#climate actions now

[reasonsforhope]

If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

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I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

[hleavesk]

penguins at KING GEORGE ISLAND, Antarctica 

(source: associated press | 11 dec 2023)

[alpaca-clouds]

How to Blow Up a Pipeline (or: why the climate movement is failing)

Okay, talking about politics this week, let me talk about this amazing book that you all should read, because it is not that long and it really makes a lot of good points. I found this book through the Philosophy Tube video a couple of years ago.

So, what is this book about?

To put it lightly: It is about how the climate movement is failing over their refusal to use any sort of violence or sabotage. And it is about the ethics of violence.

Which is not only important to the climate movement, but all sorts of progressive movements. Which again brings me back to what I talked about so many times before: Being against a revolution is being against change. And the left in general has a problem with idealizing parcifism to an unhealthy degree.

Let me explain: The left has in general very much drunken the cool-aid to accept that there is no violence happening right now, so using violence against the perceived non-violence is wrong. But that entire idea is bullshit.

Letting people starve, while there is enough food around for everyone, is a form of violence.

Letting people die of preventable deseases, because they cannot afford health care, is a form of violence.

Letting people die in extreme weather, just so that a few people can profit from fossil fuels... Well, that is a form of violence, too.

But left people - especially white, leftists - have very much accepted that non-action can never be violence. So, not giving someone the food they need, cannot be violence in their point of view. So, using violence to act against the system that lets this happen again and again... that is "out of proportion" in their point of view. Because they do not suffer themselves, they do not perceive the violence.

The book talks about how specifically the climate movement refuses to use any form of violence, even just in the form of sabotage, in which no human would ever come to harm. Which is why the title is "how to blow up a pipeline". Because blowing up a pipeline would harm those, who profit from climate change, from the fossil fuels. The book is also about how the climate movement then goes ahead to appropriate civil rights leaders, without really understanding the context they were in. Because they will name Martin Luther King, Ghandi or Nelson Mandela as examples of people who succeeded with non-violence, without acknowledging that all three of those leaders were leaders of a non-violent group that closely associated with a violent movement that aimed for the same changes. And through that contrast - of a violent group and a peaceful group with widespread support - the people in power were forced to make a move to work towards them to some degree.

Now, technically the book involved nothing new to me. Because I thought about this topic - about the ethics and visuals of violence - for a long while now. It also is fitting with the entire French Revolution thing I spoke about on Sunday. Because we see it in the judgement of the French Revolution as well. On how there a) was a peaceful group first, and b) the violence that happened, happened in response to other violence.

And as the book points out: The fossil fuel industry does not care. As a German I know this too well. And I think it is no accident that a lot of the examples of this in the book come from Germany. Our climate movement here is very tame. It is mostly just kids (like people between their teens and early twenties) doing protests in forms of blocking streets and the likes. Yet, the fossil lobby and those in power will call that "terrorism" and will call that one time when folks tore down a fence at the coal mine as "extreme violent behavior". They are doing massive and at times violent police action against those KIDS, who organize the street blockades. Having thrown literal teenagers into prison for at times weeks, before judges intervened clearly saying that "the kids have done nothing illegal".

They do not care that the movement is non-violent. And the movement will not get anywhere, without some group standing in and doing some damage to the most important thing those people can think of: Their base line.

[geminni5]

[every-sanji]

[thedreadvampy]

unfortunately the world is too fucking messed up so I am currently unable to give a shit about how messed up everything is because it's all too big and if I get upset about any of it my entire ability to be a person will come crashing in

normal service will resume as soon as possible

[bumblebeeappletree]

Don’t let the doom and gloom make you think there’s nothing you can do to slow down the climate crisis. From taking public transport to making your home greener or engaging in political activism — here are all the ways we can effect collective change. 🤝🌎

See more: go.nowth.is/what-can-i-do

[reasonsforhope]

Climate change in 2025: So, what now?

Some real talk for the new year, about where we now stand, and what the next years are going to look like.

(Still ends on a “be hopeful!! or else” kind of note, but definitely gets into some heavy truths about the meaning of recent events.)

--

Obviously, between Trump's reelection at the Los Angeles fires, things are feeling a lot more precarious than they did just a few months ago. I know a lot of people are incredibly stressed. I know I'm certainly stressed.

But this isn't the end. This isn't the beginning of the end, either. We're not doomed.

Don't despair.

Yes, things are about to get harder. Yes, the effects of climate change are now becoming truly apparent.

But here's what you need to hold on to:

We have already cut expected warming in half.

More about that including sources here: (x) I'm not going to go into it again in detail, read the source for that. But it's true. In 2000, when I was a kid, they were predicting 4, 5, 6 degrees of warming, plus a runaway greenhouse effect that would boil the planet.

Now, scientists expect that global temperatures will likely land between 2 and 3 degrees.

Which is incredibly shitty, yes. But it's survivable.

And I have for a lot of reasons (check these masterposts on this) to believe with the confidence of knowing that we're going to get expected warming down even further.

And that's something to celebrate.

I’m not saying that the effects of warming aren’t already bad, or won’t get worse. I’m from California, I currently live in LA. My state’s been on fire for half my life. Natural disasters starting amping up early here (and we’re certainly in the middle of another historic number now). And yeah, it's fucking stressful right now.

But like I said, my state’s been breaking horrible disaster records constantly for the past ten years. I've done this before. And you know what? Natural disasters have been getting more and more survivable for years, largely thanks to faster warnings and better mass communication (x).

