XT, I hear where you’re coming from–it’s largely theater–but to me it’s a ploy that has to be used. Facts and science aren’t working on conservatives; liberals claim to be worried but they’re too afraid of radiation to do what needs to be done. Thunberg’s message is (I think) an attempt to reach people who have largely ignored rationality. If it lights a fire under a small but non-trivial number
Meanwhile, Sanders and Warren both want to kill nuclear power. Egads.
Do you really not see a difference between complaining about pollution that’ll cause hundreds of trillions of dollars in property damage and lost economic growth, as well as million of refugees and complaining about whats on TV or whats for dinner?
God forbid the party that screams about death panels, communism, the antichrist, etc. over everything they don’t like consider something hyperbolic.
It may not cut 40 years off his life expectancy. But it may become a serious problem that sets humanity back by decades.
These kids are brave. They are standing up to wealthy interests and ideological fanatics to secure a better future for themselves since their parents generation is too selfish and radicalized to do it for them.
My favorite quote in this video that sums things up rather nicely is “Climate denialism isn’t just a bunch of people who are wrong. It is a bunch of people being paid to be wrong on purpose to deliberately spread doubt about the truth.” People like Crowder, Shapiro and Moore among many others. All paid to be wrong on purpose.
Climate change shouldn’t be a political issue, but it has been made a political issue by people with a vested financial interest in ensuring that nothing gets done about it. It really ought to be something that is bipartisan for everybody who isn’t vested in the fossil fuel industry. If you’re vested heavily in the fossil fuel industry, then I understand why you don’t want anything done about it (although even then). For everybody else, you’ve been conned by your political masters.
There’s very few knowledgeable people speaking out on climate change who frame it as an species ending event. However, that won’t keep people like Crowder, Shapiro, Moore, et al. from claiming that people speaking about climate change are just alarmists. Or finding that one person who claims it is the end of the world and using them as their example. Direct deaths from climate change are estimated to be about 250,000 per year. Indirect deaths on the other hand may be much higher but harder to quantify. For example, climate change is having considerable effect on food security (my area of research). A lack of food security leads to political instability, which leads to fighting and death. But it is difficult to say what percentage are due to climate change and what percentage is due to a growing population and continued unsustainable food production. I’ve seen estimates for death from issues surrounding food security to be from 500,000,000 to 1,500,000,000 from 2050 to 2075 (I might have the exact years wrong). Researchers who are looking into food security invariably are looking at climate change as a factor and how to account for it. One thing is certain, climate change is going to cause a lot of human misery. But don’t worry it won’t be most of us in the rich part of the world. So we can just ignore it.
This seems like a weirdly unimaginative dismissal. You appear to be taking it for granted that Thunberg can’t have any “dreams” that aren’t taken care of by her being a “rich girl” and “famous” and having a “fine life” in terms of material prosperity.
On the contrary, if one of the things she dreamed of was a world in which intelligent grownups would act promptly and wisely to mitigate a serious environmental crisis, then I think we have to admit that our incompetent response has “stolen her dreams”.
The thing is, though, that climate-change deniers have been asserting all along that pretty much any expression of concern about climate change is “hysteria”. And a lot of the people throwing around the word “hysteria” are specifically paid to do so, as BeepKillBeep notes (though I’d put Marc Morano at the head of their list).
So personally, I’m suffering from a bit of hysteria-accusation fatigue. It’s certainly true that some voices in popular media, particularly non-scientists, use exaggeration and hyperbole in their interpretation of the dangers of climate change. But damn near everybody who fulminates about “hysteria” and “alarmism” and so forth in discussions of climate change is using exaggeration and hyperbole, when they’re not outright lying. The deniers’ pose of skeptical moderation has pretty much lost all credibility.
My gasoline has a $0.50/ gallon tax, and I have a plug-in electric, but they aren’t practical for everywhere yet. Batteries aren’t new; I don’t know how many more electrons they can stuff in there.
Because people would surely, definitely, listen to a black girl.
Because you definitely wouldn’t be laying out this same argument “oh look, they’re cynically using this young black girl as a mouthpiece”.
Because there is definitely some other way to frame climate change in a way you’ll listen, some perfect spokesperson, but doggone if the opposition always seems to pick one that isn’t quite to your taste.
She didn’t say what her “stolen dreams” were, so I specifically avoided commenting about them. I can’t answer the OP’s question about whether her dreams were stolen or not if I don’t know what they are. Without knowing what her “stolen dreams” are, however, I can still make some general observations about the likelihood that she goes on to live a privileged life (it’s quite high).
I’m glad we agree, notwithstanding your fatigue.
“Millionaires funded by billionaires” is the phrase that comes to mind.
Cite? :dubious:
Yeah, it kind of does doesn’t it?
I wonder if he practices his confused look in the mirror or if it just comes naturally?
I don’t much like this argument, it is kind of ad hominem even though it isn’t especially insulting. And you Do discuss the content of her message, but hear me out. It may be she doesn’t perceive her identity the way others do. Heck, if she takes a non-dualist ‘perspective’, she literally IS the very poor people in 3rd world countries. It is said she has Asperger’s, so she very well may have a alternate sense of identity. Maybe everybody already does. I have someone I can ask about this later…
Even if we don’t go into any odd philosophical territory, isn’t much of the point of climate activism concern for the welfare of other people? Isn’t that a veritable cornerstone of conventional morality itself, concern for others? Future generations 100-200+ years from now? For a person that truly believes men are created equal, it would be sickening and appalling to witness the wealthiest nations causing so much harm to the most vulnerable. 4% of South Asia will be uninhabitable by 2100 if serious action isn’t taken. 4% of… 2 billion people? What are they supposed to do as their regions become literally uninhabitable?
