Comment by freedomben

> To play devils advocate, you could be seen as trying to subjugate the worlds health to your own economic well-being, and far fewer people are concerned with your tax bracket than there are people on earth.

Well, if they choose to see me as trying to subjugate the world's health to my own economic well-being (despite the fact that I advocate policies that would harm me personally in the name of climate sustainability), then we're already starting the discussion from bad faith (literally they are already assuming bad faith on my part). I'm at the point where I don't engage with bad faith arguments because they just end up in frustration on both sides. This whole modern attitude of "if you disagree with me then you must be evil" thing is (IMHO) utter poison to our culture and our democracy, and the current resident of the White House is a great example of where that leads.

> In a pure democracy, I'm fairly certain the planets well being would be deemed more important than the economy of whatever nation you live in.

Yeah, for about 3 days until people start getting hungry, or less extreme, until they start losing their jobs and their homes, or even longer term when they start to realize that they won't be able to retire and/or that they are leaving their kids a much worse situation than they themselves had (much worse than the current dichotomy between Boomers and Millenials/Zoomers). Ignoring or disregarding Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is a sure way to be surprised and rejected by the people. We know that even respectable people will often turn to violence (including cannabalism) when they get hungry or angry enough. We're not going to be able to save the planet if there's widespread violence.

> Maybe, but they could also just be doing the risk calculus a bit differently. If you are a many step thinker the long term fecundity of our species might feel more important than any level of short term financial motivation.

I think this actually pointed at our misunderstanding (I know you're playing devil's advocate so this isn't addressed to you personally, rather your current presentation :-) ). I'm not talking about short-term financial or even economic motivation. I'm looking medium to long term, the same scale that I think needs to be considered for the planet. Now that said, banning all fossil fuels tomorrow and causing sweeping global depression in the short-term is something I would radically oppose, because it would cause immense suffering and I don't believe it would make much of a dent in the climate long-term (as it would quickly be reversed under the realities of politics) and it would absolutely harm the lower income brackets to a much greater proportional extent than the upper income brackets who already have solar panels and often capable of being off-grid. Though, even they will still run out of food when the truck companies aren't able to re-stock local grocery store shelves...