Satellite imagery shows Northern California kelp forests have collapsed

I appreciate the suggestion but I would rather focus on gathering data for Project Baseline Point Lobos which is tracking changes at one specific area near Monterey.

http://db.projectbaseline.org/?c=USA&p=11&s=1M

I've clearly been doing this quarantine / pandemic wrong.

>I can't do without a car

Never buy another car. Fix what you have when you need to.

Eat less meat. Live principled- not that you don't but doing these things is almost contagious. I notice friends and family following my lead. Consuming less, buying less.

I think "The only way out is through" meaning, we will not solve the problem by consuming less or becoming primitive. We will solve the problem by developing through the environmental constraints and replacing our harmful behaviors with better ones. For example, solar, wind, nuclear, and one day fusion providing power instead of coal, oil, and natural gas. Electric cars instead of internal combustion and so on.

People just are not going to use less stuff. In fact, they're going to use more. There are billions of people in the developing world who use a lot less energy and stuff than people in the developed world - but they are developing and will come to use and consume more and more. We won't impoverish ourselves, we can't ask the developing world to stay poor, and the population is growing all the time.

Plans or hopes that involve consuming less are unrealistic. The only way to save the environment is better technology and geo-engineering.

People lived in the north prior to the invention of electricity, so it's possible. Maybe more difficult now due to the quantity of firewood that would be needed with a larger population? Architecture (and dense urban development) plays an important role in electricity-free livability across various climate conditions. Some buildings work well in the cold, some work well in the heat. That's not to say you as an individual can address these problems, but society as a whole can design urban systems which support low-energy living in even difficult conditions.

The only thing that can be done is have fewer children. Everything else is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The good news is that this is already happening in most places. The bad news is that population growth is still out of control in Africa and parts of Asia, and may lead to a environmental crisis before population growth gets under control.

The cause of the wasting symptom is still unknown, that's why the link in the article leads to a school that is looking for specimens to analyze.

It would be very surprising, to me at least, to find ultimately humans did not contribute to this chain of events. Whether it's something like microplastics causing the lesions on the star fish or water temperature/chemical concentration leading to some fungal spore growing, I suspect ancient kelp forests aren't vanishing without our help.

The size of the sea otter population is almost certainly a result of human activity. In particular the fur trade and fisheries.

I think that mindset is what has led us to the current predicament we're now facing.

We have to understand the connection between a seemingly "innocent" event such as throwing trash in a random place and something else happening thousands of miles away - the events can be interconnected and the various documentaries have been trying to make us think about that.

If our activity causes warming that causes more storms that causes species to migrate earlier to different parts of the globe than usual that causes unpredictable food for other animals which they were relying on and have done for years, which in turn means they can't reproduce or sustain their cubs meaning other animals might suffer as a result and suddenly the entire chain is broken, disjointed and collapses.

Humans have no idea how fragile the ecosystem is or how resilient it may be (since we've never had this many humans living at once, consuming at the rates we are and causing the warming we've been witnessing).

To be fair, there were some pretty drastic reduction in emissions from transportation in the last year. That was due to a global pandemic rather than environmental activism, but still it's progress. It may have at least caused some permanent changes in behavior regarding driving to the office every day.

Before the pandemic I didn't work from home at all. Now after working from home 100% for a year I'm looking forward to being able to see my coworkers in person again when things open up, but I'll probably work from home a few days a week. Not a huge change, but every little bit helps, especially when hundreds of millions or billions of other people start working from home a few days a week who wouldn't before.

> It’s not possible.

Why not. You can live like a millionaire and not have kids. Having a kid is many factors worse than living a millionaire.

Disagree. In a democracy, the only way to make the important policy changes is for the majority of people to be on board with it. Tiny actions by individuals move the needle of public opinion. Additionally, different individuals reducing their consumption in different ways provides a diversity of ideas which can later inspire the so-called "scientific solutions".

I don't understand what you're saying here...

All any one person can do is make individual contributions.

That's pretty cynical. Biden says he wants to end fossil fuel consumption by 2050. You might say it's insufficiently aggressive but it's also still 100% impossible so long as we have an opposition party unwilling to even acknowledge the problem.

https://joebiden.com/climate-plan/

> Even if Biden isn’t reelected in 4 years

Biden has said he is not going to stand for reelection.