Irrecoverable Carbon
Oct. 8th, 2022 10:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis map shows the world's supply of irrecoverable carbon. This is the stuff that is most important to keep where it is.
Really, we should be keeping as much as possible where it is. It's ridiculous to burn carbon on one end and spend more energy to "capture" carbon on the other. ("Only a white man would think you could make a blanket longer by cutting off the top and sewing it to the bottom.") That includes not cutting or burning down forests, and leaving fossil fuels in the ground, among other things. But some storage areas are much denser and or more vulnerable, and thus more important, than others.
If we want to avoid a climate catastrophe, we have a limited carbon budget to spend. It is not just emissions from cars or factories that we should be worried about. Carbon released from natural ecosystems is a problem.
True -- and of those, we need to focus on the ones we control the most. We can choose not to dig up fossil fuels and they'll stay put; that's complete control. We can choose not to bother a forest, but it might burn down anyway; that's partial control. There's fuckall we can do about melting permafrost directly.
These maps show how we can solve it.
No, they show where it is. That's useful information, but it doesn't give us a way to make stupid people behave intelligently. One of the biggest stocks is in Russia, which is ruled by an ignoramus who thinks nuclear bombs are an acceptable way to solve his problems.
Forest fire on peatlands in Indonesia’s Riau province on the island of Sumatra, one of the world’s largest stores of so-called “irrecoverable carbon.”
I think Indonesia is fucked. It has millions of people crammed into a smallish area, and it still struggles with poverty. Those people want a better standard of living, and they don't have a lot of land to do it with. That creates intense pressure, which makes any kind of conservation extremely difficult.
There’s so much more to the ground beneath our feet than just dirt — for instance, gigatons of carbon locked away in forests, peatlands, and mangroves.
Now any kind of forest is helpful in fighting climate change, but certain types are much more effective than others and we should prioritize those. That means protecting all the ones we have currently and trying to plant more wherever they can grow. These include but are not limited to:
* Mangroves -- in addition to storing carbon, they buffer coastal storms like hurricanes and they nurture seafood that is desperately needed.
* Rainforests -- their dense layering makes them extremely high in biodiversity, they actually make their own weather in addition to holding water, and if cut down the earth below tends to turn into dryland or desert because all the nutrients are bound up in the lifeforms.
* Redwoods -- ecosystem engineers, they wring water out of clouds and fog to create a whole ecosystem of their own.
This map shows you where. The darker the area, the more irrecoverable carbon there is. If we want to limit global warming to +1.5° C above pre-industrial levels, that carbon needs to stay there. That means no farming, no burning, no building. The good news: half of the irrecoverable carbon is concentrated on just 3.3% of the world’s landmass, making it easier to preserve. The bad news: Have you seen how we treat this place?
Jeez, I could've written that whole paragraph.
United States: 8.3 Gt of irrecoverable carbon; 20.3% is within protected areas and 4.2% within indigenous and community lands. 5.6% was lost in the last decade.
Looking at this map, I see that a lot of the darkest areas are desired by people and some have high populations. But some of those are places to be moving away from. The West Coast is on the Ring of Fire (earthquakes, volcanoes) and is drying out (drought, wildfires) so moving away is sensible. Southern Florida is subject to hurricanes, saltwater encroachment, and problems caused by poor development decisions. People will be forced out of there fairly soon; move voluntarily sooner and the harm will be less. I don't think people will choose to do those sensible things.
More feasibly, we could look at the land and ask: What parts currently don't have people living on them? Protect those parts first. There's a lot of land out west that just isn't densely populated, and some in the north. Over time, the west and south will become less habitable and the north more so, which requires considering those changes in planning. But meanwhile, the government owns or controls a lot of land that could be put into carbon reserve parks -- and let's be specific about that. These aren't just wildlife reserves. The point is to store carbon, so that means no digging, no lumbering, no extraction of resources period. Leave it the fuck alone. That will also protect wildlife, which is a bonus, but the goal is carbon storage.
I'm also in favor of returning land to its actual owners, native tribes. Again this will be easier to do with land that the government holds than land in private hands. It'd be nice to include "Sorry we fucked up, here's your territory back, please help save the world from our stupid mistakes," but that's probably expecting too much of white people. I'd focus first on tribes that already have conservation programs going -- especially the ones with buffalo, a keystone species -- but I'd also look at defragging the reservations with a confetti problem because larger contiguous areas are more valuable.
Russia: 31.7 Gt of irrecoverable carbon; 2.4% is within protected areas and 50.7% within indigenous and community lands. 4.1% was lost in the last decade.
