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I didn't say we are all going to die. I still have hope that despite all the recalcitrant folks constantly bemoaning every attempt at collective action to curb

I didn't say we are all going to die. I still have hope that despite all the recalcitrant folks constantly bemoaning every attempt at collective action to curb the coming problems that we will survive. But it won't be thanks to said people crying "climate propaganda!" The attitude espoused by OP here is worse than useless. It's thanks to propaganda from ideologues who OPPOSE collective action on climate change that there are huge swaths of people who think it's not an issue at all, or some kind of commie plot. Stop the buffoonery, and stop demonizing people who want to prevent future suffering and ecological degradation.

PKop 3y ago
We can't all make it either, that is utopian thinking. There will be winners and losers.
- smolder 3y ago
  This is a non sequitur given what I wrote.
- ta8903 3y ago
  But we can try to minimize the number of losers.
monero-xmr 3y ago
> I didn't say we are all going to die. But you said: > The ideology of wanting humans to not send themselves to extinction It seems pretty clear you are implying we will literally go extinct because of global warming. This is crazy.
- smolder 3y ago
  The nuance you and others are missing is that I didn't say it was a definite thing. I didn't even say it was likely. I implied that the ideology he was complaining about is made up of people who don't think we should accelerate towards extinction: not an extreme stance at all. Given even a slight, non-zero risk of us doing that, if you have the stance that we shouldn't, it's reasonable to take steps to reduce the risk. I could have been way more succinct and less sarcastic with my original comment, but it hardly seems worth the effort when replying to a post like theirs.
  - vasco 3y ago
    The stance is extreme because it's doomsday speak, of the kind only people on top of a box in the park used to say when I was a kid. Humans will be here, maybe less of us, on boats, in constant air-con personal pods, whatever, we'll figure something out. We're not going extinct any time soon unless someone decides to launch nuclear weapons.
- bradjohnson 3y ago
  >It seems pretty clear you are implying we will literally go extinct because of global warming. This is crazy. It's implying that we are sending ourselves towards extinction, just as if you were sending yourself towards obesity by continually consuming 10,000 Calories per day. What is really crazy is that there are still climate change deniers that exist in this comments section.
somenameforme 3y ago
Hyperbole tends to push people away. I was quite active in climate causes about 20 years ago, in large part because I was young and felt that without imminent action the world would face catastrophic damage. This [1] article is just one countless of the time. It was reporting on a Pentagon climate report that the White House was trying to 'keep the public from seeing.' At the top, in bright yellow, the Guardian is reminding viewers that "This article is more than 19 years old." And the lede is "Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years." Other claims include that "by 2020 'catastrophic' shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war.' It's further suggested that this will also come with "widespread crop failure, famine, disease, and mass migration of populations..." And that's just from "my" era. As you go further back, you will find similar reports. Here's [2] one I dug up from 1982: "Monstafa K. Tolba, executive director of the United States environmental program, told delegates that if the nations of the world continued their present policies, they would face by the turn of the century "an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible, as any nuclear holocaust." If I could go back 80 years into the past and try to optimize the world for climate action I would make sure that any and all predictions made appealed not to the drama of the high end outliers in order to try to spur on immediate action, but instead did the exact opposite and assumed the low end outliers - so that people would have decades of evidence of my predictions not only coming true, but being far greater in impact. At least in my case, you can thank hyperbolic messaging for the reason I've gone from 'active advocate' to 'meh, I'm somewhat more concerned about nuclear war tbh.' [1] - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.t... [2] - https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/1982.jpg https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/1982.j...
- js8 3y ago
  IMHO, that sounds just like a burnout from activism, caused by cynical people who are "meh" about the issue. Logically, your claim (that catastrophizing drives people away from activism) doesn't make much sense. If you still think that environment has same value as you did in the past, then you should still support the ecological policies, regardless what people are saying. If you only supported them because of catastrophism and not because you don't inherently value it, then you were misled and shouldn't have advocated it in the first place. What I am saying is you have moral agency, and if you feel misled by other people's factual claims (e.g. exaggerating the impact, regardless of reason), it shouldn't change the validity of your moral stance or your values. But if your values didn't change, you're still an advocate, although perhaps with a different outlook.

