nah it's natural
nah it's natural
160 comments
-
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
-
Share a link here
-
-
Finally, this is the first time I saw this graph that DIDN'T use logarithmic scale for time - which makes this sharp spike look "natural".
-
You dont understand. The poor billionairs need their money nowwww!
-
Sam Altman (OpenAI) is a Millennial. So is Zuckerberg. LLMs are one of the big energy sinks right now, reaching 1,000 terawatt-hours by 2026 and the current rate of use is doubling every year. For comparison, total global commercial (excluding industrial and transportation, so, office buildings - lights, AC, computers) energy use is 50,000 TWh.
It's still being ignored. Boomers are out of the work force (if not politics), and Gen X is just starting to retire. Between Millenials and Gen Z, they hold 32% of the voting power in the US, the same as Boomers. And Gen Z is only just entering voting age, at 8%.
Half the voting population is under 50 and global temperatures keep increasing. There's every indication sticking your head in the sand is a cross-generational behavior.
-
Altman isn't sticking his head in the sand, he's delusional and selfish. He doesn't care what happens to the rest of the world after AGI.
-
Gen Z is 1997-2010
How are they just entering voting age?
-
well, those who are born in 2010 can't vote, and those born in 1997 can vote. Some of them are too young to vote and some are not. So they're entering voting age.
-
Well the last couple of years still can't vote, so I imagine that's what they meant
-
Perhaps "just entering" was an overstatement.
Wikipedia has the Gen-Z range from 1997-2012, so they're 13-28. This year, about 68% are eligible to vote; something over 50% were eligible to vote in the last presidential election, and one statistic I saw claimed they made up only about 8% of the total vote. They are, however, the biggest generation in history, ever. Given that the birth rates in the US stopped climbing and started falling in 2007, it's conceivable that they may be the biggest generation ever, forever.
In any case, statistically, young people vote at far lower rates than older; 18-29 (GenZ, at the moment) vote around 50%. At around 30 it's 60%, and by 65 it's over 70%.
So, given that some 65% of Gen Z are eligible to vote, and statistically about half of them will at this age bracket, that's only about 35% of Gen Z voting. That number will grow over three next decade and become the dominant number, but right now it's fairly small... hence "just entering voting age."
You're right, my wording wasn't accurate; the meaning was.
Ancillarily, births in the US peaked at 4.3M births in 2007 and have been declining since; they haven't hit 4M again since, and are down to 3.6M in 2025, below 1994 (3.9M) levels.
-
-
Who do you suggest we vote for in order to adequately address this problem? Like fascism, I don’t see a way to vote ourselves out of this predicament.
We’ll have to remove power from capital owners (like Zuck and Altman) directly, in order to save ourselves.
-
I agree! I don't think we can vote out way out, not in one fell swoop.
We need to vote locally, and support voting reform efforts. If we can normalize IRV at the local level, so that people lose their fear of the unknown, we have a chance to get it into congressional elections, and that's where real change will happen. Eventually, ideally, we get rid of the electoral college and use IRV in presidential elections, and then we might see a surprise third party win. We can do most of this without constitutional changes.
But, can we survive as a country long enough to get there? It's a long road, and I don't know.
-
-
Edit: see reply. With correct numbers now I'm mad too.
By your own numbers that’s a tiny fraction of the world’s energy use. It seems strange to put such a disproportionate focus on such a small fraction. Where is this rage for the transportation sector?-
Shh, we don't want to talk about that, car is comfy
On a more serious level, the type of AI that all the energy is being used for, generative AI, is not particularly necessary. Transportation often is. There are types of AI that are ridiculously useful, like the one that does protein folding, or a lot of machine learning algos that classify things for X or Y business reason... But LLMs and image generation are a fucking novelty.
-
My numbers were mixed in the previous post; I was mixing total global and total annual use. I'm sorry about that; the numbers looked off but I didn't catch the time scale difference.