Now this is a serious problem. That's a lot of territory. It should be easy to protect because it's thinly populated. But it's held by a nutjob. This will make it difficult if not impossible to protect. What's worse, Russia could just decide to cut the world's throat by burning out those reserves. It'd take some doing but would very hard for anyone to stop them. I'm not sure they're actually smart enough to do that on purpose, but they are certainly stupid enough to do it while pursuing some personal advantage.
If global warming continues unabated, we are headed for catastrophic climate change. This year’s fires and floods will seem like an insignificant amuse-bouche by comparison.
I'm happy to see someone else saying this. Look around at all the mayhem nowadays. This is the least worst it's ever going to be again, within generations of human experience.
To avoid the worst excesses of climate change, we have to keep global warming below +1.5° C (or, at a stretch, +2° C).
We're nowhere near on track for that goal. At this point we'd be lucky to keep it below +3, which is bend over and kiss your ass goodbye territory.
To have a two-thirds chance of staying below +1.5° C, we have to achieve net-zero by 2050. Our remaining carbon budget until then is 109 GtC. (For the riskier target of +2° C, our remaining budget is 313 GtC).
To get to that first target, we must halve our CO2 emissions each decade. But while most efforts focus on emissions from transport and industry, irrecoverable carbon is often not included in the considerations.
Poor accounting is one reason I predict failure of damage control. You can't get good planning from bad numbers. Remember, these are the same idiots who can't figure out that they need to calculate maintenance costs for their infrastructure into their city budgets. Presumably, the same 66% of people who somehow manage to be worse at math than I am.
And yet, Earth’s ecosystems contain around 139 gigatons of irrecoverable carbon (57% in plants and trees and 43% in soil, mainly peat). If all those gigatons are released, simple math shows that all other efforts to remain below +1.5° C are doomed.
So if people aren't paying attention to that, they aren't protecting it, and they will fuck it up. It's like how they tell households to cut their water use, when water shortages are caused by agriculture and industry.
DR Congo: 5.8 Gt of irrecoverable carbon; 18.1% is within protected areas and 31.1% within indigenous and community lands. 2.6% was lost in the last decade.
Not bad population, but it's poor, and Africa is terrible at stability of any kind for the last several centuries. They can't even keep people from eating the megafauna. In an area where people still routinely burn wood for survival purposes, I don't see a lot of room for protecting carbon stores.
While releasing all irrecoverable carbon would require the sort of concerted global effort that we humans are so demonstrably bad at, enough of the stuff is being transformed into greenhouse gas to be a cause for worry.
No it wouldn't. The thing to worry about is not concerted effort. It's what I call a discontiguous conspiracy: lots of people operating from the same playbook so they don't need to discuss plans. So for instance, in the Congo, people want to cook food and heat homes. They commonly do this by cutting and burning wood. They don't have to talk about that; millions of them just go do it and the forest shrinks. Which is exactly how we got here in the first place.
The Amazon in South America (31.5 GtC)
This is where I see the most leverage. People already know about and like the Amazon rainforest. It's got a lot of biodiversity, and if it burns down, we lose one of the planet's larger lungs and replace that with dryland or desert. So folks in other nations are motivated to protect it. Brazilians are largely burning it down for money -- to make farms. If other countries pay them more for standing forest than for farmland, then the forest should stay up. The population pressure just isn't high enough to overcome sheer greed.
Borneo and other islands in South East Asia (13.1 GtC)
Islands will depend a lot on population density and development level. Where population is high and development low, people will eat the whole place trying to claw their way out of poverty.
Now if you can come up with a way to move people off islands, that'd be great, we need that for climate reasons anyhow. We may as well test it now rather than wait for island nations to drown. If we can couch it as part of the climate fight, we might even manage to force landed nations into recognizing alternatives such as floating nations or artificial islands which they currently deny.
The forests and peatlands of western Siberia and eastern Canada (12.4 GtC)
Siberia is controlled by a nutjob. Have fun fixing that. But hey, if something slays Russia, I'd be tempted to hand over some of that territory to Ukraine.
Canada is thinly populated and should be among the easier places to protect. See above re: returning stolen property.
The Congo Basin in Central Africa (8.2 GtC)
Maybe.
The Pacific Northwest in North America (5 GtC)
What parts of this are less densely populated may be salvageable. But a lot of it is very high-value residential territory that people don't want to give up. The government doesn't have enough money to fight that many lawsuits. It could take the land by force but the political and legal cost of doing so would be extreme. Which is why they haven't told people to move out of territory that is too dry to support that population and also going to rip an epic earthquake any time now.
