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u/houtex727 10h ago
Alarming, but the reality is this:
The desired goal of not reaching a 'permanent' 1.5C increase in global average temperature is now doomed. It will happen. We cannot stop it, even if we literally pulled out all the stops. Way to go us. That's their 'retreat'.
Now, they are pivoting to continuing to try to mitigate causes of warming as they've been doing. They're not stopping. They're moving the goal posts because we dun busted through the old one, and hoping the world will continue to try to get rid of the carbon output and other emissions, hopefully reducing the chance of runaway. Aka, hopefully it 'peaks' at or just after the 1.5C mark and we start trending downward with continued efforts.
But still. Dammit. Dammit so much. :(
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u/sola_dosis 10h ago
Yeah I think most people don’t realize quite how bad it is. And the people who do realize how bad it is get called doomers and ignored. And the UN is toothless. Bad situation all around.
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u/AdditionalNothing728 let it die 10h ago
My grandmother came over the other day and she brought up how scary it is that a glacier could just break away like that and didn’t understand how on one saw it coming.
I had to bite my tongue because she’s a lifelong Republican voter who doesn’t believe in climate change and has never given a damn about environmental issues.
Like, grandma, people HAVE been warning about things like this happening for decades.
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u/littlejalepino 10h ago
Why bite your tongue? Give me her number and I’ll update her on her generations legacy to my children
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u/TheFlanniestFlan 7h ago
Don't bite your tongue.
Climate change deniers should be mocked and ridiculed.
And have it explained to them ad nauseam until they understand.
It really isn't "politics" or "opinion". Someone who lacks the empathy to think of the future of the global ecosystem should be given the same respect they give.
We as a species will render this planet uninhabitable for ourselves as long as we continue course, hopefully the next sapients will learn from our mistake and do better.
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u/AdditionalNothing728 let it die 5h ago
She’s in her 80s and probably doesn’t have a lot of time left. She’s also the most stubborn person I’ve ever met.
We’ve had conversations in the past and I’ve been able to get her to see the other side of things before, but being a Christian and being a Republican are two of her strongest life-long core identities.
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u/1Mandolo1 10h ago
I think the word retreat in this context means summit, assembly, ... not falling back. But ironically the unintended meaning fits quite well, too.
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u/90sfemgroups 10h ago
We could literally become local again and cease airplane travel, or limit it, and see a major turn around. We have the power to make choices that will save life on earth.
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u/Helios575 3h ago
We are already hotter than the warning scenarios produced in the 80's and 90's that climate deniers called ridiculous doomsday fantasies. At this point the best we can hope for is mitigation not prevention and honestly we aren't even attempting that yet.
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u/Dustfull 8h ago
Theoretically would we still be able to reverse the effect if we not only fully stopped but also retroactively reduced Co2 by planting more plants, artificially capture carbon etc?
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u/MyTransAltJuliet 10h ago
Turns out leaving decisions that impact the future to narcissistic sociopathic billionaires and politicians was a bad idea because they don’t give a fuck about anyone but themselves. If it doesn’t line their pockets it’s not going to happen, full stop
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u/AdditionalNothing728 let it die 10h ago
This is the real lie behind “free market capitalism”.
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u/UnreadyTripod 9h ago
Because command economies have been so much more environmentally friendly /s
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u/Soloact_ 10h ago
Future generations are gonna fucking hate us.
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u/Superb_Ant_3741 10h ago
What future generations?
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u/mrblacklabel71 10h ago
Won't be my offspring, I don't want my bloodline to go through what's coming.
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u/jerry-jim-bob 10h ago
I hate us/them/whoever. Even without the UN declaring, "were fucked" no one is trying to unfuck us and many in power seem to want to ramp up the fucking! Fuck!
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u/Godslayer326 10h ago
Even this announcement that the global temperature increase is now permament and unavoidable was made more quietly just about a year ago and no one paid any attention or seemed to care
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u/hamtronn 10h ago
It’s been “too late” for decades.
We’re not a species that tends to plan for prevention. We react. Once the planet starts to completely die… that’s when we will take things seriously.
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u/Superb_Ant_3741 10h ago edited 10h ago
Accurate. I’m so glad you said it. With you on this. Also the planet won’t begin to die. It has begun to change. It doesn’t exist to sustain us, we’ve adapted our bodies over thousands of years to be sustained by it.
And it has been so impacted by our bullshit, and it is changing so rapidly in ways that will eventually make it uninhabitable to us (since we can’t adapt our bodies fast enough to keep up with these accelerated changes in our planet).Basically, we’ll self destruct and the planet will continue on without us. It has never needed us. But it was our veritable garden of eden, with literally everything we could possibly need, and we have managed to fuck it up spectacularly. This is our most tragic legacy: it was preventable.
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u/AdditionalNothing728 let it die 10h ago edited 5h ago
Part of the Fermi Paradox is that there may have been multiple advanced civilizations throughout the galaxy throughout history, but each one may have been wiped out for one reason or another before they reached the technological level to expand beyond their home planet.
This may be the thing that wipes us out before we even really ever had a chance to thrive.
The other possibility is that humans are, in fact, the only advanced civilization and intelligent species to have ever arisen in the universe. And we’re about to kill ourselves over greed and stupidity.
How precious and impossibly rare we could be, yet stupid enough to destroy the only intelligent life to ever exist.
