3 ms·

I feel that it's kind of obvious by now that we, as humanity (ofc, in most cases passively), have resigned to not do anything big to prevent negative impact of

I feel that it's kind of obvious by now that we, as humanity (ofc, in most cases passively), have resigned to not do anything big to prevent negative impact of climate change. Which means several meters of rising sea level, loss of ecosystems etc. The timescale for these consequences is now (as opposed to 20-30 years ago) fairly close, in 20, 30, 50 years, so it seems significantly more inevitable and imminent. In my country (SE Europe), a hot summer day 20 years ago was 30 C. Now it's regularly 38-39 for days on end, some going to 40. I don't expect it to be 50 in another 20 years, but is it unreasonable to think so? Who would have thought 40 is expectable before? Given the (even relatively) mild example we've had with Covid, of cascading supply chain issues and strained economies, I wonder what people think will happen when we start losing coastal cities, some of the big ports, crops, potable water etc, all combined, in different places in the world at once...Do we think that we'll somehow adapt quickly, overcome, is there a plan, or is it just a "future someone's" problem?

psadauskas 2y ago
As a kid in the 80s, I remember the "Hole in the Ozone Layer". My mom watched the morning news, and I remember it being mentioned frequently as a crisis and we needed to stop using CFCs to fix it right away. There were TV shows (Captain Planet) about it and environmentalism in general. Congress passed a law banning them even with chemical companies like DuPont lobbying against it. I grew up in a conservative state, I remember people mocking the ban, like spraying paint into the air just to mock it. My 8-year-old brain couldn't understand why they did that, but they also seemed like a minority. It felt like in just a few years we mostly managed to come together and fix it. I am at a loss as to why Global Warming isn't treated the same. It was pretty clear to me to exist as a teen, just a decade later, but it seemed to face much more skepticism[1], both in prevalence and in intensity. What circumstances are different, that we didn't all band together and fix this problem, like we did the ozone layer? - Did DuPont not lobby as hard, since they had other chemicals ready to go? - Do oil and coal companies just lobby more to prevent action on Global Warming, since they couldn't cheaply switch to alternative forms of energy? - Did the oil companies see what happened, and start better devising strategies to obstruct change? Like learning from the tobacco companies, who learned from the sugar companies? - Why didn't the chemical companies do the same? Was it just not as big a deal, like I mentioned above? - Fox News? They didn't exist until 1996, and I'm sure they would have spent enormous effort convincing their audience the ozone hole was "fake news". But there was plenty of conservative nutjob talk radio, did they not protest the ozone regulations? (At that age, I listened to what my parents listened to, and they didn't listen to talk radio, so I don't know). - Tobacco companies successfully fought off any regulation for decades, until finally there was a critical mass in the mid-90s. What's changed between the 80s and now, that's us from solving this problem, when like 3/4 of the people in the world and even 60% of Americans agree is an emergency? [1]: Not even skepticism, more like deliberate orneriness. "Rolling coal", etc.
- jemmyw 2y ago
  I think the main difference is the pain to people. We had alternatives to CFCs pretty much ready to go, it wasn't a major economic cost. You could still get hairspray after. Businesses could not run subtle campaigns about the issue because it was too hard to care about. What does subtle look like? Fossil fuel companies spending money on influencers to make videos about how gas cooktops are so much better - because if you have gas supply for one thing, even if that isn't a big climate issue by itself, why would you not also use that to heat your house? If environmentalists hadn't been campaigning against nuclear power since the 60s then we'd have been in a much better position. That was an anti-intellectual as the current climate change deniers.
- xp84 2y ago
  Great question! It seems to me like one of the problems is the way that multiple parties are incentivized (naturally — I don’t mean by a conspiracy) to view anti-climate-change action as being weaponized by others to unfairly harm them. The #1 factor, I’d say, is that rich Western countries, having already had pretty reasonable and responsible regulation for decades, say (fairly) “Hold on, we’re supposed to (insert painful thing like high gas taxes, or electric cars when I have nowhere to charge it, or as we have in California, electricity prices 3x what it costs in many other states) when we know for a fact that they’re just running factories with zero emissions regulation in Asia?? Everybody knows it’s one atmosphere so if the third world just does their thing, all our sacrifice will do nothing despite its cost!! And the third world argues, fairly, that since we got to have our “burn all the filthy coal you want” period 50-200 years ago in the UK, US, etc. it’s utterly hilarious for us to clutch our pearls at them now and expect them to only grow their economies as fast as the expensive energy from solar panels will take them when they have 3 billion mouths to feed and very little money. Both sides have a good point and yes, it ignores the fact that if many scientists’ beliefs are right, ignoring the problem also isn’t a solution.

