Ask Lemmy

I don‘t. I‘m accepting that i, as an individual, will not be able to impact it and so i‘m pretty much going with it. Humanity will survive, thats for sure but i make sure to make the most of it in the time where it‘s still bearable.

The biggest threat to your life from climate change is this kind of doomerism making you suicidal. I've been down that road myself.

Either get off your ass and do something about it or stop worrying about it. You're not helping anyone by making yourself sad.

I bike as much as possible instead of driving and lobby my local government for zoning reform.

I'm a silly goose with young kids and I've been head-in-the-sand trying to deal with my own survival. Once I had an iota of stability, I started to let the outside world in again and often wish I hadn't.

I estimate I live in a place least likely to be dramatically affected by climate change, early on. It's not like I'm in Florida and can't afford to insure my home any longer because of hurricane risk. It's not like I'm likely to be one of the 1.2 billion climate refugees by 2050.

So I try to take little steps to get prepared for something I never thought I'd need to be prepared for. We're growing more and more of our own food, we're expanding our water/food stores and storage. We plan to get a solar system soon (so we're the 1/10 that makes it through an extended grid outage), while global supply chains still function.

I've started a little (20TB) apocalypse library, full of illustrated guides, youtube videos, books, and resources.

My biggest stumbling block is starting community. I generally don't like people and as you've seen in this thread, most people don't take climate change seriously.

And, as someone else said... weed and time in nature.

I joined a climate activism group in my local area, frankly it's the best possible way to deal with it. You can make a difference, the messaging we get is often intended to make us feel powerless to keep people from protesting, but it's actually one of the most empowering ways to deal with it. Being with a group of passionate people amplifies your ability to effect change, and given how broken many of our governments are, it's necessary. The biggest thing stopping us from forcing big changes is our lack of numbers, solidarity is strength.

It certainly beats sitting around feeling angry and stressed.

Does it hit anyone else like a bolt of lightning that probably I - we - won't die of old age?

Wait, do you actually believe this?

Solar panels to run the aircon.

Just have to hope no storm blows the house down.

Would like an electric car but it's out of my financial reach at this time, so keep the old car repaired and running.

I become a stauncher anti-capitalist every day, since capitalism and its unsustainable and literally impossible aim of infinite growth, and the greed and corruption it encourages, is why climate change is not only happening but also not being treated seriously, and abolishing it is the only hope we have of dealing with the damage climate change will bring and try and minimize it going forward (since its past the point of stopping it entirely).

The whole point of those responsible shifting blame on to individuals who have nothing to do with the decisions that got us here, nor the profits they make, is to get you to the point you're at now - hopelessness which leads to inaction, or desperation that leads to futile action (like banning straws or paying to reduce your "carbon footprint" - a term they made up for this exact purpose, and so on, all of which are there to make sure you're criticising your neighbour for their recycling habits instead of the companies that say they're recycling and get paid to but really send the garbage directly to landfill, or to a developing nation already drowning in western trash).

What you actually need to be is angry and focused, to ensure your anger is aimed at the right people and the systems they uphold that got us here. Those systems are not natural or inevitable or immutable, they are artificially created by and for the benefit of a really small group of humans, a group we could easily be rid of if we actually united to do so.

Poorly. We basically didn't have a winter here in Chicago and the summer has been marked by severe storms.

I'm mostly just staying inside this time of year. I personally likely will not die of climate change as I'm privileged enough to be able to keep moving when I need, but I probably will die from micro plastic induced cancer.

Weed mostly

Got a vasectomy, because I live in the South and won't risk bringing a kid into the world.

Where did you get the idea that you’re not going to die of old age?

My only hope is that I'll be dead by the time the water wars begin.

Badly. Really, not much more that I can say about it. The future terrifies me.

related... There are now ac/heat pump mini split units that are set up to be linked directly to solar panel systems and run offgrid or with grid assist.
This is great for a few reasons:

1. solar radiance and need for cooling are related.
2. if you hook directly to solar you don't need to convert AC current to DC and lose 10-20% of the energy.
3. if you dont tie the system to the grid, you might be able to avoid the use induction effect. That is, installing air conditioning tends to make people use more grid energy.
4. It also helps with adding solar capacity to people who have electrical issues in their house and can't get typical solar install, or who can't add more solar capacity due to net metering edicts by their utilities, or dont want to pull permits for electrical work.

