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I hold out hope that eventually there will be widespread buy in to combating climate change before it's too late. But it seems that we need obvious impending do

I hold out hope that eventually there will be widespread buy in to combating climate change before it's too late. But it seems that we need obvious impending doom for everyone before people stop voting for right wing politicians.

rconti 6y ago
I think our experience with Covid-19 has revealed any such hope to be 100% unwarranted. At least in the US, "that's China, it won't happen here", "that's Italy, it won't happen here", "that's New York, it won't happen here", "that's California, it won't happen here" attitude.. and it even circled back on itself, when it did happen in many "heres" and the attitude became "it won't happen again". I'm not speaking of those who weigh the consequences of lockdowns or debate the viral reproductivity. I mean the people who outright deny what is happening right in front of their faces. Those who have easy access to good information, and ignore it in order to seek out bad information. There's just no way something such as climate change, which is much more abstract, will get that kind of buy in from this kind of populace. Even if you got everyone to agree on it, we'd hear the familiar debate; "we shouldn't be forced to cut our emissions until country Y does it first". And conversely, "why does our poor country have to suffer from these restrictive limits when the rich world profited off their pollution for decades?"
- evan_ 6y ago
  Not to mention a huge percentage of people simply saying “it’s not happening” despite all evidence
  - PakG1 6y ago
    These people are the really weird ones to me. They think they are more experts than the people who have studied this stuff for years. I don't understand the arrogance.
    - evan_ 6y ago
      They attribute it to malice, not ignorance. The people I see speaking about this believe either there is no virus, or it’s overblown- and most or all of the deaths are either misattributed car accidents and natural cause deaths, or made up from whole cloth. Doctors and hospitals are supposedly being compensated to falsely report deaths as having been caused by COVID. Obviously there are not large numbers of misattributed deaths or hospital conspiracies. This mirrors the theory held by basically the same people that climate change is just something used to push a political agenda and that scientists fake the data for grant money.
      - rvense 6y ago
        > scientists fake the data for grant money This one's the weirdest. If I had climate science credentials and wanted to cash in I'd be shilling for oil companies. Like that old Tom Lehrer joke about a doctor who specialized in diseases of the rich.
        PakG1 6y ago
        Well, never let it be said that conspiracy theories go with Occam's Razor, they can get really convoluted. Like the jump from Gates wanting to inject everyone with vaccines to Gates wanting to inject everyone with vaccines and chips so that he can control the world.
      - takeda 6y ago
        Looks like we had high spike of car accidents this year [1] /s [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
    - mistermann 6y ago
      I don't understand the naivete of how some people seem to believe they have a strong grasp on how/what millions of other people think. Actually, I may have a half-decent understanding of it, but any such beliefs are necessarily speculative. What I really don't understand is why people who work with systems for a living seem to be largely unable/unwilling to think of our planet as a system of interconnected/interactive systems, that have certain complex behaviors, and if you want to produce certain output, it requires specific input (that needs to be determined by understanding the system).
  - vbezhenar 6y ago
    While I think that it's happening, I'm not convinced that it's caused mostly by humans and I'm not yet convinced that it's a bad thing for me.
    - cdubzzz 6y ago
      You are alive right now so it’s probably not a bad thing for you. An inconvenience maybe. I don’t think that’s the point, though.
    - vmception 6y ago
      There is something to consider that the planet goes through its own phases, but the things we measure are 100% correlated to human activity and greenhouse emissions and simple chemistry. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/1912-article-global-warming/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/1912-article-global-warmin... But even without someone from 1912 looking at simple chemistry before there was heavier politics and cognitive dissonance involved, what we are concerned about is a lack of replacement for the ecosystems we rely on, and even just animals that we like rely on. It's almost fine if the earth goes through its own climate cycles, but it is not fine if it doesn't include us and things we like, and when we can also prevent it by cutting emissions and using energy differently while generating energy differently. For example, with coral reefs, we are looking at chronic failures and subsequently adjustments of entire ecosystems and ocean currents and weather patterns, solely because there isn't a replacement phytoplankton to help the corals regulate better.
- pm90 6y ago
  Despite what tv news media likes to portray, climate change does poll favorably. From this poll https://www.newsmax.com/us/us/2020/05/19/id/968005/ https://www.newsmax.com/us/us/2020/05/19/id/968005/: 73% of Americans polled say climate change is happening. 54% of Americans asked say they are extremely or very certain climate change is happening. 62% of Americans say they agree with the scientific view that global warming is mostly caused by human activity. 6% of Americans surveyed say there were extremely or very sure global warming wasn’t happening. What you see today is the encouragement of the worst instincts of people's nature by someone with real power and influence. When the President of the US says that masks are fake or a hoax, then a certain segment of the population will believe it. Which is why, if the current POTUS is re-elected and continues to throw the Country and the Federal Government into chaos, I have little hope that it will be addressed.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Those numbers are way below what they really should be.
    - pm90 6y ago
