Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
I think most people would rather die at the age of 90 from heart failure than at the age of 9 from smallpox.
Those are valid concerns, but the trends were moving in the right direction until recently. I'm concerned about backsliding too, but it's not clear whether we're seeing a long-term reversal or just some turbulence.
This is a picture of the Cuyahoga River on fire in 1969. Here's a look at the air in Los Angeles in the 1970s.
We've come a long way on environmental protection in the past half century. We still have a long way to go, and as with other issues, there has been some backsliding. I'm pretty optimistic about the long-term trend.
Believe me, I like your optimism.
If you are talking about the US, it is actively dismantling those protections now. I mean look at the fact that they are still growing corn(!) to make ethanol to put in gasoline. What a waste.
I agree LA looks better now than in the 70's, but even with all the effort it still is US's smoggiest city for 25th time in 26 years.
But look at all the other places were the pollution is dust and heavy metals like the Salt Lake in Utah. All the water diversion, and climate change, is going to come to a reckoning. Look at the water system that feeds LA (Owens Lake), it is the largest human-caused dust storm sources in the United States. They are trying to fix it, but what can be done?
This is happening all over the world. I think we are well beyond being able to mitigate this.
Warmest artic temperatures ever, with more than double the global rate of temperature change. Melting of permafrost and ice at an all time record high rate. Lowest sea level ice, June snow cover extent is half what it was 60 years ago. 200 Alaskan watersheds are now orange with iron and other elements that are polluting them that were not there a decade ago. Whole communities are being relocated and we are just starting to see the effects. Something like 250 million people will be displaced from rising water by 2050. 45 million people were displaced in 2024 from heat, with a projection of 2.8 billion likely to become heat refuges. The worst part of both of those things is that also means crops are going to be displaced too.
I believe all of this will cause the wealthiest to see opportunity to extract and plunder instead of understanding the implications and trying to mitigate it. I believe people will be convinced that they need to take it before someone else does. People seem extremely stupid or selfish. It makes me wonder if we aren't seeing long term covid brain at this point.
We could go on and on with environmental problems, and we are stating to see impacts like I mentioned before:
Youth and Young Adult mortality rates are increasing. Heat related mortality for people over 65 is up 85% since 2017. That's half a million people a year from it being too hot to live where they grew up.
I think we are way past the point of no return.