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> Nothing matters as much as our bone-headed, mass-suicidal march toward extreme-weather oblivion. Not COVID-19, not the invasion of Ukraine, not even “The Godf
by vasco 5y ago
> Nothing matters as much as our bone-headed, mass-suicidal march toward extreme-weather oblivion. Not COVID-19, not the invasion of Ukraine, not even “The Godfather.”
Says a reporter living in Los Angeles, the 49th most expensive city in the world to live in. For a lot of people, what they need to talk about is how they're getting their next meal, how they're going to make rent, or survive a current war.
Maybe go to a war zone or a poor area and try to make the same point with a straight face.
- nawgz 5y agoHis audience is first-world readers, who have time to digest the material, and then in the face of the ugly implications upon their own action, respond with snark about how plenty of humans are facing more urgent crises so we shouldn't worry about the destruction of our planet. Your point isn't what you think it is.
- throwaway5752 5y agoIf I told a person in a war zone there was a planetary crisis that would guarantee the death of the children or grandchildren, I don't have a doubt in the world they would care about it. Just because someone living in danger or poverty doesn't make them a fool or a coward.
- bmmayer1 5y agoI was in Ukraine yesterday. That is 100% untrue. When you're in a war zone, even if you're in the country but far from the action, the only thing you can think about is your immediate survival and the survival of your friends and family. Literally nothing else matters.
- throwaway5752 5y agoThanks for editing your comment for additional clarity. There isn't much one can do about anything if they survive until the next day, but that does not mean they don't care about non-immediate concerns. Flight 571 survivors were not pro-cannibalism, they did what they had to in order to survive in terrible circumstances. People in poverty and conflict definitely still care about their familys' futures.
- gr8tnwz 5y agoIt’s funny how intensity triggers our anxiety like that. Triggers a disposition to ignore the future for the moment. I wonder if western propaganda and hype generation for technology, quarterly gains, the latest stuff! could be leveraged intentionally to distract any human then given our shared biology. That’s a rhetorical point since I know our biology is intentionally used against us like that by industry because marketing and PR execs have explained how it is just so they seek to keep our inner monologues flush with their phrases. There’s plenty of new perspectives and applications of your agency available. Why not put yourself to them rather than demand others change theirs? No? Going to sit at screen and PR others into action? Typical rich westerner; externalizing the change they want to see in the world.
- j4yav 5y agoI'm sure they would care in an abstract sense. Probably they would not agree that nobody should be talking about the suffering they are going through. I have friends and family in Ukraine right now, and I've not heard anyone say anything remotely like they wished people were focusing on the climate instead.
- usgroup 5y agoSir/madam I think you might need to do some serious re-calibration.
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- evocatus 5y agoSounds like you are the one denying racism.
- bombcar 5y agoGiven how absolutely hard it is to get people to evacuate in front of an obviously on-coming disaster such as a flood or hurricane, I think your view of people is naive at best.
- andi999 5y agoAny (scientific) source that climate change will guarantee the death of the children or grandchildren?
- janto 5y agoAs someone living in the third world let me assure you those living in poverty have more pressing challenges for themselves and their children. They are fighting raw nature daily for survival and your attempt to redirect attention away from, say, business and work creation to your "end of the world (maybe)" fears is not going to go over well. What I don't understand is your lack of doubt that they would (or should) care. The conviction is something analogous to religion.
- wbsss4412 5y agoSays the commenter on a website where people treat six figure salaries like they are table stakes.
- oliveshell 5y agoDoes that make them wrong?
- usgroup 5y agoNo, just hypocrites
- fullshark 5y agoWhat's your point? Their attempt to empathize with the impoverished / war torn is fool hardy and they should try to remain clueless of other people's experiences and whine about their own problems?
- wbsss4412 5y agoHow is climate change “whining about their own problems?”. The LA times author was making the point that, to him and his readers, nothing matters as much as climate change. While what is happening in Ukraine is absolutely terrible, in his mind it does not reach the level of concern that climate does. Parents response was “oh you’re so privileged”, and my point is that just about everyone on this site is. Frankly, their comment came across less like empathy and more like standard deflection. Finally, climate change is only “our problem” in the sense that it’s primarily driven by the global rich and privileged. The people who will bear the worst of it are the poor in the global south who did little to contribute to the problem.
- fullshark 5y agoSo basically you think the person is hypocrite and that makes their point invalid. I think you should consider how we are going to achieve climate goals which require political consensus given the point OP makes personally, but noted.
- isitmadeofglass 5y agoWhat are you trying to argue? That we should not care about climate change because there are reporters who live in expensive cities? Or that no-one living in Los Angeles is allowed an opinion?
- fullshark 5y agoWell most of the proposed solutions to climate change issues involve making the proles' standard of living worse which is never going to work. Even something as minor as increasing fuel taxes led to the yellow vest protests. How are any of these major curtailing of consumption solutions going to fly globally without leading to massive civil unrest?