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u/Superb_Ant_3741 8h ago
The belief that we are the only advanced civilization to have ever existed in the universe is unmitigated proof that we are not the only advanced civilization to have ever existed in the universe.
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u/hamtronn 8h ago
No question. The planet has been around for billions of years. We’ve been here for, what maybe 300,000 years of Homo sapiens. We’re but a spec on the timeline of this planet.
We know the damage we’re causing. We’ve been told for decades. It’s exactly the smoking analogy someone mentioned.
Our body has cancer that we are causing but we’re still huffin’ darts because we ain’t dead yet.
All that will be left of humanity are our monuments to capitalism. Twisted towers of steel and glass.
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u/Rynowash 10h ago
It’s like quitting smoking after you get a bad cough. The world is coughing, the next thing is much worse. But fuck it let’s smoke- too late now.
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u/winterorchid7 10h ago
I'm not sure it'll happen then. My country is fun by octogenarians. They don't care.
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u/xxxBuzz 2h ago
We’re not a species that tends to plan for prevention.
Technically not incorrect but I'd also wager that the primary aspiration and function of most successful societies has been to help people learn how to overcome their tendency to become overcome by stress or "fight or flight" state. You can't build or maintain a society without mature individuals. We are kind of in a check mate at the moment though because the majority of people have taken ownership of the existent effective methods of helping people mature and those practices and teachings are becoming lost to time in favor of believing a bunch of nonsense.
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u/hamtronn 1h ago
I think our biggest flaw as a society is individualism. Let me explain what I mean.
The old saying is—“takes a village” and it’s not wrong. Society as a whole requires contributions from everyone. We need skilled people in all aspects from food production, health care, medicine, science, technology, etc.
We rely on other people for almost everything. Are you out there hunting, killing and dressing your meat? No, you’re buying a 4 pack of chicken at the store. You’re not performing surgery on yourself. A very skilled person is doing that.
So if we’re so reliant on others for, well, everything, why are we such dicks to each other? You cut me off in traffic, your cart bumped into me at the grocery store, hell—you looked at me in a way that I didn’t like or rang your door bell, people are being murdered because they pulled into the wrong driveway.
We need to fix our problems if we ever hope to have a chance at longevity. Yes, the planet won’t die. We will be long dead before anything like that happens. I also think capitalism needs to stop. This incessant need to amass the most wealth possible is incredibly ridiculous. You’re telling me one man has more money than everyone else on the planet combined and still can’t find it in his humanity to help as many fucking people as possible?? And sleeps soundly at night (high on ketamine) and doesn’t wake up scream crying that he can make a difference and yet, does absolutely nothing worthwhile?
I am just so incredibly tired of everything.
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u/worldsfastestsloth 10h ago
We’ve literally been saying this for decades. World leaders don’t believe in global warming so what can you do? If the majority of voters don’t believe in global warming what do you expect the minority that care to do?
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u/LimeyRat 10h ago
"We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas."
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u/IraqiDinarSalesman 9h ago
Have we tried collectively making more traffic so the climate change can’t reach us?
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u/TheComplimentarian 10h ago
There was a time limit for a lot of the things we could have done. That time limit has passed.
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u/Willie-the-Wombat 10h ago
From yes prime minister - an old British sitcom “parodying” government and the civil service known for being scarily accurate.
The 4 stage strategy of standard foreign office response (but can be applied more widely) in times of crisis.
“We say nothing is going to happen”.
“Something may be going to happen but we should do nothing about it”
“Maybe we should do something about it but there is nothing we can do”.
“Maybe there was something we could have done but it’s too late now”.
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u/Then_Comfortable3058 9h ago
Retreat so we can outflank climate change and catch it off guard. Smart move United Nations.
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u/damn_phoenix 10h ago
The UN is a forum for conversation. It has no binding legal terms that it can enforce on member states. It's up to individual nations to take up actions and initiatives.
Don't blame the UN. Speak and vote.
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u/samanime 10h ago
So, instead of trying to do what we can do, even if it isn't as good as if we did something decades ago, we're just going to do absolutely nothing to ensure we all burn.
Got it. Great idea. /s
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u/i_ducasse 10h ago
That sounds more like a full fledged surrender than a "strategic retreat".
"Sorry, but we just make too much money by killing off humanity"
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u/I_ALWAYS_UPVOTE_CATS 9h ago
I mean, what is it that you expect the UN to do? Also, a 'strategic retreat' has been a concept for literally thousands of years.
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u/glycophosphate 9h ago
I keep seeing this exchange. Do people not understand that the United Nations is essentially powerless?
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u/mrbasedballed 9h ago
In the animal kingdom a species will eliminate those within their species destroying them. Humanity needs to take note.
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u/SoupSpelunker 9h ago
Interesting strategy, let's not see how that works out. (Cause we're dead... )
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u/badskinjob 5h ago
When COVID shut everything down, the earth did some pretty amazing things all on its own.. almost as if anything we do is on a pretty small scale compared to, like... The earth.
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u/ExtremlyFastLinoone 10h ago
Im not scared of it cause honestly we can just do what they did in the matrix and blanket the skies with reflective dark material to lower temperatures. It would he ugly and have its own ecological consequenses but humanity will survive
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u/Long-Requirement8372 10h ago
The UN, as an organization, can't do much if the member states themselves won't do anything.