A warm start to the winter season has left the Great Lakes virtually ice-free and with their lowest ice cover to kick off a new year in at least 50 years.
On New Year’s Day, only 0.35% of the Great Lakes were covered in ice, the lowest on record for the date, and well below the historical average of nearly 10% for this point in winter, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL).
This year’s missing ice in the Great Lakes adds to a growing trend of winter ailments plaguing the US, from dwindling snowpacks in the West to an ongoing snow drought in the Northeast, all becoming more common due to warming temperatures from the climate crisis.
The rich and corporations are killing our planet. They don’t care if we die and people would rather save a hundred bucks on taxes than vote in their best interest.
I’m guessing you don’t use fossil fuels?
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/fc98a5b7-6ef9-4641-82c2-0f977b133baf.png
“It’s anyone’s fault but mine.”
-conservatives
You really think people are choosing to use fossil fuels at this point? Oh buddy, come to any city where public transit isn’t a thing because moneyed interests lobbied (and continue to lobby) against it, and you can see that there is no choice in the matter. It’s drive a gasoline-powered car or just don’t get to work/buy groceries for 95% of people in most places.
Yeah you’re right. Nobody is able to live without using fossil fuels.
OK but then what’s your argument for those that don’t use fossil fuels?
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. If there was a viable green alternative to transportation granted to us by our overlords, I’m sure most people would choose it.
You mean like taking a bike or walking? Let’s not be silly here, I live in a small town right outside a big city. There is a train in my town that goes into the city, it’s highly walkable, there are buses that run within a block of my house into the city. . .and people still drive everywhere.
We’re all to blame for this. While I think the best way to tackle it is to put the burden on the corporations, as it’s much easier to centralize the changes, trying to pretend like the individual has no say in this is the same blame shift of corporations trying to claim it’s the individual who needs to change. Everyone wants it to be convenient and cheap and fast. We all need to shift how we think about things.
There is a train from my town to the one I work in. There is one train per day in either direction. The morning train would get me to the train station about five minutes before my shift, and it’s a 15-20 minute walk from the station to the office, so that doesn’t work. The evening train is late enough that catching it isn’t a problem, but I’d have to figure out how to kill 45 minutes every day. If I got my schedule adjusted to make the morning train workable I’d miss the evening train. If your goal was to technically offer a public transit option while making it completely impractical so no one would use it, it would look exactly like what I have.
The poster made the claim that if it were available, most people would use it. It’s not available to you. So your position is not part of what I am pointing to.
The reality is that even when it is available, most people don’t use it, because driving is very convenient, good for being lazy, comfortable, and doesn’t require much thinking.
Make no mistake about it. We just want to blame corporations, because it’s easier and more comfortable than blaming ourselves and it makes it easy to justify changing nothing in your own life. It’s an uncomfortable reality that people just don’t want to accept.
The reality is that even when it is available, most people don’t use it, because it isn’t actually available in a way that would make it fast, comfortable, and in a way that doesn’t require much thinking. It’s strategically available while remaining useless and that must change before anyone will be able to rely on it.
It’s not even remotely useless where I live. The bus comes every 10 or so minutes during the day, and I just looked at the train schedule and there averages a train about every 40 minutes throughout the day (obviously more clustered around rush hours).
You can always find a reason it’s not convenient enough to use. I know, I’ve done it myself. It doesn’t quite get close to where we’re going, so we would have to walk a bunch or transfer on the other end. It’s faster to drive. It’s cheaper to drive (when there are 4 of us) if I think I can find parking. It’s cold. It’s too hot.
The reality is that it’s almost always going to be more convenient to drive, unless something drastically changes. It’s blame shifting, just like corporations are trying to do.
Lmao I guess sucks to be you if you’re on opening shift.
Don’t worry, I’m not actually taking this personally, but please remember that there is a very wide range of requirements for transport. I would absolutely LOVE to be able to bus to get to my job, but the city buses that I need don’t even start running until my shift starts. Biking would be wildly dangerous, as there is no way to get there while avoiding passing by poorly lit ramps for major highways. Fuck me for that, I guess.
My city also recently made the (dumb imo) decision to cut back on public transit. Now we have a bunch of seniors that have to walk a long ways if they want to take the bus. In some areas, good luck to you if it’s winter. Sometimes the buses will miss those stops altogether, usually without warning. Not great.
My region also completely axed public transportation between cities, without providing a replacement.
If we finally got decent public transportation, you can bet your arse that I would use it again. I do need a job to eat though, and staying alive sounds nice sometimes.
We should point more of this focus and ire at the yackadoodles who insist on removing the option of public transport. I certainly didn’t vote for this shit. It used to be good, and I used to use it daily.
^ Hey look everybody, it’s the “curious” guy from the meme in real life!
You must be reddit-brained.
You should know it’s a bad look when not a single person agrees with you
*Spiderman meme *