Billionaires. That’s why.
There will be movement after the first half a billion people starve to death, and when the environment forces another billion or so to move.
Money…
Truth is the enemy of politics.
*of capitalism.
Leadershit: “Why aren’t people
cranking out new victimsreproducing anymore?”Younger generation: “Fix this shit or we are canceling the next generation.”
Leadershit: (LotR Isildur meme) “No”
Billionaires
Cause we are facing global economic hardship, which is partially due to climate change.
This is the sad part, most people’s priority is their standard of living so when economic hardship happens, they double down on short term thinking.
This is why climate action needs to go hand in hand with economic reform so most people’s life gets better as we go towards solar punk.
In theory the rich who have horded all that wealth could benefit humanity if that wealth becomes our piggy bank to fix things.
It’s very very simple.
If you don’t know what that is, that’s all you need to read to understand why free markets will always lead to collapse and extinction.
Because extremely rich people have gotten extremely much richer and they still want more
They dont give a shit if the world blows up. They think they have money, they think their money will save them, they think they can build their zombie fortress and they’ll be fine
They won’t, of course but that is besides the point
Then here are the tech bros who think that just another datacenter will for sure give us real AI that will magically solve all our problems tomorrow, just give us a few billion dollars more, it will surely work this time bro! And politicians, the idiots that they all are, actually listen to that, and believe it.
Then there are the dumb votes who hear climate change and hear “tax raising” because of course they’re right because instead of taking the billions from the billionaire donors, politicians will just have the poor pay for whatever fix, just as we, the people had to get rid of straws because that will fix it, just as we the people will have to start paying.kore for food and and and…
Instead we need only one fucking politician in charge who is willing to cap net worth at 10 million dollars. After that, all your income goes to taxes. Companies must be capped at a billion dollars networth. Anything over that, 100% to tax.
THAT will give a good income that can be used for a great socialist framework with free healthcare, free housing, free education, free all the basics, maybe even UBI. THAT will give governments the money to invest in climate change but also invest in thousands more smaller companies that can innovate instead of resting on brand recognition.
Fuck the rich and powerful, they must ALL be stripped down to normal levels of we want to survive
No one’s willing to go first and put themselves at a competitive disadvantage. It needs to be uniform action. And without the US willing to participate it’ll be as slow as molasses.
This is the reason that every billionaire rails against a scary “new world order” or “one world government” or just the UN doing its job… They don’t want to actually be held to anything.
I’ve seen like half a dozen articles asking questions like this in the last week.
Money.
The answer is money.
The answer has always been money.
The answer will always be money.
There is no point in asking this question because everyone already knows it’s money.
Screw humanity.
If only it was just humanity, it would be fine. A dead end species. We’re taking everything with us, which is the real crime.
Well, the planet will bounce back without us. Sure, it won’t be the same… but a billion years ago was pretty different from now.
Great Oxygenation Event: Around 2.4 billion years ago, a type of photosynthetic microorganism—cyanobacteria, often called blue-green algae—began producing large amounts of oxygen as a byproduct of photosynthesis. At the time, Earth’s atmosphere had almost no oxygen, and this new oxygen was actually toxic to most existing life. The result was it killed most of the life on earth including itself, and new life forms adapted to oxygen.
So in a few billion more years, whatever intelligent life pops up will look back and think of us as just another algae problem.
David Kipping introduced me to the idea that the window of opportunity for intelligent life may be far smaller than we used to think. It’s a companion to the Rare Earth hypothesis of having so many variables that MIGHT need to exist to make things work, but assuming all conditions are good for what we consider hospitable, how long a planet has before the star changes and how soon basic life starts is not that long cosmically.
Simply put, new life after whatever this climate run stabilized to won’t have a billion years before the Sun begins to change. Not turn into a red giant or dwarf, those are far off still, but it will begin its path towards those long before the actual event, and conditions here will worsen for a teeming biosphere.
To quote “Hamilton”, life only gets probably one shot. Maybe two or three if it’s fast, but we can probably count a few of the mass extinctions that set things back for that.
The real question is what are 99.9999% of the humans that can’t decide about this going to do about this?
The politicians obviously don’t give a shit, they had well over a 100 years (not even kidding , earth warming due to CO2 was already know about in the 1899s somewhere) to know about this and do something about this.
They didn’t do anything, being more interested in their donors and being reelected
The billionaires literally are spending a million times the amount of CO2 that a normal person does
So what is the rest of us going to do while they literally are setting fire to the only world in the fucking universe that ever had life, as far as we know anyway?
