Were all the Civilized Nations (sic) to apply the French law to their various corporate and/or state employers and then resort to the guillotine, a new large corporation would be needed to design, build, deliver, and maintain all the beheading equipment--sharpening blades, cleaning up the copious blood spatter, making sure that Occupational Safety and Health rules were followed, etc.

There is a reason why we get paid for coming into work every day: we sure as hell wouldn't do it for free.

There is something about the world-wide dominant paradigm of management - worker relations that so easily begins the slide down the slippery slope towards dehumanization, alienation, anomie, etc, and I bet France is a relatively good place to work, by and large. And maybe the workers at this spoiled Orange French Telecom should have practiced more la solidarité and la résistance, oui?

Moral responsibility works both ways -- offense and defense. A better cure than small fines and short jail sentences (which are under appeal and might be dismissed) is strong united worker power.

Can a discussion about bullshit be anything other than bullshit? Is analytical distance possible? Or can one only lament?

although the more passionate ones believe in theirs — god must be atheist

Eloquent bullshit*** can degrade discourse, but believing one's own bullshit is THE cardinal sin.

*** "If you can't dazzle them with facts, then baffle them with bullshit."

How are such societies dysfunctional? — TheMadFool

They are dysfunctional because they have been fucked over too many times. People left to their own devices generally settle down to live ordinary lives more or less peacefully together. Until, that is, they are invaded, colonized, obliterated, subjugated, and so forth, Or until they start invading, colonizing, obliterating, subjugating, and so on. Nothing new here -- it's been going on for a long time--millennia.

But the thing is, it's very hard to fix the damage. Take Haiti: there is a country that has been multi-fucked-over. At times they have been in pretty good shape, but then some larger nation would screw them up again. Take your average banana republic: fucked over by the church, the military, international agribusiness (Chiquita banana et al), the US State Department, etc. Take Iraq: run by a dictator, subjected to a pretty bad war (USA, USA, USA ...), then some more war, ISIS, internecine terrorism, and so on.

Normally, the best fucked up societies can hope for is maybe a century or so of being left alone and they gradually put themselves back together.

It's like a plant: You can transplant a healthy specimen and it will do fine if you take care of it. But if you run over it, keep pulling it up every week, let it dry out or rot in a swamp, it will be dead before long.

Anyone who follows global warming closely has to be aware of the problems involved in talking about both "conditions that are changing now" but are part of "conditions that will change over 1, 2, or 3 centuries time". RIGHT: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Dhaka, Shanghai, New York, or Boston are not going to be evacuated next year or next decade, even if some small low-rise Pacific Islands are pretty close to being frequently flooded. Things are changing rapidly, but the great mass of ice, water, and land means that these changes aren't going to be over in a few years. Greenland and Antartica will take quite a while to melt.

But it's necessary to keep people's minds on both the present and the distant future, because (well, you know all this, I am sure) what we have done in the last 150 years, what we are doing now and will probably continue to do (adding CO2 and methane to the atmosphere) can't be undone quickly. Also, there are those worrying tipping points, where some changes happen quickly, and unpredictably.

I don't know what is in Greta's future, of course. Christ, I don't know what is in my own immediate future. My guess is that she will remain an activist of some sort but that her newsworthiness will fade, which is probably a good thing for her, if not everybody else.

Were I writing your paper, I would look among anthropologists, psychologists, or sociologists. Some philosophers might have written on the subject, but scholars in other fields definitely have.

I am thinking of Keep The River on Your Right by Tobias Schneebaum. It was published in 1969, and is a good lively read. The book deals with Schneebaum's encounter with the isolated Arakmbut tribe in Peru. The book deals much more with cannibalism than nakedness, but the description of his first encounter, in which he was stripped naked and investigated in detail is worth a read. Schneebaum wasn't mortified, apparently, and certainly the Arakmbut were not embarrassed either.***

Not every group of people is troubled by nakedness and shame. Any number of groups have been encountered who did not feel shame about being naked, though their "discoverers" (like missionaries, anthropologists, or conquistadores) may have felt intense shame about their own own nakedness. Shame and nakedness need not be seen as natural and necessary.

