Global warming appears to have shifted into a faster gear. After removing the effects of El Niño, volcanic eruptions, and solar cycles, researchers found that the planet has warmed at roughly 0.35°C per decade over the past ten years, compared with just under 0.2°C per decade from 1970 to 2015. The acceleration, which becomes visible around 2013 to 2015, appeared across five major global temperature datasets with more than 98% statistical certainty.
Crypto farming, feeding the ai bubble, large scale wars of aggression, commuters replacing cars with trucks, buying throwaway junk has never been easier. That’s the relatively new completely unnecessary hubris that I can think off atm. These should be the low hanging fruits to just not do, but apparently we’re going to continue doing them anyways. If we can’t address the low hanging fruits, then tackling the harder challenges will remain a pipe dream until it’s too late. Climate stability is fucked, and we’re in for a rough ride.
The real “low hanging fruit to not do” is blaming individual choices for societal issues. Capitalism is the one and only reason for anthropogenic climate change. Ending capitalism is the one and only way to solve it. There is no individual action you can take that is effective, we have to reorder society in such a way that it is impossible to profit from environmental destruction.
the only real solution to climate change is renewable energy, and solar energy in particular. capitalism or no capitalism basically doesn’t matter.
Like 3/5 things that poster mentioned were not individual choices. The 2/5 that are individual choices are real issues. It is an issue, not just societally but also environmentally and in terms of public health, that the world is polluted by plastic because people wanted momentary convenience. Capitalism has to end and it incentivizes those choices of convenience, but people are still simultaneously responsible for making those choices unless they have no alternative… in which case it’s not really a choice.
Human nature is the reason. Regardless of the system we live in. People want more, better, etc. and feel important/strong/rich/… It has always been like that. Heck, even monkeys display such things.
100 thousand years ago you’d say human nature was to live in small bands and only assemble for seasonal hunts or cultural events. Anything else would be perpetual war.
10000 years ago you would be saying that it’s against human nature to be sedentary or do repetitive work so agriculture is ultimately only a hobby at best.
4000 years ago you’d say it’s human nature to live in city states ruled by tyrant warrior-kings and dedicate your life to cereal farming.
Maybe human nature isn’t some well characterised and stiff thing? humans have lived in more ways than you can dream of.