41–50 of 74 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All these doomsday messages! And they have zero impact on the quality of my life. I wonder why nobody cares. \s
Kaiyou falls off a 10-story building. As he passes the sixth story, someone yells from the window, “How’s it going?” He yells back, “So far, so good!”
I think that it's important for free market advocates, myself included, to understand something. Negative third party externalities, having direct impacts on individuals that did not consent to the responsible transaction(s), are fully within the responsibility of the government to regulate and/or tax. You are not violating your principles by backing state intervention for environmental issues.
Even still, you're assuming the government has the ability to address climate change if given the chance. But, there would need to be global consensus and enforcement or government intervention could actually make the problem worse (e.g. heavy environmental regulatory burden means products get manufactured and shipped from Asia, and actually generate more carbon emissions). Perhaps, free market solutions a la Tesla a…
Tesla is still promoting the idea of the individual car, and that electric cars could replace the ICE car for each and every travel that it is used currently.
If Tesla is the free market solution, then be prepared to pay the bill for climate change.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't forget that all the insects (the single largest link in the animalian food chain) are dying. Politicians long ago forgot that their job is to instigate improvement in society, and now relegate themselves to either decrying or defending the status quo. I'm beginning to fear that the Apollo program might actually be the greatest societal effort the US will ever undertake.
I’m not sure politicians have ever seen their jobs as instigating improvements to society. I think they see their job as to protect the interests of the biggest contributors to their campaigns. There was a time when that was organized labor, which is as close as you’re going to get to the “will of the people”, but now it’s mostly big business.
How society responds to ecological disasters, basically don't think the government going to tackle it, it will just ignore it.
Does that mean over 40 years ago it had an even lower area or that they are at all time lows (as far as we can tell)? Could account for why my grandparents are skeptical, they're like "yeah, yeah, this has all happened before, environmental political fads come and go..."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kaiyou falls off a 10-story building. As he passes the sixth story, someone yells from the window, “How’s it going?” He yells back, “So far, so good!”
This conversation is now 30 years old. Still, so far, so good.
Doomsday messages are coming in in rapid succession. First the permafrost is melting 70 years earlier than expected, then Greenland losing massive amounts of ice, then glaciers that provide fresh water for hundreds of millions in India and China disappearing at an alarming rate, now this. And still politicians do nothing. What we need is an effort to build renewables, insulate homes, and build charging infrastructure…
Don't forget that all the insects (the single largest link in the animalian food chain) are dying. Politicians long ago forgot that their job is to instigate improvement in society, and now relegate themselves to either decrying or defending the status quo. I'm beginning to fear that the Apollo program might actually be the greatest societal effort the US will ever undertake.
Is there any indication what a 'tipping point' or irreversible positive feedback loop would look like once it had started? Would it resemble a graph such as in TFA? Or would perhaps not be an irreversible first swoop, so to speak, but instead oscillate deeper each time?
Unknowable and unlikely, perhaps, given that it's not happened before. But a part of me wonders what it looks like when we get to the point where the charts and graphs don't go back up again.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This conversation is now 30 years old. Still, so far, so good.
Well, that is the thing about hitting the ground— you can be milliseconds away and everything still looks fine. In a few decades, historians will be able to look back and identify the key events and turning points in all this. I suspect that the stuff we're seeing now will be eventually seen as part of the transition from "getting bad slowly" to "getting bad very quickly". But obviously it's hard to know without the…