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Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

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Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

#291

Post by changoplatanero »

latortuga wrote: post #34
changoplatanero wrote: post #3

Most smokers are unable to quit. Most fat people are unable to lose weight. I worry that most civilizations are unable to cut carbon emissions.

Interesting analogy but I don't think it holds up. Both of these are stereotypical examples of failure of willpower. Climate change does not require personal willpower when we have laws available to create carrots and sticks.

My point was that im worried society doesnt have the willpower to create those laws just like many obese people dont have the will power to lose weight.

Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

#292

Post by lanstin »

strken wrote: post #258
lanstin wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think if a billion people lose monsoon water, some of them won't put together a hand-made virus to wreak revenge on the wealthy nations responsible for the carbon burn and for climate denial? I mean, maybe, people have a capacity for good, but also for anger and revenge. Carbon caused climate change isn't a carry-ing capacity / overpopulation / over utilization issue (and is now somewhat dwarfing those issues). I…

What's your estimate of the probability of collapse, and why? I'd put it in the low single digits or maybe lower, on the basis that a cascade of things need to go wrong: first you need a climate scenario that exceeds the IPCC estimates, then you need significant damage or conflict, then you need a potential collapse event to emerge from the conflict, then the event has to trigger collapse on its own or other events h…

You are asking to predict what people will do in the future. Not a historically profitable venture. Having the Monsoon rains stop dropping snows into the Himalayas would be super bad. Just flooding Bangladesh with a meter or few meters would displace a lot of people less popular than Floridians. Is Montana going to take a few million Muslim refugees?

But maybe like Kim Stanley Robinson’s recent book, it will all work together and we will make a new carbon based cryptocurrency backed by the bankers, switch to blimps and all ends well. I have kids and am teaching them to corporate with people rather than become preppers, so I guess I am optimistic de facto.

Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

#293

Post by angelzen »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #119
Manuel_D wrote: post #54

> 56% agreed with the viewpoint that humanity is doomed, according to the study. Climate change is a serious issue, and one that stands poised to do a substantial amount of harm, but if the majority of young people think that humanity is doomed then I seriously suspect that there's misinformation about the impact of climate change at play here. Even the more pessimistic outlooks of climate change still leave substant…

You're talking of billions of deaths from famine and conflict from displacement. Should young people not be alarmed about the idea of a few hundred of millions of humans relegated to the poles of the Earth because the species was too stupid to stop destroying their own planet? If we can't prevent - or based on comments here, completely reject the reality of - the massive and preventable degradation of the only habita…

> preventable degradation

The Kyoto Protocol, first international treaty designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions, was signed in 1997. Since then greenhouse emissions have grown by 50% and global population has grown by 25%. What prevention measures are you proposing, and why did they utterly fail to reverse the catastrophic growth trend in the past 25 years?

Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

#294

Post by peterthehacker »

Do governments have the technologies to become carbon neutral?

From my maybe uniformed perspective it seems like we’re still several scientific breakthroughs away from alternative energies and sustainable technologies being competitive and cost effective.

Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

#295

Post by AtlasBarfed »

aosmond wrote: post #144

I am always amazed at the level of denial among the people. I speak of the comments to this article, not the young people in question. The IPCC reports are quite conservative. The reason the 2021 reports were so dire is because they began including some of the feedback loop modeling the scientists preparing the report have become more confident in. More is in the pipeline. Somewhere along the line, it got political.…

It's almost like the ultra-rich """elite""" will risk everyone's existence rather than surrender any of their hoard.

All one has to do is look at the distribution of wealth to see where the money exists to fix this, technologically, policy, or a combination.

This at least is one of the true environmental effects the rich can't easily run from. Go ahead, get your little fortress in New Zealand. Tell yourselves you can hop your private jet.

Global warming will displace a billion people at least. That will make the syrian refugee crisis look like your brother in law crashing in the basement in comparison.

Remember that environmental and resource wars aren't easily recognized as such. Scarcity and strife always break down along ethnic or religious lines and will appear as ethnic wars, like the Sudan which is actually about freshwater.

