My point was simply that people are only powerless against climate change when they want to be powerless. There's always something to do, including through your vote. — Olivier5
has anyone asked them ? — Amity
"Do as I say and not as I do"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U2UoR-oB1M — RussellA
The future is arriving sooner than most of us expected, and speculative fiction needs to do far more to help us prepare. The warning signs of catastrophic climate change are getting harder to ignore, and how we deal with this crisis will shape the future of humanity. It’s time for SF authors, and fiction authors generally, to factor climate change into our visions of life in 2019, and the years beyond...
Science fiction, according to Jones, provides an important forum for “humanizing science and even politics/policy.” Pop culture and the popular imagination tend to depict scientists as evil or horribly misguided, and civil servants as “contemptible, petty, power-hungry bureaucrats.” But SF can show science in a more positive light, and even show how government is capable of implementing policies that “will get us out of the mess we’re currently in,” says Jones.
“With Blackfish City, I wanted to paint a realistically terrifying picture about how the world will change in the next hundred years, according to scientists,” says Miller—a picture which includes the evacuation of coastal cities, wars over resources, famines, plague, and infrastructure collapse. “But I also wanted to have hope, and imagine the magnificent stuff we’ll continue to create. The technology we’ll develop. The solutions we’ll find. The music we’ll make.”
“The Road/Walking Dead-style abject hopelessness is not entertaining or stimulating to me,” adds Miller. “Humans are the fucking worst, yes, but they’re also the fucking best.” — Tor.com: Climate change and Sci-fi authors
I'm 75; I don't have a lot of water and climate worries, provided I don't live too much longer. I wonder what plans informed adolescents and young adults are making in light of the ongoing crises which they will have to live with. — Bitter Crank
Vote green. — unenlightened
Caroline Lucas on climate, consumerism and Cop26: ‘Boris Johnson is an absolute disaster’
by Emine Saner.
If Caroline Lucas has always seemed an optimistic sort of politician, that outlook is being pushed to breaking point. Sitting through the budget last week was, says Lucas, “an unbelievable experience. It was like being in some weird parallel universe where there wasn’t a climate emergency, and we weren’t about to host the world’s nations at this big climate summit.”
It should have been a moment when the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, “was turbocharging the funding for the net zero programme”, says the Green party MP, ahead of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, which opened on Sunday. “It should have been the point where he reversed that unforgivable cut in aid, where we demonstrated some strong climate policies. Instead, the headlines were about cutting the cost of short-haul flights.” — Guardian: Cop26 - Caroline Lucas Interview
--------... “The public pressure and movements are gathering like never before. We know the public want leadership on this – they want the government to go further, they are absolutely up for bolder and more ambitious action. I take some hope from that, but on the evidence right now, I think it’s not too late, but it’s going to be tough.”
When I was a teenager I read a lot of scifi, including some who included sea level changes. Like Paris or New York under water...
Cover art for: Valérian - La Cité des Eaux Mouvantes, by Jean-Claude Mézières, 1970 — Olivier5
Yes to optimism but no to denial. This sub-genre of scifi (called Climate Fiction) cannot be all gloom and doom of course, and mankind may indeed still thrive. But the challenge cannot be ignored anymore, nor wished away via some future technology. — Olivier5
Her biggest fear is, “That we don’t act fast enough. That we exceed 1.5 degrees, that we get towards two degrees of warming and more of the extreme events that scientists have been warning are linked to the climate emergency really accelerate.” One of her favourite films is Franny Armstrong’s docudrama The Age of Stupid, set in 2055 – with its cities under floods or on fire, it looks more familiar this year than it did when it came out in 2009 – and she says a line from it still makes the hairs stand up on the back of her neck: “‘Why is it, knowing what we knew then, we didn’t act when there was still time?’ And frankly that is the question I go to bed thinking about, and wake up thinking about.”
Voting Green would seem a sensible thing to do but some see it as a wasted vote, given our political electerol system. — Amity
Re UKIP - got their policy through — unenlightened
Expect to become poorer and learn to live simple and consume little. — unenlightened
>>> Brexit :rage:
What lessons can be learned, then, from those wishing successful outcomes to Cop26 ? — Amity
Keep it simple; keep it nostalgic; keep it racist; repeat hypnotically. Something like this:
"Bring back our White Christmases!" :scream: — unenlightened
Franny Armstrong’s docudrama The Age of Stupid, set in 2055 – with its cities under floods or on fire, it looks more familiar this year than it did when it came out in 2009 – and she (Lucas) says a line from it still makes the hairs stand up on the back of her neck: “‘Why is it, knowing what we knew then, we didn’t act when there was still time?’ And frankly that is the question I go to bed thinking about, and wake up thinking about.”
We haven't faced something this big ever, involving the entire world population — Manuel
We may adapt, but maybe billions will die. — Manuel
We'll be back something close to baseline in 10,000 years. — frank
The species will adapt to the change. — frank
It's still quite hard to absorb the idea that we are willing to destroy most sentient life on Earth, many if not most of our fellow citizens for reasons of power and profit, essentially. — Manuel
virtue is expensive and painful. — unenlightened
We'll be back something close to baseline in 10,000 years. — frank
virtue is expensive and painful.
— unenlightened
Why do you think that is? — TheMadFool
virtue is expensive and painful.
— unenlightened
Why do you think that is?
— TheMadFool
If virtue was fun and profitable, every arsehole would be virtuous — unenlightened
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