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If you are fatalistic about our future, you are part of the problem. Some of us haven't given up. [1]

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Date: 2023-07-09

Here on Daily Kos we are supposed to be about putting more and better Democrats into office. While we may disagree on what makes for a “better” Democrat at times, hopefully we can all get together on agreeing that the point of this exercise is to create a better world for the future. But with the immensity of Climate Change coming ever more into focus, a vocal minority have descended into a fatalism stating some version of “we are already dead and just don’t know it yet.” I’ll make it clear off I do not mean all the great reporting of current facts being brought to us by Meteor Blades and others.

It is true climate change has progressed far enough that a great deal of disruption is now baked in. Even if we had the political will power, we don’t have massive amounts of highly effective carbon capture machines just waiting go to immediately lower our temperature. But that doesn’t mean there are not things we can do.

Meteor Blades recently wrote about the coming farm bill working its way through congress. Agriculture has immense impact upon climate change. It’s not just what we eat, but how we grow or raise it. Industrial agriculture thins out the soil of organic material and relies heavily upon fossil fuel fertilizers. This is why Russia is a big exporter of fertilizer, it has the fossil fuels. But we don’t have to farm in this way.

You want to eat meat? Eat bison raised sustainably on perennial prairie grass. When white europeans came to the prairie states they found immensely thick and nutrient rich soil underneath all that grass. By the 1930s our style of agriculture had reduced that soil to dust. When the drought hit, great winds blew this once amazing soil into the Dust Bowl. The dust bowl would have never have happened had the agriculture remained based on prairie.

Prairie grasses go very deep trapping immense amounts of moisture with them. They also trap decaying plants and animals (and their waste) nutrients between their roots in the thick humus soil. All this soil is organic matter. And a great deal of organic matter is carbon. Here’s a basic explainer from MIT.

One of the “simplest” ways of removing carbon from the air is rebuilding our soils using organic means. We can remove a great deal of carbon from our atmosphere by trapping it in our soil again with improved agriculture techniques. These techniques also have added bonuses of better retention of rain water and greatly reduced reliance on fossil fuel fertilizers. So, by some definitions we DO have a bunch of plants just waiting to capture a bunch of carbon. We simply have to choose to do it.

THAT is the problem of climate change. It is not a problem of knowledge. We know what is happening and what to do about it. We don’t need advanced technology to solve it. New technology can certainly help in many ways, but it’s not required. What is required is political will power.

Which is why the frequency of fatalism and despondency on sites like Daily Kos is so frustrating and enraging. Giving up on this world is what WILL make climate change into the worst possible outcomes. If you want to express your fears and seek support, please do so. But don’t do so in a way trying to convince others there is no point and we’re all doomed. If you can’t control yourself, then STFU. This is a SOCIAL problem. Encouraging despondency in others doesn’t make you correct, it makes you part of the problem. We don’t need fatalism pretending to be smug, superior sounding knowledge of what will happen. Perhaps the doom trolls will turn out to be correct, but they will be part of what brings us down. Is is NOT a superior moral or virtuous position to be vocally stating there is nothing we can do.

God damit, where is the fight in everyone? Where is the will to build the better future? Hunter, some days ago, published an article talking about flying cars. In it, Hunter bemoaned the lack of a vision of a positive future . I’m not picking on Hunter here individually but pointing out that the comments section wasn’t filled with denouncements of the assumption of no positive future.

I get that some of you will not be alive to endure the damage that is most likely coming. But if you aren’t helping to mitigate it, PLEASE get out of the fucking way and stop with all the doom and gloom. Some of us haven’t given up yet. I’m not saying we become all Pollyanna and pretend everything will be all right and we ignore facts. No, we continue to live in a fact based world and strive to limit the damage the best we can. I recognize a good deal of damage is now locked in due to the inertia of the problem. But it won’t be solved by hoping we kick off individually before we have to witness the worst of it.

What can we do? We can get off our buts and make it clear to our democratic politicians NOW is the time for action. We can do our best to try and change this farm bill, and future farm bills to stop the ethanol give-away and instead greatly incentivize agriculture techniques that improve soil depth and health. Pay farmers to sequester carbon.

Oh, you’ve tried to tell our politicians that, and it hasn’t worked? So what!? We try again, and again, and again. Failure is not option here. Not for me and not for my kids. If you are tired and need to leave for rest, please do so. But if you’re here just to spread you doom and gloom because it makes you feel smugly superior to criticize efforts from the outside, then get the fuck out of here. YOU are part of the problem.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/9/2180074/-If-you-are-fatalistic-about-our-future-you-are-part-of-the-problem-Some-of-us-haven-t-given-up

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