The leap in temperatures over the past 13 months has exceeded the global heating forecasts – is this just a blip or a systemic shift?

Temperatures above 50C used to be a rarity confined to two or three global hotspots, but the World Meteorological Organization noted that at least 10 countries have reported this level of searing heat in the past year: the US, Mexico, Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Pakistan, India and China.

In Iran, the heat index – a measure that also includes humidity – has come perilously close to 60C, far above the level considered safe for humans.

Heatwaves are now commonplace elsewhere, killing the most vulnerable, worsening inequality and threatening the wellbeing of future generations. Unicef calculates a quarter of the world’s children are already exposed to frequent heatwaves, and this will rise to almost 100% by mid-century.

  • aesthelete@lemmy.world
    4·
    4 måneder siden

    Having children is morally equivalent to murder by itself (you are directly responsible for your children’s future deaths, which wouldn’t be possible if you hadn’t caused them to be alive to start with), these days it’s murder and torture.

    I’m basically an antinatalist and even I think this is a stretch. There’s even a thing called the repugnant conclusion that https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_addition_paradox says that having more people on Earth with a worse standard of living is preferable to having fewer with a better standard of living, because joy, goodness, whatever can only be experienced by bringing feeling beings into the world.

    I know life can be hard sometimes but it has its pleasant moments as well, and appears to us based on pure instinct and everything else to be much preferable to non-existence.

    Yes, we’re mortal beings, but the ending of a thing isn’t its entire story, and being so fixated upon that isn’t very healthy. Besides perhaps hyperbolic teenagers most people alive are grateful for the experience even knowing that it won’t last forever.