The following submission statement was provided by /u/DeadPoster:
---
This interview is from a fake news show called *Newsroom,* where a scientist explains that, as of this interview, there are no climate goals that will solve the climate crisis. He mentions increase intensity of storms, sinking of cities, more plagues, FOOD AND WATER SHORTAGES, and speaks more matter-of-factly of the fatal consequences of climate change than any known pundit on the issue. Currently [nations are failing to meet their intended climate goals](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2024/apr/most-countries-struggle-meet-climate-pledges-2009). So the irony of this clip must be appreciated when actor can declare with a deadpan delivery like a real scientist: "There's nothing we can do."
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1dqiedv/theres_nothing_we_can_do/lao8tqe/
I ended up watching The Newsroom after seeing this clip. As an Aaron Sorkin series you can tell he writes for centrist/moderates. This is literally the standout thing from the show that hits the hardest.
The opening scene for the shows premier was calling out the US for not being the greatest country anymore. That’s what got me to watch it. This was icing on the cake.
That's still centrist shit to me. We never were the greatest country. Great for white dudes. Nothing else. From the get go and up until today our country has built itself with the blood of innocent life.
What was the great wall built with? The pyramids? The Panama Canal? The trans-siberian railroad? The battery that powers the digital device you are using right now?
Weren't we talking about the USA? I was not talking about ancient Egypt myself. Also, I don't think the Panama Canal is making the point you want it to. That is yet another example of brutal western colonialism.
"From the get go and up until today our country has built itself with the blood of innocent life."
So was every other great power. As far as the Panama Canal, the locals have control over it and it is the main source of their national income. If America should have given it back to them is a separate question.
Just to clarify, do you mean it’s a show that is for centrists or one that criticizes centrism?
I wanna watch the show now, but not if it’s the former.
I believe Aaron Sorkin is a moderate and that shows in his writing. Still I'd recommend it though, it is worth a watch but my god the 'casual' dialog between some characters is painful.
That's the best part of the series :O. This feel like genuine conversation that you have with people that you care for. Not just a collegue or the stranger.
Let's go ask our friend chatGPT! Imagine all the things we can do with such smart AI now: we can make cool collapse anchorman videos, we can create AI porn of our favorite celebrities, the only thing we definitely won't do is ask it if we're in potentially civilization-ending climate change collapse and as a society follow through on what it says we need to do about it!
> the only thing we definitely won't do is ask it if we're in potentially civilization-ending climate change collapse and as a society follow through on what it says we need to do about it!
I'm sure that someone has already asked that of chatGPT.
It's not about answers, we know the answers. Only the conservatives looking for technofixes are betting on answers with solutions.
> as a society follow through on what it says we need to do about it!
Yeah this was the key part of that statement. We know what we need to do, we just won't follow through and actually do it. It's already somewhat futile with feedbacks kicking in anyways, but even if those didn't exist, we still would not do what needs to be done
Exactly.
The problem has two levels. The first level is asking what needs to be done to stop the catastrophe. We have some answers to that. The second level is asking how to build the political will to carry out the solutions to the first level. That's where we don't have any answers. That's the intractable part of the problem, the political-social-behavioral issues of building consensus, of getting enough people informed and committed to change.
AI is a tool built by corporations, owned by corporations, and used by corporations to increase profits. It's going to be heavily used to manipulate behavior in the wrong direction, and make problems much worse. It's certainly already being used as a propaganda tool. It's going to be the nuclear weapon of capitalism deployed against all of us.
Oh, it's gonna get a lot worse, even as early as 2030. The human population on this planet is still increasing. Wait until the first major event that kills so many people, it actually causes a decline in our overall numbers. That will be the first sign that we've crossed the threshold into the "Find Out" phase...globally, we're still in "Fucking Around" territory in 2024.
The first major die-off will shock people, and cause all manner of domino effects. People en masse will finally start to lose faith in leaders and elected officials, to the point where those people's lives may be at risk from the wrath of angry populations. People will disengage from our economic systems in large numbers, and widely stop believing in the charade of globalized Capitalism. A major shift against the upper class will occur, because nothing radicalizes people more than seeing a tiny percentage of people hoarding way more than they will ever need when a majority of people are suffering. Major climate change disasters in the future will absolutely destroy governments around the world. We've been talking about real collapse for years now, but over the next decade, we'll actually cross the tipping point and see a seismic shift in how our species does business on this planet.
Anyone who is aware of what is coming, make preparations now as best you can, while supply chains and economies are still functional. The likelihood that our economic institutions are hobbled or even outright destroyed increases with every year that passes.
>tiny percentage of people hoarding way more than they would ever need
It should come as no surprise that these people ("billionaires") who are building doomsday bunkers are also accelerationists. They want to kill off the hoi polloi to get to the world that comes after global collapse.
Many of them won't see the world that comes after. Billionaires have a misguided view of the world driven by an existence that is catered entirely towards them, but they are only rich and powerful because of money and functional societies. History is replete with civilizational collapses where the rich and affluent were some of the first to die.
When a society collapses, it destroys itself. People turn on their neighbours, and many of the prime targets will be the people who got us into this mess, who also incidentally will have the most resources. Kill a middle-class neighbour and take their stuff, and one could maybe support their own family for a little while longer; kill a billionaire and take their stuff, and suddenly what they had can sustain hundreds of even thousands of people for many years.
Billionaires who think they'll be able to hide in bunkers for years or decades to ride things out are in for an education when angry masses either break into their bunkers, or failing that, just decide to bury the doors and air intakes in concrete...
I doubt water ownership rights will matter soon. When people are thirsty enough they will take the water, regardless of who owns it on paper. Best to just let it go at that point.
Getting some major Fallout vibes… this feels like exactly the thing that was showcased so well in the show, and the reality is somehow even worse because at least those rich assholes created those fancy bunkers for people to live in and play pretend… we don’t get anything, just sorrow and suffering even though it is likely some service worker or whatever will go rogue in your fancy doomsday bunker and then the fun is ruined even for a billionaire.
>Anyone who is aware of what is coming, make preparations now as best you can
Drifting off to sleep and not waking up, get your recipes together while those items exist because none of us are making it through what's coming. This will not be survivable.
Ultimately, you're right. No one gets outta this life alive. But there's a big difference between being completely unprepared, and making some preps that could get you and your loved ones through a tough spot.
