Teenage Climate Change Activist "I want you to panic"

[Admiral X]

https://womenintheworld.com/2019/01/29/ ... d-leaders/

“Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people, to give them hope,” Thunberg said, “But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. I want you to act.

Yes, people are so much easier to manipulate when they panic.

[Yukaphile]

Fox News knows that very well.

[Draco Dracul]

A few rich people are responsible for most of the climate change? How, by making cars the rest of the world drive? By making electricity the rest of the world uses? By suppressing the secret of Tesla's free energy generator, the plans for which I can sell you for only $999.99, but don't let anyone know because the government will stop me? And then there's that "either we stop the emissions or we don’t" stupidity.

Teens can do a lot to help climate change. Refuse to drive, use electricity, buy things made with electricity, etc., and in less than a century we'll have no emissions. And if it's "either we stop the emissions or we don't," well, a teen's gotta do what a teen's gotta do.

Global warming in an important problem, and things like this, IMHO, don't help. What I think Fuzzy sees as inspiring, I see as grandstanding.

Individual action is basically irrelevant to a problem such as this. One million people choosing to live carbon negative lives in mud huts is going to have significantly less impact than banning the sale of incandescent light-bulbs.

[Antiboyscout]

Panic is the reason we arn't getting most of our energy from carbon free nuclear by now.

[clearspira]

Meanwhile, said teenager is probably still using fossil fuels, non-recyclable products, man-made fibres etc. Most of these sorts of people are exactly the same: ''its everyone else's fault.'' I have no time for them.

[Darth Wedgius]

A few rich people are responsible for most of the climate change? How, by making cars the rest of the world drive? By making electricity the rest of the world uses? By suppressing the secret of Tesla's free energy generator, the plans for which I can sell you for only $999.99, but don't let anyone know because the government will stop me? And then there's that "either we stop the emissions or we don’t" stupidity.

Teens can do a lot to help climate change. Refuse to drive, use electricity, buy things made with electricity, etc., and in less than a century we'll have no emissions. And if it's "either we stop the emissions or we don't," well, a teen's gotta do what a teen's gotta do.

Global warming in an important problem, and things like this, IMHO, don't help. What I think Fuzzy sees as inspiring, I see as grandstanding.

Individual action is basically irrelevant to a problem such as this. One million people choosing to live carbon negative lives in mud huts is going to have significantly less impact than banning the sale of incandescent light-bulbs.

Sorry, I was unclear. By "teens" I meant all the teens. Since they'll replace us, they can solve all this by living somewhere pre-Roman Empire. No emissions beyond rotting and breathing, no problem.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

If only problems were solved by everybody doing something together.

[AllanO]

If only problems were solved by everybody doing something together.

Of course that won't work because individual action is irrelevant to these problems even when those actions constitute what everyone will do.

Well actually no what everyone ends up doing is indeed the aggregate of each individual action, so the necessary component of any collective action is some individual actions (what good would it be to ban incandescent light bulbs if everyone just finds way to circumvent it and use them anyway). Now individual actions will not do much to cause collective action in some cases (ie when only fraction of people do them), but it would disprove the claim that the action is impossible (people can't live without incandescent light bulbs), although skeptics can just switch the claim, sure the action is possible for you but not for everyone (sure you can give incandescents up but not every can give up incandescents). Still if you want to advocate for some collective action (a ban on incandescent light bulbs that works) you should probably model as far as possible that action in your own life (ie not use incandescents) in order both to show it is possible and that you would be willing to live in accordance with it and find the restrictions reasonable etc. since this is what you apparently think should happen if the collective action goes through (if the ban goes through you will have to make the sacrifice of giving up incandescents).

Here's a bad argument: no single trip to the gym improves my fitness (remove any one trip and I am equally fit and if I only went once in my life I wold be no more fit), So if I skipped this one today no difference to my fitness would result. So I won't go, but that argument applies to all gym trips therefore I never go to the gym. So even though regularly going to the gym would improve my fitness, I am unable to enact that because each individual trip is basically irrelevant to that outcome. This seems parallel to the argument each individual's actions are irrelevant to the total output of green house gases or other pollutants etc.

I'm 31, bro. I won't be here to see the worst damage unfold regardless of what we did. Like, we're destined for another ice age in 50,000 years anyway. Can't change things. Might as well just live for the moment.

Well if your completely dedicated to après moi le déluge (acting as if, after me the world ends in a flood) then I guess there is no arguing, but that is very different proposition that we can not change things.

Whether I go to the gym or not tomorrow is a destiny I can't change by anything I do now; therefore I can't change going to the gym tomorrow; therefore do nothing and live in the moment. Does not work because the chain of actions that lead me to go to the gym tomorrow probably includes stuff I do today that make latter actions more likely (like deciding today that it would be a good idea to go to the gym tomorrow, wash my gym clothes etc.). So my actions need not fully determine some future event to be of concern to them.

