4 ms·

Most folks pushing climate activism fully understand that for the most part, only the poor will be effected. That doesn't lessen the argument at all, and to imp

Most folks pushing climate activism fully understand that for the most part, only the poor will be effected. That doesn't lessen the argument at all, and to imply "Well, since it won't affect rich people, it doesn't matter" is borderline maniacal.

Consultant32452 7y ago
More than one major national politician has talked about the potential end of the human race within the last year. I don't think it's helpful to get into an argument about what exactly constitutes "most folks" but let's not pretend that the doomsayers aren't treated credibly.
- abathur 7y ago
  I'm torn on this. I think it's good to police flagrant fear-mongering and all other forms of predation on our worst qualities. But we also got here by people and systems preying on other bad qualities like complacency, laziness, helplessness, and blindness to shifting baselines. Perhaps more to the point: our world is stuffed to the rafters with complex adaptive systems--both man-made and natural--themselves threaded together by positive and negative feedback loops, punctuated equilibria, and participants trained on making decisions under these conditions. We don't know which threads will snap, nor when, nor where. We don't know how the other systems and participants will react to the ripples. We don't know if, how long it will take, or where disrupted systems will settle into new equilibria. In the face of uncertainty on this scale, I think there is some value to catastrophizing. We do this with uncertainty all the time. We imagine threats (both banal and catastrophic) to our systems and game them out. We make plans and run exercises. I'm not sure it's a bad idea, per se, to be gaming out dead-end scenarios.
  - RhysU 7y ago
    > But we also got here by people and systems preying on other bad qualities like complacency, laziness, helplessness, and blindness to shifting baselines. This is not how I would characterize the last 300 years of our efforts as a species.
    - abathur 7y ago
      I'm not exactly sure how you would characterize it, so I'll just project into the space you didn't see fit to fill. We are an endlessly-(infini|adjec)tive species. I have a Whitmanesque love of our species' best and worst qualities. Characterizations are not mutually exclusive. There's no catch clause in the universe's code to stop our most-impressive inventions from ultimately killing us, our most-creative disruptions from sundering our societies, or our most endearing traits from tucking us neatly into the geologic record.

Consultant32452 7y ago

More than one major national politician has talked about the potential end of the human race within the last year. I don't think it's helpful to get into an argument about what exactly constitutes "most folks" but let's not pretend that the doomsayers aren't treated credibly.

abathur 7y ago
I'm torn on this. I think it's good to police flagrant fear-mongering and all other forms of predation on our worst qualities. But we also got here by people and systems preying on other bad qualities like complacency, laziness, helplessness, and blindness to shifting baselines. Perhaps more to the point: our world is stuffed to the rafters with complex adaptive systems--both man-made and natural--themselves threaded together by positive and negative feedback loops, punctuated equilibria, and participants trained on making decisions under these conditions. We don't know which threads will snap, nor when, nor where. We don't know how the other systems and participants will react to the ripples. We don't know if, how long it will take, or where disrupted systems will settle into new equilibria. In the face of uncertainty on this scale, I think there is some value to catastrophizing. We do this with uncertainty all the time. We imagine threats (both banal and catastrophic) to our systems and game them out. We make plans and run exercises. I'm not sure it's a bad idea, per se, to be gaming out dead-end scenarios.
- RhysU 7y ago
  > But we also got here by people and systems preying on other bad qualities like complacency, laziness, helplessness, and blindness to shifting baselines. This is not how I would characterize the last 300 years of our efforts as a species.
  - abathur 7y ago
    I'm not exactly sure how you would characterize it, so I'll just project into the space you didn't see fit to fill. We are an endlessly-(infini|adjec)tive species. I have a Whitmanesque love of our species' best and worst qualities. Characterizations are not mutually exclusive. There's no catch clause in the universe's code to stop our most-impressive inventions from ultimately killing us, our most-creative disruptions from sundering our societies, or our most endearing traits from tucking us neatly into the geologic record.