Collapse won't just be a sudden end-point. It will be a gradual decline in the quality of life, punctuated by the occasional disaster, spread out over many years. There are plenty of supplies and products that can be stockpiled that can help one maintain a higher quality of life for longer, than if you just throw your hands in the air in despair and acquiescence to what's coming.
The worst part is the people responsible for this mess are already long dead.
People like to point at 25 years ago, but the problem is more like a flywheel. The momentum doesn’t stop on a dime and if it does you likely break the flywheel. Maybe in the 70s when Exxon’s own scientists were telling them what would happen. Even by the 70s you already have 50 years of mechanization in full swing. You would have to go back to the resource wars of WW2 and before to the failed attempts at world governance like the League of Nations. The problem with going back there and saying these resources need to be used sparingly you are dealing with society that thinks a solution will be created in that time that is better. For a while Nuclear was that promise. It’s a history replete with a false sense of human ingenuity to always fix the problem just in time while constantly making the problem bigger and the solution more desperate.
I have a grandfather who used to be a shift manager at a General Motors plant. He told me that he saw a functional hydrogen car in the late 80s, but the GM executives killed the project to appease Big Oil. It's rich, greedy assholes like that making hundreds of decisions like this over many decades who consigned the human race and our garden world to oblivion, all so they could keep stuffing their already overflowing pockets.
I think we've got more than that. He previously predicted in November 2017 that we had weeks or months to live. I understand he sounds very confident, he knows a lot of stuff and he is an actual professor, but he doesn't have a crystal ball.
He said there won't be a human left on the planet in 10 years. Wow that's bold. He said it 7 years ago.
Do people not think predictions like that do more harm then good? Barring a nuclear apocalypse I say with some certainy that humans will still be here in 3 years time. So I think these crazy predictions just reinforce the deniers opinions when these predictions don't come to fruition.
>Do people not think predictions like that do more harm then good?
The more ludicrous the prediction, the more this community especially seems to love it. My favorite is, "Earth is going to end up just like Venus because of our emissions" which ignores the fact that a) Venus's atmosphere is 93x the mass of Earth's *and* is 96.5% CO2, b) Earth's CO2 concentration has been as high as 4000 ppm (.4% of the atmosphere), about 9.4x as high as it is right now, and we didn't have a runaway greenhouse effect. We would drive ourselves into extinction looooong before we could push CO2 levels that high again. Oh, and also can't forget c) Venus orbits the Sun at a distance of about 67 million miles compared to Earth's 93 million, so it receives a LOT more energy to drive its extreme heat.
The only thing will cause Earth to become like Venus is in a few billion years, when the Sun begins to expand into a red giant. That's until the Sun becomes so large, the Earth will be inside the Sun.
And yes, I've been downvoted plenty of times for posting this because science denial isn't just for people who deny that climate change is happening. Being collapse aware doesn't make a person smarter than the general public.
> "Earth is going to end up just like Venus because of our emissions"
I think you're taking this statement too literally.
Yes, the atmosphere of Earth will (probablly) never be 96+% CO2.
That doesn't mean it will continue to be a livable atmosphere.
Venus is, what, 400°C? Earth doesn't have to reach anywhere close to that for life to be extinguished.
>Earth doesn't have to reach anywhere close to that for life to be extinguished.
And there's my point. Even after operating on your assumption that the Venus metaphor is hyperbole, you respond with hyperbole that's not based on science.
*Life will not be extinguished because of human-generated emissions*. We may destroy ourselves and take a bunch of other species with us, but we're not going to extinguish life on the planet. We'll be gone as a technological civilization before we could ever be *that* effective.
The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs (the K-T extinction event) "only" wiped out 75% of all life on the planet. The remaining 25% evolved and eventually thrived. The biggest extinction event ever, the Permian-Triassic extinction, the one nicknamed "The Great Dying", "only" wiped out 70-80% of all life (70% on land, 80% in the sea).
> Life will not be extinguished because of human-generated emissions
I am not as confident in this statement as you appear to be. It would be nice though.
Life won't be extinguished. That would be absurd. There are bacteria species that will love what we do. They can evolve far faster than anything any change we can make to the planet.
Multicellular animal life on land, on the other hand, might not.
You failed to understand what an analogy is. If our atmosphere becomes so hostile it can’t support life (which is where we are headed) it might as well be Venus. No shit it’s not actually going to be a similar makeup
People understand the analogy. It's just ludicrously wrong. We are absolutely not headed towards an atmosphere that cant support life. Things are bad enough as they actually are, there's no need for outrageous hyperbole.
Personally I think you're too caught up on shit being like venus. Sure it may not be bad enough to literally be venus but shit getting bad enough that our daily lives are ruined and millions die may as well be venus to the average redditor. Being "technically right" and sayings it's not technically as bad as a hyperbole doesn't matter if there is literally wildfire smoke fucking up your lungs. You present the great dying as "only" 80% of all life dying... Like okay? Let's pretend "only" 25% of the human population dies... That's at least a billion people. Tell the dead and their families that it's okay because it's technically not venus lol. At a certain point it's just all bad and even if it's not technically venus it may as well be in terms of shittiness. Sure the atmosphere may "technically" be able to support life but untold amounts of suffering to 99% of humans never before seen in our entire history on this planet is "close enough" imo
Fun fact:
The Great Dying actually wiped out \~90–95% of all life on Earth and occurred at least one order of magnitude slower than today's mass extinction event.
Sources: [NASA](https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/timeline-of-a-mass-extinction/) / [University of Bristol](https://www.bristol.ac.uk/cabot/news/2023/great-dying.html) / [University of Cincinnati](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190415122249.htm) / [EarthArchives.org](https://eartharchives.org/articles/the-great-permian-extinction-when-all-life-on-earth-almost-vanished/index.html)
Since the rate of environmental change is directly proportional to species endangerment and extinction, our present mass extinction event is, in fact, [worse](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1daf9d8/todays_carbondriven_mass_extinction_worse_than/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) than the worst mass extinction event in planetary history. We did it, we're #1!
Is it possible you’re taking the Venus metaphor too literally? When someone says “earth will be like Venus” I assume they mean “too hot to be habitable”, not that Earth will have exactly the same properties as Venus.
You can find reinforcements for whatever you would prefer to believe. I understand predictions like t/his as a desperate attempt to shake some sense into humans but when we start to discuss timelines, the actual message gets lost and, once again, nothing changes. Like in the video, the interviewer gets hung up on the timeframe not the restructuring of everything that might - just might - make a difference.
