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> Lost opportunity: We could’ve started fighting climate change in 1971 The wording kind of implies we are fighting it now. Rather than just early skirmishes,

• wildrhythms 2y ago
  Vaguely waving at the problem while continuing to individualize the solution through "choosing" electric cars, "choosing" to install solar panels on houses, and telling people to turn off their home AC meanwhile the 1.3M sq ft vacant office buildings up and down the street blast AC night and day with no repercussion!
• fuzzfactor 2y ago
  >We could’ve started fighting climate change in 1971 Also implies that no one was doing anything at all. It actually is kind of hard to make any progress fighting, especially single-handedly. I was just a teenager but at least I resolved not to contribute more than a small fraction to the problem compared to average consumers. Over a number of decades this has added up to conserving what amounts to more than a few lifetimes worth of waste. Committing to a lifetime of alternative energy research was also a no-brainer for me. I don't have my whole life ahead of me any more, but if I can deploy some nice bits of 20th century progress it would be worth more than the money I earned along the line improving my abilities. And the 21st century was potentially more advanced. Interestingly, ERE was one of my employer's clients back in 1980 when I was pushing the state-of-the-art in CO2 gas analysis using early microprocessor-controlled instrumentation.