It is ridiculous that science is held up as some grand conspiracy, a brilliant coordination of millions of dollars of funding to bring down the brave, oppressed, helpless hundred billionaires and their trillionaire corporations.

Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

#296

Post by perryizgr8 »

eggsmediumrare wrote: post #265
perryizgr8 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's right. There have been predictions saying ridiculous things that never came to pass since the 80s.

Why do some incorrect predictions completely invalidate the devastatingly correct ones?

Most predictions were inaccurate. In fact I'm having trouble recalling any that turned out to be true. You can deny this all you want, but alarmist propaganda like this is why people don't take such reports seriously nowadays.

Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

#297

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

logicalmonster wrote: post #87

I'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…

I’m convinced now the reason we don’t live in a galaxy full is interstellar species is that ad-driven engagement has ended every society before it gets to that level of technology.

Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

#298

Post by angelzen »

rewgs wrote: post #229
Manuel_D wrote: post #54

> 56% agreed with the viewpoint that humanity is doomed, according to the study. Climate change is a serious issue, and one that stands poised to do a substantial amount of harm, but if the majority of young people think that humanity is doomed then I seriously suspect that there's misinformation about the impact of climate change at play here. Even the more pessimistic outlooks of climate change still leave substant…

Even amongst people who are presumably, on the whole, intelligent, and by definition (due to the nature of the work that attracts people to HN) good at understanding complex systems, the amount of down-playing and hardheadedness and frankly closed-minded thinking -- all in the service of a kind of soft denial -- displayed throughout the comments here is astounding. And it seems to stem from either unwillingness or in…

A lot of people see the problem, give us some credit. What we don't see is solutions. Do you have any to share?

Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

#299

Post by leeoniya »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #79
leeoniya wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can't easily force 7B people to act individually. you have to regulate at the source (the mfgs). we are far beyond individual action as a viable solution.

I feel like people use this as an excuse to avoid making any inconvenient changes in their lifestyle, or rather to avoid considering making inconvenient changes to their lifestyle. The problem with this is that it means not only are they not doing anything to help, they're much less likely to vote for people who would too because they're unwilling to accept inconveniences. Instead they'll vote for people who's polici…

> I feel like people use this as an excuse to avoid making any inconvenient changes in their lifestyle, or rather to avoid considering making inconvenient changes to their lifestyle.

i would be happy to only use glass bottles and no more plastic even if it means i have to wash them before taking them to get refilled. except there is nowhere i can do this. all i have the option of doing is buying and landfilling more single use plastic.

people need to be given no cheaper choice than to do the right thing. but capitalism isnt about to stop maximizing profits and disregarding externalities. they would much rather cheer you on to "recycle" (landfill) rather than reduce or reuse.

it's a race to the bottom. i've heard it called environmental arbitrage. regulations too harsh in US? outsource to china where it's cheaper and simply gets dumped into rivers/oceans over there.

the "individual action makes a difference" is fairy tale. for every 1 person who tries individual action, 999 will discard 3000 plastic containers that cost them ~$0 to acquire but made the container mfg $3,000 profit.

Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

#300

Post by throwaway210222 »

jjoonathan wrote: post #262
lanstin wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the progression of science predictions, they don't have a track record of being alarmist. They have a track record of predicting troubling as heck issues for 2100 or 2050 and now they are already happening.

In the late 90s, my science teacher told me that we would run out of oil and the world economy would collapse by 2010. In the 70s, my parents were told that we would run out of ozone, kill all the plants, and die from oxygen cycle collapse by 2000. A century earlier, respectable scientists were making predictions that we would run out of food within a few decades and starve to death. The history of science prediction…

> In the 70s, my parents were told that we would run out of ozone

Did you factor in the world-wide efforts to eliminate CFC gasses?

Here is an easier one: 'meteorologists predict you will get sunburnt today if you expose your skin to the sun'. So, based on this, you stay indoors most of the day, wear sunscreen, a long shirt, and a hat.

You don't get sunburnt and your rational conclusion is the science is wrong?

SMH

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