HAHA, LEOPARDS EATING FACES RULES! THIS IS AWESOME!

OH NO, MY DELICIOUS SUCCULENT FACE!

If that’s what we’re meaning when we talk about “tipping points”, yes, they exist. But as you yourself said, “We don’t necessarily understand exactly how close we are.” The idea that passing some arbitrary line like “1.5 degrees” is a point of no return is unscientific nonsense, and that’s what the vast majority of people mean when they say “tipping points.”

And the point is, none of that changes the need to keep working towards improvement. Every fraction of a degree less the planet heats will make a difference. Even as monumental climate changes occur, those changes can be lessened, their impact reduced, by any amount that we decarbonise the atmosphere.

If you’re under the impression that I’m arguing against climate change being real in any way shape or form, or that I’m arguing against it being utterly catastrophic, you’ve missed my point so badly that you might as well be reading it in a different language. My point is very, very simple; there is never a point where we get to give up.

No matter what happens, every effort to reduce the damage to our climate will save lives. Things can always be worse, and because things can always be worse it ontologically follows that things can always be better, even when the definition of "better’ is “fewer people die.”

The fight isn’t lost or won. Get those concepts out of your mind. Suzuki - as brilliant as he may be - is an idiot for invoking them like this. He’s speaking about a very limited, very specific piece of the fight, but he should have understood that the public would take his words entirely out of context. The people who want to poison and destroy our planet for profit are, right now, actively pushing the propaganda that the battle against climate change is over. They are wrong, and they are lying. The battle against climate change is a battle to reduce harm, and you can always reduce harm, now matter how great the scale of the eventual harm may be.

The comforting fantasy is the idea that we can throw up our hands and say “We lost.”

Losing is easy. It demands nothing from us. Losing has no call to action. If we’ve lost, then there’s no fight left to be fought.

The reality is that the fight is always worth fighting. And that sucks, because it means we never get to give up. We never get to say “It’s over”, and stop caring. Caring is a lot harder.

Does not remotely address my point. We can always - always - work to reduce the harm caused by climate change.

The point where the harm could be reduced to “none” is decades past us. If that’s the point where you give up then fuck off. Climate change is actively causing harm as we speak, and it is still worth fighting. We can still make life better for ourselves and future generations.

The notion that climate change is some kind of runaway engine that will continue amok without any further human input is nonsense. Yes, I’m aware of ideas like “Permafrost methane bombs” and I’ve also done enough research to be aware that only a small fringe of climate scientists actually support those ideas. They’re flashy and exciting and get big press, but they are not widely accepted climate science.

What climate science shows is that the climate actually responds faster to reductions in CO2 than our older models predicted. That means that debacarbonization can have real and meaningful positive impacts beyond what we previously thought possible.

There is real damage already done, and there is damage that we cannot undo, but there is never a point where the problem goes beyond our input. The climate fight is always worth fighting.

Even if we do pass some kind of “tipping point” (and you need to understand that every tipping point is just an arbitrary line that climate scientists draw to try to draw people’s attention to the problem), we can still mitigate the damage. There is never a point where fighting climate change becomes worthless. The less we do now, the greater the damage will be in the future. That’s all there is to it. Tipping points are just a way of illustrating that.

That’s why it’s an analogy, and not reality.

There is no point where hitting the brakes will not help. We can always reduce the amount of harm done.

Let’s be clear about something; climate scientists almost universally agree that there is no such thing as “winning” or “losing” the fight against climate change (Suzuki, for the record, is a zoologist, not a climate scientist). This isn’t a game, there’s no referee, and no one gets a trophy at the end.

The battle against climate change is about mitigating harm. The worse we do, the more harm there will be. But there is never a point where it is “too late”. The car is going to crash, but the sooner you hit the brakes, the less damaging the impact will be. Everything we do to push the needle will save lives. There is never a point where we get to throw up our hands and succumb to the comforting fantasy that it’s “too late” to change anything.

I have a lot of respect for Suzuki, and I don’t blame him for feeling defeated with everything that’s happening, but spreading this kind of message is, dangerous, damaging, and flies entirely in the face of the science.

Being a country singer from Burlington is so fucking funny to me. Like, that is the most middle class, suburban place you could possibly live. The entire city is just an endless sea of overpriced chain restaurants. This man has never smelled manure in his life.

Meanwhile in Hong Kong…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuenyeung

What unholy AI bullshit is that cover image? If your butthole looks like that you’re problems aren’t in the future, they’re right now.

How does this compare to something like Appsmith or Budibase?

Cool. So let’s get this passed, and then work on those other things.

Autarky.

That’s the four dollar word for when a nation closes off all forms of outside trade and supplies all its own needs internally.

It doesn’t work.

And it’s a core tenet of fascism.

The reason why autarky appeals is because an autarkic nation can freely engage in hostilities with anyone they want to, without fear, because they don’t depend on anyone else for anything. See Nazi Germany.

It’s an incredibly stupid notion. While unrestricted free trade is not by any means good, some amount of trade is simply far more effective and efficient than trying to be an island. And trade is an excellent means of extending soft power.

Trump hates soft power. He doesn’t understand it, so it’s bad. To him, hard power is the only thing that matters. Being the biggest, the strongest, the toughest. It’s the politics of a bully. He wants an army with a nation attached, endlessly manufacturing weapons, food and medicine to supply the troops as they goose-step across the world.

Also because cars create a huge number of negative externalities that impose additional costs on society as a whole. Pollution, climate damage, accidents, wear and tear on roads and other infrastructure, increased public transit costs because transit has to contend with traffic, etc. As someone who does drive, I absolutely should be made to pay for those costs.

They don’t know. I’ve talked to Albertans about this, and when you actually ask them what they’re mad about, they struggle to answer. They’ve grown up being taught that everyone else in Canada is fucking over their province, to the point where the actual specifics don’t even matter. It’s just an article of faith.

I don’t think hope and anger are a binary choice. As the saying goes, you have to hate something to change it.

I want an NDP that brings hope to people who are angry, by sharing in their anger and pain, and offering a way forward. Those things can build on each other.

I’m hoping someone can convince Charlie Angus to unretire and make a run for leader.

He did, and he’s stepping down as party leader. Personally, I think it’s a good thing. His leadership has been far too soft and cuddly. The NDP need a leader who will channel the anger a lot of Canadians are feeling at watching their quality of life get sold off to oligarchs.

Hard to even be mad about it. It’s just someone fucking around. Wikipedia would be a very bad place to be looking for early election results anyway so no harm done.

It’s the subtle attempts to skew articles towards a particular agenda that really bother me. Stuff like this is just whatever.

He’s setting himself up to be the new leader of the CPC. And it’s probably going to work.