chat

Hahaha that's the fun part, you don't.

Real answer: As someone in the environmental sciences, it's not easy. The thing keeping me going is knowing that there are many people who don't want it to be this way and are trying very hard to stop it, and that when we succeed the Earth can recover. Stories of rewilded places bouncing back are hopeful.

Also China is doing good things.

I was reading in Monthly Review today that the bottom 50% of the US already lives underneath the emissions targets required to meet the goals laid out and it's really the top half (and really, really the top 10%) who need to make massive sacrifices. Made it seem way more do-able when looked at this way.

International attempts to mitigate climate change began with the establishment of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, followed by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, forming the basis of all subsequent climate negotiations. This led to the 2015 Paris Agreement, in which countries pledged to reduce their emissions by certain stipulated amounts, with the object of reducing global carbon emissions by 45 percent by 2030 and reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. Central to the entire UNFCCC process has been differences in emissions between rich and poor nations. However, this emphasis on the nation in relation to international climate negotiations led to a corresponding deemphasis on the class basis of emissions. In recent years, the disparities in carbon emissions on a class basis have proven ever more crucial in addressing the climate problem. Inequality in greenhouse gas emissions within nations now exceeds the inequality between nations—although the two remain intrinsically related due to imperialism. Consequently, a combined class and nation approach that more directly challenges capitalism in all of its aspects is now required if there is to be any hope of solving the planetary climate crisis.

Over the last few decades, there has been a dramatic reversal in the relative role of class and nation in the structuring of carbon emissions, due to enormous increases in class disparities under global monopoly-finance capital. (Note: the data in the studies referred to below add carbon emissions associated with net imports to domestic carbon emissions, with the result that total carbon emissions of Europe, for example, are 25 percent higher than if only domestic emissions were counted.) According to the 2022 World Inequality Report:

In 1990, most global carbon inequality (63%) was due to differences between countries: then, the average citizen of a rich country polluted unequivocally more than the rest of the world’s citizens, and social inequalities within countries were on average lower across the globe than today. The situation has almost entirely reversed in 30 years. Within-country emissions inequalities now account for nearly two-thirds of global emissions inequality. This does not mean that there do not remain significant (often huge) inequalities in emissions between countries and world regions, on the contrary. In fact, it means that on top of the great between-countries inequality in carbon emissions, there also exist even greater inequalities in emissions between individuals [economic classes]. (World Inequality Report 2022, “Chapter 6: Global Carbon Inequality,” World Inequality Lab, wir2022.wid.world)

The implications of this can be seen by looking at the United States. If we examine U.S. emissions reduction targets under the Paris Agreement (prior to the Donald Trump administration’s withdrawal from the agreement), the United States needed (based on 2019 data) to reduce its per capita emissions by 11.1 tonnes per year to reach its 2030 target. (One metric tonne [1,000 kilograms] is about 10 percent more than a U.S. ton, weighing 2,000 pounds.) Here it is significant that the bottom 50 percent of the U.S. population is already below the target level of annual emissions aimed at for 2030, which means that workers in the bottom half—assuming these targets still applied—would not need to reduce their emissions at all, and indeed would need to increase them by .3 tonnes on average, or 3 percent, to match the targeted per capita emissions. In contrast, those in the middle 40 percent would need to reduce their emissions by 12 tonnes on average, or 54 percent annually, to come into line with the national per capita emissions, while those in the top 10 percent would need to cut their average annual emissions by 64.7 tonnes per year, or 87 percent. A similar situation applies to France and other European countries. It follows that the emissions reduction efforts, particularly in the wealthy countries, need to be directed at the top half of the income distribution, making greenhouse gas emissions fundamentally a class problem. This is, indeed, the conclusion of World Inequality Lab researcher Lucas Chancel, who writes that “policy efforts should be focused mainly on reducing the emissions of the top half of the population, and particularly the top 10 percent” (Lucas Chancel, “Climate Change and the Global Inequality of Carbon Emissions, 1990–2020,” October 21, 2021, World Inequality Lab, wid.world/news-article/climate-change-the-global-inequality-of-carbon-emissions; Jomo Kwame Sundaram, “Inequality Worsens Planetary Heating,” Substack, August 12, 2025, jomodevplus.substack.com).

