talk about this. this is the kind of shit indigenous people and others concerned with the environmental impacts of extractive energy are concerned about.
ok so people are making fun of this but adding this with other anti-global warming tactics will work
This isn’t adding ice just for the sake of denial, it’s adding to the Earth’s albedo. This in turn actually makes the Earth’s climate cooler, and then more ice will be produced naturally because of this.
It isn’t a process we need to continue forever, in fact it’s one that needs to be calculated so that we don’t do it TOO MUCH. The only worry would be cooling down too much.
So yes, this is a good idea. It simply isn’t the only thing we should do because we still have gross pollution.
For the love of god do it . anything just do it. Give us hope.
Here’s the thing: Most environmental catastrophes humans have ever or are currently creating can be fixed. It’s not just a matter of “oh no, things are ruined, and maybe we can stop the degradation so that things don’t get any worse, but we’re stuck with how things are.” There are some things we can’t do, like bringing back extinct species. But there are a lot of other things we can definitely do, many of which are being done right now. The problem is that most of our willpower and effort is spent on bullshit tiny things that won’t solve the problem (individual recycling, etc.) and not on the large-scale things that can and will make a large-scale difference.
Ice caps are melting? Guess what! We know how to make ice. It’s not that hard. Designing mostly-automated robot ships to go to the poles and rebuild the ice caps is well within our current technical capabilities. We just need to fund it.
Deforestation on a massive scale? Destruction of other biomes? Guess what! We know how to plant trees. We know how to plant grasslands. We know how to take barren, lifeless land and turn it back into a viable biome. It’s not that hard. In a lot of cases, if there’s neighboring areas where that biome still exists, all you have to do is dump a few tons of biomass (plant clippings, food waste, etc.) on the barren land and stand back and wait. The biomass will provide nutrients and keep the topsoil from blowing away, and the plants and animals from the neighboring biome will move in. In two decades, even if you don’t do anything besides dumping the biomass on it, you won’t be able to tell what was the barren area and what was the still-existing biome.
Coral reefs dying? Now, coral reefs are a bit more fragile than most biomes, but guess what! We still know how to replant/rebuild them, and in fact are working on that in places affected by coral reef die-off! And we’re learning how to do it better every day.
Desertification? Guess what! We know how to turn desert back into green space. They’re doing it on a large scale in China and sub-Saharan Africa. There are several different techniques, none of which are even very technology-intensive. It takes money and time and labor, but it’s perfectly doable. We know this because we’ve done it.
Plastic in the ecosystem, particularly in the ocean? Guess what! There’s a lot of people working on this, both on “how to remove plastic from the ocean” and “how to reuse/recycle it more efficiently.” And the techniques are improving by leaps and bounds every year. This is a solvable problem. These are all solvable problems.
So if you’re crushed by the weight of the coming environmental catastrophe … don’t be. These are all solvable problems! We can stop things from getting worse, and we can fix the things we’ve broken. The issue is political, not practical.
On the political side, of course, is the need to tighten up environmental regulations across the globe. (What’s the statistic, that 90% of pollution is caused by 100 corporations?) And then of course, we need to fund these programs on a large enough scale.
In some ways the political aspect is the hardest, but consider this: we are at a tipping point. Things are changing about the way politicians talk about climate change and ecological degradation. More ordinary people are concerned about this, which means more pressure on politicians. One of the ways that things are changing is that people–even conservatives–are starting to talk about “job opportunities in new green fields” and switching the conversation so that it’s not “rainforest vs. jobs” makes political action a lot more possible. And no, it’s not going to happen on its own, but it can happen.
“The oil and gas sector alone will cause Canada to exceed its Paris Agreement target of a 40% reduction by 2030, set by Prime Minister Trudeau at President Biden’s recent climate summit, and the net-zero by 2050 target in Bill C-12,”
the new federal climate accountability act now before a House of
Commons committee, the organizations state in their joint release.
That campaign – the little recycling logos on our plastics, the upbeat videos about a future where plastic was part of a circular economy of use and recycling – convinced us to buy, wash, and sort plastic.
90% of that plastic was never recycled. It never will be.
NONE of those splashy campaigns – the announcement that all NYC school plastics would be recycled, the recycling in national parks – ever worked. They all lasted long enough to get some upbeat press, and then they quietly shut down.
This week’s NPR/Planet Money investigation by Laura Sullivan doesn’t just talk to the ex-chief lobbyists, now serving as belated Oppenheimers, lamenting the impending destruction of our planet.
It also talks to the current round of executives who have announced a fresh round of plans to recycle plastics – completely disingenuous, insultingly obvious distraction tactics to convince us that their projections of TRIPLING production by 2050 isn’t a form of mass murder.
Then Sullivan circles back to those retired executives, the ones who oversaw the first disinformation campaign, and they confirm that this latest round of promises are literally the same tactic, barely updated for a world on fire.
The world is on fire. My sky has been orange all week. Our family’s socially distanced meetings with friends in parks or back yards have been cancelled because we cannot breathe outside.
Exxon – and Chevron, and the rest of Big Oil – knows.
In a secret recording released to the New York Times, oil execs meet to cheerfully discuss how they will burn the world and murder us all but make a buck in the process.
Their plans for climate change don’t involve reducing emissions – they’re building bunkers and hiring mercenaries to keep us at bay when we come for them. They know what they’ve done.
Exxon knows.
Exxon knows.
When I searched for the “Exxon Knew” campaign to find a link for this piece, the top of Google’s search results included a blisteringly expensive ad for a disinformation site, paid for by Exxon.
The sky is orange. The oceans are choking. The air is unbreathable. Your body is full of microplastics.
for people wondering if this is satire in the tags, no it’s not, and it’s still up on bloomberg’s twitter
ok I know the main joke here is them defending polluters but the situation regarding pollution in china (and other asian countries) is often portrayed inaccurately by western media (and conveniently western countries outsource their pollution). here is some information on the topic. please read if you consider yourself an environmentalist in the imperial core because there are sooooo many incorrect takes on global pollution ironically coming from people supposedly concerned about the environment.
I hate all this wireless shit I don’t want to charge anything ever and I fucking love wires
Several months ago I was in a meeting with our Apple account rep talking about various things and one of the questions we asked him was about whether we were able to order wired keyboards & mice (specifically for large orders like entire computer labs) because wireless is a logistical nightmare for shared computing resources that get used by hundreds of people a day. And he was genuinely baffled why we would ask about this.
For those unfamiliar with the Apple Magic Mouse, this is how it charges:
Please please please if you must buy a new electronic, buy a plug in version if possible. Not only are they more powerful when you can plug them in, they are usually more dependable and last longer, since there’s no battery to overcharge and fry.
ifesbob 