I mean seriously, how am I bit supposed to see then as a threat to the survival of the human race, or for that matter, my own? My wife’s? My children?
China and India need to stop burning BILLIONS of tons of coal a year. Everyone needs to stop burning coal in general.
This is a classssic Right/Big Oil bot talking point. Why do you think the climate is where it is now? What is the main country that has pushed so much CO2 into the atmosphere in the last 80 years that we’re even talking about this?
Yes, China, India and others need to reduce fossil fuel production and usage. But this talking point is typically used as API propaganda to push the blame elsewhere. Also where is that demand coming from? Again, it’s America and the West.
Nobody should be burning coal. Full stop. I’m not on the right, I’m a power plant engineer. A combination of nat gas, hydro, nuclear, solar and wind needs to be used GLOBALLY. Bringing up the worst offenders doesn’t make me any less against the rampant waste the US also produces.
But the implication by omission in your first comment is a literal talking point of API. It’s their entire thing. Just distract from implementing any real change by pointing to other countries. You can say that, but in the same post you should explicitly call out the entire other side of the coin.
The USA gets about 30% of its electricity via renewables. The USA gets about 14% of its electricity through coal (14% too much). China gets about 30% of its electricity via renewables and about 60% of its electricity via coal. I can call that out for being bad without it being implied I think oil is best, no? China is the current number 1 for new renewables, USA is number 2. One of the big issues that is ignored is the exorbitant amount of electricity Americans use residentially.
In a vacuum you can say whatever you want, but in today’s media environment with bad actors and bots all over, posting anonymously online to repeat Big Oil talking points requires additional context. Nothing you’re saying is factually incorrect, but it just so happens to align with propaganda strategies.
That’s what makes it so effective as propaganda, they can hide behind “it’s not incorrect, it’s just facts” but the implication (and they’ve openly parroted it all over) is that everything is the fault of India and China and therefore we shouldn’t be trying to decarbonize and move away from fossil fuels.
Saying India and China shouldnt use coal has nothing to do with the USA decarbonizing. The US has, and continues to utilize renewables at mass scale. Pretending issues in other countries don’t exist just let’s global emissions continue to climb. I’m anti coal, thats kind of like my thing.
I can see you’re not absorbing what I’m saying, so… ok
Technically true, but you don’t need to help the pro-climate catastrophe people (it’s wild that those people exist BTW) use “We shouldn’t bother to get better until they get better” to influence policy. Don’t be a crab. For what it’s worth, India burns less coal per capita than the US and China is blowing everyone else out of the water on advancing solar power and electric vehicles.
India burns a bit more than double the coal the USA does. It also accounts for 75% of their electricity generation fuel. Whereas in the usa its less than 14%. So India burns less per capita but significantly more by weight and their entire grid is based on coal. Nobody should be burning coal for electric generation period. The USA has consistently gotten better and better with emissions while excuses are made for India/China. We are getting better and have been getting better, look at the amount of nat gas plants, solar fields, hydroelectric, wind and cogen facilities that have popped up in the last couple decades.
India burns substantially less than double the US. Even if that wasn’t the case, trying to lay the blame on other countries is textbook crab mentality. That’s problematic even before you get to the callous narcissism of “Yeah, we burned coal when we were developing, but it’s wrong now so you cant. Good luck developing! We’re rooting for you to do it the right way!”
Americans and pulling up the ladder. What an iconic duo.
Don’t forget China needs to stop using cement! We can use it though of course.
And all those 3rd world countries aren’t allowed sidewalks!
Nobody should be using coal. Nobody NEEDS to use coal. Its not like you use coal for awhile then level up and it turns to renewables. Developing nations should be given/sold the necessary resources to be self sufficient.
Yeah China bad bad bad bad bad! CHINANNNAA!!
Coal bad, China meh.
You forgot the cement use!! CHINA BAD FOR USING CEMENT!1!
Is it super cement though?
Ok I’ve had fun so I guess I’ll try to educate you.
You’ve fallen for right wing talking points blaming China for climate change. Notice how they hone in a singular talking point while ignoring everything else? They don’t talk about carbon, they try to take a singular point coal.
Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita
Sort by emissions per capita and see where countries line up. US #16, China #25. India #125.
That’s not to say that coal is fine. But when you hone in on that singular talking point and blame CHINA and oh yeah INDIA bad countries why are they so bad bad bad, then you’ve fallen for right wing Fox news screaming “CHINA’S COALL!”
PS watch for them blaming cement use too, which of course developing countries will use more of.
Nothing a global guillotine movement won’t solve
