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The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change

economist.com

21–30 of 176 posts

Re: The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change

#21
post #4

Magazines like The Economist helped bring us here by describing Oil Companies still has a bright future and a great investment in the 80s and 90s. Instead if they had authored high profile articles about how fossil fuels are driving this world to disaster, maybe we would be in a better place. Doing that would have made their advertisers mad, so they kept writing about clean coal and oil for better $. It was the exact…

You should look into the economist a bit more. For one, they have no advertisers to keep happy. Edit: I stand corrected. A better way to phrase it is that their business model does not rely on advertising, and they traditionally did not run ads until recently.

I remember that mag with that name from the 80s seeing it on news stands. Is this a different one and the other one closed ?

Re: The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change

#22
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The top of economist.com has a 250px high `adComponent_adcontainer__eooQr` div. My Pihole blocks its content, but I have a guess as to what it is. They seem to think they have advertisers. https://myaccount.economist.com/s/article/How-do-I-advertise...

The ads they accept are basically just classifieds for high-level positions in NGOs. I turned off anblocking and see zero ads on the site.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/29/saudi-aramc...

> The world’s biggest oil company has withdrawn an advertising campaign that boasted it was “powering a more sustainable future”, after dozens of complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority.

> The adverts appeared in The Week magazine and The Economist online at the beginning of the year. Baines said it was wrong for publications to accept them in the midst of a climate crisis.

> In a statement, the Economist said: “Advertising is not editorial content and does not imply any endorsement on our part. In the case of this particular ad, it was put on hold at the request of the client.”

Re: The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change

#23
post #20

Every prediction we make seems to be reached sooner than expected. There is so many effects that we don't understand yet. Keeping with the "this is surprising" narrative, or like this title, implying that we have any time at all, is not helping. I would expect a less naive title from a platform like the economist.

The Economist is torn, because on the one hand they try to appear clever, but on the other hand they generally support unrestrained capitalism. It’s not possible to do both at the same time.

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Re: The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change

#24

why is it that for the ozone layer we got together and undid the damage but for climate change we don't? is it too politicized, are the required changes too damaging to the economy to start agressively implementing them?

Industry groups saw the ozone scenario unfold and said "never again".

Same thing happened after Nixon - it led directly to the founding of Fox News (https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2011/memo-from-197...).

Re: The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change

#25
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Economist is torn, because on the one hand they try to appear clever, but on the other hand they generally support unrestrained capitalism. It’s not possible to do both at the same time.

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Sarcasm?

Re: The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change

#27
post #9

It's strange that anyone's still thinking there's "still time until we have to act". Is this really the average view out there?

The average view is that "climate change" == "higher/lower temperatures". Nobody really thinks of all the secondary effects.

Re: The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change

#28
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Economist is torn, because on the one hand they try to appear clever, but on the other hand they generally support unrestrained capitalism. It’s not possible to do both at the same time.

[flagged]

Like a carbon tax?

Re: The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change

#29
I recognize this is deeply cynical and definitely doomerist. What can I as an individual actually do to stop this? Why should I even bother reading articles like this at this point? I can't do anything. I can't action it. I can collect my recycling, pop solar panels on my roof and be the most carbon footprint conscious person and it wouldn't move the needle an atom's width.

Politicians don't care, and the ones that do can't make a difference either. Corporations definitely don't care. I can go protest, and that gets a lot of media attention but it doesn't change a voter's mind when their main concern is who gets to play in school sports.

I know this is vitriolic, but I am genuinely curious about it. What can I do? What can I do outside of putting my ballot in the box and hoping something changes?

Re: The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change

#30

why is it that for the ozone layer we got together and undid the damage but for climate change we don't? is it too politicized, are the required changes too damaging to the economy to start agressively implementing them?

[flagged]
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