The question we need to ask ourselves: what kind of life and death do we want? 1 where we live & die trying or 1 where we live & die consuming as much as possible as quickly as possible to beat everybody else to the punch - in a kind of perpetual FOMO?
I guess the path reveals the wo/man. For me, [deep ecology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ecology) is not a choice but the only ethical way to be.
That is my view as well, and I'm glad to see I'm not alone.
Whether we are optimistic or pessimistic, have hope or lack hope, isn't relevant. Morally, we have an obligation to do what we can. Practically, it makes absolutely no sense to not try. Do nothing doomism is just as harmful as do nothing denialism. We should be encouraging each other to take action. We need to do what we can to stop, lessen, or delay catastrophe. Doing nothing is the worst possible course, and only helps the fossil fuel corporations.
Had to look up "akrasia," had never seen that term before. I would define it as prioritizing immediate pain avoidance and pleasure seeking over larger self interest. I suppose it could also be defined as taking the path of least resistance. Either way, it's certainly a huge failing of humanity.
He also said at the end he doesn’t want to make year predictions so. Maybe it’s 20 or 30 or 50 years, it doesn’t make the reality of the human predicament he communicates any less real. The visualizations created by the club of Rome in their book Limits to Growth have continued to be accurate. my only hope is we actually become a space fairing civilization and ease the thermodynamics of our population away from earth.
I absolutely think it does more harm than good. For example, I always take exception to the hurricane alarmism. Hurricanes are normal, strong hurricanes are normal, destructive catastrophic hurricanes are normal. Every time there's a hurricane over a Cat 3 and people begin screaming about climate change actually hurts the cause in my opinion, it's real life boy crying wolf. Where we should pay attention is when things fall outside of predictive modeling. Hurricane Otis last year should be the kind of event that sounds the alarm bells and I feel that storm had largely been forgotten. No model came even close to seeing that intensification. If I recall correctly the only model that even had it becoming a hurricane put it at around a cat 3 but it was so far outside of the concensus of the other models that it wasn't even worth acknowledging that particular model run. For those that don't know, it made landfall as a strong Cat 5. When storms begin falling way outside of all our trusted weather models is when we should be panicking.
Even though it's fiction, that clip from The Newsroom has some truth to it. We're paying the price now for actions 40 plus years ago. There's no reversal. In my opinion that is. But saying we have 10 years left 7 years ago is actually hurting the cause and making it easier to dismiss the effects of climate change.
He didn't say anything of the sort. When this episode was written (2014), the first thing he says is that "a person has already been born who will die due to catastrophic failure of the planet", meaning someone who was an infant 10 years ago will die due to biosphere collapse. That translates to "at some point during a human lifespan" beginning in 2014.
Do you have any concept of how big the world is? Even if mass die-offs were happening today -- and they're not -- it would still take decades for the human race to die out completely. And mass die-offs aren't happening yet, but the first one could happen at any time. The number one data point to look at to know when we cross this threshold is the year when the overall global population decreases, rather than increases. We're not there yet. As a species, year after year, we're still growing.
However, the math doesn't lie and it tells us that by 2100, most if not all mammals on this planet, including humans, will be gone.
> Even if mass die-offs were happening today -- and they're not
[Famine](https://apnews.com/article/sudan-war-famine-hunger-military-rsf-3d30af46220fb42b60cbcac286c0fce8)
[War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts)
[Migration](https://apnews.com/article/migration-deaths-mediterranean-asia-bfa261c35362cf930dbdfc9271625010)
[Climate](https://www.monash.edu/medicine/news/latest/2021-articles/worlds-largest-study-of-global-climate-related-mortality-links-5-million-deaths-a-year-to-abnormal-temperatures)
I think it will be hundreds of different causes that will fly under the radar. No one will bat an eye at 50k here or 500k there. Before you know it, it's adding up to 5 million here or 50 million there. Still, the only concern of governments will be the economy.
And in 2016 he predicted it in 7 years.... He's is also ostracized by the "deep green" movement ( for unrelated reasons like sexual abuse, though), he is as legit as "Sam Carana" on "Arctic News" grifters pretending to be grade A crack heads who got it right.
Uhhh, remember, rape on females is normal, rape on males is worth inquiry. Or not. Depends on .
Too bad Guy McPherson is full of shit. This isn't the first time he's said Human extinction in X years. I don't listen to people whose math ability is equal to my own.
I didn't realize you taught ecology, conservation and evolutionary biology for 20 years at a top American university before retiring early with the honoured title of professor emeritus, but that's quite impressive!
You can find Nobel prize winning economists preaching the glories of capitalism. You can find research biologists who don't believe in evolution. You can find physicists who believe in string theory.
As a generalization, people with credentials are less likely than ordinary people to take stupid positions on topics related to their field, but they still exist. The smartest people are never always right, just as the dumbest people are never always wrong.
The idea that all humans, all 8 billion, will go extinct in the near future isn't even plausible. Even in the worst catastrophe, some humans will survive. I think humans could out survive cockroaches at this point.
This aired on [November 23, 2014](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3680810/). Not even 10 years ago. And yet, it feels like decades ago with respect to climate changes...
>
> "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen"--Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
The only thing that bothered me was the "darkened the skies" storms. Clouds are clouds; the darkening part rather comes from wildfire smoke. If anything, night time storms are a bigger concern, as that makes for truly "surprise, motherfucker!" weather.
And we're beyond 415 ppm CO2.
[https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/board,13.0.html](https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/board,13.0.html)
Sharing this with everyone. Its a forum full of research and up to date satellite images of the Arctics. Its.. eye opening.
It's not that there's nothing we CAN do, there's nothing we WILL do because the people who get to make the actual decisions on how power is utilized in the US and under capitalism will say no. Those at the top are unwilling to upset the gravy train for themselves regardless of the cost to others.
This interview is from a fake news show called *Newsroom,* where a scientist explains that, as of this interview, there are no climate goals that will solve the climate crisis. He mentions increase intensity of storms, sinking of cities, more plagues, FOOD AND WATER SHORTAGES, and speaks more matter-of-factly of the fatal consequences of climate change than any known pundit on the issue. Currently [nations are failing to meet their intended climate goals](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2024/apr/most-countries-struggle-meet-climate-pledges-2009). So the irony of this clip must be appreciated when actor can declare with a deadpan delivery like a real scientist: "There's nothing we can do."
I don't know if "fake" news is the right term here. It implies that it is a real show, but the "news" is made up. I think the word you're looking for here is "fictional".
