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I was 15 in 1980 and I'm therefore old enough to remember the existential dread of nuclear destruction that was present during the Cold War - I'm in the UK, whi

I was 15 in 1980 and I'm therefore old enough to remember the existential dread of nuclear destruction that was present during the Cold War - I'm in the UK, which would have been one of the hardest hit countries in any conflict. What do I remember about that time? That most people completely ignored it - we escaped the effects of a global nuclear war through luck and sensible judgement by a large number of people on both sides who generally chose not to do something. Unfortunately, choosing to do something is much harder (exhibit A: the UK's Brexit debacle) - so I'm genuinely worried about the potential for us to actually decide on what to do even if we all agree that something should be done.

simonh 8y ago
It's worse even than that. We have to choose to stop doing things we are already doing, on a massive scale, from which we derive enormous benefits. That's really tough, it's like getting a junkie off the hard stuff in the middle of a really bad bender. Except the benefits we get from abusing oil and coal and plastics aren't illusory, they provide livelihoods to huge swathes of the world's population. This is where Thunberg's analysis comes short. The benefits from abusing resources don't just go to a tiny few. They go to all of us. We travel around in fossil fueled vehicles, the food and goods we consume travel and are farmed the same way, we fly on holiday in fossil fueled jets, we use cheap electricity from non-renewable sources. Rapidly switching away from these will carry enormous costs, just look at the energy market in Germany that's essentially being bailed out by French Nuclear power, and really wasn't even possible decades ago. If it really was just a small minority getting all the benefits, fixing this would be politically easy. We do need to act yes, it's a real problem with dire consequences, but it's not a simple issue.
dagaci 8y ago
" escaped the effects of a global nuclear war through luck and sensible judgement by a large number of people" -: And sometime by a surprisingly small number of people too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov#Early_life_and_military_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov#Early_life_an...

simonh 8y ago

It's worse even than that. We have to choose to stop doing things we are already doing, on a massive scale, from which we derive enormous benefits. That's really tough, it's like getting a junkie off the hard stuff in the middle of a really bad bender. Except the benefits we get from abusing oil and coal and plastics aren't illusory, they provide livelihoods to huge swathes of the world's population. This is where Thunberg's analysis comes short. The benefits from abusing resources don't just go to a tiny few. They go to all of us. We travel around in fossil fueled vehicles, the food and goods we consume travel and are farmed the same way, we fly on holiday in fossil fueled jets, we use cheap electricity from non-renewable sources. Rapidly switching away from these will carry enormous costs, just look at the energy market in Germany that's essentially being bailed out by French Nuclear power, and really wasn't even possible decades ago. If it really was just a small minority getting all the benefits, fixing this would be politically easy. We do need to act yes, it's a real problem with dire consequences, but it's not a simple issue.

dagaci 8y ago

" escaped the effects of a global nuclear war through luck and sensible judgement by a large number of people" -: And sometime by a surprisingly small number of people too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov#Early_life_and_military_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov#Early_life_an...