Ask Lemmy

I'm going to politely disagree. We should be afraid, but not the helpless feeling you describe, but an actionable, productive fear. The kind of fear that you feel when you see a kid too close to the edge of the stairs, or when you meet someone obviously dangerous. It needs to be a focusing fear, because we need to act now, and it's going to be an unpleasant process. We're not going to be able to vote or buy or donate our way out of this. We're going to need to be angry and loud. People aren't going to like it, and that's when we'll need our fear.

Most of us are afraid of conflict, or looking stupid, or making people angry, or getting made fun of, or even being arrested. We need to be more afraid of climate change so that we don't care, like a parent who sees their kid in trouble and just dives, without worrying about how stupid they're going to look after. We need to be afraid enough that the normal routines of our daily lives become intolerable, because those routines will be disrupted, whether we like it or not. The question is how we do it: We can do it now, which will suck, or when climate change comes for us, which will suck a lot more.

As for carbon capture, it's what I call a technological antisolution. It's a technical solution to a political problem that is incapable of actually solving said problem, but instead monetizes it, and further entrenches existing power structures.

Here's what I mean -- look at the big new carbon capture thing that was making the news just recently:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/19/a-big-new-exxon-mobil-climate-deal-that-got-assist-from-joe-biden.html

It's a deal with none other than Exxon Mobile. Carbon capture only exists because it allows companies to profit off creating the problem and its "solution." Antisolutions maximize GDP in the climate emergency. They even admit it without realizing it. From the article:

Carbon capture is a big boys' game," said Peter McNally [...] "These are billion-dollar projects. It's big companies capturing large amounts of carbon. And big oil and gas companies are where the expertise is.

What a bizarre coincidence that our most well-funded "solution" to climate change relies on big oil companies!

edit: (accidentally hit save before finishing) as for concrete steps, we need to organize. That always has been and always will be the solution to politics. We need to get together, and we need to demand that things change. It's going to take marches, strikes, protests, walk-ins, sit-ins, boycotts, ...

If you want to see an example of how to actually challenge power, take a look at what organizers in Atlanta are doing to stop the city from cutting down their forest and replacing it with "cop city," a training ground for the increasingly militarized police. They've been fighting it off for a long time now, and they're showing us what works and what doesn't, and, importantly, how loud and obnoxious you have to make yourself for power to listen.