As record heat risks bleaching 73% of the world’s coral reefs, scientists ask ‘what do we do now?’
As record heat risks bleaching 73% of the world’s coral reefs, scientists ask ‘what do we do now?’
Are you implying there is something we can do? Ooh, ooh, I know! We can ban straws! And a few if us can shower a minute shorter, that will show those pesky reefs!
Not that I’m saying that small steps don’t help, I’m sure they do, but we do tiny shit like this and a single corporation takes us a marathon back by deciding it’s cheaper to cause more pollution.
The only thing that will help is a world wide effort to curb capitalist systems. Not saying “go communist!” I’m saying we need to apply a boat load of strict environment laws and uphold them, and help companies responsible both in civil court as in criminal court. Make them pay 25% of a years revenue, jail C suit level (and lower) execs that signed off on pollution decisions or were the ones in charge of whatever caused the pollution.
Give companies good and real incentives to play nice with the environment.
Things like that will help. The entire “what are you going to do about it?” question can be answered with two words: absolutely nothing. Because I can’t, and because the real solution shouldn’t have to rest on our shoulders, it has to rest on the shoulders of the companies causing this pollution.
No
It makes it incredibly vital that we get shareholders and the C suite more money.
Anything else is optional and not very important
You have the highest IQ on the planet, don’t you not sure?
Xkcd did a “what if” on this. It doesn’t end well.
Well, it’s not good when the scientists are asking me for advice.
Ummm… Did y’all try painting them yet?
What do we do now?
Two things:
Make more money for share holders
Nothing
Die…
We’ll do three things:
Transition to renewable energy faster
Consider environmental pollution an act of war, because we really are getting to that point. Yes this will be seen as the west “pulling the ladder back up after themselves”; ask the corals if they give a shit
Those won’t be enough, maybe we can put some mirrors in orbit to cool the world down just a tiny tiny bit, then de-orbit it the mirrors.
cracked.com/personal-experiences-1424-5-things-yo…
Quite an old listicle I read more than 10 years ago, but I still remember #1; “The Armed Security is Terrifying”
First he details how massive security was for the vice president of the US. Then for another high-profile politician, with Secret Service.
But by far the most security we’ve ever had was for big oil executives. We shut down two entire floors for them that only a select few hotel employees were allowed on. I was not one of those employees. Unlike the Secret Service dudes, rich people private security is as twitchy and heavily armed as every single character in a Michael Bay movie.
It’s not going to be easy, but I’m up for it.
As an anarchist who would welcome other anarchists - sadly, I doubt if that’s a reliable recipe to stop climate change.
Limiting (hopefully stopping) climate change can be done under almost any political system… except perhaps dictatorial petro-states. However, it takes years of work to tranform the economy. Transport, heating, food production - many things must change. Perhaps the simplest individual choices are:
The rest - creating infrastructure to produce energy cleanly and store sufficient quantities - are typically societal choices.
As for corals - I would start by preserving their biodiversity, sampling the genes of all species and growing many of them in human-made habitats. If we’re about to cause their extinction, it’s our obligation to provide them life support until the environment has been fixed.
Also, I would consider genetically engineering corals to tolerate higher temperatures. If that’s feasible. Also, I would keep in mind that this could have side effects, so maybe I wouldn’t prefer this as plan A.
As for tempeature - it will be rising for some time before things can be stopped. Short of geoengineering, nothing to be done but reduce emissions, adapt, and help others adapt.