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#AcharyaPrashant #आचार्यप्रशांत #Philosophy #BhagavadGita
Climate Crisis: Is Humanity Headed for Collapse? || Acharya Prashant (2025)
Video Information: 14.01.2025, Vedanta: Basics to Classics, Goa
Description:
The recent California wildfires have highlighted the devastating impact of climate change, particularly on affluent communities. With the breach of the 1.5°C temperature threshold, the potential for severe feedback cycles increases, exacerbating climate issues. Despite ambitious targets set by the Paris Agreement, current plans project only minimal reductions in emissions, indicating a significant gap between goals and reality.
The prevailing philosophy that equates happiness with consumption drives carbon emissions, contributing to the climate crisis. Effective solutions to climate change cannot be achieved solely through political agreements or technological advancements; instead, a fundamental shift in human values and wisdom is essential. Without this transformation, the exploitation of the planet is likely to continue, leading to further environmental degradation and crises. The urgency of addressing these issues is paramount, as the consequences of inaction will affect future generations.
🎧 Listen to Acharya Prashant on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/2QmVEAA...
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~
#AcharyaPrashant #आचार्यप्रशांत #Philosophy #BhagavadGita
Climate Crisis: Is Humanity Headed for Collapse? || Acharya Prashant (2025)
Video Information: 14.01.2025, Vedanta: Basics to Classics, Goa
Description:
The recent California wildfires have highlighted the devastating impact of climate change, particularly on affluent communities. With the breach of the 1.5°C temperature threshold, the potential for severe feedback cycles increases, exacerbating climate issues. Despite ambitious targets set by the Paris Agreement, current plans project only minimal reductions in emissions, indicating a significant gap between goals and reality.
The prevailing philosophy that equates happiness with consumption drives carbon emissions, contributing to the climate crisis. Effective solutions to climate change cannot be achieved solely through political agreements or technological advancements; instead, a fundamental shift in human values and wisdom is essential. Without this transformation, the exploitation of the planet is likely to continue, leading to further environmental degradation and crises. The urgency of addressing these issues is paramount, as the consequences of inaction will affect future generations.
🎧 Listen to Acharya Prashant on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/2QmVEAA...
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:00So, looking at all these news and everything that is going around, I was just thinking
00:08that where are we heading and what's going to happen for the future of this planet.
00:18My guess is as good as yours.
00:22The writing is on the wall.
00:27I don't think any of us need any special assistance now in reading it.
00:41It's not just about the 1.5 degree centigrade threshold being breached.
00:53In fact, they are going to take at least one decade and a half more to officially admit
01:02that as a climate pattern, two or three successive years of average temperature rise do not suffice
01:15by meteorological definition to be called a trend.
01:23Statistically, it can still be called an exception, a fluke.
01:32So it is only by 2035 or 40 that it will be officially admitted that we have breached
01:39the 1.5 degree limit.
01:45The problem is we do not have 15 more years.
01:52At some point between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees, as I have often said, the feedback cycles,
02:04they get activated.
02:11By the time you come around to admitting that you have truly crossed the 1.5 degrees barrier,
02:20you will find that you have already reached 3 degrees or 4 degrees or who knows 6 degrees.
02:35There is so little discussion on feedback cycles in the climate discourse that it astonishes
02:44intelligence.
02:54The Paris Agreement stipulated that we will reduce carbon levels by 45 degrees by 2030
03:11and we will come to a net zero position by 2050 and if we are able to do this much, then
03:23we will be able to limit temperature rise to 1.5 or 2 degrees centigrade.
03:35This was the ambitious target.
03:37Mind you, we were not targeting to reverse climate change.
03:45The target itself was quite lowly.
03:47The target was to do something to limit the rise to just 1.5 degrees and even to limit
03:58the rise to that point, you need to cut down emissions by almost 50%, 43% to be exact by
04:042030.
04:05Now, if that is the macro target for 2030, then all countries were required to come with
04:19their own national deliverables because if the entire planet's emissions are to be cut
04:31down, then each country has to come up with a plan for reducing their own emissions.
04:40So all countries prepared their own plans for 2030 and you know even if we stick to
04:47those plans, all that those plans would give us is a 2.6% reduction by 2030.
04:58First of all, we set a very low target and then what we are doing to or what we propose
05:08to do, not yet doing, what we propose to do with respect to that target would take us
05:15only to the extent of 2.6% compared to the 40% reduction that is needed and that is needed
05:23just to halt the rise to 1.5 degrees.
05:36And the way we are today as we enter 2025, we are all set to exceed the emission levels
05:50of 2010 and 2019.
