8 ms·

I personally believe we're doomed. Even if there is a technological solution, as things get worse it gets harder to deploy it. If people are struggling with per

• lucianbr 3y ago
  > they didn't have the guts, being voted in again was more important Isn't this how democracy is supposed to work? Isn't it, as a general rule, preferable that politicians fear being voted out, and so do the things that the voters want, so they get reelected? The alternative seems to me for a politician to say one thing in the campaign - what the people want to hear, and then do something else when elected - what he thinks is best. Some do that, but they're not loved for it. I am pretty sure that even when or if politicians do not care about the voters, they still do not do the right thing, but some other wrong thing, like enriching themselves. What you are in fact complaining about is that politicians elected by other people did what those people wanted, instead of what you wanted. While not laying the same complaint on those you voted for - greens. They obviously did right to listen to their voters - you and people you agree with. It's not about the guts of a chosen few. It's about humanity overall. If we do not care about the environment, billions of us, a handful who care will not, can not change much.
  • ako 3y ago
    Problem is that democracy doesn’t seem to work in bad times, voters only want to hear that they have more, more, more. More jobs, more income, more houses and cars. No politician will win the election by stating voters will have to work longer hours, for less payment, have to pay more taxes, and send their kids to the army to protect our freedom. As soon as that is necessary, populist politicians will gain votes by stating all of that is not needed.
    • lucianbr 3y ago
      If you think democracy is a system for obtaining good outcomes, then yes, it doesn't work too well. Actually I think we don't have any system for obtaining good outcomes consistently. If you think democracy is a system for getting the government to do what the people want, then it's working as designed in many places. The problem is not politicians, the problem is not democracy. We are the problem, we the people who want more more, and do not accept the consequences of our actions. We vote for cheap gas, then shift the blame wherever we can: to politicians, to democracy, to other countries etc.
      • ako 3y ago
        Yes, it would help if we would be more careful with our choices. But it would also be nice if politicians could be held accountable: if they say global warming is fake, and it turns out to be true, they should get some sort of penalty. Same with allowing pollution, you’re responsible for the health impact. If a politician doesn’t think global warming is true, at least be open to the fact they might be wrong and be careful with their choices. The environment is a fragile balance, better to be careful and limit things that might impact this fragile balance.
      • tux3 3y ago
        >We are the problem, we the people who want more more, and do not accept the consequences of our actions Ask why. Consider why it is that people do that. Is it really human nature? Can't we imagine a world, or even a country, where the cultural zeitgeist is different? We certainly can have smaller communities where people accept the consequences of their actions, where people will hear about what else happens besides "more" when you ask for more. It's not that the human brain floating in a vacuum is incapable of understanding that actions have consequences. We develop that skill pretty early! I think it's interesting to look at what separates these smaller groups from the bigger groups. I don't think it's people themselves being built of a different stuff. It's the inputs and the norms that differ. I can certainly think of norms for a group that result in worse outcomes. I also don't think we're necessarily at an optimum in epistemics, looking around me. So optimistically, candidly, there's room to do somewhat better.
  • CalRobert 3y ago
    The problem here is the benefits are localised but the harm is globalised. Nobody in Micronesia can vote to raise fuel taxes in the US, despite being very much affected by US energy policy. If we all voted together it might be different. Though I doubt it, to be honest.
    • doubtfuluser 3y ago
      This is exactly the problem. Above assumptions about democracy simply are not true at world level. I would imagine that if every person in the world would be able to vote equally on these topics - and everyone would have the same impact, things would look different. The rich countries are a minority population wise (or better: the people benefitting from non-ecological behavior are a minority). But when climate based refugees come, people might change their mind - or when we see in the news people dying in those affected regions… (oh wait - we already don’t care about seeing people starving… :( )
  • tux3 3y ago
    >Isn't this how democracy is supposed to work? Under the assumption of perfect information, yes. Politicians should be afraid of doing unpopular things that will not get them re-elected. A problem that exists down there, outside the internet bubble of information overload, is that people _aren't_ reliably informed. A human in a vacuum without access to accurate information will never spontaneously guess that they should care about the environment. A politician's decisions are informed by voter preferences. That's good. But the voters, themselves, how should they know whether to care or not care about any particular subject they're not experts in? Who do you trust? Where does information come from? Well, there isn't a widespread decentralized information effort. It's not billions of us independently doing investigatory work. It is a handful of us, a small relative percentage. Voters can't all be experts. They have to trust some smaller group.
  • bobfromhuddle 3y ago
    Billions of people do care https://www.carbonbrief.org/interview-why-global-support-for-climate-action-is-systematically-underestimated/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/interview-why-global-support-for...