I've had my eye on a system from Airspool here in the US - should help with these warmer summers and help offset a little of the heating need in the winter too.

I would look into a full central system - but I have a relatively new gas furnace and can't justify replacing it and dealing with all the required electrical work.

I've been keeping my mind busy, learning actionable skills and survival stuff. I am learning foraging, growing food, I've made a real decision to not reserve my happiness for retirement, as that day isn't guaranteed but today is. I convert the worry into little reminders about how today is the most important time to do the thing. I live immediacy and radical self reliance. I recycle, upcycle, reuse, buy second hand, adopt, occasionally dumpster dive, and reduce my negative impact on the planet. I donate to charities that help people in crisis, so more people can enjoy today while they have it. Also, instead of anxious, I get high.

100mg Fluvoxamine and 5-10mg Diazepam a day seems to be working for me.

We live on an ocean-going sailboat. We make our own water and electricity. We have ~25 years of membranes, filters, and most parts. While we have the means to move around to cooler climes, going further northward means more severe storms and shorter working life of everything. So there's that consideration.

Having the escape hatch of the boat does a lot to ease the anxiety.

Other coping mechanisms:

• fixing people's bicycles for free and evangelizing micro-mobility
• monitoring and mapping marine health in maritime communities (kelp, fish counts, bottom conditions); yes this is "just" monitoring, but one measurement is worth 1000 opinions and hopefully helps to move the needle on getting everyone to pull together on environmental protections
• community education on aeroponics and micro-hydroponics
• community support on emergency preparedness

I'm sure I'm skipping over some of my other copium prescriptions, but those are the most salient.

I do what I can to reduce my own CO2 footprint - mostly for my own conscience.
In every election I vote for the party with the most focus on CO2 reduction that has a good chance of making it into parlament.
I chose both my work and home specifically so I don't need a car to commute, and am completely safe from "once in a lifetime" floods (which will probably happen every other year soon).
I could make decently more money and rent more living space elsewhere.

Otherwise I don't worry. Cause what else is there to do?
I could die in the climate wars, in an epic storm, in a new pandemic...
Or quietly in my bed at age 100 like my grandparents, who survived 2 world wars, the cold war, and 4 revolutions.
Who knows?

I'm mostly very curious how this all plays out. I'm also a bit worried, but there's not much I can do about that anyway, so whatever.

I wish I could travel a thousand years into the future and read all the history books.

I think these are very interesting times (and as we all know, it sucks to live in interesting times) with all the innovations and political desicions. Even the failures and missed opportunities. It's all very interesting.

The Earth has been much hotter than the worst-case scenario for anthropogenic climate change. (It used to be rainforests-at-the-North-pole hot.) Climate change isn't going to kill you unless you're both extremely poor (by global standards, not by first-world standards) and unlucky, although it may significantly reduce your quality of life as resources are redirected to mitigation. Where do these "mass death everywhere" ideas come from? They're not a product of the scientific consensus.

As for me: it seems like the climate where I live is getting warmer. There has been much less snow recently than there was when I was a kid; it's convenient but unsettling. The summers are getting hotter too, although the difference isn't as dramatic. I'd like to move to somewhere further north, or maybe a place like coastal California which is without temperature extremes, but I would want to do that even if the climate wasn't changing.

I do my best to limit plastic use and eat less meat. But that's a mosquitoes fart compared to all the pollution that can easily prevented by the players that matter. Governments still choose fossil over nuclear, not enough subsidy on fossil alternatives that we could have had decades ago etc.

Yesterday I had a climate change anxiety attack. I came to the conclusion that despite wanting to have children, I shouldn't because the earth is currently dying underneath our feet. Watching outside my window, a cat I've been taking care of brought her litter of kittens to take shelter under my awning, and it had me feeling very bitter, that I would never know the blissful highs and devastating lows of parenthood. All the joy and pain and love that embodies raising a child, past generations have forfeit through destructive environmental/corporate/profit-centered policies.

I was able to calm myself down, oddly enough through a few memes I saw. one of which being an old cunieform tablet that had a transcription of a man from Assyria decrying how the world was falling apart back in 1200 BC. And the second, one of Neil Degrasse Tyson saying simply, "If we can geo-engineer other planets, we can certainly fix our own."

Made me feel a little more hopeful, that we could still prevent the worst of it, and perhaps fix what we couldn't prevent.

Still not sure about having kids though. If I still even can, with the level of microplastic in my testes, and PFAS everywhere else.