Does it suck how many natural disasters there are now? Yeah.

Does it suck how many more still there will be? Yeah.

Do we need to keep working our asses off to beat climate change? Yeah.

Are we going to need to organize and mobilize (both politically and especially community-wise) like never before to see as many people through these times as best as possible? Yeah.

But that doesn't mean we should despair. It absolutely does not mean that we've already lost.

An unknown number of the most optimistic futures were foreclosed when Trump won the US election. That’s painful but a reality.

But for twenty-ish of the past twenty-five years, the science said we weren’t going to survive climate change at all.

For most of my life, we were worried that we had set Earth on a course to become like fucking Venus (which is, on average, well over 800 degrees Farenheit). Even if it didn’t get that bad, we were so worried that global warming might wipe out all life on earth - except maybe the cockroaches.

(Literally, when I was a younger the kids at my church put on a play about that. It was like an adaptation of A Christmas Carol where the future only had talking cockroaches. I grew up so worried about this. (Not the cockroaches thing specifically. Mostly the general concept. Only a little about the cockroaches. Also yes my church was very granola why do you ask.))

But starting a few years ago, studies have shown that there wasn’t going to be a runaway greenhouse effect that could turn us into Venus; that earth is warming, yes, but we don’t seem to be in danger of that.

Between that and the fact that the adoption of renewables globally is too fast to be stopped, and we do have the technology and environmental science knowledge to eventually re-lower global temperatures by getting to net negative carbon emissions (x), and most countries and at least 73% of people in all countries for which there is data (x) actually care very much about the climate, yeah, we have closed the door on the lava planet future.

And yeah, I do think that’s worth celebrating.

That’s a massive fucking victory.

There's still more work to do, and I have every confidence that we're going to do it. I also think that, given the loss of the US election, there’s a really, really strong chance the developing world will be what saves us, and we’ll just be lucky to be along for the ride.

Most people have no idea of the kinds of amazing stories and statistics coming out of the developing world and Indigenous communities. The world is changing for the better on the environment, even as disasters (and the US) are getting worse. Solar power is going to revolutionize the fucking world, because it’s going to grant humanity universal access to electricity, and that’s going to revolutionize the world, especially the developing world (aka the global majority). And most people have no idea at all, much less how much it’s going to change.

So, yeah, natural disasters are going to keep getting worse.

But there’s a long, long long fucking way between “natural disasters are going to keep getting worse” and “the extinction of all of humanity and/or the vast majority of life on earth”

So, in the face of Trump, in the face of everything, I still choose to hope. I still choose to celebrate this as a true and profound accomplishment.

Because for over twenty years, I was afraid I’d never get to.

That difference is absolutely worth celebrating.

[hleavesk]

(source: bbc future | nov 2023)

Imagery that was once hauntingly attention-grabbing was criticised for being too distant, unrelatable and devastating, prompting a call for more diverse representations of climate change. Popular media began to shift away from these iconic photos, opting instead for images of extreme weather, such as heatwaves, droughts and typhoons, which emphasise an issue far closer to home.  

...

With polar bear images, there is a risk of alienating the public by implying that the issue is removed from their reality. Stereotypical images of the Arctic – that are icy, blank, so remote it appears otherworldly – create a sense that climate change is a distant problem. "The focus on this iconic visual can exclude the wider realities of climate change. It misses the essential perspectives of indigenous Arctic communities, for example" says O'Neill. 

[sunlightthroughtrees1]

My heart goes out to all the people affected by the LA fires

[flango87]

I’m probably preaching to the choir here and everyone’s gonna be like ya no shit we’ve been saying this. but I’ve been thinking lately about how incredibly attached I am to my comfort zone. How a lot of people, online and in real life, are operating with the base assumption that activism is something to be smoothly incorporated into our lives. Caring and taking action means doing what you can, buying from more ethical companies, spreading awareness, going to a protest if you can. And on one hand, you can’t push your limits, and changing the way you live will not happen overnight. This fight needs to be sustainable and if you do something extreme and burn out immediately then you’re kind of out of the game. But why are we trying to continue with normal lives right now. Why am I so scared of speaking out to people in my life. Why does life have to go on? What has to happen before we all abandon the life we are currently living and start being “extreme”? I’m not saying we should all quit our jobs right now and start camping outside government buildings.. but also…. Why not? What’s stopping us? What do we really have to lose? What freedom or safety or shallow joy do we have to lose? What has to happen before that level of action is considered warranted? So if you’re reading this and you haven’t already asked yourself this, I invite you to ponder what comfort zones you’re holding onto at the sake of others. This isn’t about giving up comfort and joy just the sake of it, it’s about giving up the comfort and joy we get from the exploitation of others. Is there anyone in your life you’ve been too scared to have a conversation with? Is there a job you haven’t spoken out at? Have you questioned and changed the way you consume, where you give your attention and money? How do you spend your time, and how could it be spent dismantling actively violent systems? Have you gone to any protests or other demonstrations? Have you reached out to your community and found other people fighting the same fight? What are you holding on to, and is it really worth it? This is fucking urgent. This is hard, it’s a hard process, it’s uncomfortable, and frankly it fucking sucks. But this is urgent. If you haven’t already, time to kick it up a notch.

[nando161mando]

Tornadoes are a thing now in Vermont

[darthfoil]

What now?

Ok, times are tough and it sounds like they might be getting tougher. Which will you do first to make the world you live in better.

[larimar]