Climate Change? Nahhh ...

I’m here for Samuel L.’s occasional lisp.

 

Yeah, I see a concerted effort to express concern, give lip service, and do very little. Planet wide jawboning mostly.

Doing enough to push back on climate will take sacrifice. It will take effort. Most of all it will require charismatic and intelligent leadership.

This country can accomplish amazing things when acting in concert. Look at manufacturing during WWII or the Space Race. We need people to step up, lead, invent and push and make things happen. And when they step up and try to make a difference, we need to not shit on them.

 

The difference here is that wind and solar energy, and battery-powered cars, are not really progressive tech atm for mass scale. It's a step back in hopes of finding some breakthrough we haven't found yet.

We could get rid of crypto, given all the energy it takes up.

 

I have zero issues with killing crypto. Other than that, it's early days yet. Baby steps but we gotta start somewhere.

 

Thanos leads the modern environmentalist movement.

 

I keep seeing comparisons to WWII and a "we sacrificed back then, we can and should do it now" mentality.
I think a big difference between that and climate change is that the sacrifice in WWII was for a few years. Even at the outset, I don't think anyone expected it to last more than a few years. The goal and the reason for the sacrifice were also very clear, as were what would happen if we didn't.

Now take a look at climate change. You're talking about major sacrifices for the rest of most people's lives, and possibly their children's lives. And what's the goal? To keep the average temperature from rising a half a degree over the next 50 years? To keep sea levels from rising two inches by 2100? You're telling people that they need to make their lives suck, and that they need to spend tons of money they probably don't have, to prevent an alleged doomsday scenario that seems within the margin of error and will occur long after they're dead.
And then they wonder why nobody wants to get on board with it.
It's great to want to preserve the world for future generations. But there are ways to do it without destroying everything that makes living in this generation tolerable and possible.

 

Don't remember where I saw it, or exactly when, but I read that something that said around 5 percent of homes in Florida have solar. Think of all the coal and oil and natural gas we wouldn't have to burn if that number was 50 percent. Of course, the Florida Legislature is more concerned about taking care of the utilities and their bottom lines. My solar paid for itself in about six years; best decision ever.

Unfortunately, I agree with the sentiment that we're not proactive enough. We'll worry about the rise in sea level when Key West goes under.

 

Which people?

What are they being told?

Based on what evidence will their "lives suck"?

 

Adapting new technologies (or in the case of mass transit) old ones need not involve sacrifice, but it does involve change, and by and large people regard change in their daily lives as a massive inconvenience at best, so there's resistance. As far as technologies to mitigate climate change go, we are about at the stage where the popular term for cars was "the horseless carriage." But the history of technological adoption suggests that changes build momentum, and eventually become commonplace parts of the status quo. They also usually run in a top down direction, that is, they usually begin by costing a lot so the well-to-do are the first adapters. Tesla's a good example of this. And given the events of the past few years, I can't see how any Texan of means isn't at least exploring the possibilities of alternative sources of electric power.

 

We don’t have to go back to WWII. The pandemic is a prime example of just how little Americans care about the collective good and what little appetite there is for collective action.

 

People, rightly or wrongly, believe buying an electric vehicle males their lives better by mitigating the effects of climate change that make their lives worse. The entire automobile industry around the world is investing in the premise that will become a majority sentiment. People adapt solar power for their homes not just out of that belief, but because they believe it'll save them money.