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> Can we stop acting like these people are wrong or stupid This is really hard to do given my conversations with most people in real life. There is a shocking

> Can we stop acting like these people are wrong or stupid This is really hard to do given my conversations with most people in real life. There is a shocking obliviousness to climate change, plastic pollution, economic problems, healthcare (personal and the system), philosophical/existential inquiries, etc. Not to say people don’t know climate change is happening - they just aren’t aware of any details beyond surface level memes. Ignorance is bliss, as the saying goes. But also a reminder that frustration and outrage drive content algorithms, so its no surprise that kind of content dominates the text based social media.

iamstupidsimple 5y ago
Long ago, my dad checked out of news media entirely, and the effect on his mental health was incredible. Personally, I don't think I can turn a blind eye to the rest of the world, but IME those that do are generally much happier.
- heckingoodtimes 5y ago
  What do they say again? > Ignorance is bliss. I didn’t grasp this when my HS English teacher imparted this on us, but having consumed much of the trending Reddit content, it makes a lot more sense these days.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    When we all first hear this expression we assume that ignorance is a bad thing, thus we should not be like all the blissfully ignorant. But maybe it was really advice -- don't expand your circle of awareness too far beyond your circle of influence.
Robotbeat 5y ago
To be honest, I think there might be a point where if you’re too plugged in to environmental social media, you end up opposing fairly practical approaches to solving it because increasingly-niche concerns. The “good is the enemy of the better” effect. Normie: “Oh cool, electric cars are improving that means less pollution and i spend less on gas!” Too-online environmental person: “But ACKSHUALLY, electric cars are terrible because theoretically lithium might have some environmental impact and we need to ban all cars if we REALLY care about the environment, so electric cars are bad because they’re stopping us from banning all cars.” Normie: “Solar power is good; I heard a little bit about climate change, so I’m glad some people are working to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.” Left Caucus of Nevada: “ Arevia Power withdrew their application for the Battle Born Solar project. Congrats to @saveourmesa and the other activists who put in the work to keep the community healthy, safe, and whole” https://twitter.com/LeftCaucus/status/1418403704047243264?s=20 https://twitter.com/LeftCaucus/status/1418403704047243264?s=...
- goodpoint 5y ago
  Your example proves the opposite. The person you accused of being "too plugged" correctly points out the ineffectiveness of electric cars.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    Thanks for that. I was intending it to be an honest reflection of what some people actually think. Electric cars are between 2 and 20 times better than the status quo. The end result of opposing electric cars won’t be that cars get banned but that we’ll just use internal combustion engine cars.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      It's simply not that. Electric cars aren't just being proposed as a temporary replacement for ICEs, they're increasingly being proposed as a replacement to public transit. See the Loop, and various autonomous taxi schemes that compete not with personal car ownership but with public transport. Beyond that, we live in a world of limited resources and path dependency. Every dollar being spent on subsidizing electric cars is a dollar not spent on public transport. So as soon as we're no longer talking about getting ICE cars off the road, we're spending money on tech that is not good enough instead of tech that is good enough. It's not the good being the enemy of the better, it's the less bad being the enemy of good enough. A world where we're spending 5000$+ from taxpayer money on EVs while dealing with ineffective public transport, which incentivizes people to move to suburbia and double their CO2 emissions, isn't going to cut it. So by all means we can work on EVs as a backup plan for those that will never use public transportation or human powered transport, but the second it's harming actually working transportation tech, and in the US that's starting to happen, it's doing more harm than good.
      - Robotbeat 5y ago
        I just don’t buy this zero sum “every dollar helping vehicle electrification hurts public transport” idea. In fact, I think this zero sum idea is actively harmful. Every year, our society spends VAST amounts on fossil fuels and fossil fuel vehicles. THAT is the real problem. Anything spent on electric vehicles is minuscule in comparison because every single new internal combustion car sold, about 60 tons of CO2 is released from the gasoline burned, in addition to manufacturing. It is conventional cars that compete with electric cars, NOT public transport. In fact, people who live in places where public transport or bikes (whose CO2 emissions per mile depend on not having a high beef diet) is not an option, such as many suburbs, are where electric vehicles are most suitable (can charge at home). You’re making claims that people will, in the 10 years we have left to fully decarbonize, majority move out of the suburbs and into denser areas that are bike friendly and can have good public transport is absurd. Firstly, there’s nowhere for them to move into as prices in denser areas are often higher, so we’d have to kick off a massive apartment building campaign starting NOW (with all the cement emissions that implies… and cement is decarbonization resistant). Second, are we asking people (as most people in the US own homes) to abandon a massive $250k investment just to pay rent in an apartment? If everyone moves out of the suburbs on timescale you think, there’ll be no one to buy that house… it’ll just rot or will have to be torn down. Houses can last over 100 years (mine was built in 1919), much longer than cars, so you’re wasting the embodied