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This is precisely why climate change policy is so difficult to enact. Folks don’t understand the urgency until they experience it themselves, and by that point
by shay_ker 4y ago
This is precisely why climate change policy is so difficult to enact. Folks don’t understand the urgency until they experience it themselves, and by that point it’s gotten really bad.
There’s an analogy with tech debt or old software here somewhere.
- themitigating 4y agoThis is one our of biggest flaws - Being reactive instead of proactive. It doesn't always work.
- FerretFred 4y agoAgree, and a big part of the problem is that Politicians will not be proactive and spend money for no apparent visible return. If they're wasting money they're unlikely to get re-elected. It's the same as asking IT accountants to invest in mirroring systems that appear never to fail - until they do...
- eCa 4y agoExactly. For a simple example, look at the criticism about Lithuania’s LNG terminal[1] a few years ago, built to reduce their dependency on Russian gas. I think they are pretty happy about that terminal now. [1] https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/1111346/five-years-ago-lithuania-broke-russian-gas-monopoly-but-at-what-cost https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/1111346/five-years-...
- the_cramer 4y agoIn a german podcast a guy once said: "You won't get them with melting Icebergs and Polarbears. They're too far away". It's true, nobody* cares about icebergs and other things they've never seen before. Just wait when the drought kicks in and more and more Problems arise. I hope then people start acting themselves instead of shouting into the social platform nirvana.
- fitch321 4y ago
- powerhour 4y agoThis reads like you're looking for a fight by using the least charitable interpretation of the quote.
- actually_a_dog 4y agoYeah, it's only really "us vs them" in the sense that "they" don't seem to realize they're also really "us."
- fitch321 4y agoObama would say "we"
- ARandomerDude 4y agoI say "folks" as a 1:1 synonym for "people" and only recently became aware that some folks/people find this in some way derogatory. I think it's a regional thing.
- mattnewton 4y agoI’ve pretty much been using “folks” as a gender neutral “guys” because I find “people” potentially problematic (some constructions like “you folks” or “you all” are pretty much always casual while “you people” can sound charged, etc). I think this is common? Haven’t heard of people taking offense to “folks” before.
- alonmower 4y agoI feel like we need movies/media that helps things feel more real, personal, negative, close to home. Not movies that _focus_ and sensationalize climate disasters like The Day After Tomorrow. But movies that exist in the near future where really visceral elements of how climate change played out 10-20 years exist as a backdrop to whatever story is being told (but feel grounded in reality). e.g. water rationing, abandoned towns/cities, authoritarian responses to increased immigration/migration, food shortages, etc...
- Workaccount2 4y agoNobody does anything until there are bodies on the ground.
- CalRobert 4y agoBodies that look like their own, too often.
- ricogallo 4y agoI actually wonder if humans lack a crucial adaptive advantage if they do not intuitively understand how systems work. But then it occurs to me that some ancient philosophies and religions emphasised the need to be in tune with the surrounding world.
- actually_a_dog 4y agoHow would understanding systems have been significantly adaptive for humans before a few thousand years ago? I agree with you that humans generally lack this capability. We also lack the ability to understand exponential growth, which I think is partially a cause of our lack of ability to comprehend systems. My personal theory on this is that it comes from the fact that our sensory systems operate on a logarithmic response curve [0]. Note, for instance, how the decibel scale for measuring sound intensity is a logarithmic scale. Because our sensory systems respond logarithmically, that means an exponential increase in stimulus feels linear, at least until the point where the stimulus is damaging or so intense as to be uncomfortable. The end result is that we think "it's not so bad" until it's really bad. --- [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber%E2%80%93Fechner_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber%E2%80%93Fechner_law
- ricogallo 4y agoI find your perspective interesting, but have the feeling that you are not thinking in systems (!). The sensory systems are perceptual systems, but they are subsystems of a larger "cognitive" system, and we cannot be sure that it exhibits the same logarithmic response behavior.
- bmitc 4y agoWe don't understand complex systems well at all. I think the more defective part of humans is our near complete inability for long-term thinking and planning, especially collective long-term thinking and planning. Just look at our daily lives and jobs. When are long-term plans every truly engaged and acted upon? Almost none. There is much too much self-induced noise in society and the economy, and there's a hyper-focus on short-term results and concerns.
- fitch321 4y agoAnd I will never respect your policy for you lack the self-awareness required to acknowledge its risks, and they are enormous, like stalin era population displacement high. I won't go on Nazino
- iforgotpassword 4y agoI think it's with everything that doesn't have an immediate, graspable impact. Nobody would smoke if cigarettes killed you after a few months with a 50% chance. If they increase the likelihood of a stroke or other complications decades down the line, it's much easier to brush it off, tell yourself you're more of a Helmut Schmidt kind of person. Or just think it's a worthy tradeoff for the benefits you get from smoking today. Same thing with child labor regarding smartphones, clothes, you name it. It's far away. If you had to buy it right at the factory at a counter where you could see the working conditions, it would have a vastly different impact on you. And I'm not claiming to be smarter or superior to the average Joe here. This pattern strikes all the time, for everyone.