People feel shame about certain actions (theft, nakedness, sexual acts, religious acts, etc.) because they think these actions are wrong. Or they believe their bodies are very inadequate -- too thin, too fat, too pale, too dark, too this, too that -- and they are embarrassed if other people see them naked.

I overcame a good deal of shame about my body by a method similar to "flooding" which is used to overcome phobias: I found a park where other gay men sunbathed in the nude and I did likewise. Undressing in public and laying on a towel in the open took a lot of nerve on my part, but it was curative. After a few visits to the nude park I began to feel less and less shame about my appearance. (I discovered that I had misapprehended how others saw me.). In a couple of weeks I was cured.

There is also "modesty" -- a condition where people avoid being seen naked because they think it is wrong, They may not feel shame about it, but they do avoid nakedness in the sight of others.

All that sunbathing was about 40 years ago. Its benefits (aside from a couple of basil cell skin cancers) has endured.

***Summary: Keep the River on your Right is a short memoir written by painter/anthropologist Tobias Schneebaum and published in 1969. It is an account of his journey into the jungles of Peru where he is accepted by "primitive" Indians and ultimately a tribe of cannibals named the Arakmbut, which he refers to by the pseudonym Arakama. Schneebaum was presumed dead by colleagues, friends, and family after he disappeared for years into the jungle, the last westerner to see him was a missionary who had given him instructions he would find the cannibals if he "kept the river to his right." However, Schneebaum struck up a friendship with the Arakmbut based partially around his considerable art skills and his interest in theirs. The book is most renowned for its anthropological observation of flesh-eating rituals and the honest, light-hearted style in which it was written.

There are non-profits that teach people "how to fish"; some of them work in the US (or other developed countries), and some of them work in the third world. Most of them are doing good, honest work.

The problem that these programs face, even the most excellent ones, is that many, many millions of people live in societies that are at least somewhat dysfunctional, and no amount of programming can overcome people's disadvantages on a piecemeal basis. What some countries need, frankly, is a thoroughgoing revolution to remake themselves, but... that's a very risky strategy. Look at Haiti: there's a country fucked over by crooks for decades. The US has played a role in keeping things fucked up there. The problems in Haiti are way beyond mere fishing lessons.

I'm not sure that dithering over "quantum supremacy" even qualifies as political correctness. It's not even wrong. It's nonsensical.

What seems to be going on with this (and other) words is that people look at a word, check to see if they can free-associate something negative to the word, and if hey can, they feel everyone must stop using it. The behavior reminds me of the Monty Python skit in which the daughter becomes hysterical whenever she hears a "tinny sounding word" - preferring "woody sounding words"--like "intercourse".

This nonsensical political correctness is starting to infest science fiction. I recently read two sci-fi novels in which there were "aliens from other star systems". The leadership on board the space ships were very concerned that racist or prejudicial terms not be applied to the aliens. One of the alien species, a bird-like creature, interbred with a human. (Don't ask me how that would work!). The human mother was very protective of her monstrous child, very concerned that people would reject her because she was "different". Different indeed. While the mother was dithering over the equal rights opportunities for her half-bird child, the bird species was busy wiping out 9/10 of the human inhabitants on earth--too stupid and not cooperative enough. For some odd reason the humans didn't accuse the killer birds of genocide.

Back when psychoanalysis defined homosexuality as a serious deviation, the establishment considered thought it was constructed--domineering mothers, distant fathers, etc. In the early days of gay liberation (1972, to pick a year) the idea that homosexuality was essentialist was dominant and liberating. "Nature composed my sexuality in this manner, and it is good" was an empowering idea. 40 years later constructionism is back, only its more DIY this time around. Now we have this absurd list of 50 genders, which is itself an indication that gender theorists have run amok.