Mangroves and wetlands around the world (4.8 GtC)
Do you want to drown in a hurricane? No? Protect and restore these.
Brazil: 20.2 Gt of irrecoverable carbon, 56% is within protected areas and 25.5% within indigenous and community lands. 2.2% was lost in the last decade.
Some of the biggest carrot if we save it and biggest stick if we don't.
In fact, half the irrecoverable carbon in the world is found in areas that add up to just 3.3% of the world’s total landmass, or about 1.9 million sq mi (4.9 million sq km) — roughly equivalent to two-thirds of the continental United States.
That degree of concentration means that targeted conservation efforts can have a meaningful effect on keeping irrecoverable carbon locked in place, especially since large swathes of carbon-dense zones are already well-positioned.
Agreed. Also, some of the carbonland is low in species density (Canada, Siberia) but some is extremely high (Brazil, Congo, Indonesia). I'd prioritize first the places that meet both goals, because they can draw a wider base of support. They also have much higher potential for alternative income like releasing beautiful videos or artwork.
Just over a third (33.6%) of irrecoverable carbon is located on land managed by local communities and indigenous peoples, who have millennia of experience in sustainably managing their environment. Strengthening their rights should be part of securing the carbon in their environment.
That would be awesome. But it would undercut the power of colonialist governments; they won't tolerate that. Brazil is really into murdering indigenous people and activists, has been for decades. America prefers a slower form of genocide but absolutely cannot afford scrutiny of its past crimes against humanity. Russia doesn't think anyone has rights. And so on.
Canada: 10.8 Gt of irrecoverable carbon; 12.3% is within protected areas and 1.4% within indigenous and community lands. 3.3% was lost in the last decade.
Fantastic potential due to low current population. However, Canada is where everyone else in the Americas will have to flee as climate change makes more areas uninhabitable. The population a century from now will almost certainly look very different. Right now, this is probably among the easiest places to protect.
That could be an additional push for the “30 by 30” initiative, in which countries pledge to help protect at least 30% of the Earth’s land and oceans by 2030.
Good idea.
As part of this initiative, about 70 countries at the recent COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, including Brazil, China and the U.S., pledged to halt deforestation by that same year.
Waaayyy too late.
Papua New Guinea: 3.9 Gt of irrecoverable carbon; 2.7% is within protected areas and 4.1% within indigenous and community lands. 1.7% was lost in the last decade.
Maybe. Some areas of dense population, some low. Dangerously high poverty. Extremely high biodiversity. A challenge to protect, but high payoff for success.
But don’t let all these maps, percentages, plans, and pledges make you too complacent about the prospect of avoiding catastrophic climate change. Not included in this overview is the amount of carbon that humans have no control over, like the huge reserves locked away in Arctic permafrost, slated to be released by global warming itself — 18 GtC, by some accounts.
Also not included are all the factors that scientists don't know about or have underestimated. That tends to be a lot. Think about how often you've heard "Oops, it's actually twice as bad as we thought last year" or worse.
Also, protected status is not a panacea. Adding up all the protected areas that were recently opened to mining, drilling, and other heavy industries in 75 countries around the world yields a territory the size of Mexico.
That's why I argue we need a carbon park designation that clearly rules out all uses which would release carbon. It'd be great if we could get people to stop lying about what "protected" means in general, but right now for this specific goal what we need is a park class that explicitly and absolutely blocks carbon release. The problem is, people don't want to do that, because they think they can have their planet and burn it too.
If we don’t step up, climate change itself may become irrecoverable.
It's already irrecoverable. We're not getting back to the nice climate we had before humanity cocked it up. Climate change is here and already doing major damage. We do not have the technology to fix that.
What we're investigating now is whether we can keep the level of damage below what will wipe out civilization, or wipe out Homo sapiens. We have a lot of ideas how. It's just that people damn well don't want to do the things.
Indigenous people have spent thousands of years saying, "Don't, that will cause problems," and getting shot for their trouble.
We fucking told you so.
Really, we should be keeping as much as possible where it is. It's ridiculous to burn carbon on one end and spend more energy to "capture" carbon on the other. ("Only a white man would think you could make a blanket longer by cutting off the top and sewing it to the bottom.") That includes not cutting or burning down forests, and leaving fossil fuels in the ground, among other things. But some storage areas are much denser and or more vulnerable, and thus more important, than others.