AI companies are projected to use 1kTWh in 2025. Transportation is projected to use 1.2TWh, industry, 1.1TWh. Bitcoin, everyone's favorite whipping-boy, is estimated to use only 173TWh globally, a mere 17% of AI. Residential is only 800TWh, 4.5x Bitcoin, but 80% of AI. Commercial is less, at 600TWh.
These all come from different sources: homeinst.org and Deloitte are the main ones, but the Bitcoin stat comes from Cambridge and the EIA (eia.gov), and the AI industry number comes from an MIT and backed by a different Deloitte report.
The industrial sector is the largest energy user, but AI is a close third just below transportation.
I was surprised that cryptocurrency energy use was so relatively small, given the hysteria. Bitcoin alone is 173TWh, far smaller than all of the sectors, and a fraction of AI; but even adding all of the other cryptocurrencies, the estimated consumption rises only to 215TWh. That pushes it past the smallest user, the agriculture sector sitting at 200TWh, but still well below everything else.
AI is the third largest energy consumer, annually, globally.
-
Transportation is moving in the right direction atm, even if it is slow. AI is going the wrong direction.
-
I think they're intent wasn't to take away from any other issues we have but to say that we have another burgeoning issue which if it continued to grow at scale could be as damaging as our other major contributors.
Now we have the the education and first-hand experience to understand the impact and scope of the issue and despite this have still showed no reluctance.
-
-
-
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?
-
-
-
Did they ignore it? Yes but the only reason they ignored it was because...
- The oil industry (and other adjacent industries) did their best to make sure everybody doubted the science of climate change
- Governments (the U.S gov't in particular) took the oil industry's side and subsidized their ventures
- 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.
-
Our parents didn't ignore it.
Our Governments, and the corporations who bribed those governments, just didn't give a shit enough to listen.
-
Stop it, my parents ignored climinate change, my dad still doesn't believe it.
-
The corporations alone don't elect climate deniers.
-
Nah it's time to hold Boomers accountable. They were too busy focusing on hedonism, selling out future generations for a tax cut and buying pickup trucks they didn't need, to care about big picture concepts like climate change.
-
...my parents beat me for trying to do something about it: fuck them, they're complicit to this day...
-
My parents, to their extremely rare credit, complained about it and separated their trash.
Edit: paper, plastic, metal, and now that i think about it; offspring. They really were thorough!
-
-
AI is going to fix this by increasing the scale of the Y axis.
-
Just hallucinate better data
-
-
-
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.
-
-
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.
-
Hopefully cars are illegal by 2030, indoor climate control is needed to keep pipes running but it doesn’t need to be used as extremely as present, yes we should have a food stamp system to lessen the consumption of meat. If we get rid of hot water then people will just boil it. More worried about the plastic that goes into electronics than the electronics themselves. If you ban plastics outside of medical use then the cheap garbage electronics will disappear
-
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
We did manage to change some things for the better - acid rain, ozone depletion, lead in everything. However with conflicting information and some corporations doing everything they can to muddy the consensus, it is hard to do the right thing. It is especially difficult if for years you think you've been doing the right thing and find out it was all fake - recycling.
-
And yet, I still recycle because what the hell else can I do? Just give up and send to landfill? Or hope in the dark that it's going to recycling.
We already reuse and reduce, I have some clothing from over 20 years ago.
-
-
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.
-
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.
-
-
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.
-
-
Phew, looks like the industrial revolution just saved us from falling below the safe climate zone! /s
-
Next generation is going to post this map but with higher temps
-
At what point on this graph is ecoterrorism justified?
-
It isn't too late now. Apparently AI is a good target - eating a world's supply of electricity to further enrich the billionaires while continuing to muddy the science of climate change. Wish people were as upset about that as they are about their porn being restricted.
-
You're selling AI short. It also guzzles water at a rate that could make a golf course blush.