Essentialism and Constructionism are recruited for whatever purpose is at hand. Gender politics is a form of polymorphous perversity all by itself.

Unfortunately the list of card-carrying Liberal/Progressives was stolen just the other day by Rudy Giuliani and a gang of pro-Russian Ukrainian thugs as part of the Trump reelection campaign. Stay tuned for further announcements on the matter.

There have been a number of discussions of essentialist vs. constructionist thinking on gender in Quillette. This article is an example, and there are 3 additional articles linked at the bottom of the page.

The politics surrounding whether x, y, or z is determined by essentialism or constructionism is a swamp one does well to stay out of.

Sex is determined at the moment of fertilization: xx or xy. The body may begin with a female template of sorts, but it is destined to be either xx or xy. Sex isn't decided at birth by a committee -- it's identified at birth. in almost all cases, it's clear whether the neonate is male or female.

The human genome is 3 billion base pairs. What we are isn't wide open to choice. Those billions of base pairs define us as human with varying degrees of intelligence, physical characteristics, mental and physical features and traits. A lot of what we are, and how we exist in the world, is determined by genetics, like it or not.

This is an essentialist view. It isn't the sole property of conservatives. There are progressives who are also essentialists and conservatives who are constructionists.

True enough, our human behavior and personality is at least somewhat pliable. How it all is expressed is determined by both genes and environment. It doesn't make sense to take an extreme essentialist or a constructionist position. Clearly, both methods of shaping behavior are in play,

Don't get sex and gender mixed up. Males and females all have gender roles, and there is quite a bit of consistency in the roles, but sex is not adjustable; gender behavior is.

The old expression, "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear" applies to animals, including us. Your average cow isn't going to win prizes at the state fair. A dog that is not very bright is going to stay that way. Highly risk averse people have generally been risk averse from their first baby steps, and explorers have, likewise, been that way from the get go. Very smart people tend to stay smart throughout life. Stupid children usually grow up to be stupid adults.

Again, no one in the Netherlands takes this seriously. It plays no part in political discourse. If the sea level had been significantly rising, we'd be the first to notice. — Tzeentch

I've often wondered if it might be a good idea to drown the Dutch, but that was just in the context of seeking completely satisfying experiences. It seems to be the case now that the Dutch will be drowned in any event, so all we need is patience--especially if global warming and ocean expansion (from temperature and melting) "play no part in political discourse".

I'd say when we let children do the talking for us, we have definitely left the realm of rational thought. — Tzeentch

Global warming has been a hot topic of discussion for the last 40 years, conducted among smart, scientist-type adults. Did I hear about global warming in 1980? No. Back then, the burning issue was the ozone hole over the antarctic and diminished ozone in the upper atmosphere elsewhere. The world took the ozone deficiency seriously, banned refrigerants and aerosol propellants (chlorofluorocarbons) that destroyed ozone. Since the Montreal Agreement in 1987, the ozone deficiency has steadily improved. (FYI: Ozone absorbs UV radiation that causes skin cancers and interferes with photosynthesis.).

Just because I didn't hear about global warming doesn't mean it wasn't being discussed. It was being discussed, and efforts began to gather more precise data. As data accumulated, it has become clearer that global warming is real, ocean expansion is real, climate change is real, and all this is having real, negative, consequences on the global environment, on which we are 100% dependent.

And just because you aren't hearing people talk about it, doesn't mean that it isn't real. People generally don't like talking about the way of life they know coming to an end. Also, global warming effects are mostly projected into the future, which makes them seem 'unreal' to some people. "Oh, 2100 is so far away." Not so far away, really; it's the time when present toddlers will be growing old. It's in the lifetime of living people.

And because we have been changing the CO2 levels steadily for the past 150 years, at least, we have to understand that changing our life ways (like our industrial culture) has to start 20-40 years ago, and will take most of the century to achieve IF we work at it diligently.

