Human Brain EnthusiastApr 4

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/116346848141590494

People like to forget that fighting climate change is about _saving human lives_ and not about saving Earth.

Even if it's 20 degrees higher or 20 degrees lower on average, Earth will do fine, life will do fine, nature will be fine—but humans won't be fine.

Show threadLilly HunterApr 4
@thomasfuchs Um, I don't think nature will be fine with a 20ºC increase - that would likely lead to mass species die-off, both flora and fauna.
Show threadHuman Brain Enthusiast

@LaChasseuse there were multiple points in the last 500 million years alone when the global temperature was >20ºC than today

before that fluctuations were even more extreme (but life wasn't as highly evolved yet)

(Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk3705)

Apr 4 at 7:36pmWeb
Show threadLilly HunterApr 4
@thomasfuchs Well yeah. Not saying it would be the first die-off ever. After all, we lost both the megafauna and the dinos.
I hope I won't be alive to see the birds falling out of the trees and small dead mammals on the forest paths.
Show threadHuman Brain EnthusiastApr 5

@LaChasseuse we lost some dinosaurs, birds are still with us.

they’re likely to be the ones which can adapt the easiest by migration; presumably that’s why they’re the only surviving dinosaur theropods

Show threadJohn MaxwellApr 5
@LaChasseuse @thomasfuchs We won't. We'll go first.
Show threadHuman Brain EnthusiastApr 5

@jmax @LaChasseuse
I would assume that birds also start migrating and relatively quickly evolve new species better adapted.

Some have already started to.

Show threadLilly HunterApr 5

@jmax Both these things were happening in Australia. :-(

@thomasfuchs

Show threadJoeApr 4
@thomasfuchs @LaChasseuse this is true but the absolute temperature isn’t the issue with anthropogenic warming, it’s the rate of change, which is exceeding the ability of species to adapt, leading to the 6th mass extinction. The rate of change is similar to other mass extinction events, e.g. super volcano eruptions, meteor impacts. Earth will still be “fine” on geological timescales, sure, but idk, I just always find this line of reasoning deeply sad. Like I really don’t want to believe that people can only be compelled to care if the human species specifically doesn’t go extinct, and couldn’t give a fuck if 99% of species ever observed by a human’s naked eyes do
Show threadJoeApr 4
@thomasfuchs @LaChasseuse reflecting more I think I just mostly find the anthropocentrism of this line of reasoning really stark. Like if someone said in response to a city being carpet bombed “humans have lived there before and they’ll live there again”, everyone would find that callous and cruel and beyond the point. But that’s the terms we’re talking in about other species, increasingly many of which have things we recognise as culture, societies, etc. I guess I just fundamentally disagree with your original point: fighting climate change is not _just_ about saving human lives, and that’s not a feasible framing on a systems level (humans need biodiversity and the services it offers) but on a moral level. Sorry this is possibly the most reply-guy I’ve ever been on masto but this is my sandbox
Show threadHuman Brain EnthusiastApr 4

@joenash @LaChasseuse people care about neither

many don’t even care when it affects at them personally and directly, like the people whose children are dying from measles and they say “I still wouldn’t have vaccinated my child”

crooked worldviews are a thing that needs to be destroyed, it cannot be argued away

Show threadLilly HunterApr 4

@thomasfuchs I once asked a man who said he wasn't going to make any lifestyle changes due to runaway climate change how he could think about leaving such a world for his children and he said "Well, that will be their problem to solve, not mine."

His own kids, his own grandchildren.

@joenash

Show threadMattChippyteaApr 5
@joenash @thomasfuchs @LaChasseuse I wonder if he was beaten by one or both of his parents and reckons that didn’t do him any harm…
Show threadLilly HunterApr 5

@Wifiwits You hear a lot of crazy stuff when you're out campaigning. But I comfort myself with the knowledge that people often say things like that in an argument/discussion, but they don't really mean it. Not in a real life circumstance. And sometimes opponents go away from a discussion and come round to your way of thinking later.

@joenash @thomasfuchs

Show threadLilly HunterApr 4
@thomasfuchs Yeah, the *planet*, (ie, a hunk of rock in outer space) will be just fine, but most life as we know it won't be around.
Tardigrades are nice and all, but I would hate to see the starlings, the sea gulls, the deer, the spiders and butterflies, our food crops, daisies, pine trees, trout, hamsters, beluga - all those things - disappear forever.
Show threadsu_liamApr 5
@LaChasseuse @thomasfuchs Hell, I even kind of like some of the humans, but they are a lot less appealing in the absence of civilization, which is even more delicate than life.