Comment by xyzelement
14 hours ago
As an observation, global warming has completely disappeared as social concern in the last few years. Great that someone is still publishing research, but it seems like being a climate scientist has gone from hottest field to nobody cares.
Are you based in the US? Seeing how the current regime is doing its best to gut climate protections I get how it could seem that way, but it’s definitely not the case in e.g. Europe where energy from renewables continues to grow.
Anecdotally, as I spend time between the US and the EU, the divide is large and clear now. It feels like folks in the US sort of just gave up (me included to an extent), whereas in Europe there seems to be a stronger resolve at a personal level and institutional level, to keep reducing energy use, plastics, driving, waste, etc. The US on the other hand is accelerating overconsumption in all directions.
It's especially depressing for me when it comes to younger folks. In Seattle where I live (not the suburbs, actual Seattle) some teenagers drive to school in 6 seater SUVs and spend their lunch time in there, with the engine on. A minority of students of course but that's still a mindfuck... in Europe they would get so much shit from other kids and neighbors. Drop in the bucket in terms of actual emissions but a very strong symbol of the lack of awareness/motivation.
The individual contributions from emissions are much smaller than industrial scale emissions. People can still do what you describe if we magically move all power production to solar/nuclear, and move to cleaner airplanes, and things would be headed in the right direction global warming wise.
Most countries including the US are deploying record amounts of renewables. But the climate conversation is definitely reduced, and that's global. Its been a good while since I saw angsty euro teens throwing tomato soup on paintings or gluing themselves to motorways. That used to be a monthly occurance.
The US still produces more than half (58%) of its electricity from fossil fuels. In the EU, it’s less than a third (29%).
https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/united-states...
https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/european-unio...
In the EU I hear of new climate initiatives all the time. From the US every bit of news I know about is how they’re making it worse.
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That was .. last year?
There's a "top of stack" effect in that there can be only a certain number of issues which are most important in discourse, and the Israel/Iran situation has taken over the top of discourse as has the US President.
A vital part of good governance is caring about things which aren't in today's newspaper.
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Everyone and their mother is running digital influence operations, so the overall media landscape is just extremely noisy right now.
This is an art that has been refined with every election cycle and every major political event since the early 2010s, and it had already gotten dang bad 5-6 years ago[1], and definitely did not get an ounce better once LLMs came along and drove the down the cost of this type of op.
The result is that it's very hard to get any sort of coherent message across.
[1] 'member the absolute clown fiesta surrounding COVID?
Well, yes, due to systematic propaganda efforts and the general shift from being against mass death to being in favor of it.
(the Iran collapse that led to mass protests and then mass murder of the mass protests is itself a climate driven issue https://www.unicef.org/iran/en/climate-change )
I assume because the public has been consumed by narratives over data. Narratives have probably always been more powerful than data for us humans, but we now have really powerful tools to generate the narratives we like. Combine that with algorithmic feeds that prefer certain types of narratives, boring and/or annoying data gets ignored.
This is the biggest headscratcher about AI. Before 2020 every big tech company had a net neutral, if not net negative, carbon goal. And many of them were talking about not just buying offsets but actual neutrality. And others were talking about even accounting for the emissions caused by their customers using their products
LLMs hit the market and you never hear anyone talk about carbon at all. At all. Maybe Apple will mention it a little bit but they're not in the big datacenter game
The costs of LLMs are just being completely paved over. We don't let manufacturers dump cadmium into the rivers in the US anymore, even if it would enable cheap or magic products, it's insane that we're just ignoring all the external impacts in this particular area
They're grifters. They thought climate tech would be a big grift. When that slowed down they dropped it like last season's trendy outfit and jumped on the AI bandwagon.
as soon as there was money to be made by concentrating data center, no matter the energy density impact on environment, the once philanthropist changed tune real quick
https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/three...
with gems like "Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. "
I think a lot of people have lost faith in the ability of the world to come all together and make the necessary sacrifices to make a difference. Especially when some parts of the world are in competition with each other and not making these sacrifices allows them an edge.
