Climate Change Fatalism
Comments express widespread resignation that it's too late to effectively mitigate climate change, detailing stages of denial, past inaction, and inevitability of catastrophe while debating adaptation versus futile prevention efforts.
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It's partly learned helplessness: mass media likes making claims "act urgently, next year it will be too late" [1].And now the "next year" is here. It is too late. Done. Just relax and live (the rest of) your life to the fullest.[1] https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change-act-now-2650039989.h...
Probably too late to make much of a difference for climate change. We're just clawing our way back to our senses after decades of backwards movement caused by mostly well-intentioned protesters. Unfortunately, global warming did not wait for us to catch up. Whoops!
People on HN hate it when you say we have to change our whole society to deal with this problem. I agree with you though. I don’t think we’re willing to do what is necessary to avoid serious catastrophe. We’ve done a good job demonstrating that for 50+ years so far.
"It's not happening""OK maybe it's happening, but it's not a big deal""OK maybe it's a big deal, but we didn't do it""OK maybe we did some of it, but we can't fix it alone""OK maybe we could do something but, that would put us at a disadvantage""OK maybe we all need to do something, but how can we coordinate such a thing?""OK maybe we could coordinate, but it would take 50 year
This is similar to the climate change problem.First it was a problem for the people of 2050.Then 2023 happened and it was too late so why bother doing anything.
> A new level of power it seems...You can drop "it seems". We all know where this is headed. And as with the other huge problems such as climate change, we'll try to change something once it really, really hurts. But that, I suppose, has already been said a thousand times, as well. There really isn't much more left to say...
The problem is, if it's indeed a catastrophe, being "precise and measured" means you're too late. And really, the question here isn't "will this happen at all". It's "if we do nothing, will it be year N or N+1"And really, if we still need to convince people of the risks of climate change, we should not prioritize these people - convince if possible, but they're not the focus. Climate change is here. By now, even ~65% of Americans actually
See also: climate change. "No need to worry" -> "Well, there isn't really hard proof" -> "Other countries aren't doing anything about it either" -> "Well, it's too late anyway so I'll just continue to do what I was doing before".In the space of 10 years or so.
Ok, so this question has been asked before, but here goes!What are we going to do about it?I hear people say it's just too late to stop a catastrophe, but I find it hard to believe.
Ok, so this question has been asked before, but here goes!What are we going to do about it?I hear people say it's just too late to stop a catastrophe, but I find it hard to believe.