It is not just a question of morals. Many people hold beliefs which justify them doing nothing. You need to change these beliefs before it becomes a moral issue. — Agree-to-Disagree

Many people believe whatever it is convenient to believe to maintain their lifestyle and comfortable identity. This is a moral failure. You ought to believe what is reasonable to believe, not what is comfortable to believe. This is a fundamental moral commitment to truth, that is the foundation of the possibility of communication. Thus when people do not have that commitment, they are unpersuadable and communication becomes impossible.

I'm living backwards; I become more radical with age. It always seemed obvious to me that the political world is as round as the physical, and wherever one happens to reside, the extremes of left and right meet and become one at the antipodes, where the blood is always redder.

We anarchists think we know better than anyone how not to govern, but we're not going to give away our secrets to you lot!

My dad was a communist turned socialist - how was I supposed to rebel against that? Oh, I remember now, "turn on, tune in, drop out".

The source of all can only be nothing. What else is there?

Being comes from non-being.

The cause of the universe is the non-existence of God. If there was God already, the universe would be superfluous.

Smile. There e really ought to be a thread for deeply shallow music.

American society doesn't have anything to compare with that. — frank

The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Does my complicated odyssey end should I go deep enough within myself to open the door of my inner Conscience, then find a way to step into my soul? — jufa

Why do you ask? If someone would answer, would that help you?

Because I am free, unconditioned, whole–not the part, not the relative, but the whole Truth that is eternal–I desire those, who seek to understand me to be free; not to follow me, not to make out of me a cage which will become a religion, a sect. Rather should they be free from all fears–from the fear of religion, from the fear of salvation, from the fear of spirituality, from the fear of love, from the fear of death, from the fear of life itself. As an artist paints a picture because he takes delight in that painting, because it is his self-expression, his glory, his well-being, so I do this and not because I want anything from anyone. You are accustomed to authority, or to the atmosphere of authority, which you think will lead you to spirituality. You think and hope that another can, by his extraordinary powers–a miracle–transport you to this realm of eternal freedom which is Happiness. Your whole outlook on life is based on that authority. — Krishnamurti

https://kfoundation.org/dissolution-speech/

Thee heck are you talking about??? — javra

I am talking about the politics of climate change, where no government is taking serious action to adapt or mitigate because there is no incentive to do so unless everyone else is already doing it and pressuring, and no one has any incentive to do so because everyone is out for themselves and their larger clan. This is a one time situation, whereby we know what needs to be done, but not doing it until everyone else is doing it is "advantageous". and everyone knows that too, so green parties do not get elected because they would make 'us' poorer to the benefit of others. And the only solution would involve people stopping with the self-interest, and acting and voting for the common good. Those that have not already learned this will not learn in this one-off situation because it is really hard to actually understand viscerally how very fucked we all are unless we change our morals and start acting on them.

It is a big problem that so many people are relying on benefits, especially due to mental and physical problems. — Jack Cummins

The unemployed are an important part of the economy. They, you, function to keep wages low, and therefore benefits are structured to be uncomfortable, humiliating, and insecure so that there is a strong incentive to find work, but enough to keep you alive, so that there are always people ready to take work at low wages, thus preventing workers from demanding better pay and conditions. Your desperation is functional in the economy. And as the vampire illustrates, you also function as scapegoat for the miserable state of the economy in general; miserable that is for the 99%.

Honestly I don't get the aversion for the idea, when it seems clear to me that this is the only way forward. — ChatteringMonkey

I'm not averse to an agreement; I'm all for an agreement. I don't think it's going to happen; I think it's wishful thinking, for reasons I already went through. So suppose for a moment that there is no agreement to be had; shall we do what we can anyway, or shall we do nothing?

While you're waiting to die, why not look at these pretty interactive graphics and compare the changes thus far where you are with the global average. This is my local graph, and you can adjust it for your region or the global average. Get the T-shirt!

https://showyourstripes.info/c/europe/unitedkingdom/liverpool

And lets get our conversation more sparky ...