05:54These are the two reference points that the Paris Agreement uses.
06:00Forget about reduction, forget about 43% reduction, forget out even 2% reduction.
06:06We are actually increasing our emissions and the increase will be even more substantial
06:12by 2030.
06:16So I do not know how the future is any more a surprise.
06:21I said the writing is on the wall, loud and clear.
06:28Mankind has silently decided, voted in favor of a collective suicide.
06:40We are headed towards a mass extinction and we don't want to talk about it because it's
06:49our own choice.
06:51Why talk about it?
06:53You talk about something when there is still something left to be decided.
06:58All that needed to be decided has been done and frozen and there is nothing to be thought of.
07:24Are you getting it?
07:281.5 degrees is a very, very sensitive point.
07:34It's not that arbitrarily some figure was chosen, 1.5 degrees was chosen.
07:41An important reason was this is the point after which the feedback cycles will set in.
07:50They'll start operating.
07:51We do not know exactly when, 1.6, 1.8, 2.0, 2.1, but the risk substantially increases
08:00after 1.5.
08:01In fact, some feedback cycles start even before 1.5.
08:10So those feedback cycles are there and once they start operating, there is no limit to
08:17temperature rise and it becomes irreversible and uncontrollable.
08:24Then carbon addition to the atmosphere does not depend on anthropogenic carbon emission.
08:35You enter a situation where carbon will keep being added to the atmosphere even if human
08:41beings through their activities are not emitting any carbon at all.
08:48Still the planet on its own would keep adding carbon to the atmosphere and therefore there
08:55would be result in temperature hike.
08:59We have come to that point now.
09:01Don't be surprised by individual instances of wildfires etc.
09:09These are going to become daily occurrences, sometimes twice a day.
09:17Once in the US, in the morning, in the evening you hear something from France or Australia.
09:33What are these feedback cycles?
09:36I have repeatedly spoken about them because they are the most dangerous things staring
09:42at us today.
09:46They pertain to ice, they pertain to water and they pertain to wood.
09:53You can classify them this way very simply in three.
10:01What are the feedback cycles pertaining to ice?
10:05Ice being white in color is a great reflector of radiation but when ice melts it exposes
10:18the dark soil stone or sediment beneath and that being dark absorbs radiation.
10:26Since it absorbs radiation its temperature rises.
10:30When its temperature rises more ice melts.
10:33When more ice melts more stone is exposed or soil.
10:40It absorbs more temperature, more radiation and more ice melts and that way a very troublesome,
10:52very dangerous cycle starts.
10:58Similarly the soil beneath the ice contains a lot of trapped carbon and that has remained
11:11historically trapped beneath the ice in the Arctic, in the Antarctic, on other glaciers
11:22in the world, even in the tropics.
11:29When the ice is removed then the carbon that was trapped in the soil, the soil is organic
11:36matter it contains carbon, that carbon is released.
11:41Often that carbon is not just carbon dioxide but methane.
11:45Why?
11:46Because below the ice there is not sufficient oxygen available.
11:52So carbon does not turn into carbon dioxide instead there is an anaerobic reaction leading
12:02to formation of methane and the global warming potential of methane as you know is 80 times
12:09more than that of carbon dioxide.
12:14Then we know of permafrosts.
12:20They are beyond the Arctic and the Antarctic.
12:26The soil is there but the water in the soil remains frozen.
12:34It's not as if there is a layer of ice, there is the soil but the temperatures are so low
12:43that the water in the soil at least in the top layer, the top layer remains frozen.
12:51Since it remains frozen it does not allow the carbon in the soil to escape but the permafrost
13:00is receding very rapidly and it is again releasing carbon dioxide, methane and the
13:13more methane is released the more temperature rises.
13:18The more temperature rises the more ice or permafrost melts.
13:23The more it melts more methane is released.
13:26The more methane, the more temperature, the more temperature, the more melting, the more
13:30methane that's a cycle.
13:35It's just that when the ice melts, mind you, it's not just carbon that you release, you
13:39also release very very primitive kinds of virus.
13:46They were lying dormant beneath the thick ice sheets.
13:54Viruses as you know, they do not die.
13:58Just by being dormant they do not die.
14:01They are in that sense like chemicals.
14:05Water does not die.
14:06In some sense similarly virus too does not die.
14:11For thousands and millions of years viruses can remain safely stored like a chemical beneath
14:20ice or just below surface soil, top soil.
14:28The ice is gone.
14:29What happens to the virus?
14:30Out.
14:31No, that doesn't have much to do with global warming but just you know as a side, as an
14:38appetizer I am serving it.