-
-
Like 1995
-
Any point other than blue
-
Right now it is
-
Remember the weather underground? About then
-
but but but somebody was late for work!!!!! /s
-
-
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.
-
I was just thinking about the poor air quality today and yesterday here in the Midwest, and then I see this. I want to be hopeful we can change this in my lifetime, but I am also not optimistic.
-
I am optimistic. I will get downvoted to oblivion, but I want to share what I honestly observe:
1. AI demand is driving huge investment in production of carbon-free energy at scale.
Yes, AI is sucking up all the immediate term cheap fossil-fuel energy while it can. But it needs more, so it's driving carbon-free investment.
Immediate term with Small Modular fission Reactors (SMRs)
... and immediate term, multiple commercial fusion energy plants are being built.
2. Commercially viable carbon-free energy at scale is coming online in < 10 years
SMR is real, exists today, and just needs economies of scale ... and stable regulation. AI datacenters are driving the orders now and even if MAGA cultists keep USA out a few more years, science-accepting countries will be investing in clusters of those, rather than coal plants, when they see working examples and so less risk.
The Fusion plants this decade will not be just prototypes, but plants that produce more energy as a whole than they take in, multiple times over, and ofc don't produce nuclear waste. This is largely made possible by high temperature superconductors (which didn't exist commercially when ITER was built) and a demo plant fully online in 2027
EDIT: ofc we should reduce excess CO2 emissions immediate term, don't misconstrue long term optimism for polyannish denial of imemdiate term emergency
-
Yes, AI is sucking up all the immediate term cheap fossil-fuel energy while it can. But it needs more, so it’s driving carbon-free investment.
Nah, this is the same nonsense lie cryptobros tried to peddle. Any energy used by AI is energy which could have been used for something more worthwhile, carbon-free or not. And most of it is far from carbon-free.
-
AI as it now stands gives me quite the opposite of hope. It's only intended to enslave the working class and further transfer wealth to the top 0.01%, as is fusion.
Solarpunk gives me hope.
-
AI demand is driving huge investment in production of carbon-free energy at scale
I feel like AI companies are creating a large demand for energy no matter where it comes from, and feel like having some minor investments in potential carbon free energy is mainly a marketing ploy or something to point at if they ever get sued.
Immediate term with Small Modular fission Reactors (SMRs)
Tbh, the big problem with nuclear in america is that we don't really have the federal power needed to actually coordinate and mandate the needed infrastructure for it. The US is so obsessed with state rights that we're susceptible to nimby attacks and disputes at the local and State level governments.
To actually cut through the red tape, we'd have to empower federal agencies for a good reason for once, and I'm not very optimistic about our current political climate.
and immediate term, multiple commercial fusion energy plants are being built.
Yeah..... I think it would be more accurate to say that fusion experimental sites are being built. Most nuclear engineers I've heard talk about fusion are still skeptical about fusion being viable in the next 20 years.
-
-
Depends how old you are. I'm 47. It's gonna far worse. The question is will my kids be the ones to say it's bad enough? I don't know. Maybe theirs.
Also it's hilariously optimistic that this chart only thinks a 4 degree rise by 2100. Seems very conservative.
Personally speaking I'm investigating moving my family further north here in Canada to get ahead of the madness to come.
-
-
No you don’t understand.
Jesus.
That’s all, any questions will be met with a holy sword to the clavicle. Jesus!
-
I may be nitpicking here but I think people are misinterpreting the caption.
They aren't directly saying, "your parents ignored this and now we're fucked"
It's saying, "IF your parents ignored this and you found out, you'd be mad"
Implying that, "YOU should not ignore this, because what will YOUR children think of YOU?"
A lot of people are focusing on saying "uh well my parents aren't to blame" or "they wouldn't understand" but that's not the point of the message.
-
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.
-
-
And we're just meme posting ab it xD
At least our parents weren't pretending -
The shopping realization for me is that I can't find this kind of graphs online with my average ass searching skills.
