Everything is Fine

climatesupport:

elodieunderglass:

heliophile-oxon:

thehopefuljournalist:

“Is it possible to turn things around by 2050? The answer is absolutely yes,” says Kai Chan, a professor at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia.

Many scientists have been telling us how the world will look like, if we don’t act now. However, others, like Chan, are tracking what success might look like.

They are not simply day-dreamers either. They aren’t being too optimistic. They are putting together road maps for how to safely get to the planet envisioned in the 2015 Paris Agreement, where temperatures hold at 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than before we started burning fossil fuels, this article from July states.

“Three decades is enough to do a lot of important things. In the next few years—if we get started on them—they will pay dividends in the coming decades,” says Chan, the lead author of the chapter on achieving a sustainable future in a recent UN report that predicted the possible extinction of a million species.

Making these changes won’t mean years of being poor, cold and hungry before things get comfortable again, the scientists insist. They say that if we start acting seriously NOW, we stand a decent chance of transforming society without huge disruption. 

No doubt, it will take a massive switch in society’s energy use. But without us noticing, that’s already happening. Not fast enough, maybe, but it is. Solar panels and offshore wind power plummet in price.  Iceland and Paraguay have stripped the carbon from their grids, according to a new energy outlook report from Bloomberg. Europe is on track to be 90 per cent carbon-free by 2040. And Ottawa says that Canada is already at 81 per cent, thanks to hydro, nuclear, wind and solar. 

Decarbonizing the whole economy is within grasp. We can do this.

“If we have five years of really sustained efforts, making sure we reorient our businesses and our governments toward sustainability, then from that point on, this transition will seem quite seamless. Because it will just be this gradual reshaping of options,” Chan says, adding: “All these things seem very natural when the system is changing around you.”

Hoping people with more relevant knowledge and science parsing skills than I do might comment on this …

I think it is absolutely vital that people be able to picture The Healed World. Honestly I think it’s one of the most important things we can do.

Look at how many different apocalypses people can visualise. Our brains can freely feast on unlimited scenes of scarcity, competition and fear. Everywhere we turn we can consume endless content about killing our neighbors for scraps, about hurting children, about bleak planets and extinction, and lots and lots of guns. It is easy, accessible and cheap. Our minds gobble up as much of this content as the market generates and the market gleefully generates more. We feed and feed upon a future of suffering and loss. We feast on images of brown children being hurt, unnecessarily, and say smugly that “that’s just what humanity is like.” Our brains are programmed away from the natural human responses to crises (fix it, help each other, rebuild and hope) and TOWARDS the mindsets of fictional apocalypse (cause it, turn on each other [it’s just what humans do! We’ve all seen the same stories!], collapse, fight each other for crumbs, the world is doomed anyway.)

It’s pretty unnecessary. And frankly pretty cringe. Imagine being part of some of the most prosperous, empowered, educated, connected group of humans to ever exist, and having a brain that can only picture the future as apocalypse-movie.

And where is the food of abundance, equality, beauty, hope, diversity? Where is the actual food of the future? Oh. It’s in, like, three solarpunk anthologies, huh?

Huh.

Anyway not to get all Amitav Ghosh on main but we have GOT to address this unnecessary and EMBARRASSING failure of imagination. Because we are the generation currently failing in our responsibilities as caretakers of the earth, because of this deranged inability to picture the world as being a real place, and the future being a place where people will live.

So, basically, yes, let’s just say it and start saying it regularly. The work is now and we have to do it. It isn’t impossible. Yes there is hope. Yes it can all be done. Yes there is a future for fucksake. It’s within our grasp. that is what futures are.

👆 Not sure if I’ve already reblogged this, but @elodieunderglass is 100% right here. We find it so easy to picture doom, but we find it so hard to picture healing.

Also, giving up on a future that is still possible means not only giving up on your own life, but the lives of your loved ones, on the poor and disadvantaged people who will face the worst impacts of the climate crisis, and giving up on nature itself.

For some people, climate disaster is already here. There are millions of people already fighting for survival. They don’t have the privilege of sitting back, giving up, and waiting for the apocalypse to come.

They don’t have the privilege of saying “Oh well, the world’s doomed anyway so why should we bother?” And neither should anyone else.

(via krakenartificer)

derinthescarletpescatarian:

“The trannies should be able to piss in whatever toilet they want and change their bodies however they want. Why is it my business if some chick has a dick or a guy has a pie? I’m not a trannie or a fag so I don’t care, just give ‘em the medicine they need.”

“This is an LGBT safe space. Of COURSE I fully support individuals who identify as transgender and their right to self-determination! I just think that transitioning is a very serious choice and should be heavily regulated. And there could be a lot of harm in exposing cis children to such topics, so we should be really careful about when it is appropriate to mention trans issues or have too much trans visibility.”

One of the above statements is Problematic and the other is slightly annoying. If we disagree on which is which then working together for a better future is going to get really fucking difficult.

(via seerofmike)

neurodiversitysci:

creekfiend:

I saw this on FB today and I wanna try and express something about it. Like, you know the curbcutter effect? Where when curbcuts are put in it benefits everyone (bicyclists, people with baby strollers etc) and not just disabled people?

There is also whatever the opposite of the curbcutter effect is. And this is that.

