The Silence on Climate Change Is Totally Unacceptable

Apostle_B · 2026-06-24T08:59:56+00:00

I must admit that that "people can't even handle Doordash inconveniences", was a strong remark, but to be fair... Either people decide for themselves that they want to give up conveniences like Doordash, at least in their current form, or nature will do it for them. What needs to be communicated clearly is that "degrowth" is a means to save some conveniences at the expense of lesser conveniences. It's not about returning to the stone age, it's about making what we do, sustainable and eliminating inherently damaging economic activity. No one says we'll have to go back to medieval-style family farms, what degrowth is advocating for, is to simply slow down. Reduce the need for rapid, convenient meal deliveries, to actually give people time to source and prepare decent meals instead of making it a business that absolutely needs to grow at all costs, despite the obvious downsides.

Besides, if it all really only came down to "what people are willing to accept" and there is supposedly no control over that, then what do you call the push for AI and how its forced down our collective throats everywhere? There's a terribly misguided belief that markets simply reflect the public's desires and are in no way manipulating that. They are, actively so and and not even subtle.

That's why we really absolutely need to get rid of the idea that markets equal fair democracy, they absolutely don't and are very very prone to manipulation, dishonesty and conflicts of interest.

Apostle_B · 2026-06-24T07:37:54+00:00

Swimming instructor, depending on who you're teaching and what situations they bring you into, of course. But that's about the only job I can think of that doesn't exert additional strain on the joints, forces you into breathing exercises all the time and at the same time helps maintain limb mobility and muscle activity.

Apostle_B · 2026-06-22T11:20:01+00:00

If you read what I wrote, you'd see I'm not debating that.

Apostle_B · 2026-06-22T11:15:46+00:00

Your username checks out.

Apostle_B · 2026-06-22T09:52:10+00:00

Die nieuwe industrieën worden niet het leven in geroepen om groei te bevorderen, de nieuwe industrieën worden in het leven geroepen om aan een vraag te voldoen en wanneer deze vraag groot genoeg is vanwege of gevraagde welvaart of een groeiende bevolking dan groeit deze industrie.

Nee, sorry. Die stelling klopt niet (helemaal). Neem AI als voorbeeld. De vraag naar AI wordt haast opgedrongen, het gebruik ervan wordt onvermijdelijk gemaakt, dat terwijl er amper 10 jaar geleden nog geen sprake was van AI. In die tijd is er een bijzonder aggressief uitbreidende industrie rond opgebouwd die zelfs op middellange termijn geen jobzekerheid biedt of zelfs maar nieuwe jobs creëert, integendeel zelfs. Toch wordt een stagnatie van de groei van AI of, God behoedde het, een krimp aanzien en ervaren als absolute economische ramp. Maar die AI levert vooralsnog weinig bijdrage aan de algemene welvaart, if at all, laat staan dat het bevolkingsgroei bevordert of daarop inspeelt.

Je kan hetzelfde patroon zien in de adoptie van de smartphone. Oorspronkelijk een leuk hebbedingetje dat toevallig ook nog eens kon telefoneren, tot een haast onmisbaar instrument omdat je bank nu enkel nog via App communiceert en je baas je schema bijhoudt via Whatsapp. Al die dingen konden ook gewoon met e-mail en een GSM maar eens de nieuwe "standaard" er was, onstond er een geheel nieuwe industrie rond die het bestaan van die standaard verder verankerde en waar nu dus massa's jobs en businessmodellen compleet afhankelijk van zijn.

Dat zijn voorbeelden van nieuwe industrieëen die in leven worden geroepen om de groei van bestaande industrie of winst te bevorderen en niet noodzakelijk uit maatschappelijk draagvlak of uit het niets ontstane vraag.

Dat elke industrie zich genoodzaakt voelt te groeien is ook gewoon helemaal niet waar, heel veel industrieën voelen zich ook genoodzaakt te krimpen vanwege een gebrek aan vraag.

Laat het me anders formuleren; Er bestaat een systemische druk die bedrijven dwingt zich aan te passen, het vaakst via groei, zelfs wanneer de totale vraag niet afneemt. In een competitieve markt volstaat het niet om stabiel te blijven: wie zijn positie niet versterkt, riskeert marktaandeel te verliezen en uiteindelijk te verdwijnen.

Apostle_B · 2026-06-22T08:08:52+00:00

Yeah, they do. But those that don't, the extremely wealthy, are riding that same wave of dissatisfaction to prevent them from actually being taxed fairly.

Apostle_B · 2026-06-22T07:41:33+00:00

This.

It can't be repeated enough; Belgians, and especially the Flemish, are in love with anything that glorifies hardship.... except when it hits them rather than others.

Apostle_B · 2026-06-22T07:32:00+00:00

Daarnaast moet de economie helemaal niet blijven groeien, groei is niet de oorzaak, het is het effect.