Well, Ms. Thunberg is a lightening rod, as much as an oracle. A young woman who suddenly appears (in the media--Aspergers and all), somehow has a sailboat to get to New York and then Spain, and has the nerve to speak truth to power (or shame adults, at least) and whose self-presentation is quite juvenile (meaning as young as possible) is going to trigger negative comment. I've harbored some suspicious thoughts about her -- like, what or who in her background made all this possible? 15 or 16 year olds don't launch themselves, usually.

It doesn't matter, really. The guilty parties (major hydrocarbon producers and consumers) aren't listening anyway, and when they act it is to subvert the effort to reduce CO2 and Methane production. It's not Greta's fault. The fault is with they who have eyes but will not see, they who have ears and will not hear.

ideology — Tzeentch

per @Tim Wood, since when is global warming an "ideology"?

A "fuck you greta" movement is an inevitable reactionary event. I agree with Greta 100%, but I don't especially like listening to her talk. I can imagine how repellant she must be to global warming deniers, environmental-disaster-know-nothings, followers of our fucking president, and the like.

I think that's the law in many states, applying to married adults, or adults who have designated a person to have power of attorney for them.

As for spouse vs parent, I don't have any feelings about it one way or the other -- just that it needs to be clear who has the power to decide, in the event of incompetence, medical emergency, coma, etc.

Because by that point there is no way out of the pain they've been given. You have knowingly rebirthed them into a world of pain. — Brett

Lots of people end up in a world of pain and are entirely competent to decide their own future. Most people actually choose to go forward, pain and all. Some opt for suicide, but most don't.

In your OP, you ask who should make the decision? Spouse trumps parents for adults.

These are very difficult issues for people to sort through once they are faced with the question of what to do. That's why, as Hanover said, one should establish what one's preferences are before one is comatose. There are preferences such as "Do Not Resuscitate", "No 'heroic' efforts to maintain life", no intubation, and so on. If you don't want to be resuscitated, intubated, or have the crash cart rushed to your bedside to get your heart going again, then you will most likely be allowed to die. But... you have to make these preferences clear to those who are close to you (and can act on your behalf), and your doctor (who might be on hand when the accident happens, but maybe not).

Have you prepared a living will? I have not -- I should definitely get it done.

what I want to say is that everyone cares only about themselves, their friendships are but a functional structure that facilitates the acceptance of both their shortcomings. — Gus Lamarch

The first clause of the sentence is not true. I am confident in saying that it is not true because you made it universal ("everyone") and you made it extreme ("only"). We do and ought to care about ourselves, but we gain too much from caring interactions with others to leave it there. Yes, friendships do have functional qualities, one of which is as an aid in self acceptance.

My (perhaps abnormal) experience is that we have numerous acquaintances and a small number of friends. Nothing wrong with acquaintances, of course. I have known my oldest and closest friend since 1964 when we ended up as roommates in college. Now in our 70s, we find that we are still "in college" in a way -- both still studying, sharing insights from our lives, work, and reading.

Sorry about the snarky comment. As I said, it wasn't about you, personally.

I might be willing to take "something exists" or "at least two things exist" as a starting point. Moving on, we have come to understand that many things exist. So I am not willing to entertain that idea as an account of reality.

Yes, and many people do, however someone can come and tell you “maybe the whole of reality happens in the imagination of a single consciousness, or maybe only you exists, or maybe eventually a theory of everything will prove that only one thing exists”, however as I explained it is possible to prove that at least two things exist, even if we assume solipsism or that there is only one consciousness or whatever. — leo

Quite a few 'someones' over the last decade have come forward to announce that solipsism or a single consciousness accounts for everything. These claims are then dismantled by various other 'someones'.