emissions of the house. Thirdly, people often LIKE living in the suburbs with large yards (I live in a small duplex in a dense neighborhood with a small yard, but it’s clear that having more space has advantages), and this totally unrealistic idea that we can force everyone into a dense cityscape in just a decade or so is bananas. The political pushback would be enormous. So the only option is to encourage densification on the margins (by getting rid of parking mandates, getting rid of local zoning that bans duplexes and multiplexes, etc), funding public transport infrastructure and bike infrastructure (which is cheap) to stop sprawl while decarbonizing people in-place. That “factor of 2” emissions for living in the suburbs is only because of building energy costs and commuting, which can both be decarbonized much cheaper (via heat pumps, solar panels, and electric vehicles) than the cost of abandoning a $250k house for more expensive and more cramped urban housing. PLUS you won’t have the massive political cost of taking the middle class’s most valuable asset and making it worthless while also forcing everyone to change their lifestyle. The whole “electric cars are bad, ACKSHUALLY” argument relies on a chain of thought that is absolutely absurd when you look at the political capital it would take to achieve on the timescales we’re talking about. Regardless, there would STILL BE CARS. Japan, the Netherlands, and every other large developed nation that is put up as a model of public transport STILL has a heck of a lot of cars per capita, much higher than we can afford to be fossil fuel run in a decarbonized future. Best case is we get rid of half of all cars with the rest electric. We are currently at like 1% electric, and the consumers who buy from biggest manufacturers in the US (GM and Tesla) don’t even get federal tax credits for their vehicles as those companies already used theirs up, so you argument that electric cars are bad because of competition for tax dollars already is shown to be false. We need to get to 50% electric in the BEST CASE SCENARIO of bike and public transport centric decarbonization, and ban the rest. We are not going NEARLY fast enough and many states have now added EV taxes that are HIGHER than the equivalent state gas tax. Plus, actual business (meaning practical things like contractors who do plumbing, bring food to market, etc) need electric vehicles as well which must be decarbonized, as well as all buses and trains and mining vehicles and semi trucks and whathaveyou needing if you be electric, so the whole sector needs a massive push. Normies understand this better than too-online degrowthers who think you’ll be able to convince the politically diverse America to abandon the suburbs in a freaking decade and all take trains (which require expensive infrastructure that America takes literally decades to build), buses, and bikes. There is no plausible world where that happens outside of hellscape authoritarianism. We must decarbonize in-place with solutions that don’t require everyone to get on the same exact page lifestyle-wise within a decade. (And a side note on zero sum thinking about climate change solutions: we need to decarbonize so fast and spend a LOT of money to do it, so even if we DID want to spend it all in one sector, we’d run out of qualified people to do the work and machines capable of building the thing, ie you’re supply-constrained and so you’d get massive cost inflation. Spreading the money over several solutions at once, however, prevents that from happening as those who build cars & heat pumps are different from those who build railroads and trains and multiplexes. So we SHOULDN’T put all our money on just electric cars or public transport or whathaveyou, but actually spend it on a wide spread of solutions to be most optimal & enable the fastest decarbonization. This is in addition to all the other arguments above. It is NOT zero sum.)
Zababa 5y ago
> climate change, plastic pollution, economic problems, healthcare (personal and the system), philosophical/existential inquiries, etc If you're not doing actively something about it, what's the point of keeping this in mind if it only makes you sad? It seems like some people like having a moral high ground by being sad at important issues, but I don't really see the point. Either do something, or don't do anything.
goatlover 5y ago
> There is a shocking obliviousness to climate change, plastic pollution, economic problems, healthcare (personal and the system), philosophical/existential inquiries, etc. Not to say people don’t know climate change is happening - they just aren’t aware of any details beyond surface level memes. In the 60s-80s, there was impending nuclear war, overpopulation, acid rain, the hole in the ozone layer, radioactive and chemical waste, deforestation of the Amazon at an alarming rate, and various species placed on endangered lists. That and all the religious rapture expectations, in the US at least. Somehow civilization managed not to collapse or annihilate itself decades ago. So the updated crisis of climate change, plastic in the ocean, etc. starts to sound like more of the same doomsday talk. Not that all of these things aren't problems to deal with, but are they existential in nature? Do they mean we should expect life to get worse? Because the overpopulation bomb and mass starvation didn't pan out. We produce more food now than we ever have. Acid rain and the ozone layer were manageable. Species often make recoveries after being protected. Rivers recover after being cleaned up. A majority of the original Amazon still remains, even though deforestation and fires remain concerns. There are more trees in the world today than 100 years ago. And standards of living having been going up around the globe over that same time, while absolute poverty has been diminishing. Maybe we can manage our problems and avoid the worst case scenarios. In the movie Tomorrowland, Hugh Laurie as the villain does give a really compelling speech in which he talks about how all the doomsday expectations are an excuse to not fix problems, which contrasts with the main character, who is very optimistic that humans can find solutions, unlike all her classmates and teachers.