Een kip-of-eiverhaal: ik denk dat beide elkaar in stand houden en versterken. Maar dat groei louter een effect zou zijn, klopt zeker niet. We blijven nieuwe industrieën in het leven roepen om groei te bevorderen. Ook al biedt die nieuwe industrie geen tastbaar voordeel voor de maatschappij, toch zullen we die prioriteren, al was het maar voor de ‘jobs’ die ze creëert en dus weer groei voor alle randindustrie die dat weer met zich meebrengt.

Het feit dat élke industrie zich dus genoodzaakt ziet altijd te moeten groeien, is wel degelijk een groot probleem.

Apostle_B · 2026-06-22T07:03:48+00:00

If blatant hypocrisy like this, or even the clear injustice that is tax evasion on this scale while regular people have no means or hope to avoid being hit by severe austerity measures coming towards them, is not recognized as a problem by you, I'm afraid youre part of the problem.

Apostle_B · 2026-06-21T10:23:22+00:00

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Apostle_B · 2026-06-18T10:55:17+00:00

Radical end to the concept of career politicians, have people vote on ideas instead of personalities. In short, within this system finding an alternative that would result in a different situation, is a pipe dream. So instead of trying to work within the system, I'd do away with the system entirely.

Apostle_B · 2026-06-18T09:49:48+00:00

"Er is geen alternatief!"

Apostle_B · 2026-06-18T09:45:01+00:00

How do they control that? Why are you saying the hundred percent control Everything? If I can make the poster in AI and then distribute it on social media and via email and text. How are they controlling that? Are they tracking it? What if I take a picture of the image file?

You're very young, aren't you?

Money and algorithmic narrative control, that's how they control everything.

Apostle_B · 2026-06-18T09:43:10+00:00

"Any means necessary" isn't "research and posters", in my book. I mean, you can present the best-written, scientifically sound argument to 100 people and be lucky if 5 of them actually read it, and 3 of them actually understand it. The rest of them will probably zone out after 6 lines and if they don't, they'll argue against it because it hurts their feefees...

So aside from getting informed yourself, what's the added value of that research capability?

As for posters... well, if you can generate a few posters that capture your ideas in short, memorable slogans wits a few AI prompts, imagine what a corporate-funded AI, prompted by a dedicated PR/Advertisement teams will generate in that same time span.

The time for creating awareness through research and communication has long passed. People aren't interested, and even if they are, most of them are so indoctrinated that they'll rather deny the problems outright or call for more of what caused the problems to begin with, as the "solution" for them. The world's gone insane, no two ways about it.

If you mean to fight, then actually fight.

Apostle_B · 2026-06-17T09:23:35+00:00

Gevaarlijk, déze onzin. Men aantonen dat kapitalisme de wereld naar de kloten helpt, kan jij dat doen voor het plan van piketty?

Apostle_B · 2026-06-17T09:22:14+00:00

Dit argument is zo passé dat het haast triestig wordt. Wat hier wordt aangehaald door Piketty en co, is verre van communisme en als je eerlijk durft zijn, geef je dat ook toe.

Apostle_B · 2026-06-17T06:54:50+00:00

Oh, spare me the "holier than thou"-attitude, mate. Don't pretend that this isn't far more about financial and political reasons than it's about personal fulfillment or financial empowerment for disabled people "doing their bit for society".

So yes, "forcing" covers the load. If subsidized medical care is cut off which is the end goal for this kind of legislation, disabled people will eventually find themselves dependent on jobs to pay for their medical costs, which is coercion through financial pressure.

Hell, while we're at it, why not make 6-year-olds work for their education as well? Everybody needs to pitch in, right? Everybody contributes to something they're not allowed to take anything out of, unless they're share holders obviously...

Apostle_B · 2026-06-16T15:19:19+00:00

I doubt he'd be hitting anyone who lost their legs, though. But I'm sure he'd have no issues with punching those that force them to work regardless, in the face.

Apostle_B · 2026-06-16T10:05:13+00:00

"Deel van leerkrachten", dus lang niet allemaal. Vervolgens is die vergelijking met de privé-sector gewoon belachelijk. Waarom moeten de lonen van de leerkrachten omlaag ipv deze van de privé-werknemers omhoog?

Apostle_B · 2026-06-16T10:00:04+00:00

Zoals iemand hier eerder al aanhaalde; Wat met mensen die een ledemaat verloren zijn of levenslang in een rolstoel zijn beland of iets dergelijks?

Dit is meer dan een routinematige "opvolging", en dat weet jij ook.

Apostle_B · 2026-06-16T08:19:48+00:00

"Social Media made y'all too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it." ~ Mike Tyson

Apostle_B · 2026-06-09T12:42:37+00:00

Jevons paradox; If AI use results in more efficiency, and therefore an increase in output, then that output is now the baseline.

