3 ms·

> The fact that they didn't act upon the information to me is mind-boggling, I guess the profit motives were too strong. You're seriously overestimating Americ

> The fact that they didn't act upon the information to me is mind-boggling, I guess the profit motives were too strong. You're seriously overestimating Americans, circa 1982. We were still fighting about whether cigarette smoke causes cancer (correlation is not causation!) and we had a president who claimed that trees pollute the environment more than cars do (who went on to be reelected). Politically influential Christian public figures rationalized how the deadly sin of greed should be considered a virtue while also blathering about how HIV was a manifestation of God's wrath toward homosexuals. And everyone kind of assumed our odds of surviving the cold war weren't great anyway, so you want to worry about something about temperature increasing, and also didn't you say there was going to be an ice age or something, blah blah blah? It's a minor miracle that we managed to cease the destruction of the ozone layer given the level of stupidity we were operating at. A person aware of current events and capable of making analogies might question how much progress we've truly made, but that's a separate topic.

mncharity 7y ago
> You're seriously overestimating Americans, circa 1982. Circa 1982? Some months ago, the NYTimes did a story on Coke/Pepse/Nestle sugar drink/food causing simultaneous systemic obesity and malnutrition in Central/South America. Company leadership was quoted as expressing surprise at this "unexpected" impact. TPP had ISDS provisions to permit companies to sue governments to recover profits lost to health policies. And so it goes. Today.
coffeecat 7y ago
I have a non-rigorous pet theory that the combined effects of lead plumbing and leaded gasoline produced generations of Americans, from the late 19th century to the late 20th century, whose population-wide intelligence levels were adversely affected by lead exposure.
okmokmz 7y ago
>It's a minor miracle that we managed to cease the destruction of the ozone layer I'm not sure you can say that we ceased destruction of the Ozone layer. Certainly slowed, and in some cases ozone is increasing but not universally. Ozone levels in the upper levels have been slowly increasing, but the lower levels are still being depleted and there is evidence of an increase of short-lived ozone depleting substances. https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/18/1379/2018/ https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/18/1379/2018/

mncharity 7y ago

> You're seriously overestimating Americans, circa 1982. Circa 1982? Some months ago, the NYTimes did a story on Coke/Pepse/Nestle sugar drink/food causing simultaneous systemic obesity and malnutrition in Central/South America. Company leadership was quoted as expressing surprise at this "unexpected" impact. TPP had ISDS provisions to permit companies to sue governments to recover profits lost to health policies. And so it goes. Today.

coffeecat 7y ago

I have a non-rigorous pet theory that the combined effects of lead plumbing and leaded gasoline produced generations of Americans, from the late 19th century to the late 20th century, whose population-wide intelligence levels were adversely affected by lead exposure.

okmokmz 7y ago

>It's a minor miracle that we managed to cease the destruction of the ozone layer I'm not sure you can say that we ceased destruction of the Ozone layer. Certainly slowed, and in some cases ozone is increasing but not universally. Ozone levels in the upper levels have been slowly increasing, but the lower levels are still being depleted and there is evidence of an increase of short-lived ozone depleting substances. https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/18/1379/2018/ https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/18/1379/2018/