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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

#361

Post by frabbit »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #226
frabbit wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly: our civilization, comfort, enjoyment and ease is built upon the relatively predictable and stable weather patterns. Why would anyone take the risk of messing with that? It's as though they assume that there will be generalized devastation but there will be some "safe place" which some powerful group can defend and use. Instead it's possible that maybe for one year New Zealand will be great, but then there wi…

The reason people find this line of argument frustrating is that it's always presented in a weird, dismissive tone which makes it clear you already didn't like the things you're proposing to get rid of. If you want to persuade people who are attached to their 2000Kgs of metal, it'll be more productive to include some examples of things you'll have to give up even though you like them.

It's not a negotiation in which there is give and take. It's _your_ last chance to do something to do something which can benefit both of us. I already have had a low carbon footprint for decades due to being "one of those environmentalists". I have little left to cut to improve _your_ life. What can you do to help?

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

#362

Post by dorgo »

FooHentai wrote: post #268
kerng wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I wonder if people indeed believe climate change isn't real. I have difficulty imagining that there are so many that believe it's a myth. Maybe what is more common is that people do believe climate change is real, but they also think it doesn't really matter in long run - because of maybe something like a black swan event or something - dont know. So they see all this as just fear mongering.

That Upton Sinclair quote "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it". Except here we're talking about upbringings, lifestyles, social position, and career all in one caboodle. So if we buy into that quote, this is an even wider example that perhaps has just as strong if not stronger potential for resistance to change. Also, there's a layered stack of argumen…

>

It's not about predictions of climate change being real or not. It's about predictions what measures contribute to what degree which is questionable.

Society or media is pretty bad at predictions or communicating predictions. In march I saw (worst case) predictions for incidence rate (covid) of 2000 ( university researchers in my city ). What happened instead: incidence rate dropped to 5 before it started climbing again. What I've learned: nobody can predict anything.

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

#363

Post by frabbit »

angelzen wrote: post #308
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason people find this line of argument frustrating is that it's always presented in a weird, dismissive tone which makes it clear you already didn't like the things you're proposing to get rid of. If you want to persuade people who are attached to their 2000Kgs of metal, it'll be more productive to include some examples of things you'll have to give up even though you like them.

Nobody is articulating a vision for the future. OK, I'll stop driving my 2000kg of metal tomorrow. The first grocery shop is 25 minutes walking, one way. Maybe with a good degree of planning my family won't starve. But we also need to go to work and school, and these are not within walking distance. Sadly, I have to take that back: I won't stop driving my 2000kg of metal, because I don't see how we can possibly live…

25 minutes walking? Get a bike.

And as to the more general argument you can get away with it as long as you have been voting for every proposal to increase taxes to pay for public transport and prevent centralization of services and stores.

I'm afraid I do not buy it. I have lived in what are supposed to be the most car-bound US environments and also in the countryside and it is all a matter of choice: not just personal choice (which I will agree can be a displacement from central planning), but most especially of people choosing low taxation over public services every time.

I can't see how you can possibly continue to live as you have done with your 2000Kg of metal. In fact it's looking very probable that you will be accelerating a decline in many aspects of your life.

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

#364

Post by annoyingnoob »

antod wrote: post #269
annoyingnoob wrote: post #116

> more than half said climate change made them feel "afraid, sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and/or guilty." That seems like a bad survey. Why does 'guilty' get 'and/or' while the others do not? Guilty does not belong in the same question with the others. Maybe surveys like this one find what they are looking for because of the way the questions are asked.

You're reading the reporting wrong. It is meant as: afraid and/or sad and/or anxious and/or angry and/or powerless and/or helpless and/or guilty ie the last "and/or" is defining what the commas mean. Just like "a, b, c, and d" or "a, b, c, or d" don't mean "a, b, (c and d)" or "a, b, (c or d)" And that was also a smaller summary list of options than the actual study had.

I suppose if we throw enough terms into a single question then it applies to everyone. What, exactly, do we learn with a question like that?

