Climate change: children taking legal action because adults are complacent

Great Debates
1

For me, climate change will most likely be of little consequence, playing out past my tenure on this here wetrock. But young people – too young to vote – have been taking action, through the courts. And they have had a major success. Well, sort of. The text of the state of Washington judge’s ruling asserts that action is imperative, before it is too late, but then denies the children’s appeal because the state is taking action.

One could argue that these young-uns are indoctrinated, are not mature enough to understand the complexities of the issue beyond what has been spoonfed to them by dastardly left-wing teachers. But it really does highlight an important point: the children are the people most affected by the shit we pile up; how else can we be compelled to proceed in forward-looking ways that will favor them rather than simply eating, drinking and merrymaking for our own sake?

Which is to say, for those of us who have children, are they not the most important thing to us? Should we not be seeking to insure as good a life for them as we have now? What can we do to make our system better tuned to addressing the longer term, for their sake?

2

What can we do? For starters, do not vote Republican until they change their denialist and pro fossil fuel agenda.

No, really:

To see their inaction, and where is coming from, (mostly ignorance and who is paying them) check also this take down of the Republicans in congress from Jon Stewart; the vast majority of Republicans should not be there preventing new regulations and laws the we will need now and in the future.

The Daily Show - Burn Noticed

3

How many new coal-fired power plants are the Chinese building?

4

A lot, but as usual the jab implies that once again the environmentalists “should demand purity”, but the reality is that the ones that are reasonable do understand that humanity can not go cold turkey, but that does not mean that the change is not being planned or that it is not happening.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/business/energy-environment/china-coal.html

http://www.paulsoninstitute.org/paulson-blog/2016/04/22/a-new-opening-for-clean-energy-in-china/

5

I wouldn’t have put it on those words but, yes, children are certainly too young to comprehend these issues. That doesn’t mean that they don’t have standing of course, just that this isn’t really the children’s argument, it’s an argument raised on their behalf.

Can we see some evidence for this claim?

How would you even go about quantifying who is most affected by an action? If a 90yo woman has 3 years left to live and all those years are affected, does that make her less of a victim than an 18yo who will be affected for 5 years? She lost 100% of her life to the effects, the 18yo lost 2%. Children are far more adaptable than adults, they have fewer responsibilities, they have more options and so forth. Any argument that children are more affected by decisions that don’t specifically affect children is just begging the question.

First demonstrate that children are more affected than parents or the elderly, and then make an argument from that premise. Because a this stage the premise is more dodgy than the conclusion you are trying to draw from it.

By what rationale do you believe that we *should *be compelled to do that? Who believes that, and on what basis?

Once again, you are begging the question. The current crop of children aren’t owed a living any more than any generation before or after them. And the current crop of adults don’t owe it to their children to leave them better off, any more than the children owe it to the adults to work to ensure that the adults are better off them better off.

This planet is doomed. Either it gets hit by a meteor, gets swallowed by the sun or vanishes in a big freeze. No matter what we do, the planet is gonna disappear and we are all gonna die.

The best we can hope for is to prolong the existence of our species by getting off this rock. But the best way to do that before in time is to maximise innovation and advancement, which means maximising economic growth.

So the idea that “we” owe it to future generations not to live a good life is pretty dodgy. Maybe you could make such an argument, but at this stage you haven’t done so

Of course not. Anybody who believes that is psychopath.

Would you cut the heart out of a conscious child to transplant into your own child? Would you force everyone to follow Islam, killing anyone who refused, if that would save your child?

If you answered no to either of those questions then you have answered your earlier question as well. Your children are not the most important thing to you. There are all sorts of things that are more important to you. And thank Ogg for that. A person who really does believe that their child is more important than morality or respect for other people is a bona fide psychopath.

Firstly, why should we be doing that? Isn’t it adequate to provide for them a life that provides them with the opportunity to be self fulfilled adults?

Secondly, how would you measure that? If my children can’t have air conditioning, low taxes, cheap international flights and road trip holidays, then doesn’t that mean that they *don’t *have as good a life a we have now? So how can we “do somehthing” and “insure as good a life for them as we have now”? They would seem to be mutually exclusive.

“For their sake”? Seriously? You are actually using “Won’t somebody think of the children” in a debate? :dubious:

6

Well, being inactive on this issue does mean that indeed we are not providing a life with opportunity, unless you are proposing that the opportunity should come in the form of making dams or moving complete coastal cities to higher ground.

Well, thing is that those children will indeed become the 18 year olders and elderly in the future when the effects will be even more noticeable and harmful.

Basically while one can say that “the current crop of children aren’t owed a living any more than any generation before or after them.” it is a bit underwhelming when we take into account that that is like telling us that we should not think of the future nor to prepare for it.

“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” - Old Greek proverb.

7

For this and similar reasons, I’ve thought the voting age should have a cut-off. People older than, say, 60 would lose the right to vote! (Or perhaps get only half a vote.)

(I wouldn’t propose a minimum age below 18, however — children are inexperienced and easily manipulated.)

8

Imagine, for example, that there is only enough food to feed everyone for three years. The 90 year old woman will be fine, as she will die naturally about when the food runs out, but the younger people who have decades ahead of them will be faced with famine and war.