I suppose one could claim that the universe, and the fullness thereof, resides in the single consciousness of God. If so, God seems to have thought a very complex reality made up of many parts. The problem with this theory is that we do not have the means to parse the consciousness of God, if God exists in the first place. Still, the universe as the dream of God has a certain aesthetic appeal and weightiness.

However what I am explaining here is that necessarily, there has to be at least two things at the root of our existence. — leo

I believe in the existence of many things. The many are made up of a few particles combined in particular ways. Without the plethora of things made from a dearth of different particles, we would not exist. Is this a truth? Seems like it to me, but you don't have to accept it.

2 + 2 = 4 isn’t always true — leo

True. If 2 half-assed philosophers meet 2 other half-assed philosophers for lunch, their discussions might not add up to anything. 2 + 2 in that case may equal less than zero. I'm not suggesting that you are one of the 4.

People keep disagreeing about pretty much everything and yet somehow you guys don’t find it important to find things we can agree on. — leo

A forum such as this one brings out the urge to distinguish differences, even if they are minute. In the decade that I've participated in this and the previous incarnation of Philosophy Forum, people have agreed on a good many things. But we are all here to express ourselves, and "I agree with you." just isn't as much of an opening as "Let me explain the facts of life to you."

In any case, carry on with enthusiasm.

The matter has already been brought up, but I'll do it again: "truth" is unitary and doesn't need an adjectival intensifier like 'absolute'. What is true is true. 2 + 2 = 4 is true, period. "Something exists" is true.

After millennia of philosophy it seems we have only arrived at one absolute truth:

Something exists — leo

I haven't followed your writing here, so the following may be a misapprehension: your view of philosophy may be hermetic: thinking that is closed off from the flow of validating (or invalidating) experience, and cut off from the range of thought. People think about this world where "a lot of stuff exists" using various techniques -- science, literature, art, philosophy, labor, religion, and so on. If there are truths to be discovered, a wideness in our methods will yield better results.

Yes, consciousness is in the brain as a whole. It seems to be an emergent property of the brain's activity--that is, it isn't located in a particular gyrus or sulcus. Some people are bothered by consciousness not having a location in the atlas of the brain. It doesn't bother me. I'm just glad it's there.

I was going to comment on your use of arrant, but others have used it AND they have used it correctly (as you also did). But you are in a select group of persons deploying the phrase "arrant nonsense". It's not the coveted "Congratulations! You are the first person to use 'arrant' on The Philosophy Forum!", but it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

'Rubbish' and 'total rubbish' are also used quite a bit. "Total" seems to function as an intensifier. Rubbish is rubbish, but total rubbish is more so. Much like 'fucked' and 'totally fucked'.

Is it possible that capitalism may largely contribute to solving the problem? — Jack Foreman

Not so.

Capital is largely responsible (it's the key) CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM. Why? The reason is that capitalism is, by its nature, based on exploitation of resources, growth, expansion, and profitability. Corporations are compelled by their charters, their raisons d'être, to behave the way they do, and can not do otherwise. Exxon has no reason under the sun to not pump as much oil as it can, driving out competitors, and maximizing profits.

On earth we have thousands of corporations pursuing their chartered purpose for existence, and industry requires unlimited energy--coal, oil, gas, and nuclear (and a tiny fraction of wind & solar). Thus we rush to over-run the 2ºC average temperature goal, with CO2 levels currently at 407 ppm (57 ppm above the safe level of 350).

Most of the people who populate corporations are not individually evil people. They don't have to be obsessed by greed; they might love the natural world (a major personal contradiction). They may, in their hearts, care about the future of the world. It doesn't matter. They are not at their jobs to worry about vanishing species; they are there to make money -- which is the only purpose corporations have for existing--make stuff and sell it at a profit.

What could capitalism do? Nothing, really. Our best option to enhance survival is to immediately and sharply reduce consumption of goods--everything from clothing to cars, gasoline to cheese curds. Consumption of stuff accounts to about 70% of the GDP. Why does cutting consumption help? Reduced consumption = reduced production = reduced output of CO2 and methane.

