Thread by @homemadeguitars

There is no possibility that the current lifeways of developed societies can be maintained without continued degradation of the ecosystem to the ultimate point where it becomes unable to support us in anything approaching our current numbers.
And yes, that's how we stay alive.

2. This is a problem, because what we call climate change is but one symptom of broad ecosystem degradation and collapse.
Yes, carbon is a factor in climate change, but it is not the sole factor. And fuel carbon is even less the sole factor.
That doesn't imply we can keep burning

3. Sadly, virtually all "climate aware" people have been convinced that yes, since carbon is a problem, it must therefore be the only problem.
I find this odd. We all know about extinction. Deforestation. Desertification.
Don't we?

4. Don't all the people who praise electric cars know about mass extinction? Don't they regret it? Tweet about it? Worry about it?
Surely they don't think it's only caused by fossil fuel smoke.
Do they?
Didn't someone tell them about habitat destruction? Write about it? Anybody?

5. Don't we all know about habitat fragmentation? Do we think building new highways and high speed rail lines is a non-issue?
I'm seriously asking, except I guess I know the answer.
Yes. That's what we think.

6. I read today that 63% of Americans believe that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (every new plan needs a brand name) is a Good Think.
Given that most Republicans wish Biden would just die, I assume that means some huge majority of Democrats approve of it.

7. (Good *Thing)
And Democrats are the only people, as a party, who claim to give a shit about climate.
None voice any concern about the rest of the ecosystem, but they claim to care about the climate.
So we're back to my question.
Do you really think we can live like this?

8. I guess that's another rhetorical question. Obviously almost all do.
And claim at the same time to believe in science, which utterly befuddles me, but I confuse easy.

9. You do realize that there is no possibility, climate change or no climate change, that life is going to look the same way in fifty years that it looks now, right?
Life didn't look *anything* like this fifty years ago, you know.
Whatever it looks like, it's bound to change.

10. If you will permit me a bit of prosaic license (It's the pedestrian version of poetic license) I will take you back, rather than fifty years, fifty-eight. The year I turned 16 and JFK turned was assassinated.
There was not one foot of open freeway in Kansas City. Not. One.

11. The "Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways," commonly known as The Interstate System, had been under construction for 9 years, having been born June 29th of 1956.
Keep that time frame in mind when you pine for "transition" to renewables.

12. Nine years into the Interstate Highway project there were only a handful of open sections nationwide. And it was nowhere near as big as a global renewable replacement for fossil fuels in our current energy economy. Nowhere near as widely distributed, either.

13. Kansas City opened the downtown loop of freeway while I was fighting in Vietnam. I got home at 21 and didn't know my way around my home town. All the roads were broken. Scared the shit out of me.

14. When I turned 16 there was virtually nobody in America who couldn't get to the grocery store in ten or fifteen minutes at a top speed of 35 mph, with stoplights. Surface streets. Things were *lots* closer together.
Suburbs weren't strung all to-hell-and-gone, either.

15. As a 15 year old boy kid with a 3 speed English bicycle I could go anywhere in all of Kansas City, Missouri, safely, within about an hour to an hour and a half one way, to the very farthest edges of the city.
I had walked home from downtown, about four miles.
All safely.

16. The main difference between that society and this one was speed of surface transportation.
I reject the proposition that this one is better.
It has a higher GDP, but most people are more miserable now than most people were then.

17. I went through Kansas City's black districts, did business in Kansas City's black districts. We were plenty racist, but predominantly black communities are poorer and worse off in Kansas City today than then.
I've watched the whole thing.
Worse lives, worse treatment. Now.

18. Just like white people, a few black people have risen way above their peers, but just like white people, the middle is gone. Princes and paupers. I don't believe we're going in the right direction.

19. Everything in today's conversation is based on continuing *just*like*we*are*.
GDP.
High energy jobs.
No matter what we do, it's changing. Let's make it more pleasant. Instead of more hectic.
To do that, the first step is slow down.

20. Gotta run a chore. Maybe more later.