kyraneko: beatrice-otter:the-adhd-society: adrienaline-rushed-art:littlenobodys-corner:ok so peo
kyraneko: beatrice-otter:the-adhd-society: adrienaline-rushed-art: littlenobodys-corner: ok so people are making fun of this but adding this with other anti-global warming tactics will work This isn’t adding ice just for the sake of denial, it’s adding to the Earth’s albedo. This in turn actually makes the Earth’s climate cooler, and then more ice will be produced naturally because of this. It isn’t a process we need to continue forever, in fact it’s one that needs to be calculated so that we don’t do it TOO MUCH. The only worry would be cooling down too much. So yes, this is a good idea. It simply isn’t the only thing we should do because we still have gross pollution. For the love of god do it . anything just do it. Give us hope. Here’s the thing: Most environmental catastrophes humans have ever or are currently creating can be fixed. It’s not just a matter of “oh no, things are ruined, and maybe we can stop the degradation so that things don’t get any worse, but we’re stuck with how things are.” There are some things we can’t do, like bringing back extinct species. But there are a lot of other things we can definitely do, many of which are being done right now. The problem is that most of our willpower and effort is spent on bullshit tiny things that won’t solve the problem (individual recycling, etc.) and not on the large-scale things that can and will make a large-scale difference.Ice caps are melting? Guess what! We know how to make ice. It’s not that hard. Designing mostly-automated robot ships to go to the poles and rebuild the ice caps is well within our current technical capabilities. We just need to fund it.Deforestation on a massive scale? Destruction of other biomes? Guess what! We know how to plant trees. We know how to plant grasslands. We know how to take barren, lifeless land and turn it back into a viable biome. It’s not that hard. In a lot of cases, if there’s neighboring areas where that biome still exists, all you have to do is dump a few tons of biomass (plant clippings, food waste, etc.) on the barren land and stand back and wait. The biomass will provide nutrients and keep the topsoil from blowing away, and the plants and animals from the neighboring biome will move in. In two decades, even if you don’t do anything besides dumping the biomass on it, you won’t be able to tell what was the barren area and what was the still-existing biome.Coral reefs dying? Now, coral reefs are a bit more fragile than most biomes, but guess what! We still know how to replant/rebuild them, and in fact are working on that in places affected by coral reef die-off! And we’re learning how to do it better every day.Desertification? Guess what! We know how to turn desert back into green space. They’re doing it on a large scale in China and sub-Saharan Africa. There are several different techniques, none of which are even very technology-intensive. It takes money and time and labor, but it’s perfectly doable. We know this because we’ve done it.Plastic in the ecosystem, particularly in the ocean? Guess what! There’s a lot of people working on this, both on “how to remove plastic from the ocean” and “how to reuse/recycle it more efficiently.” And the techniques are improving by leaps and bounds every year. This is a solvable problem. These are all solvable problems.So if you’re crushed by the weight of the coming environmental catastrophe … don’t be. These are all solvable problems! We can stop things from getting worse, and we can fix the things we’ve broken. The issue is political, not practical.On the political side, of course, is the need to tighten up environmental regulations across the globe. (What’s the statistic, that 90% of pollution is caused by 100 corporations?) And then of course, we need to fund these programs on a large enough scale.In some ways the political aspect is the hardest, but consider this: we are at a tipping point. Things are changing about the way politicians talk about climate change and ecological degradation. More ordinary people are concerned about this, which means more pressure on politicians. One of the ways that things are changing is that people–even conservatives–are starting to talk about “job opportunities in new green fields” and switching the conversation so that it’s not “rainforest vs. jobs” makes political action a lot more possible. And no, it’s not going to happen on its own, but it can happen.This is a solvable problem. The magnitude of the problem makes it sound impossible, but the reality is it’s made up of many smaller problems, and THEY are made up of smaller problems, and eventually the problems they are made of are small enough to be solvable.Dumping compost and other nutrient-rich biowaste on barren, overharvested, used-up areas in useful quantities and concentrations and planting the appropriate plants, shrubs, and trees on it and seeing to it that it gets watered for awhile will result in regrowth of the original habitat, and the new growth will act on the immediate environment in ways that restore the moisture balance that sustains them: ground well shaded from the sun does not lose water to evaporation as easily, and cool temperatures mean plants need less water than they do in high heat, and trees release pollen that acts as raindrop seeds, causing water vapor to condense around them in the atmosphere to make rain.Fungi are very good at transporting toxins out of the ground they grow in and putting them up into their fruiting bodies, thus drawing pollutants out of contaminated soil and making them able to be easily removed.Small-scale agriculture like backyard gardening, chicken-raising, and aquaponics creates local food supplies that don’t use lots of transportation fuel, and can be of varieties chosen for flavor rather than long storage life or durability; they also provide food security and economic enrichment to the people who raise them.Individual rivers and lakes can be cleaned up and restored with natural plantings; individual lawns can be replaced with gardens or enriched with things like clover, violets, johnny jump-ups, bird’s-foot trefoil, comfrey, and moss.People who engage in ecological destruction for survival purposes can be offered new economic alternatives, such as appropriate permaculture species/techniques instead of slash-and-burn cultivation, livestock suited to the region and lifestyle, cookstoves that are more efficient or run on things like biogas from a methane digester (generated from livestock waste) instead of painstakingly gathered wood, et cetera.Small things add up. We can do this. -- source link