- anoplus 4y agoIt is all about tangibility. That is why we install car reverse parking sensors. If people had glasses that see air pollution, they would revolt. If people had access to a very accurate live and high-res computer simulation of climate-change, or anything, they would take it more seriously. People are spoiled with regard to the level of accuracy and tangibility they require to be convinced.
- smileysteve 4y ago> If people had glasses that see air pollution, they would revolt. I've ruined a couple of people's perspectives by sharing the the reason LA sunsets are so beautiful is because of the pollution particulate.
- raxxorraxor 4y agoHeh, a small oil film on the water is beautiful as well. Or if chemicals give water a nice green or red shade. There are bright sides to everything.
- voisin 4y ago> It is all about tangibility. What if every weather app showed, next to actual temperature, what the temperature is modelled to be if climate change had been avoided (kept CO2 ppm to 1950s levels, say)?
- ekianjo 4y ago
- oezi 4y agoAre you trolling? It just requires on the order of 1x GDP to install enough renewables and storage to start reversing climate change. It is totally doable, but people are just trying to skirt the costs of climate neutrality.
- nspattak 4y agoif by storage you mean batteries, are you sure that their production/usage/recycling makes up for the environmental cost of producing/recycling them? I am all in for green energy but we have to be honest and estimate well, otherwise we will simply continue as we are now (if not make matters worst)
- ben_w 4y agoI am certain that is the case for batteries. Recycling is always easier than digging up and processing the rocks which contain a few percent by weight of each relevant element, and they're already a net win (with regards to CO2) even if you do that.
- ekianjo 4y ago> Recycling is always easier than digging up Easier? Most of stuff that is supposed to be recycled ends up in landfills.
- iso1631 4y agoA common trope is "this replacement (nuclear/wind/solar) isn't perfect so lets keep building fossil fuels" Every 1kwh produced by a windmill is 1kwh less of oil being burnt. We don't exactly have an abundance of energy at the moment, there's no excuse not to be diverting vast amounts of planetary resources into renewable production.
- 4y ago
- hamilyon2 4y agoI sometimes wonder if we released civilisation game where climate change is a harsh unforgiving price for using coal and oil, would it change anything? Is it too late for such a product?
- mmanfrin 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_VI:_Gathering_Storm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_VI:_Gathering_Sto...
- wishfish 4y agoIt's been a big feature in the later games. But it's been there since the start. Civ 1 had a simple mechanism where highly industrialized cities would create polluted tiles. You could clean up the polluted tiles with settlers. But if your settlers didn't clean it up quickly enough, there would be consequences. Plains tiles would turn into desert. Coastal tiles would turn into swamps.
- danenania 4y agoI also apportion a fair amount of blame to the media. There is a major 'boy who cried wolf' effect--because literally everything is maximally exaggerated and sensationalized to optimize engagement and revenue, people are numbed to the constant alarmism and there is no way to get through to them and convince them that this time the crisis is a real one that they can't afford to ignore.
- mym1990 4y agoI think this is the case for many of the catastrophic scenarios that a human/humans can face. Think about people smoking, or eating really really poorly, or driving drunk. And the worst thing is that in many cases people will revert to the old behavior provided they survive.
- Flip-per 4y agoI wonder whether frogs have a tale about how humans behave on a warming up planet.
- tomp 4y agoNo, the reason is that people pretend that their favourite freedom-restricting policy is “against climate change”. Ban meet. Ban non-private flights. Turn off hot water. Ban nuclear. Ban bitcoin. Ban aircon. All fake, authoritarian “solutions”. The real solution is simple: tax fossil fuels. That’s literally all that you need to do to solve climate change? And also the only thing you can do.
- jgb1984 4y agoTax fossil fuels? When I fill my car with benzine at 2 euro/liter would you like to guess how much of that is taxes? Same for the gas heating in my apartment. And the electricity that powers my PC. The cost of the actual fuel or energy is only a fraction of the price I pay, the rest is taxes (plain old taxes, or taxes masquerading as operating / distribution costs).
- CogitoCogito 4y agoI didn't read tomp's post as saying that taxes weren't already being assessed. I'm pretty sure tomp was arguing that the taxes need to be _higher_.
- Tsukiortu 4y agoI live in the country, and a lot of farmers and even workers who have to commute would probably be hit quite hard by any spikes in fuel prices. We had already felt it when the prices were going up recently. It doesn't help that a lot of jobs that can be remote still aernt or still don't even give the option to be. We also aernt feasibly able to switch to electric at this point, as I can't tell you any nearby gas stations that allow for electric car charging.
- pengaru 4y agoIt doesn't help that everyone's constantly being lied to by sensationalized hyperbolic news from the mainstream media. We've been conditioned to assume everything's bullshit until it's objective reality on display before our own eyes.