One of my classes for my Ecology Degree is an Environmental future planning class and it's bleak, folks. Here are some highlights of the ideas my professor has put forward for planning for the future:
Using AI to help predict all the natural disasters. Because AI is totally going to save us folks.
Floating Parks. Lol.
More bike lanes even though we live in a part of the country that is massively spread out, unbearably hot, humid and hilly. Sure mate, I'm going to bike my 2 hour by car commute on a bike in sauna conditions.
Ride share companies where you pay a subscription instead of owning a car because yeah sure private companies getting more money and the public owning less ourselves is totally the solution instead of JUST MAKING IT PUBLIC TRANSPORT FFS WE HAD TRAMS IN THE 1900s AND THEY WORKED FINE.
Asking right-wingers really nicely to take climate change seriously.
Yet another Paris agreement style thing asking countries to commit to a weak target that they'll just ignore anyway.
Really depressing shit like "Ok so climate change is inevitable so what are some ways we can adapt to constant natural disasters and food scarcity." Like not even planning to fix it or prevent it. Just accepting it as "well it's going to happen nothing we can do." when we sure as fuck should be doing whatever possible to avoid such a future (but of course we can't, because the only solution is communism and assertive resistance and liberals would rather kill the entire global ecosystem than actively fight for survival)
So basically if you want insight on how liberals are going to deal with climate change the answer is about as well as they did with COVID. So basically limp half solutions that they give up on in the spirit of comprising with reactionaries with a focus on mild damage control rather than prevention and repair.
The sad thing is that that the students themselves are putting forward actually good solutions that are communist without realising they're communist, but the lecturer just kind of smiles and nods and goes on to the next topic as if to say "Yes you're right but I can't say it because I work for capitalists."
The more I study the more apparent it becomes that there is no way a capitalist system can fight this. The west cannot fight this even though it's people know the solutions they simply can't do them due to the oppressive nature of our system. Thank god for China because it's looking bad otherwise.
Okay so I’m going to be all over the place in this comment, but try to organize things and provide useful links. But my major takeaways are:
I’m learning more and more (I’m still young) that quality of science has not been the issue, but rather communication linked to painting rosy pictures (with the intent to not cause panic) instead of facing harsh realities and discussing how to approach them. Trauma-informed communication and general, empathetic communication of science rooted in community-building and “meeting people where there at” is our strongest tool at the present.
We’re well past the time for discussions of whether climate change is real, and as a rule I automatically treat any discussion on the matter as in bad faith and don’t waste my time - people who have experienced climate trauma will not argue this - only soft fucks who have never left their culdesac. Unfortunately, this is an expected stage of grief, and your ultimate goal is to get everyone through those stages and on to doing something about it.
Generally- things aren’t looking good in terms of habitability of coastal areas, shifts of arable land (and the food production industry’s inability to adapt accordingly), water scarcity, loss of biodiversity, disruption of feedback loops regarding ocean acidification/loss of buffer capacity/wind patterns/food webs - and frankly are getting worse faster than I was ever taught they would. It’s running headlong into the “socialism or barbarism” decision and the “most developed” nations are following the US in lockstep with hammering that motherfuckin barbarism button.
This is of course inextricably driven by the capitalist systems need to maintain a status quo, until capitalists are well-positioned to make the jump to take advantage of the next status shift. (E.g. bill gates and Microsoft have been positioning physically and politically in North Dakota, and i would say they’ve successfully done so.) Essentially, capitalism cannot survive if we intend to. Concepts of nationality must also be left behind in favor of open borders so that systems of productivity and distribution of food, water, and commodities are able to adapt based on shifting global population centers.
With sea level rise we will of course see major disruptions to sea ports and their connections to rail, population shifts away from the coasts, and general failure of infrastructure that’s not meant to be submerged. Inland we can expect changes in precipitation patterns leading ultimately to movement of communities away from floodplains- where many established for production/transportation.
I think we will be more limited in areas we live within leading to lots of necessary migration- and it’s of the utmost importance then to be sure that groups in precarious positions are not taken advantage of.
I don’t know where things are going in 70 years (presumably the longest I’ll live) - but my most optimistic viewpoint is bleak, especially if systems cling to the status quo. In that case I will cling to my family and comrades and save all we can.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240116222020/https://www.landscapepartnership.org/maps-data/climate-context/cc-resources/ClimateSciPDFs/Five%20Stages%20of%20Climate%20Grief.pdf/index_html
https://www.ctipp.org/post/integrating-near-science-into-trauma-informed-efforts
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level
https://press.un.org/en/2019/gaef3519.doc.htm