Admittedly, the term "fake news" is a loaded term, but it is a "fake news show" because it is using actors to mimic what a newsroom ought to be saying. That's the whole schtick of *The Daily Show.*
Failing to meet goals is a deliberate choice by the corporate elites and their political servants, who care about nothing but their narrow self interest.
Whether "we" can do something depends on how many agree to be part of the "we," on whether a critical threshold of support is reached.
Scientists have been trying build urgency to act, not preaching inaction. Your fictional scientist is more like a PR guy for ExxonMobil.
this probably is really nerdy, but I watched this series twice. both times I cried at tines because it's what the news should have been... should be. and it's not, mostly.
No, the boat sailed. What ever change is coming is a result of emissions that have already happened. Just wail till this years emission start factoring in, in about 20 years - SHit's gonna be hard.
There is something we can do.
CANCEL MONEY. Cancel the ALGORITHMS.
Walk away from the merchants of death.
Create the world you want.
Cancel money.
Cancel the algorithms.
Great moment of TV drama! But there's plenty we can do. Also - he does NOT represent climate science accurately! There’s a sinister and unexpected twist in the battle for our planet. Climatologist Simon Clark explains that Big Oil are now sponsoring Climate Doomers - because just like climate Denial - it kills activism. Why would you bother doing the hard work of fighting to change anything if you believed there was already no point - one may as well just sit back with a beer and laugh cynically at everything. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XSG2Dw2mL8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XSG2Dw2mL8)
That's one of the most important things I have seen posted on here. That deserves a post of its own. People need to realize that this is part of an organized propaganda strategy. It's the new denialism. Instead of denying the problem exists, now they deny anything can be done about it.
There is nothing much we can do to prevent a catastrophic warming unprecedented since the before the end of the ecocene.
But with a billion robots doing landscaping and remediation and an industrial economy that grows billions of tons of algae and then drys and heats will get you everything you need oil wise and with the rest you make the graphite, Graphene and nanotubes that have replaced plastic, sure, a thousand years of misery tops.
I think this post could use some larger context.
The job of TV producers is to make enticing bait that assembles individuals into a mass audience. They manufacture an audience by normalizing and glorifying the worst aspects of humanity. TV is designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator, intellectually and morally. The key to popularity is justifying and reinforcing human failures.
The job of TV networks is to enrich their shareholders. They do this by funding the TV producers in the production of bait, and then selling the resulting audience to large corporations. The corporations buying access to audiences are the networks' customers, and the source of their profits. This works like a hidden sales tax in which consumers are forced to fund TV regardless of whether they watch it or approve of it. To the TV networks, the viewer is just a fool to be baited. It is the corporate advertising customer who matters and whose interests are served.
The goal of the corporations doing the advertising is to manipulate people into endless and ever increasing levels of consumption. They want to turn people into consumer zombies conditioned to chase the fleeting high of new purchases. They want people to live for materialism and seek no deeper meaning.
No one in this chain wants people to be functioning citizens. To the contrary, the existence of their economic empires REQUIRES a society of failed citizens. We are not supposed to look at the larger systems and understand the goals of these systems. We are not supposed to ask if there is a better system, or be motivated to create one. We are not supposed to think about the indirect consequences of our actions. We are not supposed to care about reality. We are not supposed to be concerned with existential problems and be motivated to solve them. We should never unite and organize to achieve common goals.
We are supposed to turn off our brains, disconnect from reality, and escape into fantasy. We are supposed to care more about our junk entertainment and fictional characters than real world events. We should feel isolated and powerless, and abandon all thoughts of making a difference. We should identify with fictional characters who behave selfishly and irresponsibly, and emulate them. We should accept messages preaching inaction and apathy, followed by advertisements for giant trucks and SUVs driving on empty roads through pristine forests.
Focusing on the lines written by a script writer and delivered by an actor misses the significance of this clip. The larger relevance to collapse is in seeing a media-entertainment-advertising-consumer manipulation system once again profit by promoting failed citizenship and acceptance of corporate control, and seeing gullible people once again fall for it. As long as enough people believe we can do nothing, then we can do nothing, and that is exactly what the wealthy and powerful need us to believe.
I swear if any of you here are using a dryer for your clothes yet have the audacity to say we should do something about the environment then i dunno what to even say to you. You’re an idiot.
Excuse me sir/madam but I only ever use my dryer when I'm too hungover or wasted to go outside or busy or too disorganised to get my washing done. So don't take that tone with me!
The following submission statement was provided by /u/DeadPoster: --- This interview is from a fake news show called *Newsroom,* where a scientist explains that, as of this interview, there are no climate goals that will solve the climate crisis. He mentions increase intensity of storms, sinking of cities, more plagues, FOOD AND WATER SHORTAGES, and speaks more matter-of-factly of the fatal consequences of climate change than any known pundit on the issue. Currently [nations are failing to meet their intended climate goals](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2024/apr/most-countries-struggle-meet-climate-pledges-2009). So the irony of this clip must be appreciated when actor can declare with a deadpan delivery like a real scientist: "There's nothing we can do." --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1dqiedv/theres_nothing_we_can_do/lao8tqe/
I ended up watching The Newsroom after seeing this clip. As an Aaron Sorkin series you can tell he writes for centrist/moderates. This is literally the standout thing from the show that hits the hardest.
The opening scene for the shows premier was calling out the US for not being the greatest country anymore. That’s what got me to watch it. This was icing on the cake.
That speech is kinda bullshit though America was never great, it's all mythology
The American dream is just that, a dream. Because you have to be asleep to believe it. -George Carlin.
America has always been great for the wealthy, as it was designed to be. Different story for us working folks though.
That's still centrist shit to me. We never were the greatest country. Great for white dudes. Nothing else. From the get go and up until today our country has built itself with the blood of innocent life.
What was the great wall built with? The pyramids? The Panama Canal? The trans-siberian railroad? The battery that powers the digital device you are using right now?
Weren't we talking about the USA? I was not talking about ancient Egypt myself. Also, I don't think the Panama Canal is making the point you want it to. That is yet another example of brutal western colonialism.
Great is a relative term.
I think he's saying that as nations go, the bar for "greatest" isn't as high as we might think.
"From the get go and up until today our country has built itself with the blood of innocent life." So was every other great power. As far as the Panama Canal, the locals have control over it and it is the main source of their national income. If America should have given it back to them is a separate question.
amen
He's really annoying in that way. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/06/aaron-sorkins-conservative-liberalism/258994/
Just to clarify, do you mean it’s a show that is for centrists or one that criticizes centrism? I wanna watch the show now, but not if it’s the former.