https://monthlyreview.org/articles/mr-077-05-2025-09_0/

i don't know which is more depressing, the rightists who either insist it isn't real or pretend that it's good actually, or the leftists that think the PRC is going to save us from it

China has been doing incredible work on renewables and other measures to combat climate change, but one country alone isn't enough, not even close

Either it's too late or it's not but we will only ever know the truth of it in hindsight. That's a scary proposition but, unfortunately, it's the reality.

It's really important to not foreclose on the opportunity for change by giving up prematurely. I know that's hard (believe me, I do.) While it's scary to confront the prospect of doing everything you can and failing or doing everything wrong and thus failing, it's important to focus on confronting what it would be like not trying and failing. After all, everything seems impossible until it's achieved and then retrospectively it seems as though it was an inevitability and so it's preferable to try and fail than to not try at all. This isn't any consolation and it's completely intellectualizing the problem but it's an important frame to maintain imo.

There's three paths forward, from what I can tell:

1. Revolution and bringing the world back from the brink

2. Climate apocalypse

3. Climate catastrophe and reconstruction

1 is what we can hope for. Idk if it's a viable possibility but so be it. 2 means we're all fucked. 3 seems the most likely but, thankfully, we can shoot for 1 and if we land at 3 then basically all the efforts will still be applicable to the latter anyway.

A vulgar take on this next part would be to call it opportunism or accelerationism, but it's really not - if we have a number 3 outcome and a subsequent partial collapse of society then the people who are best organized, who are the most connected to their communities and who are capable of vanguard-style leadership and who are genuinely able to provide for their community's needs, are going to be the people who will be best positioned to reshape the political landscape. Post-WWI Russia was a similar situation. The years just prior to the Chinese revolution were too. It will be different under a number 3 scenario but the broad brushstrokes will remain the same.

If the person who knows how to grow food and is looked to for organizing the distribution of local resources in serious post-collapse community says that we aren't reverting to capitalism, people will listen. And I'm not even talking about some sort of autocratic edict being handed down here, obviously - if you're a leader and you talk to the people in your community who look up to you and rely on you and you tell them about how the previous economic system's externalities led to this outcome then you won't even need to directly educate and propagandize them against capitalism because living in the fallout and having someone bring their attention to how deeply unwell and destructive the previous system was would turn anyone against it immediately.

Got high and read this thread. Absolute worst mistake of my life.

Honestly, I've just been trying to ignore it except for when it's useful for organizing and recruitment purposes, or during periodic reviews of my consumption habits to see if I can "do my part" better (which is easy when I don't have money to spend on consuming). But since the climate is fucked unless capitalism ends, that's where I put my mental energy, and the existential climate dread gets compartmentalized as much as possible. No use stressing about the eye of Cthulhu getting larger in the sky

Apart from just not thinking about it, I find solace in the following places

• China does good.
• More and more people realise the gravity of the situation.

I had to think about it for a bit to find the second one.
When I had more energy I also found solace in involving myself in local volunteer work.

CW: Suicide

In my darkest moments I fantasize about doing a combined Bushnell/Mangione against the highest ranking capitalist I can
Mainly I just try not to think about it.

Personally I am going to China to do a masters starting next year. Equal parts interest and future planning for becoming a climate refugee.

At this point, imo, we are more or less locked into at least the end of modern industrialized society, and the deaths of billions. These deaths will be due largely due to food shortages (at some point, it won't be possible to grow rice in SEA and that means famine) and forced migration, though also nuclear conflict breaking out, see eg the violation of the Pakistan/India Indus River treaty being explicitly named by Pakistan as an existential threat justifying nuclear war.