If we want to avoid a climate catastrophe, we have a limited carbon budget to spend. It is not just emissions from cars or factories that we should be worried about. Carbon released from natural ecosystems is a problem.
True -- and of those, we need to focus on the ones we control the most. We can choose not to dig up fossil fuels and they'll stay put; that's complete control. We can choose not to bother a forest, but it might burn down anyway; that's partial control. There's fuckall we can do about melting permafrost directly.
These maps show how we can solve it.
No, they show where it is. That's useful information, but it doesn't give us a way to make stupid people behave intelligently. One of the biggest stocks is in Russia, which is ruled by an ignoramus who thinks nuclear bombs are an acceptable way to solve his problems.
Forest fire on peatlands in Indonesia’s Riau province on the island of Sumatra, one of the world’s largest stores of so-called “irrecoverable carbon.”
I think Indonesia is fucked. It has millions of people crammed into a smallish area, and it still struggles with poverty. Those people want a better standard of living, and they don't have a lot of land to do it with. That creates intense pressure, which makes any kind of conservation extremely difficult.
There’s so much more to the ground beneath our feet than just dirt — for instance, gigatons of carbon locked away in forests, peatlands, and mangroves.
Now any kind of forest is helpful in fighting climate change, but certain types are much more effective than others and we should prioritize those. That means protecting all the ones we have currently and trying to plant more wherever they can grow. These include but are not limited to:
* Mangroves -- in addition to storing carbon, they buffer coastal storms like hurricanes and they nurture seafood that is desperately needed.
* Rainforests -- their dense layering makes them extremely high in biodiversity, they actually make their own weather in addition to holding water, and if cut down the earth below tends to turn into dryland or desert because all the nutrients are bound up in the lifeforms.
* Redwoods -- ecosystem engineers, they wring water out of clouds and fog to create a whole ecosystem of their own.
This map shows you where. The darker the area, the more irrecoverable carbon there is. If we want to limit global warming to +1.5° C above pre-industrial levels, that carbon needs to stay there. That means no farming, no burning, no building. The good news: half of the irrecoverable carbon is concentrated on just 3.3% of the world’s landmass, making it easier to preserve. The bad news: Have you seen how we treat this place?
Jeez, I could've written that whole paragraph.
United States: 8.3 Gt of irrecoverable carbon; 20.3% is within protected areas and 4.2% within indigenous and community lands. 5.6% was lost in the last decade.
Looking at this map, I see that a lot of the darkest areas are desired by people and some have high populations. But some of those are places to be moving away from. The West Coast is on the Ring of Fire (earthquakes, volcanoes) and is drying out (drought, wildfires) so moving away is sensible. Southern Florida is subject to hurricanes, saltwater encroachment, and problems caused by poor development decisions. People will be forced out of there fairly soon; move voluntarily sooner and the harm will be less. I don't think people will choose to do those sensible things.
More feasibly, we could look at the land and ask: What parts currently don't have people living on them? Protect those parts first. There's a lot of land out west that just isn't densely populated, and some in the north. Over time, the west and south will become less habitable and the north more so, which requires considering those changes in planning. But meanwhile, the government owns or controls a lot of land that could be put into carbon reserve parks -- and let's be specific about that. These aren't just wildlife reserves. The point is to store carbon, so that means no digging, no lumbering, no extraction of resources period. Leave it the fuck alone. That will also protect wildlife, which is a bonus, but the goal is carbon storage.
I'm also in favor of returning land to its actual owners, native tribes. Again this will be easier to do with land that the government holds than land in private hands. It'd be nice to include "Sorry we fucked up, here's your territory back, please help save the world from our stupid mistakes," but that's probably expecting too much of white people. I'd focus first on tribes that already have conservation programs going -- especially the ones with buffalo, a keystone species -- but I'd also look at defragging the reservations with a confetti problem because larger contiguous areas are more valuable.
Russia: 31.7 Gt of irrecoverable carbon; 2.4% is within protected areas and 50.7% within indigenous and community lands. 4.1% was lost in the last decade.
Now this is a serious problem. That's a lot of territory. It should be easy to protect because it's thinly populated. But it's held by a nutjob. This will make it difficult if not impossible to protect. What's worse, Russia could just decide to cut the world's throat by burning out those reserves. It'd take some doing but would very hard for anyone to stop them. I'm not sure they're actually smart enough to do that on purpose, but they are certainly stupid enough to do it while pursuing some personal advantage.
