The government doesn't make discoveries, the government isn't creative. People are. Solving the problem of climate change can be helped by governments as a tool people use for coordination, but generally governments are best at defining rules, which are compulsory--this is antithetical to creativity. All this is to say, yes governments SHOULD fail us in solving this type of problem. Capitalism, though it is not the most popular tool in the zeitgeist right now, is a much better tool for solving this type of problem. If you have money, it's a good time to take on risk and invest in solutions. Uranium seems to be a popular one right now, as nuclear energy is the greenest energy generation tool we have, and problems from the past are being solved through better engineering currently (micro-nuclear). Private fusion investment is a much better long term investment, though it's unlikely you'll get a return in your life time, humans will get a return in the long run. The billionaires know this, look at who is investing in fusion right now.
Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them
121–130 of 377 posts
Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them
#122Alternative title: Younger generation sees disaster capitalism for what it is and realise they will have to liek with the consequences.
Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them
#123At this point, the only viable solution is geo-engineering, which has a great feature: you can do it unilaterally, without having to convince every single person to change their habits.
Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them
#124It's not just young people. I'm 56 and I'm going through a pretty serious personal existential crisis w.r.t. climate change. I think even the people who are worried about it don't realize quite how serious the situation is. I used to feel pretty confident that all of the really bad shit would not happen until after I was dead. I'm not nearly so confident any more. I now think there is a significant chance that I coul…
aren't you excited about having live through both the great rise of civilization and then also the biggest decline?
you may have gotten to see the absolute peak of society.
Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes young people more exposed to echo chambers (and why more immense?) than older adults? Younger people seem to me to be more likely to be exposed to more new people, more new ideas, and more diversity of opinions than adults.
Young people, such as those belonging to Gen Z, spend far more time on social media relative to other age groups and did not experience a non-digital world at all (unlike millennials and earlier generations). I also think they are less exposed to new ideas or a diversity of opinions - college campuses are culturally and politically far more monolithic than ever before, and are incredibly hostile to free speech and di…
[deleted]
Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them
#126I'm glad that social media wasn't around when I was growing up. If the media had the same chance to clickbait me into panic in my day, I'd have been genuinely scared to death about the ozone layer being depleted or acid rain making the planet unlivable by now, yet here we are. It's easy to panic about hot-button issues such as climate change when the media clickbaits you into endless doom and gloom and refuses to rep…
> already been a solved problem for decades
How solved is it if the solutions aren't getting deployed?
Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh, they're failing on more issues than just climate change. I think many people realize the rampant hypocrisy and political games that both sides play. It seems the ruling class grant themselves more and more power and privilege while imposing ever increasing restrictions on the population at large.
Only some people fall into the “both sides” trap and start thinking that cynicism is a virtue. It’s unfortunate, as this behavior encourages the very outcome to which you object. It’s much easier to take advantage of people who have given up.
It's not that the people have given up. There are small changes that seem to be happening, like rank choice voting, and calls for many other things, like trading restrictions on members of Congress. But really, it's easy to take advantage of people when the People have increasingly less power.
Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Defining "the one single right climate" is hard. Defining "this change is bad" is substantially easier. Wet bulb temperatures of 35 degrees C in areas with billions of people and poor power infrastructure to run AC is bad, for example.
> Wet bulb temperatures of 35 degrees C in areas with billions of people I had to look up what that meant ... With this kind of nonsense being pushed around and with more than two decades of constant scary tales, no wonder the kids are nervous. I grew up without any air conditioning at all. Ever. In any building. Summer temperatures between 35 - 40 C with high humidity. I do not know what the "wet bulb" equivalent of…
> I had to look up what that meant...
... and immediately had to reflexively reject it so it wouldn't sink in.
> I do not know what the "wet bulb" equivalent of that is, but it was warm, for sure.
It's fairly unlikely to have hit 35 a bunch, given that Wikipedia's table of places that've measured that temperature thus far has only ten places on it, and then "albeit too briefly and in too small a locality to cause fatalities".
Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
The voting age should probably be raised, not lowered. The fact that those polled here cannot function normally day to day in large numbers due to climate anxiety (per this article) suggests those in this age group are far too immature emotionally and mentally to make good choices. Obviously I am speculating, but I bet many of those polled would answer differently ten years from now, or if they were working, or had a…
I am sick of younger generations being derided and given no credit. It was students who protested the Vietnam war, climate change and brought the piece movement. It was older voters that supported Tump, Brexit and Iraq war. It was the young people that were drafted into the army to die half a world away. Can you point to a single issue where young people were the problem? Older voters are more likely to be partisan,…
>It was students who protested the Vietnam war, climate change and brought the piece movement. It was older voters that supported Tump, Brexit and Iraq war.
When the Iraq war started, how old were people who were young during the Vietnam war protests?
2003 - 1965 = 38
Young person that protested the Vietnam war + 38 years = old person
I don't think that the Vietnam war protesters were in favor of the Iraq war, but it is the same generation that you're talking about.
The young of today are the old of tomorrow. They will take their biases and ideas, temper them with experience and then be derided by the young of tomorrow for being too close-minded.
We might teach 17 year olds general relativity, but we don't teach them how much work goes into making and maintaining all of the stuff they (we) take for granted in life. They might know that world hunger is a distribution problem, but it's not as easy to accept that and apply it to your thinking.
Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them
#130It's not just young people. I'm 56 and I'm going through a pretty serious personal existential crisis w.r.t. climate change. I think even the people who are worried about it don't realize quite how serious the situation is. I used to feel pretty confident that all of the really bad shit would not happen until after I was dead. I'm not nearly so confident any more. I now think there is a significant chance that I coul…
Turn off the CNN.