  • vasco 3y ago
    The majority of people aren't deniers, so the minority that wants super aggressive change in policies just has to realize that not everyone is a revolutionary, and people shift their voting very little so this needs to be done over generations.
• andrei_says_ 3y ago
  Greta Thinberg’s speech at the UN a few years ago is crystal clear. Climate is collapsing, it is an actionable situation, and we choose to do pretty much nothing about it. https://youtu.be/KAJsdgTPJpU?si=WvYvu1eTcEqztYtq https://youtu.be/KAJsdgTPJpU?si=WvYvu1eTcEqztYtq
  • germandiago 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • aChattuio 3y ago
      That's just not true. Read the Wikipedia article about climate change and not some random climate change denier sources.
      • germandiago 3y ago
        It is what I could find here. I have more sources but not in internet and in spanish language mostly though this is strictly an english speaking page. Why I should believe Wikipedia? I have found plenty of times inaccurate infirmation in it as well. I will let it go since it is a highly politicized topic but I think that bunch of negatives without further proof is not fair. Life is not fair though :)
        • aChattuio 3y ago
          Wikipedia has all primary sources at the bottom linked. You don't need to trust wikipedia. You should trust the sources linked. Wikipedia is basically a group collaboration on fact aggregation. Why should you believe a random blog or a blog from an oil company more than a open collaborative group project which works transparent (site history+talk feature)? You shouldn't.
          • germandiago 3y ago
            There are plenty of ways to create bias. For example, omitting relevant things, focusing on only some considered more important by some people, using impressive data to impress people with no deep idea sbout a topic without knowing how to interpret data relative to the full phenomena... the list is endless. What is a fact is that politicians and secret services, according to Pedro Baños, often enter and manipulate in subversive ways information, specifically he mentioned controversial Wikipefia articles. He is a retired military. So my advice is that we should all doubt by default about every topic that is politicized and gather information from as many sources as we can that we have a reason to trust. An open place where absolutely everyone can add and remove things is not a source I would take as primary. Yes , there are links. But the time it takes to go through all that is unfeasible for most people. My advice: choose many sources, compare. Specifically, there is nothing as enriching as putting people with different opinions face to face for a live discussion. I fo not like arguments like 80% of "experts" say... that is not an argument... and science has plenty of examples where almost everyone was wrong, from whcih this man is an example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis He was beaten to death and enjailed in a madhouse, even their mates ignored him at the time. He was right. What usually happens in these forums is that they do a lot of cherry-picking, or, at least, that is what I believe. I could be wrong, though.
• golergka 3y ago
  > I've voted for green parties and politics my whole life. Green party in Germany forced the country to close down its nuclear reactors and use coal instead, increasing the emissions.
  • Gud 3y ago
    To be fair, that was not just the green party, also the social democrats and christian democrats.
  • Timon3 3y ago
    How exactly does an opposition party force the country to do something like this? Why is it the fault of the Green party, and not of the parties that were in government at the time and made the decision?
    • golergka 3y ago
      Through political pressure that forces parties in power to adopt some of the opposition party's positions in order to stay in power.
      • Timon3 3y ago
        That is incredibly biased framing. The main opinion in the broad population at the time was that nuclear power was too dangerous. You're right that the governing parties followed this to stay in power, but how is that then the fault of the opposition party, not of the governing parties? The green party wasn't able to make this happen or not happen, as they had no governing power. The governing parties were able to make this happen or not happen. They chose to adopt part of the opposition policy to gain political power, but doing this also means they have to accept the responsibility for those decisions.
        • golergka 3y ago
          They might not having governing power, but these opposition parties, as well as NGOs like Greenpeace had a lot of propaganda power that they used for evil.
• londons_explore 3y ago
  > Even if there is a technological solution, as things get worse it gets harder to deploy it. As the world gets hotter, some people will benefit. Those people will try to stop any serious attempts to reverse course, especially when the next generation comes (to them, the current climate is normal - why would we want to spend lots of money to revert it to the way it was hundreds of years ago). A 2/3/4 C rise in global temperature is going to happen, and humans might put the brakes on, but they will never put it back the way it was.
  • skissane 3y ago
    > A 2/3/4 C rise in global temperature is going to happen, and humans might put the brakes on, but they will never put it back the way it was. I think CO2 emissions are going to decline – not fast enough to prevent a 2/3/4 C rise in global temperatures – but I think that rise could well be just a temporary thing for a few centuries, after which the climate goes back to what it used to be. People are trying to limit CO2 emissions – not hard enough, but they are trying – and renewable electricity, electric vehicles, etc, are in the long-run going to win out because even if you don't care about CO2 emissions at all, they have other advantages.
    • scruple 3y ago
      > a few centuries What does society look like to you on the other end of this?
