Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

It is about climate change. The knock-on effects of the short-term changes made to benefit the climate include wealth redistribution. Stop taking that quote out of context.

This advice isn't for everyone, but personally my study of philosophy has led to adopting nihilism which has, surprisingly, reduced my anxiety about concerns like OP's.

It is this almost backward reasoning that since life is meaningless, it really isn't this gigantic tragedy even if the earth is destroyed by a giant planetary collision and the human race is destroyed. In the grand scheme of things, I don't matter, the human race doesn't matter, and neither does the earth.

I will still do what I can to improve my life and others' lives, but accepting this nihilism has allowed me to free myself from the paralyzing anxiety and inaction caused by overvaluing human life. This, in turn, enables me further to make healthy contribution and add what little meaning I actually can to our existence here.

>The alarmism comes from reputable scientific research saying that the outcome will be terrifying catastrophy.

Just to be clear, the reputable scientific research is around the issue of climate change's impact on the environment, not on the effects to society. In other words, what that statement means is that we are capable of using the scientific method to make reliable predictions about how much the earth's temperature will rise, how much ocean levels will rise, etc.

The problem I see here is that the 'reputable scientific research' is being stretched to include outcomes to society: 'reputable scientific research says the outcome will be terrifying catastrophy.' That is not science: no one has a scientific experiment that can scientifically prove how many people will die or experience hardship due to climate change, let alone that outcome is terrifying catastrophe. By the way, what is 'terrifying catastrophe?' We can only produce simulations, models, guesses and conjecture, all of which are notoriously fallible devices, to predict what will happen.

Look, and I'm in agreement that the outcome of not acting on climate change will probably be terrible. My post clearly lays out that I am an advocate of climate change progress.

The extreme alarmism is not an indisputable part of the science, it is an indisputable part of the politics. The is something which has become worth questioning.

There are a lot of people shouting up and down about climate change without doing anything serious. Some of the most capable to help others are buying into a market of products and services that appear to have questionable benefit to human welfare. For example, hybrid cars that weigh over 2 tons and get 20mpg. Those investments in extremely marginal improvements in CO2 emissions, without directing effort to make improvements in other peoples lives in very obvious, relatively low-cost, and direct ways, especially in their communities, calls into question the value of the political movements impact on our resource allocation: is $20,000 better spent on a hybrid powertrain that improves fuel economy marginally on an over-bloated car, or is it better spent on other methods of saving lives, improving education, civil rights, individual freedoms, access to food and healthcare? We do have the capability to make the world a better place, and there is still a lot of low-hanging fruit as a means to that end. For example, we live in a world where more than enough food is produced to feed everyone, yet malnutrition is still a problem. Some estimate enough food is currently produced to feed the world twice over.

What I want to say is: it is worth questioning the politics. The climate change movement has become so political, so important and so untouchable of questioning that it raises concerns.

Why is it worth questioning the politics. One reason: are we spending our resources efficiently? I don't think we are.

I commend you for your efforts. For a period, I also biked to work and ate vegetarian.

> I can never understand why dumping pollution into the atmosphere and making other people bear the costs is categorized under "capitalism" and "free market," while making people actually pay for the costs they impose on others through pollution is considered "redistribution" and "communism."

Your confusion is well founded. It is actually the other way around. Privatizing externalities (the environmental costs) is honestly a well-respected market-based mechanism to solve problems that fall under the Tragedy of the Commons category, as is the case here. So it is arguably absolutely "capitalist," and "free market." It has nothing to do with socialism and everything to do with using free market mechanisms. If you're interested in related reading, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax

Socializing the costs (which means to redistribute ownership to society) is arguably more consistently "communist." Communism is a really bloated term, economic ideology, in which the economy does not rely on markets, but on socialization of capital and production, arguably more accurately describes a situation where we socialize a cost to society.