- cogman10 5y agoThe issue is there is probably no good way to address climate change without impacting standard of living. The solution is to emit less CO2. Carbon capture/reclamation will never be enough to actually change things particularly with the current levels of emissions. So how do we address that? Best way, IMO, is to go after the largest CO2 emitters. That's transportation, electricity, and industrial emissions (mostly concrete and steel AFAIK). Hitting any of those industries with a tax to incentivize reduction will impact standards of living. It will raise the price of goods which ultimately hit the poor and middle class. You could also subsidize switch over, but that's ultimately a lot harder (and probably less effective) than more general carbon taxes. And, of course, this has to be done globally, so if we really wanted this to be effective then it'd mean not just fixing your own country but also ideally subsidizing or sanctioning/embargoing bad players.
- kulikalov 5y agoI don't think this is what he is saying. I think he is just saying that for a lot of people in the world it's hard to prioritize a potential decade(s) away crisis while dealing with life-threatening situations on daily basis.
- nuccy 5y agoI totally agree with what you say. To add on that, effects of Russian war in Ukraine may have extraordinary effect on global climate, given that to limit consumption of Russian oil and gas Europe invests more in renewables and even considers building new nuclear power plants.
- D_Alex 5y agoThe short term effect of Europe's move away from pipeline gas to LNG will be to increase CO2 emissions, if only because production and transportation of LNG consumes about 10% of the original gas. Furthermore, emissions of methane from LNG production and transportation contribute to global warming - by some estimates at a rate comparable to the CO2 emissions.
- api 5y agoThe entire framing of the climate issue as "poor and middle class people need to use less energy, says a bunch of comparatively rich people living in high cost of living first world cities" guarantees political failure. The only way we will get real traction against this problem is if we stop framing it around shame and austerity and instead frame it as a problem solvable via technological innovation that also frees us from the constraints of fossil fuel dependence. That framing is also more correct IMHO, as there are numerous reasons to get off fossil fuels other than climate. The most significant of these is political independence and the fact that fossil fuels are a strictly limited declining resource whose depletion threatens our civilization on the supply side. This is a technical problem not a moral problem. There is no god that is going to punish us for emitting carbon. It's just physics: more carbon, more retained solar heat, weather changes that will disrupt the food supply and threaten a bunch of major population centers. It's also a problem about human self-interest not saving some mythical shibboleth of "unspoiled nature." Nature just is and we are only spoiling it for ourselves. As George Carlin put it: "Stop saying save the Earth! The Earth will be fine. We're fucked." Edit: on a final note: yes it is true that we could probably absorb and adapt to even severe climate change. But the cost of non-carbon-based energy is falling rapidly as technology advances and renewable energy is scaled up, while the deferred cost of climate change is rising. These lines almost certainly intersected some time ago. Getting off fossil carbon is cheaper than continuing to make climate change worse. This effect is compounded by the fact that fossil fuels are being depleted and therefore that the more we invest in them the more fossil fuel infrastructure investment will eventually be stranded as worthless. That depletion will probably bite at about the same time as climate change, draining the economy right when that cost hits. When you consider the depletion and stranded investment angles getting off fossil fuels is probably many orders of magnitude cheaper than the alternative path.
- plaguepilled 5y agoWith full respect intended, I have to disagree. We already have several options available to massively curtail our emissions (solar, wind, hydro, geothermal). While yes new technology would make this transition even faster, a major, MAJOR roadblock is lobbying by fossil fuel industries and related corporate interests. In terms of the technological discussion though, I am excited by the recent work done in molten salt cathode batteries for scale use (https://interestingengineering.com/molten-salt-12-week-battery https://interestingengineering.com/molten-salt-12-week-batte...).
- mapster 5y agoThis is a bad faith argument
- fullshark 5y agoIt's a simple refuting of the column's thesis/headline.
- netcan 5y agoNot sure this is a good posture regardless. First, I'll note that a lot of poor people IRL have just as much "social conscience" than other people, especially politically. Poor people vote based on the whole range of issues that everyone else votes on. Second, the "i've got my own problems go away" response is applicable to everything, including poverty. The older these tropes get, the less thoughtfully they are used.
- downrightmike 5y agoWhy do you think russia invaded Ukraine? Ukraine was working with Shell oil to extract vast oil deposits that are only able to be reached with modern tech. If they got that oil, it would make them the 14th largest oil state in the world. Ukraine also happens to be the main pipeline the USSR sold through. Ukraine, when it gets that oil will be able to side step russia and sell to Europe. Also of importance is that the independent zones that sided with russia happen to be right on top of deposits. The only thing russia has going for it is oil and they need to keep their monopoly. What this has to do with climate change is that russia would have to modernize all their soviet infrastructure to get costs down and also extend their pipelines to china, but it is easier to keep being dirty and crush the competition.
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- antattack 5y agoNotably this opinion was published in entertainment and arts section.
- morninglight 5y agoThe author may be correct. However, if this is an existential problem that threatens all of mankind, why is her article locked behind a paywall?