It sounds like tall tales to a large number of people today, but even in my short life of only 30 years, the change is huge. I remember being a kid and windshields being covered in insects after a 30 minute drive. I remember turning a light on outside at night and the sides of the house being swarmed luna moths, hordes of bats swooping by and grabbing everything they could, and possums scattering away from the porch. I'd walk around the lake and see snapping turtles lazing about in the sun. Fish splashing in the water. Walking in streams, there'd be so many crayfish that they'd slip inside my sandals and I'd accidentally crush them.
Now I see nothing.
Correlation isn't causation, but it wasn't that long ago plastic was much, much rarer - talk to people over 60!
Insects also need space to breed, which is taken away by farming, roads, buildings and pesticides.
Until we act on values other than growth, efficiency, comfort, convenience, extraction, and externalizing costs, we will continue this trend.
Plenty of cultures have thrived with other values. We can too.
People insist that individual actions don't matter and that only governments and corporations can make a difference. We accept this hogwash proven wrong by history over and over to mollify our indulgence. Acting in stewardship doesn't bring deprivation or sacrifice. It brings joy, fun, freedom, community, connection, meaning, and purpose.
The greatest change we make is leading others, because it multiplies our effect, which requires leading ourselves.
Still, logic, facts, and figures don't change behavior. We change when five people around us do, loosely speaking. In that spirit, I'll share that I've dropped my emissions over 90 percent with only improvements to my life. I take two years to fill a load of trash and haven't flown since March 2016, picking up litter daily since 2017, my last electrical bill $1.40 so nearly off-grid living in Manhattan, plus plenty more. All sources of joy, more time with family and friends, more control over my career, saving money, more gratitude from people with less resources who tell me their changes improve their lives and save them time, money, and the other resources they lack.
The main Resistance (capitalized to refer to Steven Pressfield's relevant book The War of Art) comes from people with more resources than me, who say what I did before changing. Strangely, those with the most act like they can change the least. Resources that were supposed to improve our lives make us spoiled, entitled, needy, and dependent, the opposite of free and fun.
To those who insist there's no point, you can argue against me, but now that you know someone who's done it, you're 20 percent there. Find another few who have changed and you'll change too.
So, on the one hand I agree with you, justifying one's own failure to change by claiming only federal action will work is mostly just laziness and selfishness papered over with a thin excuse. On the other, mass personal enlightenment will not occur nearly fast enough to solve the problem if it's even possible at all. And in the meantime you'll have unrepentant selfish people freeloading, some of them rolling coal to spite you because they take your virtue as a personal slight or because they're sadists.
By all means, everyone should take this seriously and do what they can without compulsion. I've been striving to do this since the eighties. But honestly if we want to fix the problem the only thing that can come up to scale with sufficient speed is decisions by people who control large segments of the economy, i.e. governments and corporations.
My personal action is only the starting point to lead others. Mostly I do it to live by my values, but it gives me credibility to lead others too.
> ... honestly if we want to fix the problem the only thing that can come up to scale with sufficient speed is decisions by people who control large segments of the economy, i.e. governments and corporations.
But isn't the first step toward changing things at a governmental level getting the individuals -- who vote for said government officials -- to care about the issues? If people are so resistant to even the idea of individual change (e.g. the parent comment is downvoted), it makes me think they might not care that much after all.
Because Bill Gates is rich, you have no excuse not to be rich. Obviously it is possible. Now that you know one person who is rich, you are 20% of the way there!
We can make things better without making them perfect. We can value the environment without this being our sole consideration in all decisions.
On the other hand, I have no idea how I could possibly do that if I was blind. Perhaps it can't be done.
To summarize:
-- You, individually, have made significant motions to reduce your impact in the form of reducing emissions, picking up trash, reducing waste, and reducing energy consumption.
-- The 'Resistance'* you identify comes from people with more resources than you. You argue that those pretend they can do very little to change.
My summary of what you are arguing for in terms of how difference can be made is focused on individual action and change. My impression of your argument is that we, either alone or as a set, are or can be responsible for making the differences that will or could result in a significant difference regarding climate change.
I think its disingenuous and irresponsible to put the onus on individuals. Most people on this planet are in a daily struggle to survive and the idea that they have the agency to make the kinds of changes you say that they need to make is presumptuous and frankly, classist. Most families and individuals on this planets are have 80-90% of their waking hours filled with activities that barely sustain them at above struggling conditions. They have 0 additional bandwidth to make the kinds of changes you are describing because even a few mistakes or wasted actions will cause their lives to tumble into collapse where they end up homeless or destitute and begging on the streets. And yes, while living in a hedgerow behind the walmart will result in an overall lower rate of population and over consumption, I don't think global impoverishment is a viable strategy towards reversing climate change.
The second issue with this way of thinking is that as easily as some one changes their actions or behavior for the better, this can just as easily be reversed.