"Preprint of Peer-Reviewed paper in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS):
Warming Stripes spark climate conversations: from the ocean to the stratosphere
https://t.co/8ayLndsnEe

Abstract:
The ‘warming stripes’ are an iconic climate data visualisation, adopted globally
as a symbol of our warming world. We discuss their origin and uses for communication,
including understanding long-term changes in the climate and consequences of future
emission choices. We also extend the stripes concept to explore observed temperature
variations throughout the climate system, revealing coherent warming for the troposphere
and upper ocean, and cooling in the stratosphere, consistent with our understanding of
human influences on our climate."

If this is true, and I think it is, you would need something to overcome those inclinations, i.e. binding supra-national agreement. — ChatteringMonkey

Are you volunteering to be the world dictator? What is needed is easy to specify - to stop carbon emissions and work to restore the environment. But who is going to do the binding? Some very stable genius, no doubt.

In other words we're doomed - by and large. Such is the logic of our irrational self-interested inclinations.

Sorry, that was a joke. We don't have many planets, so the Axelrod scenario doesn't apply. Rather we have to rely on our already evolved 'cooperative' inclinations.

... altruistic heuristics that retain a sense of justice — javra

Yes. Moral rectitude. So when we have lots of crises with human induced climate change, we might learn to deal with it, eventually.

Indeed, Blair's neoliberal all stars, New Labour, were active contributors to the problem. — Tom Storm

Indeed indeed. New labour was post union labour. Socialist governments increase income taxes because they are progressive redistributive taxes; Blair's government stealth privatised the NHS with the private finance initiative. Never trust a politician who smiles!

The way to escape the prisoners' dilemma in geo-politics is negotiation and coming to some kind of supra-national agreement.... you create incentives so the prisoners don't choose the default bad option.
— ChatteringMonkey

In agreement with this, to give a relatively simple parallel to it: — javra

Clearly neither of you understand the prisoner's dilemma. You, the prisoner, cannot "create incentives", you have to rely on each other's solidarity - or not.

One difficulty with the NHS is that either there is spare capacity (aka 'waste'), or there is a lack of spare capacity (aka 'crisis').

Another difficulty is it is part of the "Nanny State" interfering with peoples lives. The nanny state has been rolled back a long way; there used to be school nurses, district nurses free school milk, free school dinners, mother and baby clinics, cottage hospitals (where one went to recuperate after treatment or operation, medium and long stay mental health hospitals, subsidised orange juice, dried milk, and more that I have forgotten. As nanny's health and safety 'red tape' and interfering healthy living projects like swimming pools sports fields, and so on were rolled back, sold off, or whatever, the costs fell on the NHS, that was there to pick up the pieces of broken lives that resulted.

Translating the bullshit we have been sold in plain English, the trade unions have lost their bargaining power, the population has been taught that it is not the rich that are responsible for their misery but gays and foreigners, and that a state that supports the poor and the sick is undesirable and cost them too much. Hence taxes have gone down, real wages have gone down, and government spending on social care has gone down. This is also partly because we no longer have an Empire covering a third of the world to exploit. Those wretched foreigners again wanting to run their own lives.

I don't see how you go from where we are now to living in harmony with nature without a lot of people dying. — ChatteringMonkey

A lot of people are going to die. I can appreciate that that is not what people want to hear; in the seventies it might have been done gently, now it's too late.

One thing that is not often discussed are the psychological effects of climate change on people and societies. — ChatteringMonkey

It is discussed, and psychological community help is available too.
see here for example: https://www.deepadaptation.info/the-deep-adaptation-forum-daf/

But it is not 'let's pretend it's not really so bad' sort of help.

More generally, people may not be aware that eco-philosophy, deep ecology, have been being studied and discussed for a long time now.

