sgolecha

I am not on FB and I tried to get out of WhatsApp too. I deleted WhatsApp and implored all my friends to move to Signal. But out of the 100 or so people I reached, only 2 moved to Signal. My extended family is in India and WhatsApp is very entrenched there. The other issue is that people in India do not realize that the attention issue these apps create is a long term problem - at least not yet.

My wife still uses Google as her default search engine on her phone while I switched to DDG years ago. I dread using her phone to search anything.

I am not talking about sacrifices for its own sake. What I am saying is to do things that reduce greenhouse emissions. The problem needs to be tackled in top-down (government policies) and bottoms-up (where consumers make behavioral changes).

Europe seems to be more in tune with top-down. In the US, bottoms-up seems to be the only option. Once people change their purchasing decisions - e.g. stop buying anything that comes in individual plastic packing etc, companies will be forced to make changes. Another example - stop giving non-sensical loot bags in b'day parties or stop taking or giving gifts altogether.

Another way to think about this: Let's say I give you $100M. You can either invest responsibly in a well diversified portfolio (less risk adjust return) or play Russian roulette. Would like like to play roulette with your children/grand-children's lives or the entire living ecosystem ? Think about it for a sec.

I wish people took this seriously. This is a slow moving disaster and that elicits a non-response from most of us. Once the temperatures rise beyond 2C, there are many consequences - 1. Food yields and nutrition drops significantly. 2. Entire species go extinct (we already see that happening). We cannot survive independently. An entire ecosystem is needed for us to lead a healthy and happy life. E.g. insecticides are causing die-offs of butterflies, bees etc.. 3. Once wild weather becomes the norm - fires, food shortages, hurricanes etc.. massive rioting will follow. Insurance will be expensive or non-existent (they already don’t cover Act of God) and that means financial insecurity for most of us.

The other overlooked fact is that the greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere for a long long time. So, once the climate changes it won’t be a 1-day/1-week or a 1-year event. We talk a lot of geo-engineering etc.. but why not make small sacrifices now (eat less meat, buy local and used stuff, no single use plastic, less air-travel etc..) and save the beautiful planet that we already have. Yes, it will cause some economic dislocations but we will be fine. Companies will adapt or healthy and environment friendly alternatives will come up.

Take this seriously folks. We don’t have another planet to go to and our children are counting on us.

Oh Dear !!! Climate change is a slow moving disaster which we humans have not evolved to completely comprehend. Once the oceans are not able to absorb any more C02, the temperatures are going to soar pretty fast and that C02 will remain in the atmosphere for a long time (unless some magic carbon capture thing comes along..which I doubt).