psadauskas 2y ago

As a kid in the 80s, I remember the "Hole in the Ozone Layer". My mom watched the morning news, and I remember it being mentioned frequently as a crisis and we needed to stop using CFCs to fix it right away. There were TV shows (Captain Planet) about it and environmentalism in general. Congress passed a law banning them even with chemical companies like DuPont lobbying against it. I grew up in a conservative state, I remember people mocking the ban, like spraying paint into the air just to mock it. My 8-year-old brain couldn't understand why they did that, but they also seemed like a minority. It felt like in just a few years we mostly managed to come together and fix it. I am at a loss as to why Global Warming isn't treated the same. It was pretty clear to me to exist as a teen, just a decade later, but it seemed to face much more skepticism[1], both in prevalence and in intensity. What circumstances are different, that we didn't all band together and fix this problem, like we did the ozone layer? - Did DuPont not lobby as hard, since they had other chemicals ready to go? - Do oil and coal companies just lobby more to prevent action on Global Warming, since they couldn't cheaply switch to alternative forms of energy? - Did the oil companies see what happened, and start better devising strategies to obstruct change? Like learning from the tobacco companies, who learned from the sugar companies? - Why didn't the chemical companies do the same? Was it just not as big a deal, like I mentioned above? - Fox News? They didn't exist until 1996, and I'm sure they would have spent enormous effort convincing their audience the ozone hole was "fake news". But there was plenty of conservative nutjob talk radio, did they not protest the ozone regulations? (At that age, I listened to what my parents listened to, and they didn't listen to talk radio, so I don't know). - Tobacco companies successfully fought off any regulation for decades, until finally there was a critical mass in the mid-90s. What's changed between the 80s and now, that's us from solving this problem, when like 3/4 of the people in the world and even 60% of Americans agree is an emergency? [1]: Not even skepticism, more like deliberate orneriness. "Rolling coal", etc.

jemmyw 2y ago
I think the main difference is the pain to people. We had alternatives to CFCs pretty much ready to go, it wasn't a major economic cost. You could still get hairspray after. Businesses could not run subtle campaigns about the issue because it was too hard to care about. What does subtle look like? Fossil fuel companies spending money on influencers to make videos about how gas cooktops are so much better - because if you have gas supply for one thing, even if that isn't a big climate issue by itself, why would you not also use that to heat your house? If environmentalists hadn't been campaigning against nuclear power since the 60s then we'd have been in a much better position. That was an anti-intellectual as the current climate change deniers.
xp84 2y ago
Great question! It seems to me like one of the problems is the way that multiple parties are incentivized (naturally — I don’t mean by a conspiracy) to view anti-climate-change action as being weaponized by others to unfairly harm them. The #1 factor, I’d say, is that rich Western countries, having already had pretty reasonable and responsible regulation for decades, say (fairly) “Hold on, we’re supposed to (insert painful thing like high gas taxes, or electric cars when I have nowhere to charge it, or as we have in California, electricity prices 3x what it costs in many other states) when we know for a fact that they’re just running factories with zero emissions regulation in Asia?? Everybody knows it’s one atmosphere so if the third world just does their thing, all our sacrifice will do nothing despite its cost!! And the third world argues, fairly, that since we got to have our “burn all the filthy coal you want” period 50-200 years ago in the UK, US, etc. it’s utterly hilarious for us to clutch our pearls at them now and expect them to only grow their economies as fast as the expensive energy from solar panels will take them when they have 3 billion mouths to feed and very little money. Both sides have a good point and yes, it ignores the fact that if many scientists’ beliefs are right, ignoring the problem also isn’t a solution.