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

#365

Post by angelzen »

frabbit wrote: post #363
angelzen wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is articulating a vision for the future. OK, I'll stop driving my 2000kg of metal tomorrow. The first grocery shop is 25 minutes walking, one way. Maybe with a good degree of planning my family won't starve. But we also need to go to work and school, and these are not within walking distance. Sadly, I have to take that back: I won't stop driving my 2000kg of metal, because I don't see how we can possibly live…

25 minutes walking? Get a bike. And as to the more general argument you can get away with it as long as you have been voting for every proposal to increase taxes to pay for public transport and prevent centralization of services and stores. I'm afraid I do not buy it. I have lived in what are supposed to be the most car-bound US environments and also in the countryside and it is all a matter of choice: not just perso…

Sure. I lived in SoCal without a car for a few years in my youth, so it's possible. Until the first child. At a mature age, I'll take up biking just after I get that knee replacement I've been postponing for a while and learn to bike with a kid on my shoulder. Throw a couple more hours in a day and I'm game.

Joke aside, even if we were to stop driving a car and flying a plane in US (the biggest pop-enviro boogeymen) it will cut 25% of USA greenhouses emissions. US greenhouse emissions is 15% of the world. Completely eliminating the automobile and the plane from US will only cut global emissions by less than 4%. The world energy usage is growing at 1% per year, so all that was accomplished was to push the inevitable about 4 years into the future.

Lets up the ante and ban the automobile & plane globally. (Or wipe US economy off the map). That would only save 15% of global emissions, i.e. push the inevitable 15 years into the future.

Here's a challenge: go find a city of non-trivial size that is living a sustainable life according to Paris accord energy targets. Bikes, Passivhaus, local agriculture, solar rooftops, windmills, the works. You won't find any, other than perhaps 3rd world slums. The only known lifestyle that fits the Paris accord energy envelope is subsistence agriculture. And we can't go back to subsistence agriculture, there is too many of us.

(Obviously) Malthus was right.

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

#366

Post by nimvlaj30 »

dwaltrip wrote: post #259
nimvlaj30 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn nice hate. OP was saying how he is losing sleep over climate change. The requirements involved with contributing to slowing (or stopping) climate change do not include worrying about it. If you are losing sleep, you would benefit from changing your attitude towards it. Civilisational decline is a constant. It is coming. Accept it now, and work to delay it if you can make a meaningful change. If not, don't lose s…

In your comment above, the last half semi-conflicted with the first half, which could easily be interpreted to imply that we shouldn’t really worry or do anything about it. Individually, that may be somewhat true / useful. But on a societal level it is quite harmful when it comes to climate change. I think that is why you are taking heat.

What you are saying would make sense if we ignore the context of the conversation. OP is losing sleep, which is a common way of telling the reader that their mental health is suffering due to wrestling with the concept of climate change and how society is underprepared for it.

If we ignore all that, then it sounds like I'm saying to give up. But if we take the context into account, it is evident that I'm actually giving OP advice on how to mentally and emotionally survive the coming apocalypse.

Though, maybe I should have been more clear.

> which could easily be interpreted

Perhaps there are more than one way in which to interpret certain concepts? Or maybe I'm interpreting your comment wrong?

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

#368

Post by antod »

annoyingnoob wrote: post #364
antod wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're reading the reporting wrong. It is meant as: afraid and/or sad and/or anxious and/or angry and/or powerless and/or helpless and/or guilty ie the last "and/or" is defining what the commas mean. Just like "a, b, c, and d" or "a, b, c, or d" don't mean "a, b, (c and d)" or "a, b, (c or d)" And that was also a smaller summary list of options than the actual study had.

I suppose if we throw enough terms into a single question then it applies to everyone. What, exactly, do we learn with a question like that?

The actual report had a histogram comparing the relative results of all those options against each other.

The point I'm trying to make is that what you're calling out as a bad question is a summary in 3rd party reporting and not the actual questions in the survey or the report.

It's a bit like judging a book based on someone else's book report rather than the book itself.

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

#369

Post by strken »

lanstin wrote: post #292
strken wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm asking to put some numbers on our predictions in a conversation that's already had us predict what people will do, as a tool to dig deeper into the factors that could lead civilisation to collapse.

Being totally accurate when predicting the future is impossible, but discussion of the factors is useful in its own right.

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

#370

Post by strken »

birksherty wrote: post #280
strken wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

https://youtu.be/fliCxyAwBWU

Can you explain what I'm meant to be getting out of this 47 minute long review of current climate indicators?

I understand that climate change is progressing rapidly, is going to cause very bad things to happen (my earlier comment mentioned hundreds of millions of human deaths as an example), and should be mitigated. What I question is whether the total collapse of industrial civilisation as a result of climate change is likely to occur. This is as opposed to economic stagnation, famine, war, widespread desertification, unliveable wet-bulb temperatures, or anything else short of a total collapse.

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