I also think it's basically impossible for us to "win" given that it would more or less require the death of the USA, whether by revolution or a very, very rapid collapse that burns through the fascist death drive remnants in short order, both ending within 5-10 years. I don't think it's likely that anything we do will matter, as what the US government actually does has nothing to do with what the people living in the US want, and the conditions are nowhere near a revolution, so even organizing probably won't accomplish anything.

But what if I'm wrong? What if getting out there and organizing actually works, and the ever-escalating crackdowns on the climate movement eventually make it so liberal co-option is no longer possible, and cause a backlash resulting in enough people turning for us to eke out a "win"? I don't think it's likely, but if my choices are to treat it as a 1% chance of winning or a 0% chance, well I might as well bet on the 1% because at least that's something. And it would also mean I'd get to watch some billionaires get what's coming to them.

As the effects become more real in people's eyes, exponentially more people will become radicalized. It's of very high importance for us to organize and have people across the world ready to be useful and educate people as the world breaks down over the next couple decades. If you're the kind of person that's getting "blackpilled" now, the knowledge, experience, and organization you can realize over the next 10-20 years can be what's necessary for the world to keep spinning. If there is to be human civilization in 100 years, the people who learn the critical things necessary about everything from agriculture to logistics and cybernetics are alive right now and learning about how those things are necessary. No other future is worth considering IMO.

I dont want to sound like a doomer but I guess Ive just accepted it ? Theres a realistic chance well see the end of the world as we know it within our lifetime.

But its not like I’m a prepper getting ready for doomsday . I just try to live my best life and hope for the best.

There is a tension between when global capitalism loses hegemony, and how that process of collapse plays out. My main concern is that the death drive of capitalism will result in a massive scale destruction of productive capacity that could be used to transition with better resiliency.

If capitalism doesn't terror bomb the world in its death throes, I'm fairly hopeful that much of the world can adapt pretty quickly. We can't avoid significant climate catastrophe at this point, but there is a possibility of adaptation and resilience in that scenario.

I guess I don't know exactly what you mean by blackpilled. It already is too late to avoid irreversible catastrophe. In terms of the people idk, most people are ignorant. Ignorance is somewhat blackpilling I get it but idk.

we have just abandoned science all together

Even mainstream climate science has abandoned how bad the problem is. But yea people collectively have abandoned even that.

Do I just stop thinking about it?

That's what I do tbh, I want to transition and fix my body. I know the world is ending but I want my little peace, my decade or two.

We must do without hope. There is always revenge.

I gave up

I was never planning on having kids and I feel like however I die is going to be horrifying either way. I'm not religious, I can't make myself believe in an afterlife, all I have is the fear of the void and the hope that at least nothing will truly be nothing

haha, cope

Living paycheck to paycheck helps

Seeing nostalgia bait online of people getting upset that kids don't have the carbon copy childhood that they did. Then mentally pushing back against that as hard as I can. That's not how anything is supposed to work, change is part of life and we owe it to our all our ancestors to adapt to whatever hellish conditions are around the corner as they did for billions of years.

The question is who inherits the new earth. My conspiracy theory is that bougeoise despise us so much that climate change is more of a force multiplier to wiping us out. Everything is irrationally being put into AI and androids to eliminate the need for a lower class. Parts of the earth will be kept habitable through careful site selection and geoengineering to keep a few thousand people alive.

I am not a very sensitive person. It's honestly been such a blessing the last few years. But I am kept going through spite and resentment. Even if it's just a few hundred women and a sperm bank. The proletariat must be who survives.

re paralysis: #govegan

re blackpill: that's a conscious choice I have to take every day*

We are all descended from people who were so unreasonably optimistic about the future that they had kids. Many times their surroundings were far more dire than the circumstances in which we find ourself. This isn't an exhortation to reproduce but I guess to indulge in that same unreasonable optimism. People will argue that that optimism is paralyzing. That is the case for the naive techno-optimists but I don't think it is true always. I don't think a movement can be built out of people who believe all they have to win is a dead world. Reality can shift very quickly.