      And Trumps polling numbers are higher than they should be. We aren’t living in a utopia, but we do have a plurality of the populace who believes in facts and we shouldn’t forget that. It can be the foundation of a durable political coalition.
  - chongli 6y ago
    When the President of the US says that masks are fake or a hoax It wasn’t just the president who said that, it was also the medical establishment a few months ago. They told people not to wear masks because they were afraid of shortages that would affect hospital supplies. They lied to the public rather than being honest about it. That sort of behaviour is extremely damaging to the public trust in experts.
    - irq11 6y ago
      It wasn’t just the medical establishment a few months ago - it’s the medical establishment today. The rhetoric around masks has vastly exceeded the evidence, and asserting that people were “lying” at first is to ignore the fact that the evidence hasn’t really changed since the beginning of the year: https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/masking-lack-of-evidence-with-politics/ https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/masking-lack-of-evidence-with-... https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commentary-masks-all-covid-19-not-based-sound-data https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commenta... https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/07/commentary-my-views-cloth-face-coverings-public-preventing-covid-19 https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/07/commenta... https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars/special-ep-masks https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars/specia...
- seer 6y ago
  While this is indeed what is currently happening in the world, I think it would be relatively “easy” to convince the poorer countries. They can be pressured in so many ways: “If you want to look like us you have to do it”(cultural). “If you want to trade with us, you have to do it“ (Economical), “If you don’t do it we will have to use other methods”(Force). Or best of all - “We did benefit from it, so here are a share of the profits, but you need to behave” (Aid). You need to convince the rich countries first. And since US is the richest, it can have an enormous influence on the world. I think people in the US know that, and that’s one of the reasons there are so many deniers. If Malta goes green - well who cares, if the US puts its entire cultural, political, economical and military will on it - things will start to change. We can’t have that.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  I think the contemporary strain of conservatism should be called “denialism”.
tuatoru 6y ago
> it seems that we need obvious impending doom for everyone before people stop voting for right wing politicians. From my observation over the last few decades, when people are frightened they vote for self-proclaimed strongmen. Back in the '00s when I was taking an interest there was a kind of general belief that the first really incontrovertible "we must do something" events[1] would happen in the '30s and, by and large, governments would act in an uncooperative, zero-sum way internationally, and focus on helping their cronies domestically. I haven't seen reasons to change that view yet. [1] For example, extreme heatwaves that each kill more than a million people directly, or simultaneous harvest failure in two or more of the five major grain-growing regions of the world, two or more years in a row, and consequently tens to hundreds of millions of refugees on the move.
jillesvangurp 6y ago
The thing to hope for is people figuring out how to get rich while doing things that are good for our planet. Economics and not idealism is the way out. People are way too much stuck assuming that saving our planet involves guilt tripping the masses into self sacrifice in a heroic last ditch effort to save our planet. IMHO this is fatalistic and not realistic. You see economics driving progress in lots of sectors. There is good reason to be hopeful here because e.g. he most valuable car company is now a battery EV company (Tesla) and the fastest growing electricity companies are all over solar and wind. Farmers are going organic because they have better margins on selling good quality produce. High tech farming meanwhile includes using clean energy to intensive green house growing, vertical farming, and better resource management. Likewise the construction sector is figuring out cheaper and cleaner materials (e.g. wood instead of concrete seems to be becoming a thing). Profits are shifting from companies doing damage to companies undoing damage. There are no silver bullets here but the effects can be quite rapid. E.g. the coal sector collapsing in the space of about 10-15 years is driven by economics not idealism. It certainly helps that people like the side effect of less pollution but the main driver there is $/kwh. Investors are voting with their feet at this point. Either way, some good old R&D and healthy profit has achieved more in recent years than decades of lobbying by environmentalists. Places like China, India, etc. are all doing their thing and mostly it's just driven by economics. That's fine. China seems to be particularly good at figuring things out that are both profitable and helpful here. You see India copying a lot of that.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  That’s why regulation is necessary. We can artificially create the conditions to make it profitable.
  - jillesvangurp 6y ago
    It helps, but I find it encouraging that places like Texas are installing wind and shutting down coal without that being necessary.
- Jon_Lowtek 6y ago
  Any industry that pays for its externalities is more expensive in production. My mother told me the river changed color based on what color the towns factory used that day, when she was young. That did not change because people were guild tripped into not buying from them, or because someone found a way to be both more ecological and more profitable. The state changed the rules: your factory poisons the river, we close the factory and take your money. Economic profit does not favor ecology. No one would have invested into the R&D of wastewater processing unless the state threatens them with an economic equivalence of a death-sentence. Nowadays waste-water processing might be a boom market where profits can be made, but that is not some free market force that is independent from decades of lobbying.
Bombthecat 6y ago
I gave up all hope. I don't see any chance in hell.

