100 paperclips a day, and I can only produce 1, it might make more sense to the maximizer to take my atoms apart and put them back together in a more optimal configuration - which of course is bad news for me. I figure an actual dissident probably has a stronger criticism than me, so I'm curious.

What you're saying is similar to claiming fixing a leak on your faucet is gonna fix the global water crisis we are starting to face.

Assuming you are in good faith, you are probably very uninformed about the state of the climate crisis, pollution crisis, and everything that comes along. We are far from the targets set by IPCC to ensure human survival, and they are one of the most optimistic organizations out there when it comes to projections, as some indicators are now much worse than their "worst scenario" projections.

Solar panels isn't gonna cut it. No single isolated change is gonna cut it. Nothing short of a global revolution tearing down industrial capitalism and consumerist culture. I mean, a solarpunk alternative sounds great, but is so far 100% unrealistic, while local-first permaculture-oriented anarchic societies have proved their worth/resilience throughout history/pre-history.

Oh, well if _that’s_ all it’ll take… you may as well stop talking or worrying about it and just enjoy your life since nothing short of a global extinction event will make a dent.

1. You’re responding to a straw man. I never said it’s all fixed and solved. I merely said that there’s a nonzero amount of people working on the solution, which even a turbo pessimist like you has got to agree with.

2. But to respond to said straw man anyway, I believe that you’re severely underestimating the single good thing about capitalism: it can cause exponential growth, in bad ways but also good. We’re now at the point where renewable energy can be cheaper than fossil fuels, and the gap is widening. Those evil nasty greedy capitalists who you despise so much are going to want in on that deal and once they do, there’s no stopping them (except for governments not giving out permits for solar parks and wind parks and so on). Investment will keep increasing, the technology will keep getting cheaper and more plentiful. There can be a huge demand and supply cycle for renewable energy spinning way out of control if only we let it.

Where I live (NL) the government is the single biggest bottleneck. They just decided against (!) allowing more solar parks on fields, they take up to a decade to OK wind parks in the North Sea etc etc. To say you want more of that bureaucratic mess, and less commercial investment in the solution, frankly, that’s insane to me.

I agree with you that capitalism caused this thing, but I believe that we’re so far out already that nothing but capitalism can move fast enough to fix it.