It's summer in Montreal. The ducks are taking a dip in the pond, the plants are in full bloom -- but for Aandrianna Jacob, it's no walk in the park. Like many others, she's worried about climate change.
Yes, things are tough now. Climate change is a very serious challenge ahead. I vote Green, ride a bike, etc.
All that being said, I’m probably older than most of you. I grew up during the cold war, when we sincerely believed we were at the brink of nuclear annihilation.
It didn’t happen.
I will spare you the countless doomsday headlines I’ve read in the news over the years. The hole in the ozone layer, the wars, the genocides, the natural disasters, the political churn.
The details don’t matter. We were truly terrified of the future, just like you are. Yet, the immense majority of the fears we had did not materialize, either because we took action to prevent them or because they had been overblown. We also faced some challenges that the news didn’t warn us about.
We prevail, like we have always done. People are much more resilient than they imagine. You can handle it and so can your children, and your children’s children. Living in fear doesn’t solve the problem, so why do it?
Equating nuclear apocalypse to the climate emergency is so strange. One requires a whole chain of command to decide that their friends, family and everything they’ve ever believed should be destroyed, the other is the default scenario.
Details really do matter. War, nuclear war and political turmoil are all very different scenarios. Climate change will likely have more severe consequences for humanity than every war ever fought.
To counter the “doomer” (scientific) point of view you’d have to point to some feasible solutions like banning CFCs to fix the hole in the ozone. We have one, stop or severley reduce all greenhouse gas emissions, and it’s not being acted upon.
Instead we’ve decided to keep pumping an ever increasing amount into the atmosphere each day and as a result are currently on course for 8-10°C of warming. For context the largest extinction event in Earth’s history which resulted in so much death it stained the geological records happened during a temperature rise of about 8°C.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s too. What we have in common with that era is that we can’t be sure that world leaders are capable of cooperating for the benefit of humanity.
The difference is that this time destruction is inevitable if they don’t cooperate. We don’t have the option of a deterrence-based standoff with the environment.
The highest global temperatures ever are not overblown. Forest fire smoke inundating the country every year is not normal. Melting glaciers are not a figment of anyone’s imagination.
This is a lot more frightening and existential angst is the correct response. If we don’t learn to cooperate and moderate our greed, the planet will determine the correct human population for us.
The difference between the cold war and climate change is that the former could be stopped simply by not being a warmongering idiot. The latter, even if we stop being a nature-raping idiot species, is still going to fuck. us. up.
Also, a lot of people have died in wars, genocides, natural disasters, and political churn. As a survivor for whatever reason, I’m not really sure how valuable your insight is. There are a lot of dead children out there.
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Yes, things are tough now. Climate change is a very serious challenge ahead. I vote Green, ride a bike, etc.
All that being said, I’m probably older than most of you. I grew up during the cold war, when we sincerely believed we were at the brink of nuclear annihilation.
It didn’t happen.
I will spare you the countless doomsday headlines I’ve read in the news over the years. The hole in the ozone layer, the wars, the genocides, the natural disasters, the political churn.
The details don’t matter. We were truly terrified of the future, just like you are. Yet, the immense majority of the fears we had did not materialize, either because we took action to prevent them or because they had been overblown. We also faced some challenges that the news didn’t warn us about.
We prevail, like we have always done. People are much more resilient than they imagine. You can handle it and so can your children, and your children’s children. Living in fear doesn’t solve the problem, so why do it?
Equating nuclear apocalypse to the climate emergency is so strange. One requires a whole chain of command to decide that their friends, family and everything they’ve ever believed should be destroyed, the other is the default scenario.
Details really do matter. War, nuclear war and political turmoil are all very different scenarios. Climate change will likely have more severe consequences for humanity than every war ever fought.
To counter the “doomer” (scientific) point of view you’d have to point to some feasible solutions like banning CFCs to fix the hole in the ozone. We have one, stop or severley reduce all greenhouse gas emissions, and it’s not being acted upon.
Instead we’ve decided to keep pumping an ever increasing amount into the atmosphere each day and as a result are currently on course for 8-10°C of warming. For context the largest extinction event in Earth’s history which resulted in so much death it stained the geological records happened during a temperature rise of about 8°C.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s too. What we have in common with that era is that we can’t be sure that world leaders are capable of cooperating for the benefit of humanity.
The difference is that this time destruction is inevitable if they don’t cooperate. We don’t have the option of a deterrence-based standoff with the environment.
The highest global temperatures ever are not overblown. Forest fire smoke inundating the country every year is not normal. Melting glaciers are not a figment of anyone’s imagination.
This is a lot more frightening and existential angst is the correct response. If we don’t learn to cooperate and moderate our greed, the planet will determine the correct human population for us.
Why not both? We have an unstoppable climate crisis on our hands AND a nuclear threat, again, from Russia with the conflict in Ukraine.
The difference between the cold war and climate change is that the former could be stopped simply by not being a warmongering idiot. The latter, even if we stop being a nature-raping idiot species, is still going to fuck. us. up.
Also, a lot of people have died in wars, genocides, natural disasters, and political churn. As a survivor for whatever reason, I’m not really sure how valuable your insight is. There are a lot of dead children out there.
Thank you for the perspective. I honestly never thought about things that way before. There’s not much we can do, so we do what we can.