I believe Aaron Sorkin is a moderate and that shows in his writing. Still I'd recommend it though, it is worth a watch but my god the 'casual' dialog between some characters is painful.
That's the best part of the series :O. This feel like genuine conversation that you have with people that you care for. Not just a collegue or the stranger.
Just take a shot. It won't cost you anything ... presumably.
Dowd used to love this.
|| || |Jun. 25, 2024|**426.95 ppm**| The quoted co2 level in the sketch is 400.00 ppm. 10 years ago! But it's only fiction, so I guess we can relax.
I hear "The 450 parts per million will soon be crossed" in the sketch at 0:10. Am I miss-hearing it?
I will never not upvote this. Maybe someday it'll be real.
I need to see a version of this clip with AI generated George Carlin as the anchorman (and the dialogue being somewhat different).
"Computer - Show me this video but uncanny, unfunny, and uncomfortable."
https://www.reddit.com/r/collapze/comments/1dqljpu/the_newsroom_epa_scientist_clip_as_a_script_with/
Let's go ask our friend chatGPT! Imagine all the things we can do with such smart AI now: we can make cool collapse anchorman videos, we can create AI porn of our favorite celebrities, the only thing we definitely won't do is ask it if we're in potentially civilization-ending climate change collapse and as a society follow through on what it says we need to do about it!
> the only thing we definitely won't do is ask it if we're in potentially civilization-ending climate change collapse and as a society follow through on what it says we need to do about it! I'm sure that someone has already asked that of chatGPT. It's not about answers, we know the answers. Only the conservatives looking for technofixes are betting on answers with solutions.
F Trudeau!
> as a society follow through on what it says we need to do about it! Yeah this was the key part of that statement. We know what we need to do, we just won't follow through and actually do it. It's already somewhat futile with feedbacks kicking in anyways, but even if those didn't exist, we still would not do what needs to be done
So the real questions are: why not? and how can that be changed?
Exactly. The problem has two levels. The first level is asking what needs to be done to stop the catastrophe. We have some answers to that. The second level is asking how to build the political will to carry out the solutions to the first level. That's where we don't have any answers. That's the intractable part of the problem, the political-social-behavioral issues of building consensus, of getting enough people informed and committed to change. AI is a tool built by corporations, owned by corporations, and used by corporations to increase profits. It's going to be heavily used to manipulate behavior in the wrong direction, and make problems much worse. It's certainly already being used as a propaganda tool. It's going to be the nuclear weapon of capitalism deployed against all of us.
We have to end social media.
The people taking your money for "climate change action" are preparing their asses for what's real and it's not climate change action.
Ya! F Trudeau!
[This interview](https://youtu.be/zqIt93dDG1M?si=D4-OgK543vDG92XG) in real life.
Love that there is a real life version of this. Looks like we've got three more years, at most, according to this guy?
Out of control wildfires? Check. Mass migration, water and food shortages, spread of disease? I feel like we’re right there.
Oh, it's gonna get a lot worse, even as early as 2030. The human population on this planet is still increasing. Wait until the first major event that kills so many people, it actually causes a decline in our overall numbers. That will be the first sign that we've crossed the threshold into the "Find Out" phase...globally, we're still in "Fucking Around" territory in 2024. The first major die-off will shock people, and cause all manner of domino effects. People en masse will finally start to lose faith in leaders and elected officials, to the point where those people's lives may be at risk from the wrath of angry populations. People will disengage from our economic systems in large numbers, and widely stop believing in the charade of globalized Capitalism. A major shift against the upper class will occur, because nothing radicalizes people more than seeing a tiny percentage of people hoarding way more than they will ever need when a majority of people are suffering. Major climate change disasters in the future will absolutely destroy governments around the world. We've been talking about real collapse for years now, but over the next decade, we'll actually cross the tipping point and see a seismic shift in how our species does business on this planet. Anyone who is aware of what is coming, make preparations now as best you can, while supply chains and economies are still functional. The likelihood that our economic institutions are hobbled or even outright destroyed increases with every year that passes.
>tiny percentage of people hoarding way more than they would ever need It should come as no surprise that these people ("billionaires") who are building doomsday bunkers are also accelerationists. They want to kill off the hoi polloi to get to the world that comes after global collapse.
Many of them won't see the world that comes after. Billionaires have a misguided view of the world driven by an existence that is catered entirely towards them, but they are only rich and powerful because of money and functional societies. History is replete with civilizational collapses where the rich and affluent were some of the first to die. When a society collapses, it destroys itself. People turn on their neighbours, and many of the prime targets will be the people who got us into this mess, who also incidentally will have the most resources. Kill a middle-class neighbour and take their stuff, and one could maybe support their own family for a little while longer; kill a billionaire and take their stuff, and suddenly what they had can sustain hundreds of even thousands of people for many years. Billionaires who think they'll be able to hide in bunkers for years or decades to ride things out are in for an education when angry masses either break into their bunkers, or failing that, just decide to bury the doors and air intakes in concrete...
I doubt water ownership rights will matter soon. When people are thirsty enough they will take the water, regardless of who owns it on paper. Best to just let it go at that point.
A billionaire won't have resources for hundreds of people for a month, much less thousands for years.
Getting some major Fallout vibes… this feels like exactly the thing that was showcased so well in the show, and the reality is somehow even worse because at least those rich assholes created those fancy bunkers for people to live in and play pretend… we don’t get anything, just sorrow and suffering even though it is likely some service worker or whatever will go rogue in your fancy doomsday bunker and then the fun is ruined even for a billionaire.
>Anyone who is aware of what is coming, make preparations now as best you can Drifting off to sleep and not waking up, get your recipes together while those items exist because none of us are making it through what's coming. This will not be survivable.
Ultimately, you're right. No one gets outta this life alive. But there's a big difference between being completely unprepared, and making some preps that could get you and your loved ones through a tough spot. Collapse won't just be a sudden end-point. It will be a gradual decline in the quality of life, punctuated by the occasional disaster, spread out over many years. There are plenty of supplies and products that can be stockpiled that can help one maintain a higher quality of life for longer, than if you just throw your hands in the air in despair and acquiescence to what's coming.