In Europe, the first announcement of the Deep Ecology Movement (DEM) was made in Bucharest (Romania) in 1973 by the Norwegian Arne Naess, who participated in the world conference on the future of research [16], from which time he was considered the first promoter of the concept of ecosophy or “ecological wisdom” [17], a concept to which the author added the letter T, becoming Ecosophy T, where the letter added to the concept is an association with the name of his hut in the mountains in Norway, called “Tvergastein” [18]. Naess supports the idea of protecting the environment if it is subjected to the type of transformation that Leopold was talking about. His ideas refer to the fact that we are part of the whole biosphere, which is why we must be in harmony with nature: “thinking for nature must be loyal to nature” [18]. His concept of “Deep Ecology” includes another concept called the “ecological self”, which is an initiative for developing environmental philosophy and activism in the world. Naess stated that the natural world cannot be manipulated or controlled for our own gain and “to live well means to live as an equal with all the elements of our environment”, continuing to refer to eco-philosophy, “which is not a philosophy in any proper academic sense, nor is it institutionalized as a religion or ideology” [19] and which it assimilates within an ecological movement.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/8/4291

And here are the barebones principles that Naess proposed.

In his “eight-point platform,” formulated together with George Sessions in 1984 while the two were camping in Death Valley, California, Arne Naess offers a convenient overview of deep-ecological principles. It runs as follows:

The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman Life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes.
Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.
Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.
The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.
Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.
The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.
Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes.

https://www.deepecology.org.au/blog/2022/04/22/the-ecosophy-platform/
Lots more interesting stuff on this site too.

. This isn't about morality. — ChatteringMonkey

It is exactly about morality, because the only escape from the prisoners' dilemma is for the prisoners to be moral; if they are logically expedient, they lose. If governments do not do the right thing for the world because it is the right thing for the world, the world is fucked. Your explaining the logic to me doesn't change the logic, it just shows how we are fucked. because we have no morality.

Deals are made to be broken. The enforcement of the prisoner's dilemma always leads to the worst result, not the best. there is no solution except to be moral and unselfish at government level - or we can (nearly) all die, of course.

I need to introduce to some people here, the notion of "social collapse". There are 'preppers' out there getting ready for it. There are billionaires buying estates in out of the way places. There are wise academics researching past collapses, and trying to learn lessons. And here is one:

How we could survive in a post‑collapse world



One of the things that concern scientists about the current climate crisis is the incredible speed of it, which @Banno mentioned above. Animals with legs or wings or maybe even slime trails can probably keep up with the movement pole-wards of their accustomed temperature zone. However forests can only move the distance they can project their seed per however many years it takes for a seed to become a fertile tree. There are pioneer species that can move much faster - berries that are eaten by birds, and so on. So there is potential for humans to assist the movement of flora.

The situation for the oceans is more difficult, although one might imagine it easy enough for fish to migrate. Unfortunately, the warming of the sea surface leads to stratification, and because there is less mixing, nutrients are reduced, phytoplankton are also reduced. Phytoplankton absorb CO2 and produce oxygen providing both food and oxygen to fish. Large parts of the oceans are becoming almost sterile.
https://news.ucar.edu/132759/climate-change-creating-significantly-more-stratified-ocean-new-study-finds

I never liked fish much anyway. But a lot of people depend on fish.

So far, most comments here have focussed on what individuals can do to adapt to what is coming. One possibility seems to have been overlooked:— One can die.

The first thing that needs to be dealt with is this collective action problem, because otherwise it does not make sense for individual countries or companies. — ChatteringMonkey

Indeed. It's a classic prisoner's dilemma. Prisoners need some moral fibre to avoid the worst of all possible worlds. Your not liking the argument doesn't really change anything. Solidarity is the answer; solidarity in life, or else in death.

An Analysis of the Potential for the Formation of ‘Nodes of Persisting Complexity’

We are not mere individuals; we are a community of the willing. I claim that making the argument is the first and most important act. Here is the economic argument, which I already posted elsewhere.

