Climate change – Many think it's world's top problem. Is this right?

https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/climate-change/

9 3 4 years ago

april_22• 4 years ago

"Climate change makes people feel angry, powerless, and — above all — afraid. If society doesn’t act more decisively, climate change will affect all our lives and gravely damage livelihoods around the world."

I agree. The media has done a great job scaring people while at the same time providing zero information about how solvable the issue actually is. We still have time and the way people live can change so quickly (e.g. many people managed to adapt to.covid fairly well within weeks).

Bubble_Pop_22• 4 years ago

It affects people at the opposite ends of the spectrum:

The very very rich (not paper wealth) who have arrived at the end of the human experience videogame and all they have left is collecting the very extra trophies: e.g. Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, John Doerr, Vinod Khosla...They want to go down in the history books as the people who stopped the crisis before it exploded

The very very poor people living in sub-saharan Africa, India, Pakistan, Middle East and generally very populated areas between the tropics which will become literally uninhabitable in certain periods due to heatwaves lasting months.

For the rest of us it's kinda meh. We have to live our lives, we cannot become obsessed with climate change, it would be the first time in history that people limit themselves for the benefit of those who'd inhabit the planet 200-300 years from now.

We should be kind and empathic but Mother Theresa or Gandhi levels of that would drive a normal person crazy. We need to consume and burn oil to secure a steady improvement in the quality of our lives. If we can chip in a bit we could make the so called green premium go down, but it's urine in the ocean

jka• 4 years ago

It's good to see that the article includes a "best ways to help" section:

https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/climate-change/#best...

Climate change – Many think it's world's top problem. Is this right?

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