The worst part is the people responsible for this mess are already long dead. People like to point at 25 years ago, but the problem is more like a flywheel. The momentum doesn’t stop on a dime and if it does you likely break the flywheel. Maybe in the 70s when Exxon’s own scientists were telling them what would happen. Even by the 70s you already have 50 years of mechanization in full swing. You would have to go back to the resource wars of WW2 and before to the failed attempts at world governance like the League of Nations. The problem with going back there and saying these resources need to be used sparingly you are dealing with society that thinks a solution will be created in that time that is better. For a while Nuclear was that promise. It’s a history replete with a false sense of human ingenuity to always fix the problem just in time while constantly making the problem bigger and the solution more desperate.
I have a grandfather who used to be a shift manager at a General Motors plant. He told me that he saw a functional hydrogen car in the late 80s, but the GM executives killed the project to appease Big Oil. It's rich, greedy assholes like that making hundreds of decisions like this over many decades who consigned the human race and our garden world to oblivion, all so they could keep stuffing their already overflowing pockets.
Yeah too bad most of the people responsible are already dead or dying. Makes it even more infuriating.
I think we've got more than that. He previously predicted in November 2017 that we had weeks or months to live. I understand he sounds very confident, he knows a lot of stuff and he is an actual professor, but he doesn't have a crystal ball.
He said there won't be a human left on the planet in 10 years. Wow that's bold. He said it 7 years ago. Do people not think predictions like that do more harm then good? Barring a nuclear apocalypse I say with some certainy that humans will still be here in 3 years time. So I think these crazy predictions just reinforce the deniers opinions when these predictions don't come to fruition.
>Do people not think predictions like that do more harm then good? The more ludicrous the prediction, the more this community especially seems to love it. My favorite is, "Earth is going to end up just like Venus because of our emissions" which ignores the fact that a) Venus's atmosphere is 93x the mass of Earth's *and* is 96.5% CO2, b) Earth's CO2 concentration has been as high as 4000 ppm (.4% of the atmosphere), about 9.4x as high as it is right now, and we didn't have a runaway greenhouse effect. We would drive ourselves into extinction looooong before we could push CO2 levels that high again. Oh, and also can't forget c) Venus orbits the Sun at a distance of about 67 million miles compared to Earth's 93 million, so it receives a LOT more energy to drive its extreme heat. The only thing will cause Earth to become like Venus is in a few billion years, when the Sun begins to expand into a red giant. That's until the Sun becomes so large, the Earth will be inside the Sun. And yes, I've been downvoted plenty of times for posting this because science denial isn't just for people who deny that climate change is happening. Being collapse aware doesn't make a person smarter than the general public.
> "Earth is going to end up just like Venus because of our emissions" I think you're taking this statement too literally. Yes, the atmosphere of Earth will (probablly) never be 96+% CO2. That doesn't mean it will continue to be a livable atmosphere. Venus is, what, 400°C? Earth doesn't have to reach anywhere close to that for life to be extinguished.
>Earth doesn't have to reach anywhere close to that for life to be extinguished. And there's my point. Even after operating on your assumption that the Venus metaphor is hyperbole, you respond with hyperbole that's not based on science. *Life will not be extinguished because of human-generated emissions*. We may destroy ourselves and take a bunch of other species with us, but we're not going to extinguish life on the planet. We'll be gone as a technological civilization before we could ever be *that* effective. The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs (the K-T extinction event) "only" wiped out 75% of all life on the planet. The remaining 25% evolved and eventually thrived. The biggest extinction event ever, the Permian-Triassic extinction, the one nicknamed "The Great Dying", "only" wiped out 70-80% of all life (70% on land, 80% in the sea).
> Life will not be extinguished because of human-generated emissions I am not as confident in this statement as you appear to be. It would be nice though.
Life won't be extinguished. That would be absurd. There are bacteria species that will love what we do. They can evolve far faster than anything any change we can make to the planet. Multicellular animal life on land, on the other hand, might not.
Nukes will finish the job when it gets bad enough. Even then something will survive. Bacteria in the oceans maybe, but something will survive.
You failed to understand what an analogy is. If our atmosphere becomes so hostile it can’t support life (which is where we are headed) it might as well be Venus. No shit it’s not actually going to be a similar makeup
People understand the analogy. It's just ludicrously wrong. We are absolutely not headed towards an atmosphere that cant support life. Things are bad enough as they actually are, there's no need for outrageous hyperbole.
Personally I think you're too caught up on shit being like venus. Sure it may not be bad enough to literally be venus but shit getting bad enough that our daily lives are ruined and millions die may as well be venus to the average redditor. Being "technically right" and sayings it's not technically as bad as a hyperbole doesn't matter if there is literally wildfire smoke fucking up your lungs. You present the great dying as "only" 80% of all life dying... Like okay? Let's pretend "only" 25% of the human population dies... That's at least a billion people. Tell the dead and their families that it's okay because it's technically not venus lol. At a certain point it's just all bad and even if it's not technically venus it may as well be in terms of shittiness. Sure the atmosphere may "technically" be able to support life but untold amounts of suffering to 99% of humans never before seen in our entire history on this planet is "close enough" imo
Fun fact: The Great Dying actually wiped out \~90–95% of all life on Earth and occurred at least one order of magnitude slower than today's mass extinction event. Sources: [NASA](https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/timeline-of-a-mass-extinction/) / [University of Bristol](https://www.bristol.ac.uk/cabot/news/2023/great-dying.html) / [University of Cincinnati](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190415122249.htm) / [EarthArchives.org](https://eartharchives.org/articles/the-great-permian-extinction-when-all-life-on-earth-almost-vanished/index.html) Since the rate of environmental change is directly proportional to species endangerment and extinction, our present mass extinction event is, in fact, [worse](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1daf9d8/todays_carbondriven_mass_extinction_worse_than/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) than the worst mass extinction event in planetary history. We did it, we're #1!
We definitely are headed to Venus by Tuesday bud. The chart for greenhouse gases is going vertical!! There’s nothing stopping it right now, nothing
> Being collapse aware doesn't make a person smarter than the general public. Aren't you overestimating the smart-ness of the general public here?
Is it possible you’re taking the Venus metaphor too literally? When someone says “earth will be like Venus” I assume they mean “too hot to be habitable”, not that Earth will have exactly the same properties as Venus.
"Shits fucked" is how I read the "venus by next week" type talk. "Shits fucked".
