DiCaprio's 'Before The Flood' free to watch

mystifeid

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mystifeid

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I think the idea is to have some influence on the outcome of the US presidential election and this was what I was alluding to when I hoped that the film had significant effect.

For those who cannot write html/css/javascript etc, it is very easy to embed Youtube videos on a webpage, as has been done on the page to which I originally provided the link.

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Scyzara Pathfinder

Scyzara

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DiCaprio's film is a nice attempt to bring attention to the topic once again, but I'm afraid it won't change anything in the long run.

Most people are just not at all willing to live in a way how it would be necessary to decrease the rate of global warming to an extent that biodiversity can bear without a greater collapse. (Meaning e.g. to drastically limit long-distance flights to one flight/20years/person, considerably decreasing the average meat consumption, accepting higher energy and thus general product prices, using almost exclusively public transportation, etc).

Neither DiCaprio, nor the pope, nor Obama, nor anyone else is going to change anything about that. The measures that would be necessary to take as soon as possible now are so unpopular that no politician could ever propose them if they want to have even the slightest chance to be elected. The Paris climate agreement is a step into the right direction, but it only covers 10% of the measures that would truely be needed.

We can (and should) all try to do the very little we can to slightly dampen the upcoming tragedy*, but in the end a true paradigm change is only going to occur once the majority of humanity is really seeing the effects of climate change with their own eyes. And by then it's already going to be way too late to prevent the next mass extinction of species on a perm/trias-like scale. Well, at least nobody's going to argue about the term "anthropocene" any more then.

*tragedy from a biologist's point of view. I have no doubt humanity is going to belong to the 5% of surviving species, but biodiversity is going to be horribly ruined for the next few million years and Earth's going to be a far less pleasant place to live than nowadays.

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mystifeid Pathfinder

mystifeid

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I would still rather there was a US president who believes this is real instead of one who doesn't.

I think a paradigm shift in the way we live our lives, generate our energy, choose what we eat or how we travel isn't the real problem. That's probably possible.

When I was about ten I remember my parents talking about the greenhouse effect and how scientists were running around with their hands in the air saying this is going to be very bad one day. They also talked about ozone depletion and how the same scientists were running around with their hands still in the air screaming "We're all gonna die, we're all gonna die."

It was a serious threat that seems to have been averted. Afterwards though, the world went back to business as usual and forgot about not only CFC's but greenhouse gases as well.

Decades later consciousness of the issue has reawoken and this time we may actually have the technology to save our planet in spite of the people who live on it.

But for how long? When I was born our population was estimated at around 3 billion. It is now estimated at 7.4 billion. More than double. That's not just scary, it's unbelievable. If we become serious about protecting our planet and all the other things that make living worthwhile, then the fight to limit the basic urge to reproduce will be the last battle in the salvation of not just our species but all remaining life.

Somehow...I don't think it's going to happen. I think you are right. It is much more likely we will follow the classic high school biology example of any collection of organisms with limited space - population increases to a maximum and is followed by a massive dieback when resources are consumed, the environment becomes poisoned by waste or disease takes it's toll. Since we're clever we have many other ways we can kill ourselves and I have a bad feeling that life may become extremely cheap in an increasing number of places in the next fifty years or so.

This will not stop the world investing in green tech however. If there is a health risk associated with living within a 100km radius of a coal fired power station no matter the wind direction, imagine living in Beijing. No-one likes seeing their children die before them.

I wonder if you have seen "Under the Dome". Originally this was supported by the Chinese government but was removed from Chinese sites soon after release. It is not hard to understand why the Chinese are directing a massive amount of money toward this problem.

 

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Hotzn Pathfinder

Hotzn

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It's interesting - this year I really noticed how the number of insects has gone down in the part of Germany where I live. We have a house in the countryside, and when we drove there when I was a kid the car used to be encrusted with insects, you basically had to clean the windshield once after going there and once after coming back. Over the last years this has gone down drastically, and this year you could drive there and return and still have an almost clean car. Some years ago we still used to be hassled by wasps and flies when having breakfast on the veranda. This year - nothing. I read in an article that biologists have found insect biomass to have gone down over 80% in some parts of Germany. @Scyzara - can you confirm that? Seems crazy to me.

Now I don't claim that the disappearance of insects is necessarily connected to climate change. Could be collateral damage of modern pesticides, whatever. But I find it particularly unsettling, because I would have expected insects to be the last remaining survivors if it came to worst. Seems I was wrong...

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Scyzara Pathfinder

Scyzara

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I don't blame anyone for anything, I just wanted to say what I believe might happen. :winky:

@Hotzn:  Yeah, insect species numbers are decreasing already in pretty much all of Germany due to the use of pesticides and farming methods. (Large fields with no bushes/trees in between). Bird species also decrease accordingly.:crying:

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