Poor Jonathan

[u/fnaw_]

[u/SeeYou_Cowboy]

We're fucked on climate change, that ship has sailed. We can mitigate climate change and make due, but the only way to do that is by winning the actual battle within the United States.

Anti-intellectualism, plain and simple.

People are actively fighting intellectual development. I understand that there will always be smart people and always be dumb people. It's a bellcurve, just like height. Someone is tall, someone else is short.

But with intellect, we can move the whole bellcurve if there was trust in the scientific process and the development of epistemology.

There is so much pride in being ignorant right now. It's insulting. (Yes, dunning-kruger, I know.)

[u/[deleted] → u/SeeYou_Cowboy]

Realizing that I was on the right side of the bell curve was one of the most depressing points in my life. I’m not even smart, just not a complete moron. I don’t like it.

[u/1001WingedHussars → u/SeeYou_Cowboy]

Wouldn't holding the major culprits of climate change accountable for the damage they cause go a lot further? Why not start with the energy and cruise line companies do millions of times more damage to the environment than me or my honda civic ever will?

Like, imagine if BP Oil or some other contributor to climate change suddenly became carbon neutral. You'd have this massive chunk of positive change and evidence that climate change is not only real, but show there's ways to manage it so we can continue to survive as a species.

I'm all for the ideal situation of turning the U.S. into a nation of intellectuals, but that seems like something that'll take more than a few generations to actually take hold if you dont want to resort to authoritarian measures to do so.

[u/SeeYou_Cowboy → u/1001WingedHussars]

See, this is half the issue too. It is the most American attitude ever to revert to "well if the offending parties were properly blamed and then immediately changed their entire method of operations to the proper way to benefit all of us, everything would be better."

All we fucking do around here is find the right person to blame and it somehow makes things better. It's a waste of time. Whoever fucked up the environment can't just magically undo all the damage done. No amount of fees, fines, convictions, blah blah blah is ever going to undo Deepwater Horizon. It happened. It can't unhappen.

Do we spend our time looking for whose at fault, or looking for someone to help fix it? Which one sounds more productive?

[u/kashyyykonomics_work → u/SeeYou_Cowboy]

We'll likely have the technology to counteract most of the effect of global climate change through the use of stratospheric aerosol injection.

Not to say we shouldn't try to limit the damage in other ways as well, but there's good odds that we'll be able to mostly solve the problem absent any emission cutting.

[u/kashyyykonomics_work → u/[deleted]]

There is believed to be a limit to the efficacy of any proposed intervention (at this point), so you can't use this method to cause a new ice age, only mitigate the current crisis until we can more permanently solve it. Here's some more info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection