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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

#61

Post by toolz »

I'm probably overly calm about climate change. I can't trust that science isn't trying to sensationalize the problem so much so that I end up discounting everything I read.

Take this [1] paper for example I just happened upon. Look at this scary graphic they provide to convince the reader that wildfires are getting worse [2]. The paper goes on painting a terrible picture about the rising trend of wildfires in the U.S. Now let's look at the source for their graphic and look back further at earlier dates from the same source. [3] - kind of paints a different picture, no?

So at what point am I, an average citizen supposed to be worried enough that I do my own systematic reviews of the literature and see who is just sensationalizing the problem?

Maybe I'm the minority, maybe the "marketing" of global warming is exactly as it should be if the problem is indeed as dire as many would have me believe, but the obvious sensationalism just makes me wonder if everyone trying to sell me on this fear has just bought into the hype and as such I'll be a hard sell on this issue, because if it was real and dire - I doubt there would be such obvious sensationalism every time I look into it.

[1] https://costofcarbon.org/files/Flammable_Planet__Wildfires_a...

[2] https://i.imgur.com/0FlXads.png

[3] https://i.imgur.com/zvbApzL.png

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

#62

Post by freddealmeida »

Young people are driven by propaganda and social trends. I don't see what the crisis is at all. Data, cleaned for bias, suggests very little difference. And certainly not in the West. Pollution is certainly a problem, such as in China, India, but I don't agree that the world climate is changing in a way that is abnormal.

I'm anxious though about the drive for using climate as a premise to remove freedoms for some possible safety. Authoritarian regimes are increasingly taking power.

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

#63

Post by refurb »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #29
throwawaysea wrote: post #13

Young people are also exposed to immense echo chambers that operate as runaway feedback loops, which manipulate their emotions, political views, and so on. This leads to extreme perspectives that are detached from reality. These two paragraphs from the article demonstrate this: > Positive feelings such as optimism were reported least among the respondents, researchers said. In fact, 77% said that they considered the…

Indeed why are young people nervous? it's only skyrocketing property prices, gig economy, obliteration of property rights by software, financialization of the economy and ecological collapse. Nothing to be worried about

When is the last time the world wasn’t falling apart?

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

#64

Post by sentinel »

mc32 wrote: post #22

I'm sure people are frustrated, but I wonder what the consensus, if you could fine one, would be. What exactly are they expecting governments to change? Policy, power generation, transportation, what? And will they accept the necessary or resultant policies and changes? The above are "easy" if you have a totalitarian regime where what the autocrats say go, goes: China, Saudi Arabia, etc., most other countries are mor…

Carbon taxation. The idea being that otherwise it’s an unpriced externality.

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

#65

Post by throwawaysea »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #48
650 wrote: post #2

Regardless of climate change, media outlets like NPR propagate this anxiety to young people.

What propagates anxiety in young people is that they can't vote untill they are 18, their voting block is tiny and no-one represents their concerns in the system. Meanwhile folks in charge are dense as lead and vote for one party their whole life, but deride 'millennials'.

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 family. That experience is necessary to find balance and completeness in their worldviews.

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

#66

Post by tfehring »

nanis wrote: post #12

What exactly is "the" "right" climate?

The fact that climate change is a problem doesn't imply that there's a "right" climate. The rapid rate of change itself is the problem - and particularly the fact that that rate of change is faster than organisms and systems can adequately adapt to.

Atmospheric CO2 levels have previously, naturally, been higher than they are today. The most recent time that they were that high, the land on which most of our population's biggest cities were built was underwater. We could have just as easily built cities in an environment in which CO2 levels and temperatures were higher than they were in 1800, just by building farther back from today's coasts - but we didn't, so some cities will face massive costs to adapt, and others will simply go away.

All of that is literally true for cities, but it's also true by analogy for organisms and natural ecosystems. We can't quantify the full magnitude of climate change's impacts on those ecosystems, but there's wisdom in risk aversion when dealing with highly uncertain situations.

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

#67

Post by nanis »

ceejayoz wrote: post #25
nanis wrote: post #12

What exactly is "the" "right" climate?

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 that is, but it was warm, for sure. People will figure out how to deal with the weather.

One of the most fun tourist attractions of my childhood was swimming/free diving around two thousand year old ruins under water.

The changes of a bunch of self-interested central planners figuring out how to do what you want without killing you are nil.

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

#68

Post by ripper1138 »

lisper wrote: post #4

It'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…

Stop reading all the sensationalized news about it. Wasn’t south Florida supposed to flood already?

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

#69

Post by tppiotrowski »

mc32 wrote: post #22

I'm sure people are frustrated, but I wonder what the consensus, if you could fine one, would be. What exactly are they expecting governments to change? Policy, power generation, transportation, what? And will they accept the necessary or resultant policies and changes? The above are "easy" if you have a totalitarian regime where what the autocrats say go, goes: China, Saudi Arabia, etc., most other countries are mor…

Government might not be the solution here. I look at electric cars and soon they will require less maintenance, less money for fuel and be cheaper than their ICE counterparts. If you build something that emits less CO2 and it is BETTER and CHEAPER than the competition it's game over. No one but hobbyists will look at ICE again.

This to me aligns with economic theory in practice more accurately than a carbon tax.

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