“We now have direct evidence that not only was the ice gone, but that plants and insects were living there,”…Near‑complete melting of Greenland’s ice over the next centuries to a few millennia would lead to some 23 feet of sea‑level rise.
“We now have direct evidence that not only was the ice gone, but that plants and insects were living there,”…Near‑complete melting of Greenland’s ice over the next centuries to a few millennia would lead to some 23 feet of sea‑level rise.
We all hem and haw endlessly about how bad the climate change problem is, but by not collectively DOING something about it, we’re leaving it up the countries that actually have the biggest populations and have the most at stake in taking drastic action.
In America or Europe we are talking about building sea-walls and flood control systems, spending billions or trillions on preparing for rising sea levels.
What about India? China? Southeast Asia? They have far more to lose from extreme weather and wet-bulb heat events and far more people with lives at risk and less resources to put into massive concrete walls around their coastal cities. How are we going to feel when they start seeing extreme, unilateral options as viable? If they decide to do drastic geoengineering projects like shading the earth with aerosols or orbital shields, we could all suffer if those projects have unintended consequences. (The climate is complicated, yo.)
US/EU could have done a lot for long time, but they don’t care about the root problem. There is no need to pull out your selected countries as somehow needing more oversight than the West. We are the cause of this problem. The question is more, how do we ensure competition stays away from existential processes and ecological systems that we all need ?
I mean, at this point the best thing that can happen to our biosphere and atmosphere would be the inevitable AI-driven societal collapse that will be the result of unchecked capitalist crusades to make the best, fastest, biggest line go up the furthest before anyone else, safety be damned.
I used to be the one screaming at people in the transhumanism subreddits that they’re delusional, now I’m screaming that they’re not delusional, no, go ahead, make it smarter, faster, bigger… put the thing in charge of the stock market, it’ll be great bro, I promise.
This is such a good point about the global power dynamics. The rate of melt is actually accelrating faster than most models predicted even 10 years ago. Countries with less resources might resort to desperate geoengineering measures becuase they literally can’t wait for the rest of us to get our act together.