rconti 6y ago

I think our experience with Covid-19 has revealed any such hope to be 100% unwarranted. At least in the US, "that's China, it won't happen here", "that's Italy, it won't happen here", "that's New York, it won't happen here", "that's California, it won't happen here" attitude.. and it even circled back on itself, when it did happen in many "heres" and the attitude became "it won't happen again". I'm not speaking of those who weigh the consequences of lockdowns or debate the viral reproductivity. I mean the people who outright deny what is happening right in front of their faces. Those who have easy access to good information, and ignore it in order to seek out bad information. There's just no way something such as climate change, which is much more abstract, will get that kind of buy in from this kind of populace. Even if you got everyone to agree on it, we'd hear the familiar debate; "we shouldn't be forced to cut our emissions until country Y does it first". And conversely, "why does our poor country have to suffer from these restrictive limits when the rich world profited off their pollution for decades?"

evan_ 6y ago
Not to mention a huge percentage of people simply saying “it’s not happening” despite all evidence
- PakG1 6y ago
  These people are the really weird ones to me. They think they are more experts than the people who have studied this stuff for years. I don't understand the arrogance.
  - evan_ 6y ago
    They attribute it to malice, not ignorance. The people I see speaking about this believe either there is no virus, or it’s overblown- and most or all of the deaths are either misattributed car accidents and natural cause deaths, or made up from whole cloth. Doctors and hospitals are supposedly being compensated to falsely report deaths as having been caused by COVID. Obviously there are not large numbers of misattributed deaths or hospital conspiracies. This mirrors the theory held by basically the same people that climate change is just something used to push a political agenda and that scientists fake the data for grant money.
    - rvense 6y ago
      > scientists fake the data for grant money This one's the weirdest. If I had climate science credentials and wanted to cash in I'd be shilling for oil companies. Like that old Tom Lehrer joke about a doctor who specialized in diseases of the rich.
      - PakG1 6y ago
        Well, never let it be said that conspiracy theories go with Occam's Razor, they can get really convoluted. Like the jump from Gates wanting to inject everyone with vaccines to Gates wanting to inject everyone with vaccines and chips so that he can control the world.
    - takeda 6y ago
      Looks like we had high spike of car accidents this year [1] /s [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
  - mistermann 6y ago
    I don't understand the naivete of how some people seem to believe they have a strong grasp on how/what millions of other people think. Actually, I may have a half-decent understanding of it, but any such beliefs are necessarily speculative. What I really don't understand is why people who work with systems for a living seem to be largely unable/unwilling to think of our planet as a system of interconnected/interactive systems, that have certain complex behaviors, and if you want to produce certain output, it requires specific input (that needs to be determined by understanding the system).
- vbezhenar 6y ago
  While I think that it's happening, I'm not convinced that it's caused mostly by humans and I'm not yet convinced that it's a bad thing for me.
  - cdubzzz 6y ago
    You are alive right now so it’s probably not a bad thing for you. An inconvenience maybe. I don’t think that’s the point, though.
  - vmception 6y ago
    There is something to consider that the planet goes through its own phases, but the things we measure are 100% correlated to human activity and greenhouse emissions and simple chemistry. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/1912-article-global-warming/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/1912-article-global-warmin... But even without someone from 1912 looking at simple chemistry before there was heavier politics and cognitive dissonance involved, what we are concerned about is a lack of replacement for the ecosystems we rely on, and even just animals that we like rely on. It's almost fine if the earth goes through its own climate cycles, but it is not fine if it doesn't include us and things we like, and when we can also prevent it by cutting emissions and using energy differently while generating energy differently. For example, with coral reefs, we are looking at chronic failures and subsequently adjustments of entire ecosystems and ocean currents and weather patterns, solely because there isn't a replacement phytoplankton to help the corals regulate better.
pm90 6y ago
Despite what tv news media likes to portray, climate change does poll favorably. From this poll https://www.newsmax.com/us/us/2020/05/19/id/968005/ https://www.newsmax.com/us/us/2020/05/19/id/968005/: 73% of Americans polled say climate change is happening. 54% of Americans asked say they are extremely or very certain climate change is happening. 62% of Americans say they agree with the scientific view that global warming is mostly caused by human activity. 6% of Americans surveyed say there were extremely or very sure global warming wasn’t happening. What you see today is the encouragement of the worst instincts of people's nature by someone with real power and influence. When the President of the US says that masks are fake or a hoax, then a certain segment of the population will believe it. Which is why, if the current POTUS is re-elected and continues to throw the Country and the Federal Government into chaos, I have little hope that it will be addressed.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Those numbers are way below what they really should be.
  - pm90 6y ago
    And Trumps polling numbers are higher than they should be. We aren’t living in a utopia, but we do have a plurality of the populace who believes in facts and we shouldn’t forget that. It can be the foundation of a durable political coalition.
- chongli 6y ago
  When the President of the US says that masks are fake or a hoax It wasn’t just the president who said that, it was also the medical establishment a few months ago. They told people not to wear masks because they were afraid of shortages that would affect hospital supplies. They lied to the public rather than being honest about it. That sort of behaviour is extremely damaging to the public trust in experts.
  - irq11 6y ago
    It wasn’t just the medical establishment a few months ago - it’s the medical establishment today. The rhetoric around masks has vastly exceeded the evidence, and asserting that people were “lying” at first is to ignore the fact that the evidence hasn’t really changed since the beginning of the year: https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/masking-lack-of-evidence-with-politics/ https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/masking-lack-of-evidence-with-... https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commentary-masks-all-covid-19-not-based-sound-data https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commenta... https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/07/commentary-my-views-cloth-face-coverings-public-preventing-covid-19 https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/07/commenta... https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars/special-ep-masks https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars/specia...
seer 6y ago
While this is indeed what is currently happening in the world, I think it would be relatively “easy” to convince the poorer countries. They can be pressured in so many ways: “If you want to look like us you have to do it”(cultural). “If you want to trade with us, you have to do it“ (Economical), “If you don’t do it we will have to use other methods”(Force). Or best of all - “We did benefit from it, so here are a share of the profits, but you need to behave” (Aid). You need to convince the rich countries first. And since US is the richest, it can have an enormous influence on the world. I think people in the US know that, and that’s one of the reasons there are so many deniers. If Malta goes green - well who cares, if the US puts its entire cultural, political, economical and military will on it - things will start to change. We can’t have that.
rorykoehler 6y ago
I think the contemporary strain of conservatism should be called “denialism”.

