Joined June 26. according to your profile.
And there is another segment of the wealthy, who continually agitate for climate change action under the impression that (1) this will deflect attention from their vast and occasionally earned fortunes and (2) all the costs and impacts of CO2 reduction will be borne by the little people, not by them.
Seems to be working pretty well so far, Tom Steyer and Al Gore and Leo DiCaprio go through as much carbon in a year as my town does, and no one on their side suggests they might cut it back a little.
That’s provably false. Read Kevin Anderson’s essays on this, for example. But as you’re criticizing, I assume that means you have led by example and already enjoy a zero-carbon lifestyle?
It wouldn’t be quite so bad if that reflected reality. But more often than not those “cost-cutting conservatives” make cuts so idiotic they just increase costs in the larger picture.
So it ends up with all the negative parts of cost-cutting with no benefits whatsoever…
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Absolute red herring.
The scale of the climate disaster is such that a massive, systemic, compulsory decarbonisation of the entire energy sector is urgently required. Individual profligacy is not the key problem.
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When I was about six I realized that I would probably have to watch someday while the people I loved (parents, relatives, etc.) slowly sickened, aged and died. Now, in the midst of a mass extinction event, it feels like that has expanded to cosmic scale.
I don’t know how to deal with climate grief, let alone the actual climate change itself
There are no adequate words
Even my generation who will live through more effects (mid 20’s here) doesn’t seem to give a shit (or, like me, they just don’t know what to do about it, but have better mental barriers than I and are able to pretend that it doesn’t exist).
Sometimes I wonder if part of the leftist infighting over specific particulars of language is because, unlike other issues, it feels more easily under personal control.
My personal carbon footprint is not zero, no.
But when it comes to wanting to restrict fossil fuel usage by those whose carbon footprint is far less than my own, I’m reasonably sure that my hypocrisy emissions are close to the zero level.
Irrespective of the accuracy of your statement, the question remains of whether a movement, many of whose most public advocates live lives of blatant hypocrisy, can achieve the political traction needed to implement the authoritarian measures you recommend.
So far, the answer seems to be “no”.
The advocates of the opposite do seem to be doing fine on their hypocrisies.
(Not that I particularly disagree with your general point).
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