      • logifail 3y ago
        > What does society look like to you on the other end of this? Q: If you look back a few centuries, what does society look like to you?
    • wcoenen 3y ago
      > a temporary thing for a few centuries, after which the climate goes back to what it used to be Reduced or even zero emissions are not negative emissions. By what processes and at what time scales will 100% of the surplus accumulated CO2 go away? I am not so sure this can happen in just a few centuries.
• roenxi 3y ago
  If there is a theory for how climate change will doom us, you should spend time talking about it. The threats people usually bring up are relatively mild. Eg, wet bulb events are pretty scary but are also sound relatively straightforward to mitigate if they start happening. Human societies deal with nasty weather events already. I've heard scenarios put as mild as a reduction in real GDP growth, which is just a non-issue compared to the risks people want to shoulder to mitigate climate change. > I've voted for green parties and politics my whole life These people tend to be anti-nuclear in my experience; so I'm not sure from your comment if that strategy is a good idea. Environmentalists have been some of the more effective lobby groups for locking in fossil fuel use through 1980-2020 when we really should have been transitioning to nuclear power.
  • ben_w 3y ago
    > wet bulb events are pretty scary but are also sound relatively straightforward to mitigate if they start happening First time I've heard that, everyone else says "this will kill anyone experiencing it for more than a brief period, meaning hours or minutes depending on the details". Solution is only easy on a scale of one person, "move elsewhere", or rich societies, "stop working outside and install aircon inside", which isn't so easy for anyone working in agriculture or much of Africa and India.
    • roenxi 3y ago
      > Solution is only easy on a scale of one person, "move elsewhere", or rich societies, "stop working outside and install aircon inside", which isn't so easy for anyone working in agriculture or much of Africa and India. India's real growth rate is >5% p.a. They're going to be a rich society pretty soon, because they are behaving like a clever country and building lots of power plants. And while horrific things are likely to happen in Africa, horrific things have been happening in Africa every year for my entire lifetime. So yeah, it is terrible but not going to make me depressed by the future so much as the present. They need to figure out economic growth like Asia did. It is their only hope. > stop working outside and install aircon inside I dunno, sounds scalable to me. Repurpose office buildings with air conditioning for crisis use sometimes. People with air conditioners help those without. Order of magnitude it sounds pretty doable. I don't see where the scale issue comes from to the point where I'd consider anyone I know "doomed". EDIT If you described snowstorms, earthquakes, bushfires or tropical cyclones in the abstract they sound civilisation ending too. They are bad but people cope.
• masa331 3y ago
  You can do a lot of things about it. You can talk about it, you can gather data, you can vote politically and with your wallet, you can reduce your consumption, you can set the example for others, you can research, you can help in current organizations which are doing things about it... there is actually so much you can do if you really care. But people ale don't really care bc. putting in the work is harder than blindly consume and doom
  • sneak 3y ago
    This is a fiction. Just like the fact that you cannot end war by voting for antiwar candidates or end mass surveillance by voting for anti-surveillance candidates (viable ones do not exist, by design), you cannot meaningfully affect this trajectory by any individual choice.
    • masa331 3y ago
      That is absolutely not a fiction. You can make a big impact with all the things i mentioned and many more. Now it will obviously not change the thing overnight and the result will depend on how hard you work, what area you choose and a bit of luck i guess. But if you persist there will be results. By changing a few things in your own behaviour and taking pride in it you can improve your own life. Not consuming so much actually improves a lot of other areas in your own life like physical and mental health, finances etc. By working on things in your local area, raising awareness, getting involved with local government(at your town) you can make a difference with a few hours per week. Or be imaginative, do some research, get interested in some specific area and then try to apply it around you. These are the easiest things you can do. And then you can do more, if you are ambitious. What you are describing is a viewpoint of somebody either lazy, resigned, or not really interested in these things.
• nec4b 3y ago
  >> I personally believe we're doomed. Our ancestors survived ice ages. >> I've voted for green parties and politics my whole life. You are part of the problem why we are burning coal instead of using nuclear power.
  • jantissler 3y ago
    > Our ancestors survived ice ages. I’m not sure if you are actually serious. They did not have billions of people relying on a very brittle global economy back in the day. They did not have cities with millions of people and an enormous infrastructure to keep these people alive.
    • nec4b 3y ago
      >> I’m not sure if you are actually serious. I'm not the one implying impending doom if the climate is getting slowly warmer. >> They did not have billions of people relying on a very brittle global economy back in the day. Compared to freezing in an ice desert, not knowing when you'll eat next time. >> They did not have cities with millions of people and an enormous infrastructure to keep these people alive. Funny, I see our infrastructure as a strength and not a liability.