We're not even squarely on the other side of Covid yet, and I'm already sick and tired of the "worse than Covid" trope.
Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says
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Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says
#52Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few countries in Europe ban face coverings in public. Mainly driven by fear of people wearing burkas.
I'm only aware of a small subset of laws existing in Europe, but every single example of restrictions to face hiding I can think of predates Muslim presence by many decades. No, those are not driven by fear of people wearing burkas.
France 2011 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering
Denmark 2018 https://www.dw.com/en/denmark-bans-full-face-veils-in-public...
Austria 2017 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41457427
etc
Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says
#54Quoted post unavailable.
In fact as George Orwell put it, they are probably disgusted by them, and pretend to care about them to advance their own "socialist" leanings.
Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says
#55Wow 9 million a year die prematurely. The environmental crisis is manifold: we have the destruction of species and habitats, the global warming problem, and now also just trash - overuse of plastics is a huge problem, air pollution is pretty terrible.
For example, smoking probably causes more deaths than Covid. So, while it may be perfectly true that things like smoking and pollution are bigger public health issues than Covid, we never spoke of a "smoking crisis", and justifiably so.
The thing that makes a crisis into a crisis is that it's highly discrete in time and there is a temporally very limited window of opportunity to take action. This is true of Covid, but it's not true of smoking or pollution.
A politican speaking of a climate "crisis" is engaging in the same psychological manipulation tactic as a radio commercial telling you to "act now on this limited-time offer", or a used-car salesman telling you that you have to buy that car right now, because this other guy definitely just called and is now on his way to the lot, and will likely buy the car you're interested in as soon as you leave the lot.
Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says
#56We're not even squarely on the other side of Covid yet, and I'm already sick and tired of the "worse than Covid" trope.
It’s perfectly reasonable the much scarier stuff we aren’t panicking about.
Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says
#57Quoted post unavailable.
Fentanyl is a working class problem. No-one remotely close to power (journalists, influencers, politicians) really care about working class people any more. In fact as George Orwell put it, they are probably disgusted by them, and pretend to care about them to advance their own "socialist" leanings.
Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says
#58Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says
#59Maybe we can keep using masks? Now that we already got used to them, we may reduce the effects of pollution with good filtering masks. Of course this doesn't mean we shouldn't address what's causing the pollution in the first place.
Re: Pollution causing more deaths than Covid, action needed, U.N. expert says
#60Meta-discussion, but I think "statistical deaths" - deaths where the causation has to be inferred, rather than being completely obviously monocausal - have been a big feature of quality of life improvement in the 19th and 20th century, but are now running into an informational problem. Namely that you have to believe the statistics in order for the process to work, but it's increasingly common to lie with statistics.…