Did I say “better off”? At present, it looks to me as though our consumption habits are likely to leave subsequent generations much worse off. Some of that is not the fault of the current crop of adults, but at least we might be in a position to mitigate the damage that has been done. To not make a reasonable effort, or at least some effort, in that direction is essentially the same as being a callous sociopath.

That is just inane. We have, or could have, a few thousand, or maybe million, years left at least. That is too long for us to behave as though it does not matter and burn our potential to the ground so that the human race is gone within centuries instead.

I am not convinced that “getting off this rock” is realistic or practicable. It may be, but that is a huge gamble if it is not. Even so, even if it is, economic growth is not necessary to drive technological progress. At least, not the absurd form of growth we have, which is based on producing as much garbage as possible and lavishly wasting energy.

It depends on how you define a “good life”. It is probably possible to live comfortably and be reasonably happy in a simpler lifestyle. Because you seem to feel that a simpler life would probably suck does not mean that a simpler life would in fact suck.

This is not making sense to me.

If we leave them a broken world, it will become more an more difficult to be self fulfilled adults. At present, if we are truly on a trajectory that will gain us the ability to “get off this rock”, it is not clear that this rock will be able to sustain us long enough to reach the target of that trajectory. That would be an ironic tragedy, to be on the cusp of escaping a world that kills us before we can get away from it. Traveling to other worlds and terraforming them is the really long game, maintaining what we have is the short-ish game we absolutely must win before we have any chance to finish the long game.

Fair enough. I worded it badly.

9

Do you drive a car or ever fly in a plane?

10

Irrelevant to the issue of actual dishonesty and obfuscation concerning scientific findings.

Just because modern humans in wealthy societies may not find it a simple matter to make large reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions through voluntary individual actions doesn’t mean that it’s okay to outright lie and mislead about the importance of the issue of greenhouse-gas emissions.

GIGObuster’s not saying “Don’t vote Republican because they use fossil fuels riding in cars and planes”. That would indeed be a hypocritical stance. What he’s saying is “Don’t vote Republican because they’re systematically trying to lie, deny and cover up scientific findings about the impacts of fossil fuel use”.

11

I think we’re looking at a longer time interval for measurable climate change, it will be our grandchildren who will begin to see these effects, and then only where climate is dependent on temperature. We have time to solve these problems and we’re working towards these solutions.

Burning fossil fuels brought us extraordinary technological advancements, we’ll have to give up some of these if we want to stop this burning. Clogged city freeway systems just have to come to an end.

12

The same rationale by which, after having a nice dinner, you refrain from taking the dishes with the leftover scraps and throwing them against the wall, and permanently leaving the kitchen a festering mess, and failing to ever clean or maintain anything. Because most of us believe there is a tomorrow, there is a future, and that fact places upon rational people a certain burden of responsibility for stewardship of the place that we inhabit.

In other words, throw those damn dirty dishes against the wall, and when the mess becomes intolerable, burn the house down and hope that somebody gives you a new one. Then you can start trashing it all over again.

Maximizing economic growth as the sole priority means continuing to burn fossil fuels with reckless abandon. That’s pretty much a guarantee of environmental catastrophe within an incredibly short time relative to the timescale of human history. It really is just the kind of senseless recklessness suggested by my little analogy.

13

This is just question begging.
There is a price to be paid for not doing anything about global warming. There is also a price for changing our economy to mitigate global warming somewhat. No one actually knows what either price is and so it is impossible to compare the two costs with any reasonable degree of certainty. Thus to make an accurate judgement the judge would have to know two hypothetical futures well enough to decide between them.
It is also disturbing how willing some are to work around democracy in pursuit of their agendas.

14

This is the price.

This is the price.

Only those engaged in willful denial claim they don’t know.

15

The future that is free of fossil fuels isn’t hypothetical, we will someday run out. So that’s a cost we will be paying, we know that already. The sooner we start paying, the less economic impact we’ll suffer. There’s jobs to be had installing solar panels on rooftops and more jobs re-roofing around the panels.

Carter administration era postage stamps

We’ve known all this for quite awhile now …

16

Can you simplify things for us and just give the dollar amount for each? Those look like a link to an encyclopedia of information that would take days or weeks to wade thru. The Summary alone is 32 pages. and are you seriously saying that anyone who has not read all that stuff and/or disagrees with it is engaged in “willful denial”?

17

The data is indeed complex and involves an enormous number of different variables, although most of them have to do with the political will to engage in serious mitigation and investment in development of alternative energy sources. The fact that there are no simple answers doesn’t detract from the fact that there is an enormous body of knowledge about the subject, that the different scenarios can be modeled, and that we know that the costs in terms of loss of life and property are quantifiable and rapidly increasing. The complex interactions of different scenarios don’t change the fact that everyone who claims that no such data exists is engaged in willful denial.

18

I defer to economists with experience on the issue:

So the answer is, even with some unknowns, that we should act, because uncertainty is not our friend, and for less odds than that we do insure our homes. It has to be mentioned also that when William D. Nordhaus wrote that he and many other did not know if the loss of cap ice was accelerating, and we know that now, meaning that the cost for not taking care of the issue as it should is increasing.

19

This is not true at all. The cost we are now paying for fossil fuels is less than what we would be paying for an alternative. The longer we wait for the alternative the more money we save. If we wait long enough then technology may bring alternative fuels down to cost parity and then we would spend no more money. The jobs are a cost and not a benefit.

20

I do not think that we should wait anymore.