PKop 3y ago

We can't all make it either, that is utopian thinking. There will be winners and losers.

smolder 3y ago
This is a non sequitur given what I wrote.
ta8903 3y ago
But we can try to minimize the number of losers.

monero-xmr 3y ago

> I didn't say we are all going to die. But you said: > The ideology of wanting humans to not send themselves to extinction It seems pretty clear you are implying we will literally go extinct because of global warming. This is crazy.

smolder 3y ago
The nuance you and others are missing is that I didn't say it was a definite thing. I didn't even say it was likely. I implied that the ideology he was complaining about is made up of people who don't think we should accelerate towards extinction: not an extreme stance at all. Given even a slight, non-zero risk of us doing that, if you have the stance that we shouldn't, it's reasonable to take steps to reduce the risk. I could have been way more succinct and less sarcastic with my original comment, but it hardly seems worth the effort when replying to a post like theirs.
- vasco 3y ago
  The stance is extreme because it's doomsday speak, of the kind only people on top of a box in the park used to say when I was a kid. Humans will be here, maybe less of us, on boats, in constant air-con personal pods, whatever, we'll figure something out. We're not going extinct any time soon unless someone decides to launch nuclear weapons.
bradjohnson 3y ago
>It seems pretty clear you are implying we will literally go extinct because of global warming. This is crazy. It's implying that we are sending ourselves towards extinction, just as if you were sending yourself towards obesity by continually consuming 10,000 Calories per day. What is really crazy is that there are still climate change deniers that exist in this comments section.

somenameforme 3y ago

Hyperbole tends to push people away. I was quite active in climate causes about 20 years ago, in large part because I was young and felt that without imminent action the world would face catastrophic damage. This [1] article is just one countless of the time. It was reporting on a Pentagon climate report that the White House was trying to 'keep the public from seeing.' At the top, in bright yellow, the Guardian is reminding viewers that "This article is more than 19 years old." And the lede is "Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years." Other claims include that "by 2020 'catastrophic' shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war.' It's further suggested that this will also come with "widespread crop failure, famine, disease, and mass migration of populations..." And that's just from "my" era. As you go further back, you will find similar reports. Here's [2] one I dug up from 1982: "Monstafa K. Tolba, executive director of the United States environmental program, told delegates that if the nations of the world continued their present policies, they would face by the turn of the century "an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible, as any nuclear holocaust." If I could go back 80 years into the past and try to optimize the world for climate action I would make sure that any and all predictions made appealed not to the drama of the high end outliers in order to try to spur on immediate action, but instead did the exact opposite and assumed the low end outliers - so that people would have decades of evidence of my predictions not only coming true, but being far greater in impact. At least in my case, you can thank hyperbolic messaging for the reason I've gone from 'active advocate' to 'meh, I'm somewhat more concerned about nuclear war tbh.' [1] - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.t... [2] - https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/1982.jpg https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/1982.j...

js8 3y ago
IMHO, that sounds just like a burnout from activism, caused by cynical people who are "meh" about the issue. Logically, your claim (that catastrophizing drives people away from activism) doesn't make much sense. If you still think that environment has same value as you did in the past, then you should still support the ecological policies, regardless what people are saying. If you only supported them because of catastrophism and not because you don't inherently value it, then you were misled and shouldn't have advocated it in the first place. What I am saying is you have moral agency, and if you feel misled by other people's factual claims (e.g. exaggerating the impact, regardless of reason), it shouldn't change the validity of your moral stance or your values. But if your values didn't change, you're still an advocate, although perhaps with a different outlook.