This is precisely why climate change policy is so difficult to enact. Folks don’t understand the urgency until they experience it themselves, and by that point it’s gotten really bad.
There’s an analogy with tech debt or old software here somewhere.
I don't see the climate analogy. People live their plight. On a day to day basic they know where they stand. They have been watching costs rise and incomes not keeping pace. This is situation decades old but only breaking the narrative surface lately.
They're reminded of the power of The Fed. True, they might get the exact details wrong, but they have a solid enough grip on who. They also see others (i.e., 1%) doing better and better.
"I'm struggling to pay my bills" is all they need to understand. Because the people don't understand the nitty gritty doesn't make The Fed any less accountable.
It's not a new idea, right? People are bad at valuing far-off very-bad risks compared to inconsequential but tangible near-term risks. And bad at valuing broadly distributed hardships versus concentrated individual pain.
It's exactly why we can't solve climate change, right?
The problem with climate change is that the average person can't see the effects until long past the point when the problem can be easily solved. It's not at all comparable to social media.
I never understand people who write stuff like this. Its climate change; we know what is happening and we know how to fix it. We don‘t need AI for it, next thing they‘re gonna say is let‘s use blockchain to fight climate change
Interesting analogy but I don't think it holds up. Both of these are stereotypical examples of failure of willpower. Climate change does not require personal willpower when we have laws available to create carrots and sticks.
The article provides an example of what you're asking for:
> "To be perfectly honest, and this is awful, but to the young, watching as the elderly over and over and over choose their own interests ahead of Climate policy kind of feels like they’re wishing us to a death they won’t have to experience. It’s a sad bit of fair play."
I find the whole generational conflict bewildering. To me, blaming "the elderly" for "the climate crisis" and "saddling us with debt" seems stupid beyond words.
The morality-based "don't create technology to fight climate change since it would allow us to continue current behaviors" position is definitely one of the more infuriating ones.
The damage is the big problem here, not the behavioral causes.
Great example. Reminds me of Milton Friedman's "Nobody knows how to make a pencil" essay.
A lot of human progress is result of human actions but not planning. Centralized planning around "climate change" would 100% be a recipe for disaster and a monumental failure about which future generations will write for 100s of years just the way we talk about slavery today.
Your use of carbon makes my existence on the planet a bit risky and hence you should pay me some compensation. But how much ? That is an impossible task for anyone and not just for the centralized government systems but even for highly efficient private players looking at very small problems. This is something that even outright climate change deniers like me admit.
It's actually a result of the spineless geriatrics in the government not being willing or able to keep up with an evolving world. We see the same with climate change.
There are a lot of factors at work here at the same time.
It's far off (or perceived that way) and people naturally seek relief of immediate pain. It's human nature. You tell somebody that they'll save $X over the next 10 years by spending a fraction of it now, most won't bother. On the other hand, if you're currently spending $X on something and you need to invest in something to get that cost down, they'll do it almost immediately.
Because it's far off, there's not a sense of urgency to it.
Additionally, there are some fairly strong factors that call a lot of climate change activism into question, like wide spread opposition to nuclear power by many of the same activists. Examples like Germany shuttering nuclear facilities only to turn around and turn to coal power certainly doesn't help.
Other factors such as the need for change across the entire world complicate matters when numerous businesses will just send their pollution to countries that don't impose the same requirements.
Separating hyperbole from practical application in pursuit of pre-existing goals is another huge factor. We've heard about methane emissions from cattle ranches for years. It seems like we have a great solution for this by adding an ingredient to the feed:
But rather than pursuing this, activists are more interested in continuing to attack the industry and pushing vegan diets when a potential solution seems readily available.
Factor that in with alarmism over temperature increases as if every potential increase is man made while other factors are ignored by most outlets...
The climate argument is not factually weak... but when it comes to actually persuading lots of people to change their ways... its just so weak. It's just a sad fact about our political reality today.
And even among those who say they are concerned about climate change and the environment - it still can be very difficult to actually inspire some sort of productive urgency in them. Climate change is the most gradual disaster to ever to befall humanity and our psychology isn't built for that at all, en masse.
On the other hand, when you see the air is turning black from the bumper to bumper traffic in your city, and then you notice yourself coughing, and your lungs hurting, at the same time... well that's a different situation.
People to need to understand that human nature and incentives are easy to talk about changing, and nearly impossible to change. It's why we're slow-walking towards catastrophic climate change.
The climate change issue is mostly a political problem, as sustainable ways of modern living have been known for decades, created by society and politicians not caring about the global impacts of local decisions. The almost-dystopian socialmedia/pervasive-ads/misinformation/compromised-democracy internet landscape is mostly a technological problem, an outcome of computer scientists and engineers just building things without thinking of the ethics of their technology. Nobody campaigned to build facebook, like they campaigned to build another coal power plant or another highway. The nerds and politicians alike are on their way to destroy the world - one compromising our minds, the other poisoning our air.
The failure of our times has been just this. Not realizing that when what you are doing has global impact you need to think hard about its effects and be crystal clear on the ethics of it all. Perhaps the original sin was not pushing for more hands-on ethics training for every child and college student.
Climate change is, in a sense, a massive store of value that you can take from without the consent of those who pay. Which makes it very hard for economics-minded thinking to overlook as a lazy way to thrive.
There is so much technology available to combat it, yet those people elected seem hell bent on wrecking it to support a shrinking fossil fuel industry. They’re obviously failing to realise they will be victims too.
How pathetic and what an unusual time to be alive.
Take a look at the Australian PM. What a stick in the mud, the whole state of NSW is practically on fire, and all he can say is that isn’t not really caused by climate change, there are “other factors involved.
What these climate scientists have done to predict this would’ve been witchcraft a hundred years ago, the work they’ve done is amazing. The people who matter still don’t listen.
It's climate change passive aggressiveness. You are provided with a tool which turns useless the moment you start using it. Oh, and nearby there is magazine with ranking of the most expensive yachts in the world, and of airlines by most comfortable first class.
There’s an analogy with tech debt or old software here somewhere.
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