4 ms·

> boomerisms Kind of ironic, given that "boomers" lived under the 4 decades long threat of total nuclear war. Frankly, as an instance of those "age 30+ milleni

• imtringued 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure I would be more terrified if there was a planned schedule of sending 1 nuke per year and then 2 nukes per year and then 3 nukes per year and so on than if you sent them all at once even though the first scenario is unlikely to kill me any time soon. It's far more benign yet it is scarier.
• Apocryphon 5y ago
  Climate change is not comparatively benign. Unpredictable localized calamities can quickly spiral into unpredictable geopolitical conflagrations. There’s no red phone to deescalate the drought that motivated the Syrian Civil War.
• avgcorrection 5y ago
  Nuclear armaggedon is avoidable with some luck and enough safeguards. Catastrophic climate change is inevitable at our current trajectory.
  • adwn 5y ago
    Climate change can be mitigated by technological solutions. Sure, you also need political action, but it's a marathon, not a sprint: a chain of bad decisions will make matters worse, but you'll still have a chance to recover. During the cold war, a chain of bad decisions could have led to immediate, full-scale disaster. That you had to depend on "some luck" to prevent the collapse of civilization as we know is terrifying.
    • imtringued 5y ago
      The thing about climate change is that it is 100% avoidable yet nothing is being done. Everyone just says "we can fix it afterwards with twice the effort".
    • svnt 5y ago
      Your argument makes no sense. Lots of people have to push lots of buttons they’ve never pushed before for nuclear war to occur. Lots of people have to change their entire lives to prevent climate change. Do you see the difference?
• Dudeman112 5y ago
  >rather benign (compared to WW3 between the US and the USSR) effects of climate change. There's nothing benign coming of the acidity/temperature/luminosity levels of oceans going so out of whack that planktons start dying. Changing nuclear Armageddon for food scarcity Armageddon doesn't make it any less of an existential threat. Last I heard Mr Putin was playing games with the nuclear shitshow a few days ago, to boot.
• vkou 5y ago
  > Kind of ironic, given that "boomers" lived under the 4 decades long threat of total nuclear war. We still live under that same threat, almost nothing has changed... Other than public perception [1] of the dangers. All the same failure modes that lead to nuclear war that were in place in 1980 are still here, today. [2] All the same kinds of people are in still in charge. [1] Just because the news has gotten bored of writing about a subject doesn't mean the subject has gone away. [2] Also, India/Pakistan/North Korea are now nuclear powers, but as someone who doesn't live in Asia, I'm far more concerned about the Russia/US dynamic than any of that. Neither of those three parties can 'end the world' in the same way the latter two can.
  • fuzzfactor 5y ago
    >All the same kinds of people are in still in charge. Very true. However the quality of those kinds of people has declined further while it has become easier for complete non-leaders to attain leadership positions around the world. The political & financial leadership shortcomings across-the-board are more disappointing through time since it doesn't seem like there is enough sophistication to avoid war as well and preserve what prosperity there is. So this is all basically threatening peace & prosperity, that's what really gets people worried. The pandemic certainly didn't help, why work so hard if you may not even be around tomorrow.