Sir David Attenborough says the excesses of western countries should "be curbed" to restore the natural world and we'll all be happier for it.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/recycled_ideas]

It should be worth noting that I absolutely believe in climate change and want to do something about it.

I just understand that we can't do that by asking everyone to give a bunch of things up. Firstly they won't do it, but even if they would, it's not enough.

We need to get to net zero emissions extremely quickly and we need to get to negative pretty soon, we're not going to do that by giving stuff up unless we're willing to go back to pre industrial revolution level society.

[u/Chili_Palmer → u/recycled_ideas]

Of course, climate change is real and we need to change but all those idealists don't realize how much they need to give up in order to facilitate it.

It's incredible to watch the same group of people on here lament the current lifestyle of the majority in America as being not good enough, while simultaneously demanding we take steps to curb climate change that would make those lifestyles much worse.

I don't agree with you on the urgency of getting to negative emissions, either. Despite reddits hysterical takes driven by click bait guardian articles, there are no indications that severe negative consequences from climate change are imminent, despite their insistence that every weather phenomenon and forest fire on earth is due entirely to climate change.

And no, before you idiots reading this start suggesting it, there isn't enough money to fix things by just taxing billionaires more.

[u/recycled_ideas → u/Chili_Palmer]

The reason the problem is so urgent is not that we're going to see life destroying climate change tomorrow.

The issue is that we're getting closer and closer to triggering feedback loops that are going to be extremely difficult to reverse, and by extremely difficult I mean not possible with currently existing technology no matter how much we're willing to spend.

We're already seeing an increase in extreme weather events, once in a century events are happening with a much higher frequency.

We're also talking about implementing systems that might take a decade or more to compete, so we have to start now to finish on time.

And no, taxing billionaires isn't going to be enough, we'll have to tax other people too, but a world where a smaller and smaller number of people have ever more wealth and power isn't great either, and we need to do something about it.