We do not manage our societies well or our economics well otherwise we wouldn't be in this mess. Biblical verses told (tell?) us that we have domain over nature and animals. (Sorry for the poor citation there). But it does say something about that. This is all about power and control. We are spoiled rotten. We live where we want to live and build were we want to build or we are poor and our ancestors settled on a island now swamped with sea waters or heavy rains or tsunamis and we are stuck. We are stubborn, and we don't like each other, so don't emigrate to my country just because you are water-logged or lost your village or have no drinking water.
Yeh, stay out of the way. Sorry to be so cynical but this climate change catastrophe is all about greed, delusion, and hatred --the three poisons .
3
For a more rounded view of the walruses in the film and the way wildlife documentaries are pieced together, see the article in The Atlantic online. It does us no good whatsoever to pretend that there is a direct line from climate change to falling walruses. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/04/why-are-walruses-walking-off-cliffs/586510/
1
Unbridled capitalism and religion make it impossible to have a discussion about human over population. More people use to mean more profits. But not planet, no people, no profits. We're just too stupid and selfish to leave anything for the rest of life here on the planet. Stop breeding!!
5
Many in power don't even care (vote them out; don't buy their products). But the rest of us, who may cry watching some of this, who understand interdependence and systems, must look at our habitual patterns, our dependence on cars, airplanes, plastic, coal. And we need to change quickly, and not just one thing. Norm Vinson, below, has a good comprehensive list of what everyone could be doing. Get out of your car, grow vegetables or support a local farmer who does, don't fly (but our grandchildren live so far away). Notice each thing you consume--where does it come from, whose hands touched it, where is it going? Actually take that time and attention.
7
Think of walruses plummeting off cliffs as a metaphor for humanity. The difference is our arrogance. We will continue to reproduce until there is no ecosystem to support us. The earth will go on. We won't. We are the kudzu of the planet.
15
For how much much brain power we have we are sooooooo short sighted that we can't see how bad we are making things for ourselves and future generations.... Is it ego? Is it our survival instinct gone haywire? Maybe we never really good at super long term planning because we never lived so long and we were still in balance with nature until the Industrial Revolution and other "advancements" happened? Our we now truly slaves to technology, which has no soul?
4
for some reason the last paragraph seems so out of tune and vague from the rest of the article; what exactly does "just leaving it alone" mean when human life and the environment are so entertwined?
1
@riya gorji the last few points refer to wilderness, which - by definition - human life is not particularly entertwined with. It calls on us to at least stop destroying the last remaining truly wild places on earth because those are the only truly natural refuges that species can use to recover.
3
And yet most of those in power will say that going into space is what is required to enervate our creativity, to power our best qualities, to fire the imagination. When you ask why saving the Earth and Earth's creatures isn't a powerful enough motive, they appear bewildered. It is a clear sign of species insanity to be directing billions into space exploration, particularly manned exploration, while these kinds of outcomes face the Earth. Even if economic prosperity is your key measure, the steps needed to manage global warming and habit loss will provide far more to the GDP over time than space exploration.
2
I often wonder how the producers and film makers of these programs can stand it. We only see a small part of what they are filming, and that's hard enough to watch. It must be agonizing to film these scenes of desperate animals trying to survive and losing ground against all the forces we are stacking up against them.
13
They should make another series about what to do about it. The impact of anti-global warming people on the earth is currently about the same as the deniers. Material impact is what matters, not allegiance and belief.
4
@S
What to do, what to do. I don;t understand why people keep asking this question. Do any or all of the following as much as possible:
1- vote for people who support GHG regulation and environmental protection.
2- Walk, bike, ride the bus, sell your gasmobile and get an EV (or even better, just keep the money).
3- Insulate your house like mad.
4- Turn down the heat.
5- Get an instant on hot water heater.
6- Turn down the AC (but not you S: you live in BC which has really green electricity).
7- buy a super high efficiency furnace, or, if it doesn't get below freezing where you live and you have clean electricity, get a heat pump.
8- If you don't have a heat pump, get a super efficient A/C unit.
9- If you live in a coal-fired state or province, buy some solar panels.
10- plan your meals (so you throw out less food).
11- eat locally grown food. (yes, sustainable might be better but how do you what's sustainably gown?)
12- eat more fruits and vegetables; less beef and lamb. (Maybe: The claim that beef is bad for GHGs might have been apples and oranges. In any case, you need to eat more fruits and vegetables for your health, so why not?)
13- never use single use plastics, not even once (ha ha).
15- avoid plastic wherever you can.
16- don't buy new clothes.
17- read up on reducing your waste.
18- plant some trees.
19- Limit air travel. buy carbon offsets when you do.
20- Use carbon offsets to offset all your GHG emissions.
21- Use LED light bulbs
22
The walrus cliff segment should be required viewing for all climate change skeptics.
12
Climate change is an ongoing tragedy of gigantic proportions. This series might be too little too late but the generation being shaped by this video series will be even more motivated than Gen-Z to undo the damage done by the oil oligarchy.
7
People cry out for AOC’s green Deal, as if it was magic wand to fix the world.
The did the same over the optional, ignored and another joke called the Paris Agreement.
But no one looks at the real actions emptying the oceans, and warming up the planet.
Overfishing. Just wholesale taking of entire ecosystems, drag nets destroying entire reefs and such to get a few shrimp, a few Patagonia toothfish, sorry ‘chilean sea bass’.
The animals starve because there is no fish left for them. But no one is stopping that, they prefer to hear how plastic is to blame. Animals eat plastic as there is nothing left for them to eat.
Wholesale forest clearing, burning the amazon, taking forests down to build another parking lot. Trees filter the air, absorb ground water thus stopping erosion, and absorb radiation, thus absorbing heat. But no one cares for the trees, they are simply razed.
If you take out the lungs of the planet, how do you expect fresh air?
Hope some one can do something about that, instead of clapping like trained monkeys every time AOC says ‘Green Deal’, and going back to Pinterest right after.
3
@AutumnLeaf
Yeah, let's not do the green deal because it just doesn't measure up. Let's just keep going the way we are until someone comes up with a real solution that no one will accept.
22
I started watching this series last week. The program has been so eye-opening: I did not know that the ice sheets covering the Antarctic and Arctic also functioned as deflectors of the sun's powerful rays. The rate at which these ice sheets are melting is alarming.
I find it ironic that the lengths we have gone to "improve" our lives is going directly to the complete deterioration and degradation of our planet and species. The scene with the walruses was heartbreaking. I also watched the Blue Planet docu-series: the segments showing the enormous amounts of plastic waste in the oceans (being ingested by marine life such as whales and pelagic birds) was disconcerting to say the least.
What will we really have in the end?
24
@Emlo37
nothing. That's the answer to your question Emlo37, 'What will we really have in the end?' nothing. us humans are on the verge of causing the extinction of a lot of other species, probably most of the so called higher organisms, and we're going to do ourselves in as well along the way. fitting, as we think of ourselves as the 'highest' organism of all. then, over time, new species will evolve. maybe the next bunch of organisms will be lucky enough to not have any creatures as arrogant as us evolve. the earth will, despite us, keep going and be repopulated by some other forms of life, probably evolved from cock roaches, rats, pigeons, glyphosate resistant superweeds (google it), and lots of plastic eating bacteria, oh yeah, and marine life adapted to low pH, so no calcium-carbonate based exoskeletons.