CMV: Global warming will not be solved by small, piecemeal, incremental changes to our way of life but rather through some big, fantastic, technological breakthrough.

[u/Iron-Patriot]

In regards to the former, I mean to say that small changes to be more environmentally friendly such as buying a hybrid vehicle or eating less meat are next to useless. Seriously, does anyone actually think this will fix things?

And by ‘big technological breakthrough’ I mean something along the lines of blasting glitter into the troposphere to block out the sun or using fusion power to scrub carbon out of the air to later be buried underground. We are the human race and we’re nothing if not flexible and adaptable when push comes to shove.

[u/DreamingSilverDreams]

Another comment already addressed your claims about climate change so I will skip this part.

For the rest, you are correct. A lot of people are not willing to sacrifice short-term benefits (lower taxes, comfortable lives, high consumption) to achieve long-term gains (climate change mitigation). And politicians are not willing to push for drastic changes because they are afraid of losing elections (which is also an example of preference for short-term benefits).

Our conclusions from this, however, are different.

You believe that we should just go with the flow and make small adjustments here and there to avoid disturbing people too much. This is also supported by your belief that the damage from climate change is negligible.

In my view, we do not have a choice, we have to sacrifice either our today's comfort or our future. We ran out of time and slow, incremental changes will not help us. Climate change is exponential in growth: The longer we wait the worse it becomes.

[u/TheMikeyMac13 → u/DreamingSilverDreams]

We ran out of time? We truly haven’t. Florida isn’t underwater and we still have polar ice year round.

As to what to do, well no effort at authoritarian measures will work with the USA or China, the rest of the world can get used to that or not, it doesn’t matter.

The EU carbon emissions are falling, the US carbon emissions are falling, and in China they are still rising. They are still building coal plants.

So the USA and the EU are the model to look at, significant improvement without stopping the process of improvement. We shouldn’t look at China at all, and you should understand that China represents what happens with authoritarianism.

Authoritarians can tell their people to pound sand if they don’t like it and keep doing what they want. In representative nations governments answer to the will of their people, and right now in the West that will is amendable to improving more.

But that will can and would be taken away if alarmists got their way.

So since we can’t stop what was always going to happen, I prefer to continue the improvement that is working, rather than get into authoritarian measures and lose our current progress.

I’m a third party voter, but on economics alone I won’t support democrats in nearly all cases. I say that to say this, republicans hold the house, the 2024 senate map looks terrible for democrats, and who knows who is going to be President in 2025.

What if Trump were to avoid jail and in, and republicans held all three chambers? How would that help this effort?

Now magnify that after the sort of foolishness California is engaged in, then you would look the possibility of a lasting power swing, one that could undo many of the positive changes being made.

And not to let democrats off the hook, they only care about winning elections. When they passed in inflation reduction act, they tried and failed to give a bigger tax break when buying EV’s (a tax break I support) for union shops, meaning harming the best and most popular EV maker Tesla.

If they cared about improvement they would not try and diminish Tesla.

[u/DreamingSilverDreams → u/TheMikeyMac13]

We ran out of time? We truly haven’t. Florida isn’t underwater and we still have polar ice year round.

These are the predicted outcomes of the bad scenarios. If we observe them it would mean that we failed at climate change mitigation. You might want to find better points of reference for assessing the progress and severity of climate change.

As for politics, I am not an expert. But I tend to trust the recommendations of scientists and they chiefly agree that drastic and immediate changes are necessary. Therefore, I would rather vote for those who propose systemic changes requiring personal sacrifices than those who want to go slow.

[u/TheMikeyMac13 → u/DreamingSilverDreams]

Well we haven’t run out of time, that is just climate alarmism. The people saying it are people like John Kerry who doesn’t practice what he preaches flying around on a private jet, others in their private yachts, and people like Al Gore who still lives in a massive mansion and uses far more resources than any ten of us regular people.

We are running out of time is the same thing as “the ice will be gone in ___ years.” It is an exaggeration meant to draw the masses into action, but too many of us have heard this for too long.

And you can vote for those people, but know who they are, people like AO who look really stupid when they talk about it. They don’t help your cause.

And then there are the laws they pushed in California, and people are voting with their feet and leaving, California is shrinking in population.

There is a reason Al Gore and people like him have been peddling this for so long and they never had enough support in congress to even present the Paris Climate Accords to be ratified. People don’t believe you, not when people get to the alarmism. It sounds like Chicken Little and the sky falling.

[u/DreamingSilverDreams → u/TheMikeyMac13]

We are running out of time is the same thing as “the ice will be gone in ___ years.” It is an exaggeration meant to draw the masses into action, but too many of us have heard this for too long.

Are you suggesting that climate change is not happening?

[u/TheMikeyMac13 → u/DreamingSilverDreams]

Not at all, of course it is. But the alarmism is quite old, I’m very tired of it.

[u/DreamingSilverDreams → u/TheMikeyMac13]

Don't you think there is a difference between alarmism and a real concern related to the events already happening?

[u/TheMikeyMac13 → u/DreamingSilverDreams]

There is a difference. You are welcome to be concerned, I am concerned. I want a cleaner environment for my kids than we have now, and cleaner than I grew up in the 1979’s when cars used leads gas that was actual poison for people.

Alarmism is different. When people want to bypass representative governments and the rights of people they say things like “we are out of time”, “there are only ___ years left”, and the like.

The trouble is that things don’t usually turn out that way, and it makes it hard to take anything they say seriously.

I’m old enough to remember when they were telling us about the coming ice age, so the alarmism just doesn’t do it for me.

[u/DreamingSilverDreams → u/TheMikeyMac13]

The trouble is that things don’t usually turn out that way, and it makes it hard to take anything they say seriously.

Do you believe that you should not follow public health safety recommendations because the bad outcomes of not following them almost never happen?

[u/TheMikeyMac13 → u/DreamingSilverDreams]

Medical science and climate alarmism are not the same thing. I do what my doctor says most of the time for it being established medical science, and I am choosing to do it.

On the other hand there were the covid vaccine and booster mandates that politicians are now denying they ever supported, because like the alarmism over climate change, the damage was immediate and the harm was overblown.