iamstupidsimple 5y ago

Long ago, my dad checked out of news media entirely, and the effect on his mental health was incredible. Personally, I don't think I can turn a blind eye to the rest of the world, but IME those that do are generally much happier.

heckingoodtimes 5y ago
What do they say again? > Ignorance is bliss. I didn’t grasp this when my HS English teacher imparted this on us, but having consumed much of the trending Reddit content, it makes a lot more sense these days.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  When we all first hear this expression we assume that ignorance is a bad thing, thus we should not be like all the blissfully ignorant. But maybe it was really advice -- don't expand your circle of awareness too far beyond your circle of influence.

Robotbeat 5y ago

To be honest, I think there might be a point where if you’re too plugged in to environmental social media, you end up opposing fairly practical approaches to solving it because increasingly-niche concerns. The “good is the enemy of the better” effect. Normie: “Oh cool, electric cars are improving that means less pollution and i spend less on gas!” Too-online environmental person: “But ACKSHUALLY, electric cars are terrible because theoretically lithium might have some environmental impact and we need to ban all cars if we REALLY care about the environment, so electric cars are bad because they’re stopping us from banning all cars.” Normie: “Solar power is good; I heard a little bit about climate change, so I’m glad some people are working to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.” Left Caucus of Nevada: “ Arevia Power withdrew their application for the Battle Born Solar project. Congrats to @saveourmesa and the other activists who put in the work to keep the community healthy, safe, and whole” https://twitter.com/LeftCaucus/status/1418403704047243264?s=20 https://twitter.com/LeftCaucus/status/1418403704047243264?s=...