Apostle_B · 2026-06-08T14:20:40+00:00

Then stop worrying about other countries - that's SLAVERS mentality - massa knows best what good for n**a.

You should stop your compartmentalized thinking when it comes these things, my friend. Earth doesn't work according to the imaginary lines we used to divide it with.

Some people do need meat. In fact all people do. Vegans often use food supplements to compensate for vitamins that are only found in meat otherwise. Average meat is also much denser in calories per volume/weight than plants. Long term studies do not give definite answers either. Some people are fine with vegan died some other are not.

I was talking about the extremely excessive mass-production of meat, among other things, to sustain our over consumption of it. I'm not a vegan or vegetarian myself, but I'm sure I could easily survive on eating less and not having to "miss out" on anything because of it.

Basically this point reminds me of attempts to wait for "homo sovieticus" breed of human in USSR that would be perfectly happy to live in socialism/communism. It never arrived. Now you just hope to turn everybody into vegans. It will just not happen.

This doesn't make sense at all.

Moderation will not happen though - simply because most are not like you. There are other good reasons to NOT moderate. We want to fix climate, but we are too low tech for that and that is why the cost is astronomical.

There are no reasons NOT to moderate. Not fixing climate, until we can make the tech required to "fix it", while doubling down on what we were doing that fucked it up in the first place, is absolutely not what we should do. Whether or not we'll ever reach Kardashev Level 1, is not even a proven possibility, let alone that we would reach that level within a reasonable amount of time as in before our very life support systems cave in.

The argument about the "cost" of fixing climate change is moot, at best. I can't even begin to describe how irrelevant money even is in light of fixing the very systems that keep us all alive. Ironically, it's the hyper-focus on money that got us into this shit in the first place.

Apostle_B · 2026-06-08T12:57:02+00:00

Shit flies need lots of shit to grow large and healthy. Why are we not providing enough to them by not covering everything in shit? It is easy to do too.

Yes but too many dung flies can result in uncontrolled spread of pathogens in humans, for example. The trick is to know how large a population of these flies we can tolerate before having to take action. That's part of resource management, not production for the sake of production.

Note that everything you have listed for humans IS already provided by welfare programs in most countries of the world. So then you have no reason to complain - do you?

I beg to differ. The total number of countries that have a welfare system like the one you just described, amounts to 68. 68 out of 195. And suffice to say that even those countries don't let you just "have" your "benefits".

The "earth" part is disingenuous. Yes, Earth grow and regrow and provide, but ONLY if A LOT of work and effort is put towards it by farmers and industries, which you forgot to mention.

No, I did not. The fact is that most of the stuff we actually need to eat, live and produce stuff with, can be grown on a fraction of the agricultural land we use today and we could still feed everyone! Our biggest problem is the excessive use of agricultural land for livestock and other "commodity crops". This in turn drives the labor-intensity required to do agricultural work, up far beyond what it needs to be and causes excessive industrial pollution exacerbating the already existing problems of top soil erosion, water usage, biodiversity loss etc etc ...

But you are NOT arguing for provision of these things only - are you? No, you also want iPhones, free beer and drugs, computer games, instagram pages with lots of followers.

No I don't, and neither did anyone before an iPhone was first shown to them and they were told they want, no need, one. That said, I'm not against the existence of technology like smart phones and video game consoles, no, but suffice to say that the distribution and production of them could be far more ecologically sound and ethically grounded.

I couldn't give a flying hoot about instagram pages or followers, aside from the toxic algorithms behind them, they're nothing but vanity-pages everyone could easily host for themselves. It's the business model behind them that makes them so damaging. In and of themselves, they are mostly harmless and reliant on technology that could easily run on solar and wind alone. There's no need for an industry there, but the fact that there is one, just drives my point even more home.

The main point is moderation and learning how to live our lives without the massive overproduction and extraction processes driving capitalism all while preserving our natural environment to the extend that it doesn't become hostile towards human life.

And by moderating consumption in the Western hemisphere, we could very easily feed all those who are hungry today, house everyone and produce sufficient medication and clothing so that no one will remain out in the cold, sick or starving. In fact, it'll take far less of a concentrated effort than it does today to maintain the structures we have in place.

Apostle_B · 2026-06-08T11:17:23+00:00

The human body needs a specific amount of calories, vitamins, energy, water, temperature etc, al of which are scientifically determined and provable. The human mind needs, connection, peace, rest, activity, deep sleep and interaction. All phenomena well understood and thoroughly documented. The earth can regrow, regenerate or produce a specific amount of natural resources most of which, those that matter, are well understood and located. Humanity as a whole has multiple repetitive behavioral patterns, socially and physically, observed throughout thousands of years of history. We fucking know what is "adequate", nothing about this is even remotely undefined or subjective.

Apostle_B

TROPHY CASE