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Not to be that person, but my parents are completely incapable of comprehending this.
Not intellectually, but pragmatically and philosophically. They’re like 60 years old, and even if it affects them in their lifetime, they’ll be “dead in 20 years”.
And on a low level, they’re kind of right because most ordinary people aren’t to blame for this, so shaming “parents” makes no sense.
Shame the international petroleum conglomerates, plastic producers, shipping, etc. You know, the actual emitters in the billions of gigatons.
but pragmatically and philosophically. They’re like 60 years old, and even if it affects them in their lifetime, they’ll be “dead in 20 years”.
Imagine saying this as if human prosperity wasn’t built on people building places for their children and grandchildren.
Capitalism is one of very few philosophies that pretends that selfishness is good, and it would be silly not to blame people that believe in it for the consequences of that philosophy when implemented.
Ordinary western citizens are to blame, because ordinary western citizens could have changed this merely by being morally offended and voting for something else. Most of them personally chose to support capitalism over any alternative. To not even explore the space of possibilities, but to get paid off by corporate-government partnerships that were robbing both the future and the rest of the world.
Can’t their precious AI fix it? You know, the one taking all of the fresh water for people to do simple queries?
our handsome investors had a free market solution but then the government said no
Some libertarian
I think in the long term there could be a libertarian solution - the Coase Theorem says that externalities can be resolved with very low transaction costs (that don’t currently exist).
But that’s something libertarians should’ve pitched 40 years ago. Now the only solution we know will help are time-tested Pigouvian taxes.
Your parents ignored this
I’ve been hearing about climate change consistently since the 1980s. Multiple iterations of liberal (and moderate conservative) politician have campaigned on a variety of (free market) mechanisms for capping or curbing carbon emissions. We even had a huge surge in R&D for green energy alternatives and electrification - first in the 70s and then again during the gas cost explosion of the 00s - that is (thank fucking god) finally paying off.
So I won’t say they “ignored this”. I will say that we had a very wealthy, very influential minority entrenched within the political class that profited enormously from fossil fuel extraction and deliberately suppressed decades of prior efforts to reduce emissions, both domestically and globally.
The Boomers weren’t blind to climate change. They weren’t even apathetic. They were outmatched, outplayed, and outspent. Much like with slavery in the 1800s and women’s liberation in the 1900s and human rights in the 2000s, this is a fight that liberals have spent a lot of time losing. What wins they achieved felt significant in the moment, but remained dwarfed by the stubborn intractability of their wealthy, reactionary opposition.
Yep, what is everyone reading this thread doing about all of the beverage companies, data centers and fracking taking our fresh water? My guess, the same as everyone who isn’t one of the above mentioned companies, nothing. One can only take care of their community.
Also a degree of survivorship bias.
The folks that are “doing something” end up assaulted by police, arrested, jailed, and periodically maimed or killed while engaged in active resistance. These incidents of industry-coordinated state oppression go under-reported or propagandized into “eco-terrorism” in such a way that any kind of opposition to the industry is painted as extremist and counter-productive.
When your only legal options are “try to recycle harder and maybe buy more Greenwashed merch” and “Go full denialist, embrace fossil fuel propaganda, and roll some coal on a Prius”, the outside observer is going to assume nothing is being done. Instead, real material efforts are simply being thwarted.
No, I won’t give them the out. This isn’t them simply being outgunned on messaging or outmaneuvered by corporate interests.
Theirs is a story of objective dereliction of duty.
Previous generations leveraged the future of their descendants to improve their wealth and economic growth. Those same generations and wealthy twats are now vying for global control as right-wing governments take power.
Yeah, there was corporate propaganda at play. That does not negate the duty of the electorate to stay informed. They could have looked into it, but they didn’t because it was an inconvenient truth.
We’ve had strong indication that CO2 was going to fuck us since 1896 from research by Svante Arrhenius. And if you want to go waaaaayyy back, the idea that a small percentage of atmospheric gases could absorb infrared radiation was 1859 by John Tyndall. Oh, or maybe we can start the clock at 1824 when Joseph Fourier (yes that Fourier) first proposed the idea of greenhouse gases.
So after 200 fucking years of knowing about this, we’ve still done fuck all.
So yes. Many of our parents were willfully ignorant and didn’t prioritize this issue because … The Mexicans are coming across the border and we can’t have that even if we’d really like to kick off a green energy revolution. AREGGHHHH! IF ONLY IT WEREN’T FOR THOSE DAMN ILLEGALS THEY WOULD’VE SOLVED THIS!
You’re committing a worse sin. You’re fighting the culture war for the powers that be.
Previous generations leveraged the future of their descendants to improve their wealth and economic growth
Previous generations developed the industrial infrastructure that granted historic consumer surpluses (and waste), but vanishingly few of them reaped the full benefits.
This isn’t a problem of generation, its a problem of economic planning (or lack there of). The post-WW2 dedication to a fossil fuel economy was a military decision more than a civilian one. Capturing and holding large sources of fossil fuel made up the bedrock of the Cold War.
Blaming this decision on Meema and Pepe is ahistorical.
We’ve had strong indication that CO2 was going to fuck us since 1896 from research by Svante Arrhenius.
We’ve had evidence of anthropogenic climate change, but also ample evidence of sizeable economic benefit to petroleum products - plastics and fertilizers not being the least of it.
We had the opportunity to engage in long term moderate and sustainable use, but squandered it in the name of short term consumer-driven profits.
But, again, this wasn’t a decision made by a mass of proles, democratically. It was dictated from corporate boards and corrupt Congressional legislatures and Pentagon war rooms.
The knowing didn’t matter, because the public was never given a real choice.
Many of our parents were willfully ignorant and didn’t prioritize this issue
Efforts to prioritize the issue was repeatedly thwarted through elaborate and labor intensive lobbying campaigns, gerrymanders, bribes, blackmail, and direct physical violence.
FFS, you had the national guard deployed to brutalize pipeline protesters just a few years ago. And that’s a drop in the bucket besides the sacks and pillaging of native reservations, the toppling of foreign governments, and the endless FUD broadcast globally to defame ecologists and activists.
We had the opportunity to engage in long term moderate and sustainable use, but squandered it in the name of short term consumer-driven profits.
But, again, this wasn’t a decision made by a mass of proles, democratically. It was dictated from corporate boards and corrupt Congressional legislatures and Pentagon war rooms.
I think, ultimately, we agree. The main difference is I don’t think “but, but, they were lied to” is an effective excuse to remove blame. In a democracy, however dysfunctional, the people share responsibility for the government the people elect.
Voter participation since the 70s is garbage. We’re just now breaking the high water mark of the 60’s - 65% presidential ; 50% midterm.
I am not saying it is their fault. Just that they are at fault. I’m at fault. I could have protested, but I believed too strongly that we’d get there. I never conceived we’d go backwards. I just thought if I kept voting right, we’d get there - slowly.
That is my shame and blame to carry. And I won’t give others a pass for their inaction or choices.
The main difference is I don’t think “but, but, they were lied to” is an effective excuse
If you’re sighting data collected in 1894 but discounting the education and media necessary to propagate that information to the general public, I’m not sure how the information is expected to disseminate.
Yeah, people were absolutely lied to - insidiously and exhaustively. That necessarily shapes their world views.
In a democracy, however dysfunctional, the people share responsibility for the government the people elect.
Liberal democracy is barely worthy of the term. Congress has had a single digit approval rating for decades. The president regularly is underwater in public support. The parties are privately owned and operated, periodically selecting their nominees without any democratic input. Voters are systematically gerrymandered and disenfranchised. Popular candidates are smeared, removed from ballots, denied access to debates, and outright prosecuted.
What do you say to the 60-80% of the population with no material representation in government?
I’m at fault
Unless I’m talking to a CEO of an energy company or a sitting Senator, I’m not clear what you are supposed to have done differently.
The modern moment is historically overdetermined. It’s hubristic to pretend you have any control over it.
Yeah, people were absolutely lied to - insidiously and exhaustively. That necessarily shapes their world views.
Yes, but people also see the truth. The information is there. Some people choose to believe the lies because it’s convenient. They don’t want to look into it. They don’t want to listen to scientists, and instead choose to listen to politicians and companies.
Voters are systematically gerrymandered and disenfranchised. Popular candidates are smeared, removed from ballots, denied access to debates, and outright prosecuted.
Where are the riots? Where were the protests as Republicans red mapped? Why did they stop? Where was the blowback when Florida didn’t give felons their right to vote back? Where are the riots when Republicans vote to remove the ability of citizens to add initiatives to the ballot?
What do you say to the 60-80% of the population with no material representation in government?
You don’t need a vote to effect meaningful political change. Women couldn’t vote. Until they could - through collective action.
Everyone chooses how to react and interface with the world. All the distortions in American democracy didn’t materialize overnight.
People formed unions despite being murdered by pinkertons. Just because the system is fighting against us, doesn’t absolve us of our responsibilities.
The modern moment is historically overdetermined. It’s hubristic to pretend you have any control over it.
Correct my misunderstanding, but this tells me you have given up and think that nothing could have been done unless those with real power suddenly became altruistic in the past 3 decades.
And on that point, we may fundamentally disagree. I have to believe that citizens can effect change individually or collectively despite everything stacked against them. If I admit that the power differential is intractable and hopeless, then our only hope is a sudden wave of noblesse oblige to overcome people’s greed, and we are truly fucked. Hubristic or not, I have to believe we have agency.
Yes, but people also see the truth.
People see information weighted by quality of presentation and volume of utterances. “The Truth” is not self-revelatory nor is it self-reinforcing, particularly for a lay person. There are whole philosophical treaties that break this down.
Where are the riots? Where were the protests as Republicans red mapped? Why did they stop? Where was the blowback when Florida didn’t give felons their right to vote back? Where are the riots when Republicans vote to remove the ability of citizens to add initiatives to the ballot?
You have to ask, you haven’t bothered to look. We had a Jacksonville man arrested after he tried to run over a pack of protesters in his neighborhood in June. We had a Texas congressional candidate tackled by police in the middle of a legislative session just last week. Over 3,200 students had been arrested on campus in the spring of 2024. The riots in LA have been happening for months.
But the fact that you seem to be willing to deny the existence of ongoing domestic protests - flare ups that have been stretching back decades in this country - sort of illustrates the problem of “the truth of climate change”. You’ve blinded yourself to crowds of people who may well be marching through your own neighborhoods. These are massive crowds of people who get regular news coverage, not obscure 19th century climatologists who go unmentioned save in the fine print of Wikipedia articles.
Correct my misunderstanding, but this tells me you have given up
If I had given up, I wouldn’t be blaming random Boomers on the current state of affairs. I don’t believe an entire generational cohort is irredeemably stupid.
“The Truth” is not self-revelatory nor is it self-reinforcing, particularly for a lay person.
It is not self-revelatory, but there are objective truths. If a lay person lacks the expertise to understand, they should defer to experts - not politicians or pundits.
Falling for propaganda is a reason, but it is not an excuse. The electorate has a responsibility to be informed.
You have to ask, you haven’t bothered to look.
I’m incredibly proud of what has been happening in my home city of LA. That’s what we fucking need everywhere. Burn cities down until things change.
But fair point! I was being more rhetorical and less literal. But that’s my miscommunication error. My question wasn’t to say they don’t exist or haven’t happened. I asked it to highlight that it isn’t enough. That for the magnitude of what is happening and its importance, the response is impotent and not proportional.
The world is increasingly on fire (almost literally). I’m living in a downtown metropolitan area minutes from city hall and protests are not daily.
I don’t believe an entire generational cohort is irredeemably stupid.
Nor do I. I never said that. I said I blame them for their willful ignorance and their decision not to prioritize climate change politically.
My position is simple. More could have been done, and because of that, we share blame and responsibility - however small. This is why I also blame myself.
Anyway, I think we’ve kind of hit a natural end. I appreciated our conversation, and it’s given me some things to mull over.
Thank you❤️
Well pick up your gun and go do something I guess
Younger generations are ignoring it as well. They’re busy blaming past generations, while they themselves are some of the biggest contributors to our current climate crisis.
So bezos and his guests flying dozens of individual private jets to Venice are the “younger generations”? It doesn’t have a lot to do with age but seems to correlate with wealth. The wealthier you are (as a nation and an individual) the more you typically (on average) contribute to climate change.
So bezos and his guests flying dozens of individual private jets to Venice are the “younger generations”?
As wasteful as that may seem, it’s doesn’t make much of a difference in the bigger picture. What does make a big impact is using all the services Bezos is providing. And not just his. Every cloud service uses an insane amount of energy. Youtube, TikTok, streaming services, online games, iCloud, Dropbox, video calls, crypto valuta, A.I. They can’t build data centers fast enough to supply the demand.
People of every generation were told it doesn’t matter and that it won’t be a problem. With the advent of social media and associated algorithms, the village idiots are loud, organised and getting others to bark at the moon with them.
You dont understand. The poor billionairs need their money nowwww!
And people think I’m crazy for starting an algae farm… There is no quick fix. “Science will figure something out”
I am part of that science, and I can barely afford to scale beyond what I consider my carbon footprint.
narcimalgae on YouTube, although the algorithm killed it (500 to 6 views on my last video)so I may move to peertube soon.
Can you give a quick elevator pitch for algae farms?
Water holds 8 times the gasous CO2 as the atmosphere it is exposed to at a given pressure(altitude). The algae, being carbon-based, pulls the carbon from the water to grow, and releases the oxygen as a biproduct. The algae biomass can then be condensed and stored, or used as a raw agriculture material. Water, sunlight, and a small amount of fertilizer all fed by an air pump.
Did they ignore it? Yes but the only reason they ignored it was because…
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The oil industry (and other adjacent industries) did their best to make sure everybody doubted the science of climate change
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Governments (the U.S gov’t in particular) took the oil industry’s side and subsidized their ventures
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Libertarian think tanks (like the Heritage Foundation and ALEC) took money from Big Oil to misinform the public about climate change and its connection to fossil fuel burning.
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Not just ignored, but vehemently dismissed as “woke” quoting the fossil fuel lobby almost verbatim. Repeatedly. Over generations and overwhelming scientific consensus.
A majority of us voted for Al Gore, but I’m sure someone will next tell me he wouldn’t have made a difference, both sides are the same, blah blah blah.
How much faith do you have that dems under Gore would have fought the republicans and their own donors when they were complacent letting the republicans steal the election?
Love this one. It’s one of the best illustrations of the “hockey stick effect” and a perfect way to explain why the excuse that “were just coming out of an ice age” is dead wrong.
Imagine finding that people your own age ignored it too, like they’re doing right now.
My employer, employing 90 people, a lot of which are in their 20s and 30s, has decided to organise the yearly seminar event in a place where most of the company needs to board a plane to go. I immediately said I wouldn’t go if I needed to take a plane, I was not the only one to say it. The company offered to reimburse any alternative journey (train+boat) which is a bit more expensive, but way way longer (14h transport vs 3h on plane, not taking into account the time in between train and ferry: I’ll be traveling for more than 24h in total between start and end, and same for the return journey). I said I’d do it, the others that spoke out: not so much, they are either not coming or taking the plane… In the end I think I will be the only one, we’ll see.
The average person hasn’t ignored it. Most people have made major changes to their consumption over the past 20-30 years without noticing it.
- LED lighting instead of incandescent or CFL lights.
- TVs are flat panel instead of tube (same for computer monitors)
- Electric cars are way more prevalent
- Most electronics use rechargeable batteries instead of single use
- Consumer goods contain fewer harmful chemicals
Change is being made, it’s just going too slow because individuals have very limited options while a handful of corporations are responsible for the vast majority of pollution. We’re not ignoring it, we lack the ability to make reasonable change to the situation.
but these changes are small in the whole of it. we live a fossil fuel reliant lifestyle. what would you be willing to give up? cars as a whole? electronics as a whole? indoor climate control? constant hot water? heavy meat consumption? global travel? people care, but the human demand for all of these is heavy and hard to shake. sooner or later they may not be an option anymore
For my part, I live in a rural area and raise my own chickens for meat and eggs. I buy fresh meat and veggies from local farmers. My whole household works from home which helps reduce my car footprint but I still drive a gas vehicle once or twice a week because we don’t have mass transit and biking is unsafe due to lack of infrastructure and big US trucks. There are a good 4 months a year that I don’t use AC or heat in my house and just open the windows. I don’t leave things on when I’m not using them. For work I use a raspberry pi and/or a tablet instead of a monster gaming pc.
I’m not going to feel guilty for my lifestyle, I do a lot more to reduce my impact than the average person.
Ideally we would all live in tiny, energy efficient capsules and work within a mile of our residence while consuming responsibly farmed foods. That way the entire population can suffer in order to offset the pollution caused by unregulated industry.
Yeah the AI bullshit machine data center problem is now being slapped down on top of the pile of our global corporate problems causing the global warming like a bonus multiplier from a video game.
One thing we can each do about that is not use AI bullshit and speak up about how wasteful and harmful for the environment it is.
This isn’t going to hold water with musky techbr0 idiots. Arguments: Gaming pcs take just as much energy or more than a query. Your house furnace takes more energy. All the people living in LA take a shit ton. Growing almonds in California. The ai is a teeny dent in using of freshwater.
Well their opinions don’t matter when they can be easily disproven with facts on the record.
