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You were downvoted, but I'm not sure why. To emphasize, your post as written is not denying human-induced climate change (at this point I think it's fair to cal

You were downvoted, but I'm not sure why. To emphasize, your post as written is not denying human-induced climate change (at this point I think it's fair to call people that do this idiots, or at least impervious to evidence), it's just acknowledging that cheap energy has been responsible for a huge surge is standards of living (and lifespans) for humans. > I posit it's entirely reasonable to disagree on what we should do about climate change. I think maybe you could have argued that in the past, but not so much anymore. We know now that it is possible to fully decarbonize the vast majority of our energy sources without a significant decrease in living standards - we just need to ensure the infrastructure exists that incentivizes the transition as quickly as possible, and ensure that organizations/people with large vested interests in fossil fuel extraction aren't allowed to control the direction we, collectively, take.

Teever 3y ago
It's denial of a different stripe. Instead of saying "It's not happening." the GP is saying "It's happening but it's no big deal. good stuff came from it." Which to be frank, is a complete waste of time not worth responding to. What they've said has been a meme for 30 years at this point. https://condenaststore.com/featured/the-planet-got-destroyed-tom-toro.html https://condenaststore.com/featured/the-planet-got-destroyed...
- gottorf 3y ago
  You will have to present something better than a meme cartoon if you want me to change my mind.
  - Teever 3y ago
    I have no intention of changing your mind.
acdha 3y ago
There are two problems: one is that cheap energy wasn’t the only factor in things like population growth or quality of life improvements and it’s also not like most of the carbon emissions were directed towards that goal. Attributing everything to cheap energy is effectively using someone in, say, India getting access to antibiotics, water filtration, and fertilizer as an excuse to ignore just how much of the global carbon footprint went not to providing the global poor with the huge reductions in childhood mortality but rather to things like Americans eating beef multiple meals a day and driving inefficient vehicles everywhere. Whether or not that was their intention it reads like an attempt to whitewash our highly disparate contribution to global carbon levels. The other problem is the future: it’s mostly the same places which saw those gains which are also critically at risk from flooding, drought/famine, dangerous heat levels, etc. so there’s very much a “the future is longer than the past” aspect to this conversation where, say, 3-6 good decades shouldn’t be accepted as an excuse for the much larger number of worse decades which have already started.

Teever 3y ago

It's denial of a different stripe. Instead of saying "It's not happening." the GP is saying "It's happening but it's no big deal. good stuff came from it." Which to be frank, is a complete waste of time not worth responding to. What they've said has been a meme for 30 years at this point. https://condenaststore.com/featured/the-planet-got-destroyed-tom-toro.html https://condenaststore.com/featured/the-planet-got-destroyed...

gottorf 3y ago
You will have to present something better than a meme cartoon if you want me to change my mind.
- Teever 3y ago
  I have no intention of changing your mind.

acdha 3y ago

There are two problems: one is that cheap energy wasn’t the only factor in things like population growth or quality of life improvements and it’s also not like most of the carbon emissions were directed towards that goal. Attributing everything to cheap energy is effectively using someone in, say, India getting access to antibiotics, water filtration, and fertilizer as an excuse to ignore just how much of the global carbon footprint went not to providing the global poor with the huge reductions in childhood mortality but rather to things like Americans eating beef multiple meals a day and driving inefficient vehicles everywhere. Whether or not that was their intention it reads like an attempt to whitewash our highly disparate contribution to global carbon levels. The other problem is the future: it’s mostly the same places which saw those gains which are also critically at risk from flooding, drought/famine, dangerous heat levels, etc. so there’s very much a “the future is longer than the past” aspect to this conversation where, say, 3-6 good decades shouldn’t be accepted as an excuse for the much larger number of worse decades which have already started.