We don't have a lot of time. The world (including capitalists) has known about the threat to the world for at least 30 years (1988-present) and has so far accomplished virtually nothing towards reducing CO2 output.

Very possible I would think. Capitalism is very adaptive. — Brett

Indeed. When Standard Oil (or Exxon) scientists discovered that CO2 levels were rising as a result of burning fossil fuels, the corporation considered the problem, and made the logical choice for an adaptable corporation: they buried the research and embarked on a program of confusing the public about global warming with the same methods tobacco companies used to confuse the public about the harms of smoking their product.

Under what rock does your economics professor live? Here we are in the beginning of the possibly terminal climate crisis and he's theorizing about so much production that our need for output would be saturated.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, and maximized productive output will demand more energy than can be provided by wind and solar generation -- at least for quite some time. Here's the crucial point: By "quite some time" we will have burned through another mountain of coal and petroleum and disrupted the climate so much, we won't be worried about maximized production, We'll be worried about barely surviving the various aspects of the climate crisis -- high wet bulb temperatures that make it impossible to do agricultural work; massive flooding; unprecedented storms; highly irregular weather events that will interfere with agricultural production; massive migrations; clean water shortages; enormous ecological disruptions which will affect us severely and directly; droughts; and so on and so forth.

Tell your professor to wake the fuck up.

Tastes and preferences will radically change. Marx epitomized this in saying,

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs — Wallows

Ability and need is different than tastes and preferences, even if they radically change. I might experience a radical change from Haydn to hip hop, and you might switch your philosophical preference from Wittgenstein to St. Thomas Aquinas. That isn't going to help you with your abilities or needs.

My philosophical or biological view is that human beings have innate characteristics over which we have little control. Our problem is captured in the vulgarism that "a hard cock has no ethics" and applies equally to men and women (who of course, don't have one). With respect to global warming, we have a raging hard on for stuff. We are quite short sighted. We rarely look for long term consequences for any behavior. Our behavior is partially composed of very persistent habits. We like what we like without subjecting "likes" to rational analysis. People who "like elephant tusks and rhino horns" fuel a market that is close to destroying both. There are few innocent people in the First World. (Poor people are not better; they just don't have the means to be as guilty as us.).

"What we are, we are." Descended from a common ancestor, we are closely related to the big primates like Pan Troglodytes (chimps and bonobos). The other primates don't have our problems because they are not quite smart enough. We have become smart enough, and acquired a lot of technology that enables our reach to exceed our grasp.

We are the sorcerer's apprentice: we cast a spell, the spell is causing problems, and we can't bring ourselves to undo the spell (we could, but we apparently won't) because we kind of like what the spell is doing.

We could save our world. You know, we really should do that. Will we? Probably not. The consequences of global warming are not quite as vivid in our minds as the consequences of behaving like responsible, prudent, thrifty human beings who can well imagine that the minor horror of not consuming so much stuff is trivial compared to the gross horror that billions of people now alive will witness.

I was wondering why we were discussing ends and means again. Lenin supposedly said, "If the ends do not justify the means, what in god's name does?"

Glad you brought up Huxley, there.

Ends are always constituted of the means whereby they are achieved. — Pantagruel

Which explains why things turned out so poorly under Lenin and his immediate successor, Stalin, a committed "achieve the ends or else, never mind the means" kind of dictator.

fantasies of infinite economic growth — Mark Dennis

That's the problem, all right, and it is a fantasy. It's a sort of magical thinking.

In WWII, US production was reorganized for war production, whether the corporations owning the factories liked it or not. Rationing of staples (flour, sugar, butter, meat, oils and fats, gasoline, clothing, etc. was imposed. There was no automobile manufacture. There were "fat drives" (like bacon grease or lard, useful for making explosives), metal drives, and paper drives. Public transit (buses and trains) were very crowded because of the heavy use by 3-shift production schedules and troop transport. In the event of infectious diseases (TB, Influenza, Polio) quarantines were sometimes used; small pox vaccinations were not optional. The same thing happened in most other industrial countries.

