The world has experienced its hottest day on record, according to meteorologists.
The average global temperature reached 17.01C (62.62F) on Monday, according to the US National Centres for Environmental Prediction.
The figure surpasses the previous record of 16.92C (62.46F) - set back in August 2016.
So if this milestone is a death sentence, does that mean it’s time to give up?
These temperatures will kill people. They will cause crop failures. The death, hunger, and hardship will cause people to leave their homes to come to more habitable regions.
But there will still be habitable regions for generations still to come. A lot has been lost, and more will be before we fix what we broke, but plenty can still be saved as long as we don’t just give up
So would you say morale is a really important factor in our global warming response?
Maybe these scientists should stop talking about hopelessness and death sentences and start talking about challenges and hardship.
Depending on who you ask it’s the most important. Once people are educated they can make informed decisions themselves. Just do what you can and are willing to do and don’t wait for the governing bodies to change their pace. The IPCC report actually contains solid Data on what individual behavior change is most effective, this article lists a few things https://news.sky.com/story/climate-change-what-does-the-ipcc-mean-by-choice-architecture-and-can-it-change-our-behaviour-12582739
Now we watch in horror as corporate lobbyists and their lackeys prevent such measures from being implemented at any wide scale, especially in countries and regions that produce the most pollution and still choose to keep fracking and all that. ~Strawberry
They are unlikely to actually stop any individual from becoming vegan or at least making an effort to become one. The attitude that it is to öate and we can’t do anything about the catastrophe is precisely the feeling they are hoping for so we continue to consume their products. You can however at any time just stop.
We should give up hope that things are going to be fine and it’s all going to work out paintlessly.
That isn’t necessarily the same as giving up hope that we’ll survive and adapt.
How do we do that? How do we prevent further damage to the environment by fossil fuel companies and such? It doesn’t feel like that’s feasible… ~Strawberry
Keep yourself occupied and do the best you can. Informed descisions of individuals can bring more change than governments. You might not stop the oil from being sold, but if there is less demand for it, profits go down and that has great effect on the rate at which oil is pumped out of the ground.
I don’t know what decisions I can make that would make any significant impact on this. I mean private jets, for example, produce more emissions than any other part of the aviation industry. If some billionaire who took private jets regularly chose to stop doing that, it’d have a much more significant impact than me eating vegan hot dogs instead of meat hot dogs. And that’s not accounting for how many run massive polluters like Exxon-Mobil and actively lobby against measures to combat climate change. And this isn’t some abstract, random, unchangable force of nature. They are making the choice to do these things and could easily choose to stop at literally any time they want and still have their dragon hoards afterward. But they don’t. What kind of choices could I make that could have anywhere near that kind of impact? ~Strawberry
The choices of yourself influence the choices of those around you. And collectively we have much more impact on climate change than for example the private aviation industry. The following article contains a few ideas and their impact to start with. https://news.sky.com/story/climate-change-what-does-the-ipcc-mean-by-choice-architecture-and-can-it-change-our-behaviour-12582739