A new report, commissioned by the International Chamber of Commerce, estimates that climate-related extreme weather events have cost the global economy more than $2 trillion over the past decade.
https://iccwbo.org/news-publications/policies-reports/new-report-extreme-weather-events-cost-economy-2-trillion-over-the-last-decade/

If global warming is allowed to reach 3°C by 2100 from pre-industrial levels, cumulative economic output could be reduced by 15% to 34%, the report says, while investing 1% to 2% of cumulative GDP in mitigation and adaptation to limit warming to 2°C from pre-industrial levels would reduce economic damage to just 2% to 4%.

“Rapid and sustained investments in mitigation and adaptation will minimise the economic damages and come with a high return,” says the Executive Summary. “Mitigation slows global warming by cutting emissions; adaptation reduces vulnerability to the physical impacts of climate change. Investments in both must rise significantly by 2050 – 9-fold for mitigation and 13-fold for adaptation. We estimate that the total investment required equals 1% to 2% of cumulative economic output to 2100.
https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/2025/new-report-from-bcg-and-cambridge-on-climate-change-investment/

https://www.bcg.com/publications/2025/investing-in-climate-action

The latter numbers are of course estimates, based on the somewhat optimistic forecasts of the IPCC
and interpreted by economists. But the former are more solidly founded in actuarial accounting.

These reports are already a year old, and the climate has not improved. This is particularly bad news because ordinarily, we would be in a cooling part of the El Niño/La Niña cycle.

They have achieved that by lower wages, lower enviromental standards, lower quality requirements, direct state-aid, a strong dollar, regulatory barriers, taxes and to a lesser extend tarifs... thus undercutting other economies en forcing them to a race to the bottom in many cases. — ChatteringMonkey

I'm curious about the logic here. "We" have high wages, environmental and safety standards, etc, and that means we cannot compete on equal terms with people who are poor and do not have these things, and this is unfair on "us"? Not the poor people who make all this stuff for us?

No, it was a feeble joke. I was just teasing your two cents self-valuation.

Folks can learn to behave better in contentious threads, and if higher standards are applied, the threads will change for the better.

My two cents worth is that the Trump thread inevitably becomes about venting. — frank

It is not inevitable, but it takes work and careful thought to prevent it. I applaud the changes being made, and I am going to also try to raise my personal standards to match. And I hope you will also be inspired, @frank to raise your prices to at least a dime. People avoid threads where there is too much vitriol, and that makes the place look worse than it is. And in this case, that suits one side, and hurts the other.

Thank you for that revelation.

What are the implications of this on people's motivation to "save the planet" when they don't have any children (and possibly don't intend to have any). — Agree-to-Disagree

This was your question that I wanted you to answer, since you didn't like my response very much.

I think here the political situation or climate change are a very minor factor.

The bigger factor is simply the cultural change in the society — ssu

And a cultural change in society is nothing to do with the political situation? The end of WW2 produced a baby boom; the prospect of WW3 might likewise account for a baby bust.

It might be agreeable to translate "res cogitans" as "understanding"instead of using the term, "substance" however qualified, since they are identical in literal meaning but vastly differ in their associations.

The reasons the men and women gave for why they would probably never have kids, even though they probably did want them, were: — Agree-to-Disagree

Well that's an interesting gloss. so they probably do want kids, but ... their position in the world, or the condition of the world is such that they do not want them.

But what is your answer to your own question in the light of this?

What are the implications of this on people's motivation to "save the planet" when they don't have any children (and possibly don't intend to have any). I realise that some childless people have nieces and nephews etc. and this may affect their motivation. — Agree-to-Disagree

I would think rather that people are disinclined to have children because they feel helpless to prevent the approaching disasters, rather than they are demotivated to act to mitigate the disaster because they do not want children. This is what I mainly hear from my daughters and their friends. But obviously, "Apres moi le deluge" is not a new sentiment either. It's a very ugly one though.

who pays the costs and who gets the benefits?

