Thread by @JeffAndDonkeys

What is it to be a doomer?
I believe that society - global developed societies in the aggregate - are going to push the global ecosystem into a state which is not hospitable to standard model H. Sap. I think we're going to break some combination of natural systems to the point

2. Where neither the manner nor the quantity of participants in human society worldwide can continue as we have known it this past hundred years.
That's really all we're talking about, is the last hundred, hundred and twenty years.
You could go back over 200 to get the roots. But

3. that's less than one year, for each hundred thousand years, that we've been here as Homo Sap.
For the most recent .00001% of our time here we've used high energy, concentrated energy, to accelerate the rate of our work.
Fucked things up to a fare thee well in the process. Fast

4. I'm a doomer because people - almost all people who have a seat at the table, way way way way more than 99% of all "climate concerned" people, I believe, although I have no source for that - believe that the solution to this is to build what they choose to call renewables,

5. that is to say primarily wind turbines and solar panels, and then install them.
The sad fact is that the push to build this technology is probably the worst thing to ever happen to the ecosphere. In terms of extraction, materials processing, energy, land modification - it's

6. the biggest natural disaster since the meteor that took out all the dinosaurs except birds.
We're even getting the birds. We're getting the bugs.
The entire conversation about bees, for instance, is somehow worded in terms of bees.
Bees aren't the problem.
Industrial poison.

7. As long as we choose to make anything except industrial poison the center of that conversation it's not going anywhere.
I've got cornfields and soybean fields all around me. We're setting up to catch a wild swarm and begin keeping bees in a horizontal hive. Our 28 acres is

8. poison free except for the direct application, by drip bottle, of Tordon on stumps.
I don't know any other way to cut down a thorn tree once and not have it come back as half a dozen. Tordon on stumps doesn't kill bees. And I work alone, so I'm limited in options.

9. But unlike other people who are described as doomers, I don't think the global ecosystem is broken beyond repairing itself.
I have watched Earth heal, and I have given my effort over more than half of my long life to encouraging the ecosystems around me to restore themselves.

10. We saw ecosystem regions and components recover significantly in just the few weeks of slowdown we did when Covid first surfaced. There are records.
Atmospheric carbon is the primary building block of all life. It's brought out of the atmosphere via photosynthesis, which

11. which provides the food base for the entire surface and near-surface life on land an on sea.
We could, if we chose to, immediately reduce the amount of damage we do to our ecosystem with our actions.
We could reduce transportation energy tomorrow. #degrowth would result.

12. The typical, "Oh it's too late the ecosystem is irreparably broken" response annoys me.
So fucking lay down and die, it says.
I'm not going to.
We literally could make a difference AND WE HAVE RECENT PROOF.
There are hundreds of millions of tons of life forms missing.

13. In their place we have corn deserts and soybean deserts, strawberry deserts and Walmart deserts, 55 mile and hour deserts, 70 mile an hour deserts, golfing deserts, suburban yard deserts, and, more and more, silicon solar panel deserts and wind turbine deserts.
Stop. Stop it.

14. We are literally building wind turbines and solar panels worldwide as fast as we can. Every factory is running 24/7. Biden's Fossil Fuels for the Climate bill has $10 billion just to build factories to build more of the damn things.
Meanwhile.
The things we do, do this.

15. The next person who says "fossil fuels" gets a thousand demerits.
The things we do, cause this.
Every part of the things we do causes every part of the global ecosystem catastrophe. Plastic in the ocean is plastic out of factories.
Period.
Peery fucking yud.

16. Trainloads of poison will always get spilled. Blaming the asshole that spilled it is stupid. I never spilled anything on purpose in my life, but I've spilled a lot of stuff.
That's real life.
Don't want poison in your river?
Don't make it.

17. We didn't have that shit when I was born.
We had most of it before I turned 16.
So - back down off of it.
Plastic is necessary to waste all the energy of centralized production and global shipping.
Neither of those is necessary.
Not even good, except in money for a few.
Stop.

18. Highways exist for the sole purpose of enabling society to expend more energy in transportation, to drive more vehicles more miles faster.
Then we want to talk about electric cars.
What a crock of shit.

19. Have you ever lived anywhere near a highway interchange construction project, or a major building project, a new arena or major public facility?
They take years. You know that. You've seen it. They've had the road to your office blocked for 27 months.
That's one building.

20. People are talking about building enough solar panel deserts and wind turbine deserts to replace every oil well, every coal mine, and every gas field IN THE WHOLE WORLD and that's only if the economy doesn't grow AT ALL because all economic growth has an energy component.

21. So since we're assuming growth, we have to build more solar panel deserts and wind turbine deserts than the energy coming out of all the oil wells and all the coal mines, all the gas fields - can't anyone see, put that scale of project together with the simple time factor -

22. What makes me a doomer is that whole science fiction project. Because it's getting launched. It's happening. Everyone needs to pat yourselves on the back.
You did it.
They're building the renoobles. They're building new battery factories and opening new copper mines.
You won.

23. Earth lost.

24. Sorry.