1. Plant a few trees; destroy forests. 2. Wind & solar; drill the Arctic. 3. Tasty fake meat; more pesticides. 4. Electric buses; aviation boom. 5. Ban plastic straws; 5G. 6. CO₂ tax; private geoengineering.
The Extinction Economy: contempt for science.
Interference from 5G wireless phones could reduce the accuracy of weather forecasts by 30%.
That reduction would give coastal residents 2 or 3 fewer days to prepare for a hurricane, and could lead to incorrect predictions of the storms’ final path to land.grist.org/article/5g-net…
'Electromagnetic radiation from power lines, wi-fi, phone masts and broadcast transmitters poses a ‘credible’ threat to wildlife, a new report suggests, as environmentalists warned the 5G roll out could cause greater harm.'
Smartphones Are Killing The Planet Faster Than Anyone Expected:
'Researchers are sounding the alarm after an analysis showed that buying a new smartphone consumes as much energy as using an existing phone for an entire decade'.
COLLAPSING: scientists indicate civilisation-wrecking conditions are already developing as rapid mass extinction accelerates with billions set to be killed from 2029- 2048🧵
Current generic extinction rates likely to greatly accelerate in coming decades due to economic growth & overconsumption by the rich.
Economic activities during capitalism are destroying the conditions that make human life possible. pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn… salon.com/2023/09/19/exp…
Plastic contamination will soon be "catastrophic" for human health and is slowly "killing the human race"
more cancer, more allergic diseases, more infertility
DOOM: majority of scientists think difficult-or-impossible-to-survive warming of 1.9-2.1°C and rising is now unavoidable and set to begin wiping out species within years 🧵
1. 'New assessment warns area the size of the USA will become too hot during extreme heat events for even healthy young humans to maintain a safe body temperature if we hit 2°C' kcl.ac.uk/news/half-a-de…
2. Even before new research confirming warming is accelerating, the overwhelming majority of climate scientists fully expected ~2°C (in most cases much more).
COLLAPSE: scientists indicate all aspects of human societies will be wrecked by 2029-2092 as habitat destruction and pollution intensify with unsurvivable accelerating warming of 1.95-2.15°C and rising now unavoidable even with capitalism's best-case emissions reductions 🧵
"The 2C target is dead, because the global energy use is rising, and it will continue to rise”.. global heating is likely to reach 2C by 2045 dumptheguardian.com/environment/20…
The economy is a heat engine.
How will it cool the planet?
Collapse is already here.
Time to rethink. 🧵
1.
Economic growth: the engine of collapse
The hope is that, with astute academic guidance and sufficiently powerful doses of political will, we can safely navigate our way through the Anthropocene.
But there are physical limits to what is possible.
2.
To get a sense of any physical limits, it helps to look at how physical systems function. A useful concept here is a thermodynamic “heat engine”... available energy powers cyclical motions thereby enabling “work’’ to be done to move something else while giving off waste heat.
COLLAPSE: there is a very high likelihood that capitalism has condemned 2 to 7 billion people to an early death by 2038-2058. 🧵
1.
'a very high likelihood of 2.0 °C of regional warming by 2040 for the majority of regions, along with a likelihood of 3 °C by mid-century' iopscience.iop.org/article/10.108…
2.
Report fr risk management experts the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries:
'At 3C or more of heating by 2050, there could be more than 4 billion deaths, significant sociopolitical fragmentation worldwide, failure of states..'