Yes, people were frustrated at times by limited or no goods at all, There were strikes for higher wages, and the usual bitching and carping. None the less, hundred of millions of people around the world resolved to do what was necessary. It worked because the existential threat and the necessary preventive actions were clearly stated. Patriots grew some food in the back yard and reduced their consumption. In some countries, rationing lasted from 1939 to 1947 (and longer in some places).

I think that there are a 2 or 3 billion people who, if told the truth about global warming and if given clear behavioral options (like wearing shoes completely out before replacing them, buying a very limited number of clothing items per year, not eating meat, not flying, not driving, and so on) they would rise to the occasion

There are another 2 billion people, give or take, who are already effectively doing what we should all be doing because they are too poor to do otherwise. and maybe there are a couple of billion people whose reductions in lifestyle would be more limited.

People need to be told that rainforests like the Amazon, Central African, SE Asian, or NW American temperate rainforests are vital; that they are in danger of dying from destruction negative cascading effects; that they are being destroyed to grow palm for oil and soybeans to feed animals for meat. Dead rainforests produce very little oxygen, which we need to breathe. We can live without meat and palm oil (at least for a while).

People do make adjustments. Most toilets are far more efficient these days, whether people like the way they flush or not. People are much better at turning off unused lights than they used to be (individually and institutionally). They will make more changes and faster changes if they are told the truth about what will happen if they don't.

This sermon preached to the choir is now over.

You might dare, but don't anyway.

Economic recovery would have most people employed in a probably radically reorganized system of production ad distribution. It would, of necessity, be organized for low CO2 output. So people would be working, basic needs would be met. The volume of economic activity would likely be much lower than it is now.

I think it would be worse than China. But if we want to brake CO2 emissions, it certainly can NOT be accomplished through slight efforts. I'm not enthusiastic about giving up my luxury-carnivore-comfortable lifestyle, but... what else can we do? Serious question: "What else can we do that achieve immediate reductions in CO2/methane, etc. output?"

We've pissed away 40 or 50 years of time that we could have been reducing our CO2/methane output and weren't. We don't seem to have another 40 or 50 years to screw around trying to decide what to do.

There is a lot of magical thinking going on. Oh, they will plant 25 trees to compensate for this flight to New York. How big do people think those trees are? 50 feet high? More like 1 or 2 feet high. It will take at least a decade before a successful tree will be big enough to absorb a significant amount of CO2.

Yes -- climate change is slower but more thorough. However, in a carbon-reduced economy, it would be quite a while before most people experienced an economic recovery. The reason that economic recessions were short in the past is that the economy was expanding. In a shrinking economy (a permanent recession) there wouldn't be a recovery.

Only when we had devised a new low-carbon regime could the economy expand. It wouldn't be as robust an recovery as we have seen in the last couple of centuries.

Just what sort of consumption reductions would be necessary?

We would switch to a vegan diet, or at least a largely vegetarian diet. Meat/fish/crustaceans would rarely appear on the table.

We would stop traveling farther than we needed to get to work (if we still had a job) and back. We would use our feet, bicycles, or public transit to get there. We would forego leisure travel beyond the distance we could get to on our own two feet or by bike. Forego air and auto travel altogether.

We would buy no new clothing, shoes, furniture, gadgets, cars, houses, appliances, etc. We would buy food and an occasional replacement item for clothing that was too ragged to use (not just too familiar--too worn out).

We would live in warmer (in hot zones) or cooler (in cold zones) houses, within the limits of safety.

ETc.