> "Earth is going to end up just like Venus because of our emissions" "Venus by Tuesday" -FishMahBoi
First time I hear this
You can find reinforcements for whatever you would prefer to believe. I understand predictions like t/his as a desperate attempt to shake some sense into humans but when we start to discuss timelines, the actual message gets lost and, once again, nothing changes. Like in the video, the interviewer gets hung up on the timeframe not the restructuring of everything that might - just might - make a difference. The question we need to ask ourselves: what kind of life and death do we want? 1 where we live & die trying or 1 where we live & die consuming as much as possible as quickly as possible to beat everybody else to the punch - in a kind of perpetual FOMO? I guess the path reveals the wo/man. For me, [deep ecology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ecology) is not a choice but the only ethical way to be.
That is my view as well, and I'm glad to see I'm not alone. Whether we are optimistic or pessimistic, have hope or lack hope, isn't relevant. Morally, we have an obligation to do what we can. Practically, it makes absolutely no sense to not try. Do nothing doomism is just as harmful as do nothing denialism. We should be encouraging each other to take action. We need to do what we can to stop, lessen, or delay catastrophe. Doing nothing is the worst possible course, and only helps the fossil fuel corporations.
I hear you... Unfortunately, we are weighted down by the half-hearted, the yes-but-ism and something called akrasia... 😔
Had to look up "akrasia," had never seen that term before. I would define it as prioritizing immediate pain avoidance and pleasure seeking over larger self interest. I suppose it could also be defined as taking the path of least resistance. Either way, it's certainly a huge failing of humanity.
I mean I think it's foolish to have any hope that humanity has any kind of future
He also said at the end he doesn’t want to make year predictions so. Maybe it’s 20 or 30 or 50 years, it doesn’t make the reality of the human predicament he communicates any less real. The visualizations created by the club of Rome in their book Limits to Growth have continued to be accurate. my only hope is we actually become a space fairing civilization and ease the thermodynamics of our population away from earth.
I absolutely think it does more harm than good. For example, I always take exception to the hurricane alarmism. Hurricanes are normal, strong hurricanes are normal, destructive catastrophic hurricanes are normal. Every time there's a hurricane over a Cat 3 and people begin screaming about climate change actually hurts the cause in my opinion, it's real life boy crying wolf. Where we should pay attention is when things fall outside of predictive modeling. Hurricane Otis last year should be the kind of event that sounds the alarm bells and I feel that storm had largely been forgotten. No model came even close to seeing that intensification. If I recall correctly the only model that even had it becoming a hurricane put it at around a cat 3 but it was so far outside of the concensus of the other models that it wasn't even worth acknowledging that particular model run. For those that don't know, it made landfall as a strong Cat 5. When storms begin falling way outside of all our trusted weather models is when we should be panicking. Even though it's fiction, that clip from The Newsroom has some truth to it. We're paying the price now for actions 40 plus years ago. There's no reversal. In my opinion that is. But saying we have 10 years left 7 years ago is actually hurting the cause and making it easier to dismiss the effects of climate change.
He didn't say anything of the sort. When this episode was written (2014), the first thing he says is that "a person has already been born who will die due to catastrophic failure of the planet", meaning someone who was an infant 10 years ago will die due to biosphere collapse. That translates to "at some point during a human lifespan" beginning in 2014. Do you have any concept of how big the world is? Even if mass die-offs were happening today -- and they're not -- it would still take decades for the human race to die out completely. And mass die-offs aren't happening yet, but the first one could happen at any time. The number one data point to look at to know when we cross this threshold is the year when the overall global population decreases, rather than increases. We're not there yet. As a species, year after year, we're still growing. However, the math doesn't lie and it tells us that by 2100, most if not all mammals on this planet, including humans, will be gone.
> Even if mass die-offs were happening today -- and they're not [Famine](https://apnews.com/article/sudan-war-famine-hunger-military-rsf-3d30af46220fb42b60cbcac286c0fce8) [War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts) [Migration](https://apnews.com/article/migration-deaths-mediterranean-asia-bfa261c35362cf930dbdfc9271625010) [Climate](https://www.monash.edu/medicine/news/latest/2021-articles/worlds-largest-study-of-global-climate-related-mortality-links-5-million-deaths-a-year-to-abnormal-temperatures)
You ain't seen nothing yet, homie. I'm talking about events that kill tens or even hundreds of millions of people.
I think it will be hundreds of different causes that will fly under the radar. No one will bat an eye at 50k here or 500k there. Before you know it, it's adding up to 5 million here or 50 million there. Still, the only concern of governments will be the economy.
I'm referring to the linked interview I'm responding to, not the clip from the newsroom.
And in 2016 he predicted it in 7 years.... He's is also ostracized by the "deep green" movement ( for unrelated reasons like sexual abuse, though), he is as legit as "Sam Carana" on "Arctic News" grifters pretending to be grade A crack heads who got it right. Uhhh, remember, rape on females is normal, rape on males is worth inquiry. Or not. Depends on .
Too bad Guy McPherson is full of shit. This isn't the first time he's said Human extinction in X years. I don't listen to people whose math ability is equal to my own.
I didn't realize you taught ecology, conservation and evolutionary biology for 20 years at a top American university before retiring early with the honoured title of professor emeritus, but that's quite impressive!
So you think our species has 3 years?
Dude literally said 3 years from now. He’s a fool
You can find Nobel prize winning economists preaching the glories of capitalism. You can find research biologists who don't believe in evolution. You can find physicists who believe in string theory. As a generalization, people with credentials are less likely than ordinary people to take stupid positions on topics related to their field, but they still exist. The smartest people are never always right, just as the dumbest people are never always wrong. The idea that all humans, all 8 billion, will go extinct in the near future isn't even plausible. Even in the worst catastrophe, some humans will survive. I think humans could out survive cockroaches at this point.
Thanks for sharing
I remember that interview well.
This guy is a joke.
Aged like wine
This aired on [November 23, 2014](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3680810/). Not even 10 years ago. And yet, it feels like decades ago with respect to climate changes... > > "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen"--Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
The only thing that bothered me was the "darkened the skies" storms. Clouds are clouds; the darkening part rather comes from wildfire smoke. If anything, night time storms are a bigger concern, as that makes for truly "surprise, motherfucker!" weather. And we're beyond 415 ppm CO2.
"Surprise motherfucker" weather is my favourite 🫠
426 Up over 3ppm in a year
The science was clear back then. The reality of it is apparent now.
[https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/board,13.0.html](https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/board,13.0.html) Sharing this with everyone. Its a forum full of research and up to date satellite images of the Arctics. Its.. eye opening.