The same structures that might help prevent the worst of the collapse--organizing, sustainability, class consciousness, mutual aid--will also be essential to getting though the worst of the collapse if and when it happens. If you live like you're trying to save the world, you might at least be in a position to save a few people.

Communism defeated Nazism, we will struggle but we will defeat those pesky gas molecules!!

We have everything we need to get to net zero, all the technology is there, we just need to produce everything and, for some technologies, make them cheaper. Once we do that, we also have the technology to sequester about 10-15% per year of what we are emitting right now. Of course, we aren't going to avoid any number of environmental catastrophes, but humans have committed numerous environmental atrocities already during the Holocene extinction.

Incremental progress doesn't make headlines. LCoEs continuing to plummet for wind and solar doesn't get reported on. Even successfully saving species doesn't get much notice unless it's something flashy. Roughly 1/3 of all patents being filed today relate in some way to reducing carbon emissions, electrifying transport, increasing recyclability, etc. That's millions of minds across the world all chipping away at this problem little by little.

At some point recently I realized I had kind of forgotten about it. There is just an absolute deluge of ongoing and increasing threats that demand immediate attention that it can be hard to remember the thing that, while super urgent, has distant consequences. That thought made me really depressed because I realized that not only have we made little progress on fixing this existential threat to humanity, but in some ways we're getting further from being able to fix it. Fascism and surveillance capitalism are tightening the noose around effective political organizing and improvements to technology like AI are only going to make that worse on top of it's impact on climate and the environment.

I keep having this irrational thought pop up in my head that's something along the lines of "surely... they won't keep making this worse right? There has to be some limit on just how cruel the people in power can get... right?" and then I snap myself back to reality and remember all they've done and continue to do and realize that isn't going to happen. Over my life I've watched as things have just steadily gotten worse. There were glimmers of hope when Obama got elected, but seeing him continue most of the bad stuff was a real shock to my worldview. I thought that maybe things were going in the right direction with Bernie's campaigns, but then that was crushed and now we have more brazen fascists in power.

I was recently thinking about just moving to a communist country like China or Vietnam, but aside from the logistical challenges involved in that, but even there the US will still manage to fuck me over with climate change so...

At this point, the fight for our freedom is the same as the fight for stopping climate change. The rich and powerful are never going to stop driving us towards that cliff, so we need to do something about them first. I just wish I knew what that even was.

Know and accept thy limits.

Though it saddens me that those who have the least, pollute the least. And those who have not catched up yet, perhaps due to a history of colonial exploitation, will suffer the most.

In my mind, this government capture and fight against recognizing externalities is a prominent argument against Capitalism. And also why they so fight against universal healthcare.

Honestly? By not hitching my hopes to a collective American national consciousness having a change of heart; by instead having a pretty well-developed strategy for land acquisition for the purpose of building communes that do extensive permaculture and silviculture, maximal self-sufficiency through appropriate technology, and biochar sequestration. My networks have a good amount of land projects going already, and most of what we need is for a lot of people to make the lifestyle switch from "living as an individual socialist under capitalism" to "living as part of a collective project".

In the meantime I have a low-end "first-world" income level with a high-end "third-world" consumption level. In less than a year I will be set to really take off with urban commune and workers' cooperative projects. Maybe people see how much better of a living we're making for ourselves and desert the market to us en masse, or maybe they don't and make capitalist colossus teeter more. To hell or utopia; either answer satisfies us.

Yes I am basically wagering that something close to the pre-Cambrian level of CO~2~ is not enough to turn us into a runaway hothouse Earth that resembles Venus, and that a lot of salvaging can be done in a generation or two once Western civilization topples under its own destabilizing forces. These may not be true but believing against them doesn't help the cause.

I touched grass and found meaning in the value of labor

https://hexbear.net/post/7010657