Thread by @andrestaltz

What you can do to prepare for climate change:
Reduce economic activity.

In your lifetime, the planet will most likely *collapse* under the weight of economic growth. It's not a mere possibility, it already began. Brace for impact. ⚠

THREAD:

If you're still debating whether climate change is real, you're too late. It's quite simple: a finite planet cannot take an ever-increasing demand for natural resources. In the OECD, everything we do, from travelling to commuting to electricity and consuming, costs the planet. 🌍

In the lifetime of your children, realistic estimates say we're going to see more than 2.6°C of warming. What does that number mean? At 1°C warming (in 2018), we've seen hurricanes, heat waves, long summers in Europe, wildfires. 2.6°C will bring more, and extreme weather. 🔥

At 4°C (possible in your grandchildren's lifetime), North/Central/South America are desert-like or inhabitable, as well as Africa and China. 🌵🏜

Where do greenhouse gases come from? You've probably heard already these, so I'll translate them in terms of daily life:

🏭 Home and office electricity
📦 All kinds of products you buy
⛽ Cars, airplanes
🍖 Meat
commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gree…

It's not enough to "solve" greenhouse gases through clever technology. The planet has many other kinds of limits. E.g. biodiversity loss is already much worse than climate change.

Bottom line is that if our economy continues at this pace, we will BREAK the environment, and subsequently a broken environment will break the economy.

Current capitalistic economic world is simply not sustainable.

The planey needs to go on a diet!

Several climate reports suggest that our actions must be towards drastically reducing. It's not enough to tweak our behavior. We need a 180° turn. What can *you* do to make a difference?

Num 1 thing: don't raise up a new generation of consumers in the OECD.

As for yourself, ban cars from your life, or at least fill the car with max capacity of passengers every time you drive.

Buy green energy, solar or wind. I buy mine from Sweden, because Finland doesn't have much wind and solar.

Travel less. Live locally.

Stop commuting! 🚗

I haven't been commuting for 2 years, and now that I look at it from an outsider's perspective, it's madness! Millions of office/computer workers going daily back and forth in a car with 1 person each, and workers complaining they wish they could do remote.

Not everyone can stop commuting, but MANY can. Demand remote work from your employer. Show them these climate reports. Remind them of the future of their children. If not that, do car pooling. Anything to stop this crazy habit inherited from the Boomer generation.

Stop consuming! 💸

You really don't need that many objects. Reuse, repair, look for companies that don't engage in planned obsolescence, but overall get used to the idea of living with less, frugally. Reducing emissions equals reducing luxury.

This may sound radical today, but not in 20 years:

Stop working! 💼

With less commuting and less consumption, there will be less work around supporting the consumerism economy. This won't be at all idealistic, it'll look ugly, but we will HAVE to transition to frugality.

These changes will require us to rethink everything, globally, not nationally. Capitalism will have to change into something else. I'm not sure what, but at least products should display not just the $ cost, but other hidden costs, like ecological impact, inequality, and health.

I'm not an expert in this, just concerned. So read credible reports and charts and statistics, Twitter threads cannot go in depth. I just want to expose what I learned so far as a citizen, browsing many reports and studies.

It's not anymore ideological or apologetic, it's surviving extinction. Reducing consumption is a fundamental intergenerational trade-off between short-term luxury or long-term wellbeing.

Do you want to be "The Last Generation"? Or the first generation to do the right thing?