Are they the same people? — Agree-to-Disagree

Old people like me will not benefit much; the young will benefit, and their offspring. People with money will have to pay, again that's not me, by and large. Poor people cannot do much mitigating, they are too busy starving and trying to get somewhere else where there might be food and water available. Rich people do not have these problems, they can just jump on their obscenely luxurious yachts and sail off to somewhere more congenial. People who have migrated to Mars will not be affected except that imports may become more expensive.

From there everything else is near trivial to demonstrate. — boethius

Sir, you exaggerate!

I haven't finished a first skim, but it is a heroic effort. I find myself largely in agreement with your conclusions, though I arrive at them in other ways sometimes. Give me a couple of days to read more slowly, and have a think, and I will come back with some questions and thoughts.

Meanwhile, I think you could do with a bit of editing here and there - Your English is excellent but there are one or two places where the meaning could be more clear. I could make some suggestions on that level at some stage if you would like.

Happy April 1st to all our reader. Science goes tits up.

Money talks - the universal language.

1. Should we try to do something about it? Or let it take it's course? — frank

Economic and business groups are starting to think yes. Some of us have been saying it for a long time.

A new report, commissioned by the International Chamber of Commerce, estimates that climate-related extreme weather events have cost the global economy more than $2 trillion over the past decade.

https://iccwbo.org/news-publications/policies-reports/new-report-extreme-weather-events-cost-economy-2-trillion-over-the-last-decade/

If global warming is allowed to reach 3°C by 2100 from pre-industrial levels, cumulative economic output could be reduced by 15% to 34%, the report says, while investing 1% to 2% of cumulative GDP in mitigation and adaptation to limit warming to 2°C from pre-industrial levels would reduce economic damage to just 2% to 4%.

“Rapid and sustained investments in mitigation and adaptation will minimise the economic damages and come with a high return,” says the Executive Summary. “Mitigation slows global warming by cutting emissions; adaptation reduces vulnerability to the physical impacts of climate change. Investments in both must rise significantly by 2050 – 9-fold for mitigation and 13-fold for adaptation. We estimate that the total investment required equals 1% to 2% of cumulative economic output to 2100.

https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/2025/new-report-from-bcg-and-cambridge-on-climate-change-investment/

https://www.bcg.com/publications/2025/investing-in-climate-action

That's the American Dream.

I believe in clean dishes, but I am sceptical about me washing up.

Nosferatu is a vampire.

But you are asking what reasons there could be for hiding an after- or other- life. It could equally be in terms of Greek or Roman gods playing tricks on us, or something else. Or it could be a voluntary affair of eternal beings playing at mortal life for entertainment. The major point being that the reason for the hiddenness is likely to be part of what is hidden. You ask a religious question, and then complain when you get religious answers.

Alright. Can you tell me some things that go into the archetypes? — fdrake

In relation to Chinese thought, this is rather like asking a computer scientist which things are 1 and which are 0.
And if they cannot tell you, it's a false distinction?

No. But I think it makes sense to be able to provide one, if you've got an account of masculinity or femininity. Like why do the gals go for sushi and the guys go for burgers bro. I find it difficult to believe the sheer degree of affectation that goes into gender derives from any cosmic principle. — fdrake

I have an account of such, in the process of identification. I am told that I am a boy, and that big boys don't cry; therefore I must learn not to cry. Having grown up and learned not to cry, I become a model of masculinity to the next generation, and anyone who questions the mantra that big boys don't cry is impugning my masculinity and is liable to be thumped, hard.

Thus 'pink' has become the colour of femininity and blue, by simple contrast, that of masculinity. Who even knew that one was expected to have a favourite colour, let alone that it was sexually determined? Personally I like my sausages brown and my cabbage green, but if you want to go for pink or blue ...

Which properties go in the archetype, the essence, and which don't? And how can you tell? — fdrake

I don't think you can always tell, because the culture becomes embedded so as to be indistinguishable from nature. But cross-cultural and historical comparisons can sometimes make things clear. It's a difficult maybe impossible question to answer definitively, but that doesn't' make the distinction meaningless.

Long and short hair are not part of the archetypes, but beards perhaps are.