goodpoint 5y ago
Your example proves the opposite. The person you accused of being "too plugged" correctly points out the ineffectiveness of electric cars.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Thanks for that. I was intending it to be an honest reflection of what some people actually think. Electric cars are between 2 and 20 times better than the status quo. The end result of opposing electric cars won’t be that cars get banned but that we’ll just use internal combustion engine cars.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    It's simply not that. Electric cars aren't just being proposed as a temporary replacement for ICEs, they're increasingly being proposed as a replacement to public transit. See the Loop, and various autonomous taxi schemes that compete not with personal car ownership but with public transport. Beyond that, we live in a world of limited resources and path dependency. Every dollar being spent on subsidizing electric cars is a dollar not spent on public transport. So as soon as we're no longer talking about getting ICE cars off the road, we're spending money on tech that is not good enough instead of tech that is good enough. It's not the good being the enemy of the better, it's the less bad being the enemy of good enough. A world where we're spending 5000$+ from taxpayer money on EVs while dealing with ineffective public transport, which incentivizes people to move to suburbia and double their CO2 emissions, isn't going to cut it. So by all means we can work on EVs as a backup plan for those that will never use public transportation or human powered transport, but the second it's harming actually working transportation tech, and in the US that's starting to happen, it's doing more harm than good.
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      I just don’t buy this zero sum “every dollar helping vehicle electrification hurts public transport” idea. In fact, I think this zero sum idea is actively harmful. Every year, our society spends VAST amounts on fossil fuels and fossil fuel vehicles. THAT is the real problem. Anything spent on electric vehicles is minuscule in comparison because every single new internal combustion car sold, about 60 tons of CO2 is released from the gasoline burned, in addition to manufacturing. It is conventional cars that compete with electric cars, NOT public transport. In fact, people who live in places where public transport or bikes (whose CO2 emissions per mile depend on not having a high beef diet) is not an option, such as many suburbs, are where electric vehicles are most suitable (can charge at home). You’re making claims that people will, in the 10 years we have left to fully decarbonize, majority move out of the suburbs and into denser areas that are bike friendly and can have good public transport is absurd. Firstly, there’s nowhere for them to move into as prices in denser areas are often higher, so we’d have to kick off a massive apartment building campaign starting NOW (with all the cement emissions that implies… and cement is decarbonization resistant). Second, are we asking people (as most people in the US own homes) to abandon a massive $250k investment just to pay rent in an apartment? If everyone moves out of the suburbs on timescale you think, there’ll be no one to buy that house… it’ll just rot or will have to be torn down. Houses can last over 100 years (mine was built in 1919), much longer than cars, so you’re wasting the embodied emissions of the house. Thirdly, people often LIKE living in the suburbs with large yards (I live in a small duplex in a dense neighborhood with a small yard, but it’s clear that having more space has advantages), and this totally unrealistic idea that we can force everyone into a dense cityscape in just a decade or so is bananas. The political pushback would be enormous. So the only option is to encourage densification on the margins (by getting rid of parking mandates, getting rid of local zoning that bans duplexes and multiplexes, etc), funding public transport infrastructure and bike infrastructure (which is cheap) to stop sprawl while decarbonizing people in-place. That “factor of 2” emissions for living in the suburbs is only because of building energy costs and commuting, which can both be decarbonized much cheaper (via heat pumps, solar panels, and electric vehicles) than the cost of abandoning a $250k house for more expensive and more cramped urban housing. PLUS you won’t have the massive political cost of taking the middle class’s most valuable asset and making it worthless while also forcing everyone to change their lifestyle. The whole “electric cars are bad, ACKSHUALLY” argument relies on a chain of thought that is absolutely absurd when you look at the political capital it would take to achieve on the timescales we’re talking about. Regardless, there would STILL BE CARS. Japan, the Netherlands, and every other large developed nation that is put up as a model of public transport STILL has a heck of a lot of cars per capita, much higher than we can afford to be fossil fuel run in a decarbonized future. Best case is we get rid of half of all cars with the rest electric. We are currently at like 1% electric, and the consumers who buy from biggest manufacturers in the US (GM and Tesla) don’t even get federal tax credits for their vehicles as those companies already used theirs up, so you argument that electric cars are bad because of competition for tax dollars already is shown to be false. We need to get to 50% electric in the BEST CASE SCENARIO of bike and public transport centric decarbonization, and ban the rest. We are not going NEARLY fast enough and many states have now added EV taxes that are HIGHER than the equivalent state gas tax. Plus, actual business (meaning practical things like contractors who do plumbing, bring food to market, etc) need electric vehicles as well which must be decarbonized, as well as all buses and trains and mining vehicles and semi trucks and whathaveyou needing if you be electric, so the whole sector needs a massive push. Normies understand this better than too-online degrowthers who think you’ll be able to convince the politically diverse America to abandon the suburbs in a freaking decade and all take trains (which require expensive infrastructure that America takes literally decades to build), buses, and bikes. There is no plausible world where that happens outside of hellscape authoritarianism. We must decarbonize in-place with solutions that don’t require everyone to get on the same exact page lifestyle-wise within a decade. (And a side note on zero sum thinking about climate change solutions: we need to decarbonize so fast and spend a LOT of money to do it, so even if we DID want to spend it all in one sector, we’d run out of qualified people to do the work and machines capable of building the thing, ie you’re supply-constrained and so you’d get massive cost inflation. Spreading the money over several solutions at once, however, prevents that from happening as those who build cars & heat pumps are different from those who build railroads and trains and multiplexes. So we SHOULDN’T put all our money on just electric cars or public transport or whathaveyou, but actually spend it on a wide spread of solutions to be most optimal & enable the fastest decarbonization. This is in addition to all the other arguments above. It is NOT zero sum.)

Zababa 5y ago

> climate change, plastic pollution, economic problems, healthcare (personal and the system), philosophical/existential inquiries, etc If you're not doing actively something about it, what's the point of keeping this in mind if it only makes you sad? It seems like some people like having a moral high ground by being sad at important issues, but I don't really see the point. Either do something, or don't do anything.

goatlover 5y ago

> There is a shocking obliviousness to climate change, plastic pollution, economic problems, healthcare (personal and the system), philosophical/existential inquiries, etc. Not to say people don’t know climate change is happening - they just aren’t aware of any details beyond surface level memes. In the 60s-80s, there was impending nuclear war, overpopulation, acid rain, the hole in the ozone layer, radioactive and chemical waste, deforestation of the Amazon at an alarming rate, and various species placed on endangered lists. That and all the religious rapture expectations, in the US at least. Somehow civilization managed not to collapse or annihilate itself decades ago. So the updated crisis of climate change, plastic in the ocean, etc. starts to sound like more of the same doomsday talk. Not that all of these things aren't problems to deal with, but are they existential in nature? Do they mean we should expect life to get worse? Because the overpopulation bomb and mass starvation didn't pan out. We produce more food now than we ever have. Acid rain and the ozone layer were manageable. Species often make recoveries after being protected. Rivers recover after being cleaned up. A majority of the original Amazon still remains, even though deforestation and fires remain concerns. There are more trees in the world today than 100 years ago. And standards of living having been going up around the globe over that same time, while absolute poverty has been diminishing. Maybe we can manage our problems and avoid the worst case scenarios. In the movie Tomorrowland, Hugh Laurie as the villain does give a really compelling speech in which he talks about how all the doomsday expectations are an excuse to not fix problems, which contrasts with the main character, who is very optimistic that humans can find solutions, unlike all her classmates and teachers.