Tuesday, June 14, 2022

Climate Change: Not As Bad As Your Kids Have Been Told

The following is from Vox--Vox!--which is no universe is a right-wing publication:

As I’ve written about before, climate change is going to be bad, and it will hold back humanity from thriving as much as we should this century. It will likely cause mass migration and displacement and extinctions of many species.

What it won’t do, however, is make the Earth unlivable, or even mean that our children live in a world poorer than the one we grew up in. As many climate scientists have been telling us, the world is a better place to live in — especially for people in lower-income countries — than it has ever been, and climate change isn’t going to make it as bad as it was even in 1950...

In some cases, it feels like adults are displacing our own frustration at political inaction on climate onto kids — and doing it by telling them things that aren’t true, and that they don’t have the perspective or context to take with the appropriate grain of salt.

The problem permeates advice about what kids can do about climate change, too.

I imagine the tendency of advice for kids about climate change to urge them to challenge their grownups, recycle, ride bikes, and attend protests is out of a well-intentioned urge to give them advice they can use right now. But I worry it sets them up for frustration, and is fundamentally not very honest about how they can solve climate change.

Kids who throw themselves wholeheartedly at those problems for their entire childhood, but who aren’t themselves Greta Thunberg, aren’t likely to get anywhere, and they won’t be positioned to get anywhere as an adult either. 

I've believed for a long time that the global warming messaging was overhyped; when you've lived as long as I have, you've seen these things before.  Lefties always go for the children, though, because as that famous leftist said, "He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future."

3 comments:

Snake Plissken said...

America is easily among the cleanest, least polluting countries in the world.
As a nation, we care deeply about the environment. What we don't do is spend our time freaking out about all the scary garbage the zealot extremists like Greta T. love to throw at us.

We are raoidly reaching the point of diminishing returns on our climate efforts. AND India and China and other countries continue to indicate through their actions that they just don't care.

Ellen K said...

Did you read the story regarding the accidentally tweeted out marching order from Greta Thunberg in India? It's been deleted, but India is majorly sore since her plan used farmers to promote protests that become riots. And her home country is very upset because this impacts international relations. At any rate, you might want to read it. I found it in one of my insomnia fueled drives for distraction.
https://yhoo.it/3OfGCfv

Darren said...

Teenagers....