If global warming continues unabated, we are headed for catastrophic climate change. This year’s fires and floods will seem like an insignificant amuse-bouche by comparison.
I'm happy to see someone else saying this. Look around at all the mayhem nowadays. This is the least worst it's ever going to be again, within generations of human experience.
To avoid the worst excesses of climate change, we have to keep global warming below +1.5° C (or, at a stretch, +2° C).
We're nowhere near on track for that goal. At this point we'd be lucky to keep it below +3, which is bend over and kiss your ass goodbye territory.
To have a two-thirds chance of staying below +1.5° C, we have to achieve net-zero by 2050. Our remaining carbon budget until then is 109 GtC. (For the riskier target of +2° C, our remaining budget is 313 GtC).
To get to that first target, we must halve our CO2 emissions each decade. But while most efforts focus on emissions from transport and industry, irrecoverable carbon is often not included in the considerations.
Poor accounting is one reason I predict failure of damage control. You can't get good planning from bad numbers. Remember, these are the same idiots who can't figure out that they need to calculate maintenance costs for their infrastructure into their city budgets. Presumably, the same 66% of people who somehow manage to be worse at math than I am.
And yet, Earth’s ecosystems contain around 139 gigatons of irrecoverable carbon (57% in plants and trees and 43% in soil, mainly peat). If all those gigatons are released, simple math shows that all other efforts to remain below +1.5° C are doomed.
So if people aren't paying attention to that, they aren't protecting it, and they will fuck it up. It's like how they tell households to cut their water use, when water shortages are caused by agriculture and industry.
DR Congo: 5.8 Gt of irrecoverable carbon; 18.1% is within protected areas and 31.1% within indigenous and community lands. 2.6% was lost in the last decade.
Not bad population, but it's poor, and Africa is terrible at stability of any kind for the last several centuries. They can't even keep people from eating the megafauna. In an area where people still routinely burn wood for survival purposes, I don't see a lot of room for protecting carbon stores.
While releasing all irrecoverable carbon would require the sort of concerted global effort that we humans are so demonstrably bad at, enough of the stuff is being transformed into greenhouse gas to be a cause for worry.
No it wouldn't. The thing to worry about is not concerted effort. It's what I call a discontiguous conspiracy: lots of people operating from the same playbook so they don't need to discuss plans. So for instance, in the Congo, people want to cook food and heat homes. They commonly do this by cutting and burning wood. They don't have to talk about that; millions of them just go do it and the forest shrinks. Which is exactly how we got here in the first place.
The Amazon in South America (31.5 GtC)
This is where I see the most leverage. People already know about and like the Amazon rainforest. It's got a lot of biodiversity, and if it burns down, we lose one of the planet's larger lungs and replace that with dryland or desert. So folks in other nations are motivated to protect it. Brazilians are largely burning it down for money -- to make farms. If other countries pay them more for standing forest than for farmland, then the forest should stay up. The population pressure just isn't high enough to overcome sheer greed.
Borneo and other islands in South East Asia (13.1 GtC)
Islands will depend a lot on population density and development level. Where population is high and development low, people will eat the whole place trying to claw their way out of poverty.
Now if you can come up with a way to move people off islands, that'd be great, we need that for climate reasons anyhow. We may as well test it now rather than wait for island nations to drown. If we can couch it as part of the climate fight, we might even manage to force landed nations into recognizing alternatives such as floating nations or artificial islands which they currently deny.
The forests and peatlands of western Siberia and eastern Canada (12.4 GtC)
Siberia is controlled by a nutjob. Have fun fixing that. But hey, if something slays Russia, I'd be tempted to hand over some of that territory to Ukraine.
Canada is thinly populated and should be among the easier places to protect. See above re: returning stolen property.
The Congo Basin in Central Africa (8.2 GtC)
Maybe.
The Pacific Northwest in North America (5 GtC)
What parts of this are less densely populated may be salvageable. But a lot of it is very high-value residential territory that people don't want to give up. The government doesn't have enough money to fight that many lawsuits. It could take the land by force but the political and legal cost of doing so would be extreme. Which is why they haven't told people to move out of territory that is too dry to support that population and also going to rip an epic earthquake any time now.
Mangroves and wetlands around the world (4.8 GtC)
Do you want to drown in a hurricane? No? Protect and restore these.
Brazil: 20.2 Gt of irrecoverable carbon, 56% is within protected areas and 25.5% within indigenous and community lands. 2.2% was lost in the last decade.
Some of the biggest carrot if we save it and biggest stick if we don't.
