Andor is one of the finest shows I've seen in years, and so deeply relevant for today.
Fir anyone who hasn't seen it yet, you can watch the first 3 episodes for free on YouTube. The rest is free too if you have certain swagger as he sing a shanty witg her mates! (Dbzero is a wonderful instance, by the by).
Humanity does not have the technology or capability to be sustainable
We absolutely have the technology, it's just being blocked from being implemented on emergency timescales by soulless oil and gas corpo suits that have almost de-facto control of governments in most countries.
There's a surprising amount of recognizable english in there, I was able to understand around 50% without the subtitles.
Yes we can. Doomerism only guarantees our failure. Collective action still matters, it still has an effect.
Capitalism will bring us to ruin if allowed to continue, and we will indeed need to have a reckoning with it, or perish. If you want that reckoning to be tried, then join in your local communities, organize, unionize your job, help your friends and family unionize theirs, and prepare together.
At least then we'll have a chance.
This is an anarchist instance, we're on the same page. Ending capitalism is the only real way out of all of this.
But right now, at this very moment, things are not doomed. They could be doomed in the future, but that isn't written yet. So yes, fight like hell, but realize that a lot of people who read comments like "We're fucked. It's over", or read the OP's article, will come away thinking we've already reached a human extinction level event, which we absolutely have not yet, and can still influence.
It's important to frame it that we can still make a difference, otherwise people will simply give up and not worry about trying to fix things since they believe it's all fucked and pointless, which can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Eventually there will be a heat death of the universe, so that technically makes all existence 'meaningless' if you consider an ending to make everything before it meaningless.
Before then though, there will be a lot of existing going on for living beings, who fill their lives with meaning and joy and connection while they remain alive, and we'd rather like it if our environment wasn't a complete garbage fire while doing so.
Nothing has changed. Nothing.
Alternative energy is cheaper and more viable than anyone 40 years ago could've ever thought possible. China is building out insane amounts of solar energy, and India is starting to as well. The EU is reducing emissions, if slowly.
Yes, the US going hard right and abandoning climate goals is a shitshow, but they're not the entire world. Good things are still happening.
Based on this interview with Douglas Rushkoff, they can't even fathom treating their security guards well to prevent them from revolting in the bunker.
Doomerism isn't the answer. You may not have kids, but other people still will, and they'll have to live through the world we leave them. Instead of giving up and saying fuck it, use your anger, hope, love, whatever you need to fuel you, and do what you can. Plant trees to create shade you will not be under, find ways to minimize your energy usage, get to know your community, talk to them, prepare together.
It's far more fulfilling than waiting out your death in despair, so even if you think it's all useless, you'll have a much better time of it either way.
That is not a position backed by our current climate science knowledge. We do have a certain amount of climate change baked in right now, absolutely. And it will remain like that for quite a long time, and yes, if we went net-zero, it will stay that way for many decades, maybe even a century or two.
But we can influence how bad that period is, and if it will ever level off (for future generations, not in our lifetime).
If we throw up our hands and do nothing, we are guaranteeing our doom as a species. If we continue to fight, we can ease the pain and horror we and our future generations will have to go through, survive as species, and far in the future, bring the climate back to what it was pre-industial revolution.
The tech is there. The only thing stopping us is a lack of political will due to capitalism resulting in oligarchs who have captured the political system, and a lack of public awareness of alternative ways of life due to poor education and propaganda.
A properly informed public that understands the extreme dangers of climate change, oligarchic capitalism, and the viability of changing things with collective power would allow us to use these existing technologies and prevent the devastation we're headed toward.