How much should we scare people when it comes to climate change?
24 replies, posted
Just came across this very disturbing FB post on the matter. Is potentially inspiring defeatism and issue at all or should we just not give a fuck?
https://www.facebook.com/SoilLifeQuadra/posts/10156656875720199
If things are truly doomed, I just want to see all the rich people who murdered the planet punished (I keep thinking of something involving molten gold) and then I will commit suicide as I refuse to live in that world.
Discordant, stagnant ideologies with broad influences nationally and internationally supported by societies deeply rooted flaws in this age of information is causing the continuation of climate change. I fear the only way to disrupt those ideologies, objectively, is catastrophic riots and civil wars, if you want entire nations' life styles to change.
I have no idea how to wrangle hundreds of millions of dumbasses to stop consuming the planet
Like some user may have once said, only a 100% green totalitarian world government emerging, or aliens invading, could possibly save us and our planet.
Fuck it, though. Even in the face of certain doom we must still act, and only the weak would lose hope and start panicking.
I'm concerned about the impact of our polluting of the planet and global warming.
But I see so many defeatist posts and people saying "we're doomed" all the time and it makes me sick. Things aren't gonna get better if you put your head in the sand and ignore it.
Eat the rich, but also you're right. It is so simple to find a single point of blame, but the reality is depressingly more complex and we are all responsible for it in many ways.
Doesn't matter how scared people get if it's true. You shouldn't blame people like this for 'inspiring defeatism', blame the defeatists.
I've already accepted that I shouldn't worry about things I have no control over. Doesn't matter how bleak and horrible it is, I can't decide the outcome as an individual so I'm not going to ruin what's left of my life thinking about it up to that point. I don't think about every single car that could swerve and kill me instantly, or Cancer that can appear out of nowhere. You should all do the same. Don't let posts like these ruin your life if you can't do anything about it. Support the people who can, that's all you can do.
Sadly posts like in the OP makes people just say Fuck it. Doesnt help.
Personal change doesn't make much of an impact when the majority of emissions are caused by a few companies, when a few countries dump more plastic waste than everyone else combined, when authoritarian leaders can destroy critical segments of the environment at a whim and the ruling party of the world's foremost superpower denies that climate change even exists. Simply living greener as an individual is not the solution, this is a collective problem that requires collective, wide-ranging solutions.
Don't (just) stop eating meat, demand change to the meat industry. Don't (just) buy an electric car, vote for carbon taxes and emissions restrictions. Don't (just) install solar panels, support action against the energy companies that covered up the known impacts of climate change since the 60s. Don't (just) reduce your own impact, fight against the corrupt systems that have gotten us here, and against those who are selling your future for their own profit.
One thing I think will happen once the effects of climate changes hits us hard is that "terrorist" groups will form, exacting violent revenge upon people they believe were the main perpetrators of climate change. Or upon politicians they believe were too passive. I think it would be fairly easy to motivate joining a group like this, considering everyone would be dying anyway.
Which was why I took the step to write to my MP to ask him to speak up about it in Parliament.
They are the people that the people elected, and they represent the people.
Write to your government officials, and ask them to speak up. This is the first step to having policies affect both countries and the world.
Or, run for politics.
I shared this on my Discord group and I put half the regulars into depressed moods, and at least one guy is mad at me for ruining their night.
Good times...
Do what you can and hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Or just improvise
Things are probably gonna get bad and lots of people are probably gonna die. But it'd be better to focus on how we can avoid that, or at least how we can survive through it
Literally same thing I did....one guy even left oof
At this point the question shouldn't be about preservation, it should be about survival and regeneration.
Our biggest problem is still that people are uninformed.
Genuine education works far better than scare tactics.
Do you know what the sad thing is? Right here, in my country, the Czech Republic, a sizeable portion of the population will call you an "eco terrorist" if you ever dare speak about such topics as the need to reduce our carbon footprint, to put carbon tax in effect, to protect the environment, to put more money in renewable resources or even when you mention ditching ICE vehicles because you want to buy an electric car.
Seriously, fuck those people. They don't think it's even slightly weird that ever single year, we're breaking new temperature records in every goddamned season. It's not just summer. It's every fucking season.
When it's over 35°C or close to 40°C in summer, they say "What are you whining about? It's summer, you should be happy the sun is out! In winter you'll be crying about the temperatures being too low! Enjoy it while you can!"
When the winter is super mild, they say "Be happy that the roads aren't icy and we don't have to salt them! Geez, you people complain about everything!"
When confronted about climate change, they say "We don't know enough about what the climate is meant to be like! For all we know, these are nothing but natural cycles are there is absolutely nothing we can do about them! Don't listen to those eco terrorists saying that it's our fault for burning coal, wood and petrol!"
Seriously, in the past several years, each summer has had temperatures soaring up to 40°C, which is very unusual for this part of the world (I was born in '97, and the hottest temperatures til 2012 were 33°C tops.), we've had very little precipitation with rivers and lake rapidly drying up. Yet there were no discussions about this being caused by climate change. Oh no, good sir! They always attributed our loss of water to our government exporting it to other countries!
Fish started dying en masse because the water temperature got too high for them to survive. Do you think the images of all those dead fish made people concerned? Well... yes, for about 3 minutes, before they decided to move the goal post to "Wait a minute, how come there were so many fish in one place? See, that's the reason why they all died - there were too many of them in a single place and they ran out of oxygen! Not because the water got too warm! The climate change is not to blame here, folks!"
Is there realistically anything to be afraid of?
Fucking yes.
How much should we scare people?
A lot.
Should we really scare them?
As long as it'll make people change their ways, yes. However, if it ultimately makes people less likely to change then no.
Can we really scare them?
Yes and no. If they don't believe in climate change (meaning quite a lot of people) then they won't believe you or even the effects of climate change. Even if a forest fire engulfs their home during a record-breaking summer, they'll still look for different explanations.
To talk about America specifically, the right wing is extremely insulated, and completely polarized. I cannot stress this enough. One word from Fox news, or a conservative politician is worth more than hundreds from anywhere else. The republican party denies climate change, and everyone believes it on good faith. If someone who isn't in line with the republican viewpoint tires to offer a counter-point, there is an extreme uphill battle to get them to listen at all, because they will automatically assume that it's politically motivated, and always look for any possible minor flaws that can throw the entire thing out.
"How does this affect me?" "Why does a few degrees warmer matter?" "I'm sure it's not that bad" and so on. To a climate change denier, the burden of proof is on the other side. They're not going to look for, and watch, a 30 minute video, they're not going to read a scientific article, and they're certainly not finding anything about it without looking for it on their own. They need a hook that catches their interest and gives them something new to think about in the attention span of a toddler, and it needs to be where they can see it. Fox news isn't going to do it, and apparently neither is the U.S. government. So far I have yet to see anything arguing a good case for the existence of climate change, that starts by assuming nothing. Everything I see relating to it starts with the assumption that climate change is real, then explains what will happen, or they explain why climate change is real without also explaining the causes in depth, or they explain the causes without explaining the effects. Climate change for dummies is something that I'd expect to find in the dusty backroom of an unpopular bookstore.
In the age of information, we have fucked up the spread of that information, and have especially fucked up education.
No wait, that's wrong.
We don't have education; Nobody is learning anything. Knowledge is only spreading as far as people are seeking it out, and most people aren't. They're still waiting for a reason to. I hope that that reason will be someone instead of something.
Totally this and visualizing changes being made over decades of time helps a lot.
This is the great filter, isn't it? We trash the planet before we have a chance to leave it.
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