How to talk to a climate doomer (even if that doomer is you) | It’s not too late to tackle climate change, but sometimes it sure feels that way.
How to talk to a climate doomer (even if that doomer is you) » Yale Climate Connections
especially if we all do our small part...
Yeah, I'm done with this article. If you want to make me feel less doomed, start blaming the corporations responsible and demanding actual action from the top down.
If you're opening with some "individual responsibility" bullshit, you're contributing to the apathy problem, because fuck you I can't fix this.
Your part is not thinking how to reduce your carbon footprint but organizing with other people and partecipating in collective actions or movements or whatever.
Your small part may be even just donating 10€ to the people needing legal help cause protesting. Or just showing up to a rally. Joining a union…
I think that just liberals think we should all try to reduce our carbon footprint so there is really no need to feel guilty about that on this server ;)
Can you explain to me why folks shouldn't bother trying to emit less carbon? I don't understand why they should feel good about donating 10€ but not do other things within their control. Like sure if you exist in a city and rent somewhere you have no control over, and already train/bike/walk and aren't wasteful and don't eat much meat, there's not much else you can reasonably do on a personal level, but many don't bother to do most of that. I'm in the US, maybe this is my bubble, but the waste is obscene - so many folks should also do better on a personal level assuming they care enough to do anything else.
Have people been doing hard things for millennia, or
A) people overstate how difficult a task was and through the lens of history we think it was actually difficult, or
B) they literally enslaved or conscripted people into doing the hard work , or
C) each individual contributor actually felt like they had a stake in tackling the difficult problem, instead of our current tragedy of the commons where it’s far easier and cheaper for individuals to act as though there’s no issue
B, is it B? I'm pretty sure it's B.
Yeah I was pretty upset by this like it seems the other commenters. The issue is that climate change isn't "solved" or "not solved". We are, day by day, locking in deaths, locking in ecological damage. The longer we take, the worse it gets. That's not doomerism that's just reality.
As for doing something, well yeah we have to do something because the longer we take the worse it gets.
The real problem here is that most mainstream politicians are trying to "balance" issues like "the economy" (AKA stuff humans made up) and "Capitalism" (more made up stuff) and "climate" (a real thing). Literally the easiest thing to change here (collectively) is our minds, but it's the one thing the politicians won't do.
*This message brought to you by Exxon Mobil
(probably)
Given the publisher, no. The doomerism is however being promoted by Exxon's CEO.:
Most objective analyses would suggest that “we’ve waited too long to open the aperture on the solution sets in terms of what we need, as a society, to start reducing emissions,” Woods told Fortune CEO Alan Murray and editor-at-large Michal Lev-Ram on a recent episode of the Leadership Next podcast.
This reads like a plea for the general public to keep slaving away because "we can get this done."
How about instead of articles targeting individuals they try writing articles targeting the biggest climate offenders: corporations.
Because corporations aren't going to change because of an internet opinion piece. They'll only change if they're forced.
The problem is the only ones with the power to force them are the government... and the only one who can force the government is the people.
The problem isn't that we're telling individuals to do their part instead of corporations... the problem is that we're telling individuals to attack the problem as individuals instead of working together. The problem is that we're telling people to aim in the wrong direction.
And worst of all, we're telling people "It's someone else's fault, they should be the one's dealing with it" and then sitting on our hands.
And the best thing to push the government to do is pass a Carbon Tax -- tax polluters and give that back to the people.