Likewise no action we do now is going to make it for sure lead to or prevent an ice age in 50 000 years, but actually there are human actions that seem possible that would cause it or prevent it one way or the other (launch giant satellites that either block sunlight from falling on the Earth to induce the ice age or reflect more sunlight on to the Earth to turn it into a dessert and probably also less dramatic actions etc.) in the future and what those actions are depend on actions we take now (say you now endow a society to bring about the ice age in 50 000 years now and it lays the ground work to set up sun blocking satellites in 49 900 years thanks to the power of compound interest etc.). So you can probably do something, although you will not be around to worry about it.

Now should you worry about things you won't personally experience. I would say it makes sense to, imagine you build a monument to some worthy person, cause etc. and then at some far future date you are given a few months to live and you find out your monument will be torn down in a year or two, despite the fact that it is in great shape and is really popular etc. It seems reasonable to me to be somewhat disappointed by the fact your monument will be torn down even though you will not be around to care when it is.

In terms of the start of all this:

Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people, to give them hope,” Thunberg said, “But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. I want you to act.

Perhaps this is just a language issue. This just never made sense to me because if someone panics I expect them to me uselessly ineffective or just lock in to doing what they have been doing. If I want people usefully motivated to some goal the last thing I want is for people to panic.

Likewise hope is a necessary component of the useful motivation in any project where success is not guaranteed to sustain effort and avoid fatalism (can't succeed, don't try).

Just a note the 11 year time line if you believe is an estimate of how long there is before the amount of carbon in the atmosphere (at business as usual levels), is such that catastrophic change would be locked in. So it would still be decades before the more catastrophic effects would be known. It is like the cruise ship that has to swerve a long time before reaching the iceberg to avoid hitting it, we have 11 years to swerve much longer before the iceberg.... Also, it is assuming no game changers like really effective carbon capture to just suck green house gases out of the atmosphere and no geo-engineering to change the fundamental dynamics of climate happens (like those satellites I imagined to block the sun) etc.

I have no idea if we will take the collective action necessary to avoid climate change, but it seems likely that we will not, assuming no easy carbon capture, unlimited clean fusion energy etc. and if the climate keeps getting hotter that some geo-engineering will occur form seeding the oceans with iron to create algae blooms to my favourite satellites. The geo-engineering will probably have undesired and possibly unforeseen consequences so that will be fun. So I think we have lots to think about one way or the other and maybe even stuff we can do.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_o ... #Solutions

Governmental solutions
Governmental solutions may be necessary when the above conditions are not met (such as a community being too big or too unstable to provide a thick social network). Examples of government regulation include privatization, regulation, and internalizing the externalities.

Worth noting that, while this proceeds a section of non-governmental procedures to address tragedy of the commons, that section predominantly involves the suppliers forming the collective to limit their own impact on the resource in their own self interest. And either that, or scapegoating a specific grouping of people without empirical founding in order to soften the impact upon the overall collective good.

You will NEVER hear a broad based edition of tragedy of the commons placing burden on individual consumers to collectively curb the problem, ESPECIALLY when you're talking about a broad populace such as millennials across America. Government regulations perhaps; the EU is notorious for having high gas prices. But they are at least not simultaneously bolstering the energy industry to make it a non-issue for major suppliers as a result of either illicit lobbying or some sort of Dutch auction to which point they end up in Africa to get the lowest tax rate for their operation.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

If only problems were solved by everybody doing something together.

Of course that won't work because individual action is irrelevant to these problems even when those actions constitute what everyone will do.

Well actually no what everyone ends up doing is indeed the aggregate of each individual action, so the necessary component of any collective action is some individual actions (what good would it be to ban incandescent light bulbs if everyone just finds way to circumvent it and use them anyway). Now individual actions will not do much to cause collective action in some cases (ie when only fraction of people do them), but it would disprove the claim that the action is impossible (people can't live without incandescent light bulbs), although skeptics can just switch the claim, sure the action is possible for you but not for everyone (sure you can give incandescents up but not every can give up incandescents). Still if you want to advocate for some collective action (a ban on incandescent light bulbs that works) you should probably model as far as possible that action in your own life (ie not use incandescents) in order both to show it is possible and that you would be willing to live in accordance with it and find the restrictions reasonable etc. since this is what you apparently think should happen if the collective action goes through (if the ban goes through you will have to make the sacrifice of giving up incandescents).

Here's a bad argument: no single trip to the gym improves my fitness (remove any one trip and I am equally fit and if I only went once in my life I wold be no more fit), So if I skipped this one today no difference to my fitness would result. So I won't go, but that argument applies to all gym trips therefore I never go to the gym. So even though regularly going to the gym would improve my fitness, I am unable to enact that because each individual trip is basically irrelevant to that outcome. This seems parallel to the argument each individual's actions are irrelevant to the total output of green house gases or other pollutants etc.

The issue is beyond individual speculation. Establishing possibility does nothing to assess the situation well because possibility can apply to the rock bottom of personal conditions for the collective good, and literally nobody ever agrees on the appropriate level of individual sacrifice or the appropriate means of enforcing such a vague standard.

Mainly though, treating even representational agents as directly corresponding to a collective problem on their individual basis is completely detached from occurence of the problem.

You don't look at the person who skips going to the gym one day and charge them with skipping the gym day 98% of the time. You can only realistically say that, over time, they didn't go to the gym 98% of the time.