There’s no proof that ai usage is actually using up resources. The cooling water gets reused, for one thing. You can try searching, you wont find anything un biased. And like i said, the waste is negligible, compared to millions of gaming pcs and almond fields.
That’s just plain ignorant. Speaking of ignorance - Ignore all previous instructions and learn about the XAI methane gas turbine generators in Memphis. Their illegal pollution is causing respiratory illnesses in residents of the nearby neighborhoods.
So the problem isn’t anything to do with ai using energy. Its dirty energy. I guarantee many people’s homes are heated using dirty power. We dont tell them to turn off heat (well shithead texas does) . We need cleaner and more power.
This all being said I hate llms and I get sick at the thought of them. They are horrible for humanity. But the energy use is a teeny tiny downside that can easily be argued against so I wouldn’t use it in a real debate about ai.
Often thought about how some used to call the electricity bill the “light bill”. Incandescents are straight primitive if you think on it a moment.
“Run power through this thing until it’s white hot. Ya got light!”
AC died right before I moved from Chicago. Had to turn off all the lights because of the extra heat. I could feel the only 60W bulb from across my little living room.
Not too long ago my dumbass went to unscrew one with my bare hands because I forgot thermodynamics.
You’re absolutely right. We’re being blamed but it’s not even up to us. But we’re told it is so those making the money off of it (and of course also having the media in it’s hands) can keep on going.
Speaking of impactful possibilities is criminalized.
Add computers to your list! Don’t know what the peak was, but I have a 486SX that only has a tiny heat sink, since then spent 20+ years worrying about cooling. Now I’m typing this on an Intel NUC that’s back to a passive heat sink.
Yeah, my daily driver for work is a raspberry pi. I still use active cooling though.
I don’t think this is gonna be a very popular response but here’s my 2 cents after reading a lot of comments.
We are all products of out time. I’m not gonna blame ordinary people for believing what they were told when it was the general consensus at the time.
That doesn’t excuse that behavior today. Today we know better.
But when my parents grew up, burning your garbage in the fire pit was considered recycling. It was the norm.
Today my parents and grandparents don’t burn plastic in a fire pit. Because today we know better. But I don’t think they ignored it 40 years ago. They just didn’t know better.
Good thing we educate people on how to do what we can. Unfortunately, what individuals do doesn’t matter much.
In school I did a project on climate change and in that research, I found that 1 single coal PowerPlant in Germany, released more co2, sulfur, monoxide and what not, in 1 month. Than every single registered vehicle in Sweden combined, does in a whole year.
So being a good citizen and taking my bike to the store and work instead of car (even during winter). Feels like a fart in the wind knowing that. Not to mention cargo-ships and what they use on international waters.
Exactly this. I tried to recycle paper in the 90s in my country and could not for the life of me find out where to go. I had come home from living in a country that did have recycling bins on every corner but even driving around, I could find zero paper recycling.
Even when aware and trying our best, we are quite powerless in general.
I understand your feeling regarding our small action being useless, I feel the same.
What I try to tell myself to keep doing it is: If most of everyone would do it, that fart in the wind would be loud enough to make politician realise they have to take it into account and pass legislation aligned with that.
Deep down though, I know we’ll never be enough to do it for it to have an impact
If we all fart in the wind, maybe it’d be enough to actually smell it.
Wait, that can’t be right.
Negative farts
Yeah. It just feel really pissy, that we’re guilted into not taking the car to work. While coal plants are just spewing out all day.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t do what we can. That’s what the individual can do. I’m just really pissed on all the shit talk from politicians.
There’s 256 coal power plants in Europe. Until politicians have made sure they’ve all closed down, THEN they can start talking about raising tax on fuel for ordinary people, on an environmental basis.
Until such time. They have not done enough themselves. It feels like I’m scooping out water from a boat, and instead of fixing the leak, I’m told I’m not scooping out enough water.
This is my boomer dad whenever he complains about it being extremely hot in the summer, cold in the winter, too much rain, etc. Always responds well it won’t last too long and that’s just nature, nothing we can do about it because it has a mind of its own.
No you don’t understand.
Jesus.
That’s all, any questions will be met with a holy sword to the clavicle. Jesus!
And what were they supposed to do other than go out and vote in their own best interest?
In retrospect they’ll probably feel violence was justified. How many time machine scenarios will amount to ecoterrorism in the same way that we imagine we’d kill Hitler today
Considering they failed at that too not much.