In fact, half the irrecoverable carbon in the world is found in areas that add up to just 3.3% of the world’s total landmass, or about 1.9 million sq mi (4.9 million sq km) — roughly equivalent to two-thirds of the continental United States.
That degree of concentration means that targeted conservation efforts can have a meaningful effect on keeping irrecoverable carbon locked in place, especially since large swathes of carbon-dense zones are already well-positioned.
Agreed. Also, some of the carbonland is low in species density (Canada, Siberia) but some is extremely high (Brazil, Congo, Indonesia). I'd prioritize first the places that meet both goals, because they can draw a wider base of support. They also have much higher potential for alternative income like releasing beautiful videos or artwork.
Just over a third (33.6%) of irrecoverable carbon is located on land managed by local communities and indigenous peoples, who have millennia of experience in sustainably managing their environment. Strengthening their rights should be part of securing the carbon in their environment.
That would be awesome. But it would undercut the power of colonialist governments; they won't tolerate that. Brazil is really into murdering indigenous people and activists, has been for decades. America prefers a slower form of genocide but absolutely cannot afford scrutiny of its past crimes against humanity. Russia doesn't think anyone has rights. And so on.
Canada: 10.8 Gt of irrecoverable carbon; 12.3% is within protected areas and 1.4% within indigenous and community lands. 3.3% was lost in the last decade.
Fantastic potential due to low current population. However, Canada is where everyone else in the Americas will have to flee as climate change makes more areas uninhabitable. The population a century from now will almost certainly look very different. Right now, this is probably among the easiest places to protect.
That could be an additional push for the “30 by 30” initiative, in which countries pledge to help protect at least 30% of the Earth’s land and oceans by 2030.
Good idea.
As part of this initiative, about 70 countries at the recent COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, including Brazil, China and the U.S., pledged to halt deforestation by that same year.
Waaayyy too late.
Papua New Guinea: 3.9 Gt of irrecoverable carbon; 2.7% is within protected areas and 4.1% within indigenous and community lands. 1.7% was lost in the last decade.
Maybe. Some areas of dense population, some low. Dangerously high poverty. Extremely high biodiversity. A challenge to protect, but high payoff for success.
But don’t let all these maps, percentages, plans, and pledges make you too complacent about the prospect of avoiding catastrophic climate change. Not included in this overview is the amount of carbon that humans have no control over, like the huge reserves locked away in Arctic permafrost, slated to be released by global warming itself — 18 GtC, by some accounts.
Also not included are all the factors that scientists don't know about or have underestimated. That tends to be a lot. Think about how often you've heard "Oops, it's actually twice as bad as we thought last year" or worse.
Also, protected status is not a panacea. Adding up all the protected areas that were recently opened to mining, drilling, and other heavy industries in 75 countries around the world yields a territory the size of Mexico.
That's why I argue we need a carbon park designation that clearly rules out all uses which would release carbon. It'd be great if we could get people to stop lying about what "protected" means in general, but right now for this specific goal what we need is a park class that explicitly and absolutely blocks carbon release. The problem is, people don't want to do that, because they think they can have their planet and burn it too.
If we don’t step up, climate change itself may become irrecoverable.
It's already irrecoverable. We're not getting back to the nice climate we had before humanity cocked it up. Climate change is here and already doing major damage. We do not have the technology to fix that.
What we're investigating now is whether we can keep the level of damage below what will wipe out civilization, or wipe out Homo sapiens. We have a lot of ideas how. It's just that people damn well don't want to do the things.
Indigenous people have spent thousands of years saying, "Don't, that will cause problems," and getting shot for their trouble.
We fucking told you so.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-09 10:57 am (UTC)And yeah...the rest of us were getting warnings about this for over a century and a half, and still the fossil fuel industry decided everything from Indigenous peoples to democracy were surplus to their "requirements"...
A Discontiguous Conspiracy
Date: 2022-10-09 02:56 pm (UTC)Wealth and power accumulates on the backs of the disenfranchised. Colonization, looting, cash crops farmed by a steady supply of slaves worked to death and easily replaced, factory towns, industry and low wages that made Europe a world power. The apex of civilization, we have never had it so good. Apparently, no one wants to give that up.
We spread out of Africa and ate our way across continents, exterminating anything that had not learned to run away, then figuring out how to kill off the rest. Like cats on bird island, we never had it so good. Apparently, no one wanted to give any of that up.
Re: A Discontiguous Conspiracy
Date: 2022-10-09 05:41 pm (UTC)