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‘What if there just is no solution?’ How we are all in denial about the climate crisis
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
97 points (92.2% liked)
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Oh fuck right the hell off with this despairist shit.
The fossil fuel companies want this kind of sentiment to be the mainstream because the logical conclusion is "so then why bother doing anything?"
They want your despair, they want your hopelessness, they want your burnout, you owe it to the world to not let them have it.
No, they want you to keep voting for milquetoast centrist liberal policies that don't hurt their bottom line. Car companies and oil companies love that the "left" party in the US only supports pro-car policies that maintain our reliance on them. Every polluting company absolutely loves the tax credit non-solution because it will cost them much less than an actual emissions-reducing solution. Plastic companies love that there is no widespread plastic ban or mandatory reduction in plastic use by manufacturers, and instead only consumer-aimed recycling programs.
Fossil fuel companies absolutely love your defeatist "don't let perfect be the enemy of good" attitude. They love these policies that make you feel like you are doing something but don't actually change anything. They love when you tell people who want actual solutions that they need to vote for the compromise. They still get to keep their profits going strong, and the Earth will only burn after the people pushing these policies are long dead.
< gonna be real quiet when the even worse option does even worse stuff because they didn't vote because "mIlQuEtOaSt!" and "rEaL sOlUtIoNs!"
Almost none of what you said is a counterargument or even separate from what I said, you just phrased it like a takedown because the idea that this movement not give in to fatalism and cynicism pisses you off for some reason so you need to make it about letting the Right win and institute mandatory coal rolling quotas is uber l337 based praxis or some shit because "bUt DeMs BaD tOo!"
"Man I know how I'll address the climate crisis in 2000, vote for Ralph Nader! Surely letting Bush win won't have disastrous consequences for the entire world!", that's what you just tried to shoehorn in here, "surely project 2025 won't be that bad!"
That is a bet only someone who has no right to be deciding could consider making.
Yead, I agree. I'd rather take a half-step forward than two steps back. A full step would be nicer yet, but we can't let the best be the enemy of the almost good enough.
Neoliberalism is not a "movement", it's the global hegemon. You're pretending to be a part of this small, bespoke, counter-cultural collective that needs to remain principled, and meanwhile obstinately upholding the status quo. And at the same time holding this globe-spanning conspiracy theory that international conglomerates care about your personal feelings.
The data is out there, and you can just freely listen to scientists. But you will not read or listen, because they are saying things that you don't like. Combatting climate change will require a great upheaval. It requires policies that liberal parties in major governments are not putting forward. People in the most vulnerable countries will die. But, again, you are more interested in protecting the status quo, most likely because you are comfortable and those more vulnerable don't matter enough to you.
You are trying to frame this as if the people further to your left, who want to do more to combat climate change than you, are closer to the right. But that's impossible. If it was up the right, all the countries with brown people in them will burn, and the wealthy countries will deny the immigrants. If it's up to the centrists, all the countries with brown people in them will burn 20 years later, and the wealthy countries will deny the immigrants. I would very much not like to punish those most vulnerable in the long term for a feeling of moral superiority in the short term.
al gore won that election, but votes didn't decide the winner. don't blame greens, blame the people who have had power for 100 years and shepherded us into this situation.
I'm an engineer, so I don't agree with the despair, but also believe that what we'll have is a number of partial and not entirely satisfactory solutions that mitigate the problem but don't fully solve it. And we'll adapt because we have to. But it's foolish to underestimate the intertia of the present way of doing things. It's going to be a long slog, and the legacy indstries are going to fight and foot-drag until they're driven out of business.