I can find linear graphs from the last 200 years or log graphs from the last 2000, but not what is show in this picture. No ship average joes think it looks natural, I'm convinced no one sees this graph, they see the shitty confusing ones. I bet many people don't have any idea what a log graph even is.
-
Hell yeah, bring back pangea. I want dragonflies the size of baseball bats.
-
Not sure, but I think that wasn't because of higher temperatures but higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere.
-
Correct! Insects have spiracles that basically passively exchange air. Max size is basically determined by this.
IIRC, some caterpillars only stop growing and pupate when they run out of a growth hormone.
I always wondered what would happen if you grew them in a high oxygen tank and supplemented their diet with the hormone.
Maybe get a Mothman that way.
-
-
-
Wow, so nature was getting colder to give us a bit more room to make some extra heat and we beat that to death.
-
The Earth is always trying to become a snowball. It has a pattern that has been consistent for millions of millions of years. Homo Sapiens were basically survivalists that won the lottery because it was a warm side of the last cold period.
Make no mistake, the heat we feel now is nothing compared to the heat the planet has endured in the past. Dinosaurs had a much hotter world, with the poles being tropical forests. But the problem is we broke the normal hot and cold time cycle. And the next cold cycle is going to be a massive freeze and its going to happen in a flash (thousands of years) but when it does its going to mean that if we survive the heat, will we survive the next cold that could bring mile thick glaciers at the equator.
-
-
Economists are orgasming so fucking hard at this you wouldn't beliee
-
Some economist did his calculations and came to the conclusion that climate change up to 4°C would only cost 0.1% GDP (or something else ridiculously small). Somebody else remarked that his calculations showed the same 0.1% at -4°C. There was a a kilometer of ice on the spot he was now sitting when it was last -4°C, and you'd think the influence on the economy of that would be a bit more than 0.1%.
-
That line is going UP, boooiiii!!!
-
-
@notIO@lemmy.blahaj.zone When I saw the "Industrial Revolution" label next to the vertical increase in global temperatures, I couldn't help but recall of some text written in 1995 by a certain former math teacher, and how right he was about the Industrial Revolution's consequences...
-
-
Ah yes, Teddy Roosevelt, the Trump of the 1800s.
-
-
I am out of the loop, what are you referring to?
-
-
What’s this bullshit putting blame on parents? Go blame CEO’s & members of the board. You do know they actively hid this info to the general public for decades?!
-
I think you've misunderstood - the angle is "imagine your kids find out that you did nothing about it".
It's not about blame, it's about action. Protest, boycott, recycle, petition - do everything you can to make positive change happen.
-
-
The rich made the poor ignore it.
-
"The line must go up" or something like that
-
That 'line goes up' graph shape has been termed a 'hockey stick' as it's become so prevalent in recent years.
-
Fortunately for them, I flushed my kids.
-
I look at this graf, and I really feel like, it's so sudden that you can't really stop this at a human level. Human are curious adventurous and like confort and enjoy surviving. As soon as we started using coal and gaz,it was too late. We would probsbly need to renounce everything to have a slightly better outcome. So clearly, people don't give a shit anyway.
-
When covid stopped everything the noise in the oceans and cities decreased so much the animals started singing again. Dolphins returned to Venice, whales to New England harbors, the environmental impact of those years was significant. We are capable of adapting quickly and making huge impact, covid showed us that's it's just an unwillingness on the part of the ruling class. It can be done, we're just told "small, incremental change is best" (neo-lib bs enshrining short-term profits). Kill the industries, pay the people via social safety nets, federal jobs program to build better stuff, public projects, public ownership. Public money made most things but the people in power transferred all that tech and IP into private hands.
-
We can stop at a human level if we decapitate the rich and powerful.
-
-
Americans in a few years: "Best I can do is ecofascism."