tuatoru 6y ago

> it seems that we need obvious impending doom for everyone before people stop voting for right wing politicians. From my observation over the last few decades, when people are frightened they vote for self-proclaimed strongmen. Back in the '00s when I was taking an interest there was a kind of general belief that the first really incontrovertible "we must do something" events[1] would happen in the '30s and, by and large, governments would act in an uncooperative, zero-sum way internationally, and focus on helping their cronies domestically. I haven't seen reasons to change that view yet. [1] For example, extreme heatwaves that each kill more than a million people directly, or simultaneous harvest failure in two or more of the five major grain-growing regions of the world, two or more years in a row, and consequently tens to hundreds of millions of refugees on the move.

jillesvangurp 6y ago

The thing to hope for is people figuring out how to get rich while doing things that are good for our planet. Economics and not idealism is the way out. People are way too much stuck assuming that saving our planet involves guilt tripping the masses into self sacrifice in a heroic last ditch effort to save our planet. IMHO this is fatalistic and not realistic. You see economics driving progress in lots of sectors. There is good reason to be hopeful here because e.g. he most valuable car company is now a battery EV company (Tesla) and the fastest growing electricity companies are all over solar and wind. Farmers are going organic because they have better margins on selling good quality produce. High tech farming meanwhile includes using clean energy to intensive green house growing, vertical farming, and better resource management. Likewise the construction sector is figuring out cheaper and cleaner materials (e.g. wood instead of concrete seems to be becoming a thing). Profits are shifting from companies doing damage to companies undoing damage. There are no silver bullets here but the effects can be quite rapid. E.g. the coal sector collapsing in the space of about 10-15 years is driven by economics not idealism. It certainly helps that people like the side effect of less pollution but the main driver there is $/kwh. Investors are voting with their feet at this point. Either way, some good old R&D and healthy profit has achieved more in recent years than decades of lobbying by environmentalists. Places like China, India, etc. are all doing their thing and mostly it's just driven by economics. That's fine. China seems to be particularly good at figuring things out that are both profitable and helpful here. You see India copying a lot of that.

rorykoehler 6y ago
That’s why regulation is necessary. We can artificially create the conditions to make it profitable.
- jillesvangurp 6y ago
  It helps, but I find it encouraging that places like Texas are installing wind and shutting down coal without that being necessary.
Jon_Lowtek 6y ago
Any industry that pays for its externalities is more expensive in production. My mother told me the river changed color based on what color the towns factory used that day, when she was young. That did not change because people were guild tripped into not buying from them, or because someone found a way to be both more ecological and more profitable. The state changed the rules: your factory poisons the river, we close the factory and take your money. Economic profit does not favor ecology. No one would have invested into the R&D of wastewater processing unless the state threatens them with an economic equivalence of a death-sentence. Nowadays waste-water processing might be a boom market where profits can be made, but that is not some free market force that is independent from decades of lobbying.

Bombthecat 6y ago

I gave up all hope. I don't see any chance in hell.