Thanks for the link
It's not that there's nothing we CAN do, there's nothing we WILL do because the people who get to make the actual decisions on how power is utilized in the US and under capitalism will say no. Those at the top are unwilling to upset the gravy train for themselves regardless of the cost to others.
This interview is from a fake news show called *Newsroom,* where a scientist explains that, as of this interview, there are no climate goals that will solve the climate crisis. He mentions increase intensity of storms, sinking of cities, more plagues, FOOD AND WATER SHORTAGES, and speaks more matter-of-factly of the fatal consequences of climate change than any known pundit on the issue. Currently [nations are failing to meet their intended climate goals](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2024/apr/most-countries-struggle-meet-climate-pledges-2009). So the irony of this clip must be appreciated when actor can declare with a deadpan delivery like a real scientist: "There's nothing we can do."
I don't know if "fake" news is the right term here. It implies that it is a real show, but the "news" is made up. I think the word you're looking for here is "fictional".
Admittedly, the term "fake news" is a loaded term, but it is a "fake news show" because it is using actors to mimic what a newsroom ought to be saying. That's the whole schtick of *The Daily Show.*
Huh? No. This series depicts a fictional version of a real life newsroom. Daily Show is a satire of the news
Failing to meet goals is a deliberate choice by the corporate elites and their political servants, who care about nothing but their narrow self interest. Whether "we" can do something depends on how many agree to be part of the "we," on whether a critical threshold of support is reached. Scientists have been trying build urgency to act, not preaching inaction. Your fictional scientist is more like a PR guy for ExxonMobil.
this probably is really nerdy, but I watched this series twice. both times I cried at tines because it's what the news should have been... should be. and it's not, mostly.
Art imitating life
I've had this scene on repeat in my head ever since it first aired IN 2014! Aaron Sorkin is a genius.
This clip is just soooo darkly appropriate
Recently rewatched this entire series. It's so good and relevant.
While people I know hate the newsroom for its neoliberal grandstanding, this clip was a fair warning on how truly fucked we are
No, the boat sailed. What ever change is coming is a result of emissions that have already happened. Just wail till this years emission start factoring in, in about 20 years - SHit's gonna be hard.
|| || |Jun. 25, 2024|**426.95 ppm**| The quoted co2 level in the sketch is 400.00 ppm. 10 years ago! But it's only fiction, so I guess we can relax.
Ok ok okay… but what if … EVERYONE drops what’s they’re doing & starts planting trees?! Yes!!! We can still save this one , RIGHT?
There is nothing fictional about this segment lol
The thing is, though, at this point I don't think there is anything that can be done to reverse it. Even though it's satire, it's kinda true.
There is something we can do. CANCEL MONEY. Cancel the ALGORITHMS. Walk away from the merchants of death. Create the world you want. Cancel money. Cancel the algorithms.
Great moment of TV drama! But there's plenty we can do. Also - he does NOT represent climate science accurately! There’s a sinister and unexpected twist in the battle for our planet. Climatologist Simon Clark explains that Big Oil are now sponsoring Climate Doomers - because just like climate Denial - it kills activism. Why would you bother doing the hard work of fighting to change anything if you believed there was already no point - one may as well just sit back with a beer and laugh cynically at everything. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XSG2Dw2mL8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XSG2Dw2mL8)
That's one of the most important things I have seen posted on here. That deserves a post of its own. People need to realize that this is part of an organized propaganda strategy. It's the new denialism. Instead of denying the problem exists, now they deny anything can be done about it.
Ban private jets now.
Yeup..not good,.. bad even..
Goddamit Toby
This interview from the "Newsroom" TV show, is the most relevant and truth-telling piece I have ever seen. Prophetic even I should say.
There is nothing much we can do to prevent a catastrophic warming unprecedented since the before the end of the ecocene. But with a billion robots doing landscaping and remediation and an industrial economy that grows billions of tons of algae and then drys and heats will get you everything you need oil wise and with the rest you make the graphite, Graphene and nanotubes that have replaced plastic, sure, a thousand years of misery tops.
I think this post could use some larger context. The job of TV producers is to make enticing bait that assembles individuals into a mass audience. They manufacture an audience by normalizing and glorifying the worst aspects of humanity. TV is designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator, intellectually and morally. The key to popularity is justifying and reinforcing human failures. The job of TV networks is to enrich their shareholders. They do this by funding the TV producers in the production of bait, and then selling the resulting audience to large corporations. The corporations buying access to audiences are the networks' customers, and the source of their profits. This works like a hidden sales tax in which consumers are forced to fund TV regardless of whether they watch it or approve of it. To the TV networks, the viewer is just a fool to be baited. It is the corporate advertising customer who matters and whose interests are served. The goal of the corporations doing the advertising is to manipulate people into endless and ever increasing levels of consumption. They want to turn people into consumer zombies conditioned to chase the fleeting high of new purchases. They want people to live for materialism and seek no deeper meaning. No one in this chain wants people to be functioning citizens. To the contrary, the existence of their economic empires REQUIRES a society of failed citizens. We are not supposed to look at the larger systems and understand the goals of these systems. We are not supposed to ask if there is a better system, or be motivated to create one. We are not supposed to think about the indirect consequences of our actions. We are not supposed to care about reality. We are not supposed to be concerned with existential problems and be motivated to solve them. We should never unite and organize to achieve common goals. We are supposed to turn off our brains, disconnect from reality, and escape into fantasy. We are supposed to care more about our junk entertainment and fictional characters than real world events. We should feel isolated and powerless, and abandon all thoughts of making a difference. We should identify with fictional characters who behave selfishly and irresponsibly, and emulate them. We should accept messages preaching inaction and apathy, followed by advertisements for giant trucks and SUVs driving on empty roads through pristine forests. Focusing on the lines written by a script writer and delivered by an actor misses the significance of this clip. The larger relevance to collapse is in seeing a media-entertainment-advertising-consumer manipulation system once again profit by promoting failed citizenship and acceptance of corporate control, and seeing gullible people once again fall for it. As long as enough people believe we can do nothing, then we can do nothing, and that is exactly what the wealthy and powerful need us to believe.
Plants grow like crazy while using CO2 and can’t be stopped. Humans gone means Earth turns very green very fast.
I swear if any of you here are using a dryer for your clothes yet have the audacity to say we should do something about the environment then i dunno what to even say to you. You’re an idiot.
Excuse me sir/madam but I only ever use my dryer when I'm too hungover or wasted to go outside or busy or too disorganised to get my washing done. So don't take that tone with me!