I don’t think it matters that she lives in a 1st world country and benefited from fossil fuels. It wasn’t her choice. Is she supposed to be grateful and just zip it? She had a shot and she took it. I mean, she’s just rando girl to me, probably not a superhero but who knows, but really try to imagine the *literal real-world horror show *she and any 16-ish year old person is likely to witness world-wide as they grow into adulthood and old age. Mass extinction? Droughts, wars, enormous suffering and millions of deaths? Because corrupt politicians got bought by oil companies &etc. to steer policy away from the public interest?
But yeah, we could also cause a nightmare if we pull the rug out from everyone’s economic security if we sacrifice everything to this issue. I admit it is sticky. I think it is reasonable to cause wealthy-ish people to be a bit less wealthy for it though.
Here’s what the relevant sentence from your cite actually says:
Do you feel like you left out an important detail in your paraphrasing? I do.
Scared, angry child is not an appeal to rationality, it’s an emotional appeal.
The single most damaging blow against the environment has been the emotion, not science based, opposition to nuclear power, we’ve had the technology to move past the use of fossil fuels for more than half a century but that next, absolutely necessary, step was thwarted by another set of scared, angry people armed with emotional appeals.
I’d say is time to stop listening to angry, scared people, they’d screwed us all up enough already.
No we haven’t and no it wasn’t.
:rolleyes:
Here is a recent poll in which 51% of 18-34-year-olds respond “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to the question “Within the next 10-15 years, how likely is that the earth will become uninhabitable and humanity will be wiped out?”
~51% of Millenials are like Zach, the hysterical DNC staffer.
In a humorous (to me at least) incident, President Trump echoed some of my sentiments:
Always amusing to hear what admitted sexual abusers think about young women who are passionate about public policy, am I right?
Fighting climate change is difficult but not impossible. If success seems unlikely, does that mean we should give up?
America has done great things in the past: extended civil rights to blacks, saved Europe from Naziism, put a man on the moon. It seems too pessimistic to assert that America will never be able to do great things again.
I am tired of hearing that China is the problem, so the U.S. shouldn’t bother with its own emissions. China now spends 0.9% of its GDP on renewable energy technologies. Compare that with U.S.A. which spends 0.1%. And despite that China’s population is more than four times that of the U.S., the U.S. consumes far more petroleum than China. Even a paltry 50¢/gallon tax on gasoline might effect some change in America’s profligate habits, yet almost half a century after first proposed, such a tax remains anathema.
Politically, who’s to blame? Elected officials kowtow to voters; voters are misinformed, often deliberately. Recently Europe has done a much better job than America at instituting pro-environment and pro-humanity policies. This is no accident: among the world’s advanced “democracies” it is the U.S.A. specifically where power has been turned over to kleptocrats and liars.
But a big reduction in CO2 emissions would be difficult in any event. There is one solution the world desperately needs. From a recent article:
I’ve emphasized an eye-catching quote from that article. The benefit of even modest population reduction would be so huge, that it was omitted from a graph comparing benefits. :eek: Ironic? The benefit of addressing population growth would be so huge that the graph would be “unbalanced” — all the other remedies would appear as faint lines down near zero! Therefore, so that line placement would seem to yield a more informative graph, the best remedy was … omitted altogether!
I’m sorry you’re tired of it, but China is the problem.
And yet China emits more GHG than the US and the EU put together.
Which is much of the problem with this rich teenager’s speech. She is saying that China (and India and the rest of the Third World) shouldn’t get to have what she has already. They should forgo economic development, not fly over the ocean (to, for example, address the UN), not drive cars, not have another child. And climate change is the West’s fault because we haven’t made the Third World forgo those things. :rolleyes:
I am afraid this teenager is going to be disappointed. Neither the West, nor China, is going to cut their own economic throats. And the Right isn’t going to shut off economic growth, and the Left isn’t going to accept nuclear energy. If her dream is a world where the peasants in China accept living a stunted lifestyle and the West outsources its manufacturing to China who emits GHG anyway, her dream is dead.
“Literally uninhabitable” means they need air conditioning?
I’m not.
Regards,
Shodan
You don’t need to travel to Southeast Asia to know that most people there are very poor and don’t have air conditioning. But I have, and I can report that it’s true.
When their homes become unsurvivable without air conditioning, what’s going to happen to them?
Are they supposed to sell their property and move elsewhere? Who will be the buyer of uninhabitable property?
Are the richer countries that refused to spend money fighting climate change now going to come up with money to buy all these people air conditioners, putting even more demand on energy?
I expect your response is something along the lines of “I don’t care”. I won’t bother persuading you, but if you accept that since we’re not installing air conditioning in that 4% of Southeast Asia (or elsewhere), then nobody’s going to live there when it gets too hot.
OTOH if you surprise me and say "we should take up a collection and air-condition the affected area, my response is “why funding for the symptom but not the disease?”