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People who think/wish that worsening climate fundamentals leading to # heatwave events will suddenly sensitize society to environmental # ... (mastodon.social)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/sustainability@fedia.io
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People who think/wish that worsening climate fundamentals leading to #heatwave events will suddenly sensitize society to environmental #sustainability are probably counting themselves prematurely rich.Just a few years ago we had a planetary scale biological #pandemic risk event which is now almost forgotten. As soon as stress subsides prevalent cultures and mental models reassert themselves, like an elastic band that returns to its base stateReal change does happen but is infuriatingly slow

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[–] [S] 1 point 4 months ago (3 children)

This innate conservatism and resistance to change is of course well known. This is why we have expressions like "never let a crisis go to waste". The idea is that during stress periods collective behavior is more open to extraordinary measures and changes. But as a strategy for steering ourselves to a safer place this is a deeply problematic approach. Leaving aside that waiting for crises to change anything is absurdly risky, it is also very undemocratic: Bypassing consensus at gun point.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    @openrisk the only nuance I would add is around the availability of trusted public data that reflects the crisis.It is necessary (but by no means sufficient) to help the public understand why a decision is made, even if they don't agree.But what's also fundamentally true about your point is that a lot of the solutions to big crises are also inherently democratic in nature - lots of distributed, small actions that actually move the needle

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 4 months ago

    @Gord1i what characterises this wretched era is that - from a pure digital technology perspective - collecting, processing, disseminating "ground truth" has never been easier.Yet somehow our trajectory is the exact opposite, factual reality increasingly buried under hard to identify "AI" creations and other algorithmic manipulation 🤦

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 4 months ago

    So instead of waiting like lemmings to fall over a cliff before we change direction, we need to change directions, adjust our consensus smoothly and continuously, as new factual information arises. It sounds ambitious, if not completely utopic, but this is ultimately imho the real task for the #fediverse and genuine #socialnetworks more broadly.Its not a technology issue - all the hardware and software exists. Its primarily a sociopolitical choice to better ground discourse on reality.

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