I assume you are not being serious, but the idea is floating around out there (certainly in SciFi--which regardless of the science part, is F I C T I O N) that we could live on the moon or Mars. I submit that if we were able to figure out how to enable 100,000 people to live on the moon or Mars (in the relative near future), then it is well within our operational capabilities to sharply reduce CO2/methane output on earth.

I am sorrowfully leaning toward the view that we are totally screwed. We are screwed because we are descendants and close relatives of primates without god-like abilities. We stumble into our graves.

Capitalism, generally, is required to grow, expand, enlarge, continue forward IF at all possible. That's not an altogether bad thing (it's not altogether good either). The coal, gas, petroleum, automobile and concrete industries are the most problematic industries, of course, and we are all its customers, one way or another.

In short radical de-growth. But radical de-growth is not going to happen because no one wants it, including you and me. — Janus

The bitter truth is this: IF we are (or were) to succeed in limiting Global warming to 1.5ºC or 2.0ºC, we affluent people would have to relinquish our lifestyles, lock stock and barrel. We affluent consumers shrinking our consumption and CO2/methane et al by even 10% to 20 % (to pick a figure out of thin air) would be an immediate economic catastrophe which would have cascading consequences. A big drop in consumption would produce widespread unemployment and (probably) increase social instability. Yes, a transition to a low consumption could be made, but we don't have time to do it in a leisurely manner. We need now, and will need in the future, to do it very rapidly - like overnight (practically speaking).

A hard braking on consumption will be personally and collectively painful, if not fatal for some.

No leader, no national congress, no political party--nobody--wants to propose a totally demoralizing policy which will have literally painful consequences. Individuals are prone to continue forward

The economic catastrophe would be shorter and less drastic than global overheating, but it would have to be deliberately engaged.

Philosophers will be as overheated as everybody else, so it's in our best interests to think about what can, can not, should, should not, will, will not... be done.

Well, for a long time (a millennium minimum) State and Church has been allied. The alliance bound the church to the preservation of whatever-ruling-class-status-quo prevailed. At the same time, there has always been (some, not a lot) resistance to this alliance. Other historical rivers flow into this question: the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the rise of Capitalism, the Industrial Revolution, and so on and so forth. Ebb and flow, action and reaction

The revolutionary Jesus was screwed early on by his success in the Roman Empire. Once a bunch of Christians (just like anybody else anywhere on earth) got a chance at power, they hung onto it. Doom. Holy Mother Church just isn't good soil for nurturing Marxists.

The revolutionary Jesus has been screwed and re-screwed many times over the succeeding centuries, as the church and individual Christians followed their preferential option to attach themselves to the rich and powerful.

Since about the 1850s, small groups of Catholic sisters (mostly Sisters of St Joseph) have provided low cost education and health care for remote communities where there was insufficient public education or healthcare available. — Possibility

A similar development took place in the United States, particularly in New England, the Upper Midwest, and Northwest, secular and religious culture produced large religious and non-profit social service, education, and medical establishments. The St. Joseph sisters (several varieties) were a part of this. So were Methodists, Lutherans, Jews, et al.

To a large extent, that legacy has withered. After the 1960s exodus of church membership across the church (Protestant and Catholic both), and the abrupt shrinkage of the lay orders, the churches began to lose the economic/membership base that had supported their work.

St. Joseph Carondelet nuns, for instance, were forced to sell their group of hospitals as they shrank and aged out of the capacity to continue on. Actually, the religious & non-profit hospitals were a high-water mark in both cost effectiveness and quality of delivered services.

The constitution can't be suspended. Were he to order the DOJ or the military to arrest and jail Pelosi and Schiff, I expect that officials (who didn't have a gun pointed at their head, and maybe not even then) would quite properly refuse.

Trump can disregard the facts because he is a liar who has no respect for what is true or real. You know, some people are liars. They lie. Or thieves, knaves, and scoundrels. They tend to behave in an immoral manner.

The congress could, if they were not hogtied by partisan divide, withdraw funding from White House operations.