14:42Then comes to the feedback cycles associated with water.
14:50Water vapor by itself is a greenhouse gas.
14:57You increase the temperature of the oceans and there is more evaporation and that water
15:06vapor traps more heat and that leads to more temperature and that leads to more evaporation
15:12and that leads to more water vapor.
15:16The oceans absorb 90% of atmospheric heat.
15:20They are the biggest sink.
15:24So when you trap more heat in the atmosphere, it is the oceans that get heated up.
15:30The sea level rises on two counts.
15:33One melting of ice, second thermal expansion of water, warm water expands.
15:40So the sea level will rise.
15:42Additionally ice is melting.
15:44So sea level will rise.
15:48Another phenomenon, warm water absorbs less CO2 compared to cold water.
15:56So the capacity of the oceans to absorb carbon dioxide reduces.
16:04So more carbon dioxide remains in the air.
16:11This is what happens at the surface of the ocean.
16:12You come to the belly of the ocean.
16:17What do you find there?
16:23You know of the coral reefs, right?
16:25They are very very temperature sensitive and they are organic in nature.
16:33When the sea temperature rises, the reefs, they decompose and when they decompose, what
16:43do they emit?
16:45Again carbon dioxide.
16:48So a big quantity of carbon dioxide that was lying trapped in the reefs that is released
16:54into the atmosphere.
17:02Even relating to water, peatlands, the coastal areas or sometimes the inner areas that are
17:14always inundated.
17:18So there is soil but there is a column of water always above that soil.
17:27So that soil was never directly getting exposed to the air.
17:34When there is temperature rise or due to human intervention, the water is cleared away.
17:42Then the soil after hundreds and thousands of years suddenly gets exposed to air and
17:49what does that soil release?
17:51Methane.
17:52That soil was covered with water so it never got to react with oxygen.
17:58So again it turned into methane rather than carbon dioxide and then you clear the water
18:04because you want to build a township there or because the water is anyway receding.
18:16Again tons of carbon dioxide gets released from there and tons is a small number.
18:21You always measure it in tons.
18:23It's a figure of millions of tons.
18:32Then you go to the bottom of the ocean.
18:37You have methane hydrates there that are again very temperature sensitive.
18:44Now methane hydrate is not dangerous but the moment it gets heated up, methane hydrate
18:52decomposes to give methane and the more methane is liberated, the more the temperature rises,
18:59the more the methane hydrates decompose.
19:08Then there is wood.
19:09We talked of ice, we talked of water, then there is wood.
19:13Wood is a wonderful thing.
19:18Trees absorb carbon dioxide and turn it into something extremely beautiful called wood.
19:28What is wood?
19:30Carbon dioxide plus soil.
19:35You take soil from below and carbon dioxide from above and the result is wood.
19:41So wood is carbon sequestered.
19:44Carbon has been absorbed and turned into wood.
19:47What a beautiful way of reducing carbon dioxide from atmosphere.
19:54But the same wood turns very dangerous when climate change intensifies because now there
20:03will be extreme weather events.
20:06More heat, more cyclones, more logging, more felling and when wood falls then it becomes
20:18an emitter of carbon dioxide because wood is organic material.
20:24When wood would decay, it would release carbon dioxide.
20:31Instead of becoming an absorber, it becomes an emitter and the more the trees are felled,
20:42the more the trees, that is the fallen trees, emit carbon dioxide and that intensifies climate
20:49change and that leads to the falling of even more trees.
20:59Are you getting it?
21:11Why talk of a localized event like the US wildfires?
21:18The symptoms might be local.
21:23The problem is planetary.
21:30Forget about meeting the problem effectively.
21:36Most of us avoid even looking at the problem because looking at the problem would involve
21:43questioning the very center humankind operates from.
21:51What is carbon?
21:52Carbon is a result of the flawed life philosophy mankind has.
21:59As long as we are conditioned, trained, educated to believe that we exist to be happy and that
22:12happiness is a product of consumption, there would be carbon emission.
22:16I often say it's not emission, it's emotion.
22:21The more we are told that there is value in having pleasurable experiences and emotions,
22:35the more there would be emissions.
22:41Our happiness, our emotions, that's what emissions are.
22:47The more prosperous you are, the more you emit.
22:55The more you chase happiness, the more you emit carbon.
23:02As long as we are educated to find right avenues of joy, we will continue to hunt for
23:14pleasure and this hunt for pleasure is the wildfire that you are seeing.
23:29There can be no political, legal or technological solution to climate change.
23:38Climate change is the final crisis.