-
Typical copes:
"It's ONLY 4 degrees... that's not very hot! Liberals are blowing this out of proportion."
"Since 100% of climate change can't be attributed to human activity, what's the point in trying to change our behavior?"
"The spring was unusually cool... so much for global warming!"
"I'll be dead by the time this matters, so who cares?"
"I don't live by the ocean, so a rise in sea levels is nothing to worry about."
"The ice caps are actually getting LARGER! Liberals are just making all this up."
"Do you REALLY think they kept weather data back 150 years ago? Certainly that's propaganda."
I don't know why people are so against trying to do something. I'd like to think if it was scientifically proven that people had 0% to do with changing climate that we STILL should try to do something. It always made no sense to me as just to dismiss it as some kind of "natural change" in the Earth that we shouldn't oppose.
-
increase in global temperature drastically increase the intensity of hurricanes, theres a theoretical type called a hypercane.
-
Which could destroy the ozone layer by pumping water into it, which would be very bad.
-
-
Is this what they meant with "the like must go up at any cost"? Because it doesn't feel right.
-
Imagine there was no industrial revolution or fossil fuel bonanza.
World population, please?
Standard of living, please?
Typing on the internet? -
Covid was sent by time travelers as a last ditch effort to stop climate change.
-
Right, if your parents are billionaires or corrupt heads of state.
-
So the industrial revolution safed us from temperature going below the level for agriculture?
-
No, there was just some weather around then that was cold. See the little ice age, by that point we'd already cut down most of the megaforests and the co2 levels were rising so the temperature was going to slowly increase over time
-
-
Get fucked. My Mom walked to work for 27 years.
Side point: we're gonna be in the red much faster than 75 years.
-
Maybe if education and news media continue to degenerate they'll become too stupid to know any better.
-
Need graph source. Who had the thermometer in 12000 BC
-
-
Thanks! Going down the rabbit hole now
-
-
-
Have you considered that humanity does not actually have enough data to know what is and is not a "safe climate zone"?
How long, in years, did the climate take to "recover" from siberian traps eruptions? How about the dinosaur killing asteroid/deccan traps episode? What was more damaging to the environment, particulate in the air or the release of volcanic gasses?
The planet has been through multiple unimaginable apocalypses. It will survive humanity just fine. And if it doesn't? Im sure something will evolve to take our place. Terraforming is well beyond our means as a species, intentional or not.
-
The problem is not the planet surviving, we know it'll most likely be fine eventually. The problem is that we're causing wide-spread death and destruction, including our own.
-
We evolved to be smart enough to be able to create and use tools, but not the wherewithal to prepare for compounding trends. Maybe this is the great extinction barrier that explains the Fermi paradox
-
-
You're right, all those studies and scientists are actually pulling that stuff out of their asses, just to be contrarians.
-
Idk man remember when that ozone hole was supposed to kill us all but we started fixing it in like 10 years? How about when we decided plastic would choke the oceans to death only to find that microbes are busily learning how to break down all those man made forever polymers? Member those? Meeeember?
-
-
-
Not quite right on the start of human agriculture.
-
10,000 BC is the number I’ve heard most often. What do you mean?
-
Yes, let's focus on minutiae instead of the point being made!
-
106 comments on this thread. Good to know mine is so consequential that it overwhelms all of those and drives the entire discussion. Thank you.
-
-
-
But if we had done something about this, gas would have gone up!
-
We are outside the safe climate zone? Damn. Nature just forgot to die I guess.
-
Except for like all the nature that is being destroyed but yeah nvm smfh
-
160 comments
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.
Fossil fuel lobbyists coordinated with lawmakers behind the scenes and across state lines to push and shape laws that are escalating a crackdown on peaceful protests against oil and gas expansion, a new Guardian investigation reveals.
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!
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 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.
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.
You're committing a worse sin. You're fighting the culture war for the powers that be.
Well pick up your gun and go do something I guess