This isn’t just anti-adhd/autism propaganda… this is anti-child propaganda.

Kids have developmentally appropriate ways that they need to move their bodies and express themselves and sitting perfectly still staring straight ahead is not natural or good for ANY CHILD.

Don’t get me wrong, I was punished unduly as a kid for being neurodivergent (and other types of kid will ALSO be punished unduly for it… Black kids come to mind) and thus UNABLE to perform this – but even the kids who ARE able to perform this type of behavior are not SERVED WELL by it. They don’t benefit from it.

This is bad for everyone.

The idea that bc some kids may be capable of complying with unfair expectations, those expectations don’t hurt them… is a dangerous idea. Compliance isn’t thriving. Expectation of compliance isn’t fair treatment.

The image above expresses the attitude towards children I grew up with, in a fairly conservative United States suburb in the 1990′s. Expectations for children’s behavior were strict, and when children failed to meet them, their parents were blamed publicly and privately, to a traumatizing degree. 

When I went to the Kids R Us, Toys R Us, even the supermarket I constantly heard parents yelling and nagging at their kids over virtually nothing, and telling them not to cry. Kids had their own segregated food (unhealthy, tasteless fast food and pizza), clothing, and activities (full of plastic junk toys and meaningless crafts that would get thrown out the day they were made). 

Parenting advice was everywhere, in grocery checkout aisles and doctor’s waiting rooms, with the format “push button, receive behavior” and the goal of making kids do what you wanted easily, without conflict. It drove my mom frantic that it never worked for neurodivergent kids like hers. 

In school, we had to get permission to go to the bathroom. I’ll never forget nearly wetting myself for a half an hour waiting for the kids with the passes to return. I learned that even my most basic basic bodily needs were unimportant and unacceptable.

No one seemed to think kids were actual people, and the segregation and contempt pissed me off even when I was young enough to use a kid’s menu. The anger and hurt are still there, under the surface.

And yes, I was one of those kids who couldn’t focus on busywork or stand in line for a long time. I’d wander off to dance or draw or I’d just let my imagination wander, “zoning out.” It’s the same old story everyone in neurodivergent communities hears ad infinitum. 

Meanwhile, I was told, and I believed, that school was designed for all the other kids, who seemed to do what was expected without struggle. Many of them even seemed content with school and life. It made me feel even worse about myself. I didn’t understand that they were suffering, too, until I saw my generation and then Gen Z going through the resulting mental health crisis.

Somehow, I never realized that strict expectations that require kids to go against their own needs, that teach kids their basic needs don’t matter, are a reverse curb cut effect.

“Even kids who ARE able to perform this type of behavior are not SERVED well by it…the idea that because some kids may be capable of complying with unfair expectations, those expectations don’t hurt them, is a dangerous idea.”

Yes. All kids deserve better.

Neurodivergent ones are just the canary in the coal mine. Things that hurt neurodivergent kids, tend to be bad for everyone.

Thank you for pointing this out, OP.

(via roach-works)

bakedbananners:

I love when dogs and cats just let you pat the shit out of them and they enjoy it so much. Like yeah dude real quick I just need to play you like a bongo and they’re like god yes I’ve been waiting for someone to play me like a bongo

(via brainrotdotorg)

triviallytrue:

geoguessr guy continues to body people on twitter

(via hotvampireadjacent)

army-of-bee-assassins:

sybilvimes:

what if a guy was awesome

[image description: Fanart of Kim Kitsuragi from the video game Disco Elysium, drawn from the waist up. Kim is looking off to the viewer’s right with a neutral expression. A sold white circle is in the background behind Kim’s head, reminiscent of a halo. End ID.]

(via brainrotdotorg)

sew-birb:

chaoticneurodivergent:

ralfmaximus:

radicalgraff:

“Abolish Golf”

Sticker spotted in Chicago, Illinois.

A typical golf course uses 200 million gallons of water a year. There are over 16,300 golf courses in the United States.

That’s nuts.

Ngl I hate golf and I’m all for this. They put a golf course in our public park at the expense of hundreds of centuries-old live oak trees. Half of the walk around the park you’re just looking at an empty golf course. Like 2 people want to play golf. So annoying.

Golf was a game developed in Scotland, where it rains up to 250 days of the year, and where the courses use very hard-wearing grass. The sand in the bunkers is because it used to be played on the coast - these traditional courses are called “Links” courses. The top Links course in Scotland, Royal Dornoch, uses no mains water at all. They have their own rainwater collection system.

It wasn’t originally intended to be played in the middle of a desert on lush green turf that takes thousands of gallons of water a day to maintain. Unless you can keep the course alive using only rainwater collection, it shouldn’t exist.

(via doriansbutt)

casterice:

a-candle-for-sherlock:

a-candle-for-sherlock:

Gorgeous thread this morning on Twitter by @jeffreymarsh!

A few more:

We’ve always been here

(via i-need-glitter)

marxisforbros:

Conversation with a Native Son: Maya Angelou and James Baldwin

(via mayfriend)

mosticonicposts:

toritheestallion:

me at Olive Garden at 11:02 am staring down the elderly people impatiently waiting outside knowing we should’ve opened 2 minutes ago but my boss is in the back cheating on his wife with the girl who makes the salads and he has the key to unlock the doors

certified iconic post

(via uglygirlstatus)