Climate change (because it's still political for some reason)

[Pale Rider]

The people who already don't take it seriously, IMO, will never take it seriously. Even when coastal cities like Miami and New Orleans are under water, there will still be people denying that this was preventable or that they're in any way to blame for it happening.

In fact, I expect them to act very similar to how they did when covid was decimating their communities. They'll resort to every coping mechanism under the sun, from denial to conspiracy theories. Whatever it takes to shirk any responsibility.

We are our own Great Filter.

 

[Nevermore]

Jewish space lasers.

 

[Anonymous X]

Nah, blame the EU instead.

Blame the EU for record temperatures while also claiming that belief climate change is “woke” and that the leftover EU environmental laws are crippling the economy.

 

[Nevermore]

Move on everyone, nothing to see here.

 

[Anonymous X]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1549145182184128517

Highest ever recorded temperatures in the UK, and the media are calling us snowflakes for noticing the dangerous heat.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Not too hot for a bearskin!... while the dude is literally being bottle fed water to prevent dehydration and death.

 

[Xaaron]

And the nominee for clip that gets less and less funny every year is...

 

[wonko the sane?]

Wild fires, way too many to contain... kinda sounds familiar, don't it...

 

[NovaSaber]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1549768004233314306

 

[NovaSaber]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1549801578353139712

 

[NovaSaber]

 

[Anonymous X]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1549801578353139712

It seems unbelievable by modern standards that the governments of the world acted so decisively about banning CFCs, rather than ignoring the damage and/or turning it into a culture war issue... Those truly were different times.

 

[Rust]

I'd argue the global response to CFCs is what convinced business owners to buy Politicans to help prevent such a thing happening ever again.

 

[Thylacine 2000]

It helped that CFCs were only related to a few industries and there was a just-as-good replacement already available. If we had that kind of luck with fossil fuels we would have solved that too.

 

[wonko the sane?]

If they hadn't spent the last 50 years enforcing a dark age of oil, we'd HAVE a viable complete replacement to guzzoline.

 

[The Mighty Mollusk]

But that means change, and change is bad.

 

[Pocket]

If they hadn't spent the last 50 years enforcing a dark age of oil, we'd HAVE a viable complete replacement to guzzoline.

Would we, really? There's evidence that Big Oil has been behind the vilification of nuclear power, but I haven't heard anything about them suppressing R&D on batteries, which are a big step that still needs to be taken before EVs can be sustainably produced and economically competitive.

What we could have had by now if not for corporate bullshit was a more robust mass transit infrastructure and a less dogmatic car culture. The subplot in Roger Rabbit about companies funded by the auto industry buying up trolley lines with the express purpose of shutting them down? That was based on a real thing that was happening around that time, and the reason almost none of America's cities have streetcars anymore.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Go ahead and look up who owns most of the patents for batteries. I'll wait.

Long story short: the oil industry is also actively hunting down technology that would replace gas engines (like batteries, reasonable efficiency motors, solar panels, etc.) and either bullying the patents owners into selling, or just outright buying them then burying the technology to prevent implementation. The only thing that's changed in the last 20 years is how hard it is to keep the information of what they're doing hidden.

 

[Ungnome]

Also patents do have a lifetime. It's a delaying tactic more than anything. I think we are starting to see the results of that now as more and more of said patents expire and enter the public domain.

 

[Nevermore]

Recently had a discussion with a coworker who insisted that the biggest problems to German society right now was the alleged "brainwashing" by the government (as in, teaching kids to respect, not hate one another) and enforced gender pronouns. I told him if those were his biggest concerns, he should consider himself lucky. Then told him to worry about real problems instead, such as climate change. He responded by insisting it had been "hot" when he was young, too.

Guy's an anti-vaxxer too, just so you get the whole picture. Oh, and he told me several times back when Merkel was still chancellor that the "witch" deserved to be "shot".