If someone knows how to unflag this, I'd appreciate it. I think this is a fair climate discussion and I'm happy to weigh in. Also, Eliot Jacobson is an active figure in climate science, so it's not just some rando's blog post.

▲

jmclnx 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I agree, it was very clear in what it was saying.

I have said this thousands of times. Now in a different way. Collectively, people born in rich countries between 1930 and 1980 could have done something.

When the oil crisis hit in the early 70s, governments could have decided it was time to get out of fossil fuels. I was there on the cusp of adulthood. There was lots of talk, but the extreme rich and the oil barons started a huge propaganda campaign. People in gov. at the time were not stupid, they saw through it. But instead wanted to keep their jobs and the status quo. So here we are.

What could we have done ? Instead of crying about gas prices in the 70s, waiting hours in gas lines*, people could have started using other forms of transportation and kept at it. Back then public transportation worked fine in many places and bicycling was booming. Also many people lived relatively close to their work place. Instead we cried and cried about gas prices and continued to drive 2 or 3 or 5 miles to our work place daily. Same goes for shopping. Most shops were also rather close to were people lived.

So here we are, handing our grandchildren a life probably worse than what people experienced in the late 1800s to early 1900s. This way we avoided a bit of inconvenience in our life style.

Hope we are all happy as we age out.

* in many cases people waited hours with their cars running, some even ran out of gas waiting in lines. Others drove around for hours looking for a gas station with the lowest price. How stupid was that!

▲

bryanlarsen 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Most governments and people did nothing, but there were some that did take decisive action.

We're particularly indebted to Germany and Denmark and a few others. In the 90's and 00's they installed a lot of wind and solar power at particularly ridiculous prices. They were the ones that really bootstrapped the production curve that has lowered the prices so much that today solar and wind power are cheaper than any fossil fuel source.

Today the world is spending over $2T a year on clean energy and electric vehicles.

It's far from enough, but it's likely the difference between 4-5 degrees of climate change instead of the 6-8 we could have ended up with. That's a massive difference.

	▲	jmclnx 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		From what I have read, Europe did a better than the US at the time. Maybe not on purpose. From what I remember, they let their gas prices raise, keep public transportation viable and some countries even supported bicycling as an alternative. But it was not enough, especially with a giant at the time spewing CO2 into the air at ever increasing rates. I remember the manufacturing smoke stacks pumping it into the air. Only in the 80s did I start seeing the smoke lessen. By the late 80s, most manufacturing left my area.

▲

greygoo222 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> So here we are, handing our grandchildren a life probably worse than what people experienced in the late 1800s to early 1900s. This way we avoided a bit of inconvenience in our life style.

Lol. We are going to get richer. Climate change means becoming richer at a somewhat slower pace.

▲

atmavatar 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Collectively, people born in rich countries between 1930 and 1980 could have done something.

In the US, I would narrow that a bit and place the blame squarely on the boomer (or "me") generation. Slightly less than a majority of congresspersons (both house and senate) are boomers, with many of them having served for decades. Similarly, Clinton, Bush, and Trump were all born in 1946, with Biden barely predating them in 1942. Obama technically fits the bill as well, having been born in 1961, which is the tail end of the generation.

The generation is marked by enacting policies that rob from future generations to enrich themselves and continue pushing fossil fuels to this day despite overwhelming, irrefutable evidence that they not only contribute to climate change but also no longer make economic sense, again screwing later generations for their own gains.

	▲	blooalien 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's not the generation that's the problem. It's (as always) the specific (increasingly) psychotic individuals that we've foolishly allowed (or placed) into positions of power, and then increasingly worshiped in cult-like fashion, and defended the "honor" of because "Fearless Leader" (favorite public figure of the moment) can't possibly be wrong about anything ever. We keep doing it, and we keep doing it more fervently as if it'll somehow get better for us if we repeat the same mistakes only harder this time.

▲

newsomix9xl 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There is no unflag button I'm aware of.

As for the merits of the article and author I'm not so sure, but I like to disagree widely.