A third issue, is that focusing on individual action only addresses the terminal node in a chain of consumption, the visible obvious bit. What it fails to address is the 'under-the-hood' components of a chain of consumption, when its the 'under-the-components' that represent much/ most of the real environmental impacts of over consumption.
Nibbling around the edges of issues is not going to result in the kinds of change we need. The kinds of change we need have to be baked into the cake of how we engage with society, which means they'll have to be somewhat central to how society is constructed. Fundamentally, I would argue, the unit of organisation or incorporation needs to be addressed. Organisations and corporations need to be attached to the outcome of their behaviors in the same ways that individuals are. A massive overhaul of how we organize institutionally needs to make anything other than a middling difference.
A final point I'll make is that we've put the onus on individuals to make their own difference for the past 60 years and the effects of this strategy are self evident. Individuals simply can not collectively make the kinds of difference required to move the needle with an issue as entire or existential as climate change. Individuals have been engaging in the kind of change implementation strategy you are describing for 60+ years. Consumption and pollution haven't gotten better they've gotten worse.
My proposal to address this: Corporations and institutions need to be able to quantify and address the externalities of their productions before any profits can be made. For changes to be effective we need governments and we need the ability to create regulation which is central to they way our societies operate. Putting the onus on individuals is a short term, ineffective strategy, both in theory and in practice. It puts additional pressure on people who can barely handle it, and is easily reversed. It does nothing to address the vast majority of externalities related to consumption (the ones not visible at the supermarket shelves). It provides a psychological relief valve for people to think that they've 'done enough' and precludes the need for them to invest in institutional change. Addressing change as an individual is nibbling at the edges of something that needs to be addressed systematically at the core of how societies operates. Citing the individual as the unit over which change can or should operate is at best an anesthetic and at worst, prevents the ability to implement change at an institutional level.
*I think you should define what you mean here. I'm not gonna go chase down that definition for some keyboard fencing. Also its your interpretation of that word that matters.
> Consequently the two temperatures defining the core of krill distribution (7–13 °C) were 8° of latitude apart 60 years ago but are presently only 4° apart.
Krill lost 50% of their habitat in the last 60 years. This article has been added to my favorites because this is one piece of evidence that shows that climate change won’t just shift organisms north, but will result in reductions of species that will impact our ecosystems.
Not necessarily.
Krill species live from surface to fairly deep waters. Surface is an important, but small part on its entire habitat.
We need to take in mind that all in this study is about the situation found when sampling an area between 0-10m deep.
For Thysanoessa for example this means that if you don't find them at the surface there is still a 390m deep layer where they could still be located. Meganyctiphanes, Nematobranchion and Thysanopoda concentrate normally in waters below 400m by day (Saunders et al, 2013). They can migrate to surface [1] at night, but can also choose to remain close to the sea bottom in much deeper areas. It depends a lot on the species, location and time of the year.
[1] More or less, surface does not mean 0m necessarily, can mean -15m or -20m also.
> Mean spatial abundance of euphausiids per decade in the North Atlantic from 1958–2017 split into six time-periods 1958–1967; 1968–1977; 1978–1987; 1988–1997; 1998–2007; 2008–2017.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-021-02159-1/figures/2
Finding preys to quit gradually the surface and search for deeper areas when its main predators gradually increase is not a strange outcome, or one that would need necessarily a climate change explanation as the main factor. The study toke samples of the first 10 meters of water only.
If the main predator of one species is increased by, lets say x500 (nobody knows the real value really) and we observe a significant reduction in the number of preys, this is the first thing that we must assure to mention in our discussion.
As research is a so slow process I'm having a hard time thinking that everybody just forgot to see the 'big whale in the room'. A logical explanation is that they put their bet in the winner horse (those that would sell better and had more options to end the publishing race). The logical, but boring explanation would be put under the rug. I could be wrong, of course, but this is not how science should work (in my arrogant opinion).
> The reason there aren't lot more of them is that there isn't enough food, because everyone is fucking up the climate.
We need to choose between the truth or the ideology. A simpler alternative explanation is that the ecosystem changed and do not have room for allowing more whales. Other that we just see the population in the middle of a recovery, not the final phase and our grandsons will see much more whales and even much less krill. Whales mature and breed slowly so they recover slowly. Ship traffic, fish nets, fish hooks, diseases or whale fishing quotes don't help. The lack of food can be related with climate warming, but also with over-fishing and plastic pollution.
ETA At mass extinctions the things that survive and repopulate the Earth are the small generalists with a fast reproductive cycle. Whales are the opposite of this.
Let’s hope we get climate change handled so at least the animals that didn’t add to it don’t have to needlessly suffer.
Apparently not.
> Another important group of zooplankton, the appendicularians, have shown a dramatic increase, nearly quadrupling their abundance since the 1960s, suggesting that, while there has been an overall increase in phytoplankton biomass in this region, there could also be a trend towards a smaller size-fraction of phytoplankton. It is unclear why the euphausiids alone among the most dominant zooplankton taxa in this region have shown a particular decline since the 1990s.