Also another group of people have realized they are not willing to forgo all their petty and unnecessary comforts nor are they willing to pay any price increases that would be required to adopt less economical but more sustainable services or production methods.
I don't think there's been any big change in climate change believers/deniers, but i do think some people have started accepting that we're doomed and that there is no "practical" solution. And if you think you're doomed, you might as well skip the sacrifices and enjoy your last days (decades) to the fullest.
Its not that.
Basically, on the average, people don't have ability to think rationally into the future. Most people think only 1 level of cause and effect.
Right now, for the vast majority of people, global warming isn't a problem when your house has AC, your car has AC, your workplace has AC. When you are forced to do things that you see no direct effect of, it makes it seem less important, and its a self reinforcing cycle where you see other people not doing it and you wonder why you have to make your life harder.
People will start caring only when their direct lives are affected. So unfortunately, the only way to fix global warming is to let it get bad enough to where there is enough death and destruction for people to start paying attention.
"People aren't willing to pay price increases" is interesting. Of course that's what they say when you ask them directly. Yet everyone is currently paying massive price increases as a result of covid-era money printing. I'm not saying you're wrong necessarily but what it shows it that it has been possible in very recent times that a collecive decision was made which increased general prices for everyone.
> that a collecive decision was made which increased general prices for everyone
I think you're referring to inflation with that? I wouldn't necessarily say that inflation is the result of a "decision", certainly not a direct decision of any single person nor any collective group. Economies can move around in weird and unpredictable ways, and they are also quite intertwined at the global level making policy decisions even more complicated and unpredictable.
The "money printing" decision wasn't made by asking the public: "would you like to help our economy and businesses and our essential public services in this tragic event? Oh btw you'll be paying for all of this with inflation, are you still sure?". Politicians tend to conveniently leave the second part out, and also, this questions wasn't asked to the public at all. I believe a sizeable amount of the public would've responded "no, let the people die, let the businesses die, i'm not paying for them".
Which is why for example, in many democracies with tools of direct democracy, such tools cannot affect fiscal policy, because people are dumb and they would just say "i want all of the welfare and zero of the taxes", bringing the country to ruin.
People are largely unaware of the sources of those price increases, at least in the US, which is why they were such a successful bludgeon in recent elections.
Well, this did hit #1 on HN. A bunch of us might actually still be worried about it.
The problem is, no amount of climate policies in the West is going to offset burning fuel in the developing counties. It’s a global phenomenon and addressing it locally is futile. That, and you don’t have the luxury of green solutions when energy prices were going through the roof.
> addressing it locally is futile.
Imagine what could be accomplished if Americans used their global influence to affect global change on climate issues with the same zeal that they pursue manipulative trade deals.
It's a good job Americans are right if they were to start swinging their global weight around.
Surely it's better to be more reliant on domestically/locally produced wind and solar when oil and gas production by 3rd party countries is plummeting?
Someone needs to set the example and be the model?
So pay for developing countries to go green. If they can get free solar energy they won't spend their money on gas.
This is not only wrong but you are bending over backwards to maintain the state of ignorance which makes it possible to say that. Most of the carbon in the atmosphere did not come from developing countries, and every reduction buys more time to deal with the problem so, yes, local measures matter: as an example, the U.S. transportation sector is so carbon intensive that getting our average efficiency up will reduce global emissions by more than entire other countries produce.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1118464/transportation-c... shows the American trend, then look at which other countries that’s similar to assuming we electrify a given fraction of the transportation sector:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
This is even more wrong when you look at how Africa is electrifying. Unlike the United States, China continued to invest in solar panel production and so they’re now the cheapest option for electrical power for millions of people since solar panels run for decades and don’t require trucking diesel fuel around or building out power grids. Investments in batteries are having the same cycle: richer countries have the research universities and product development but then anyone can buy the product.
https://apnews.com/article/solar-energy-china-imports-batter...
That’s why the fossil fuels spend so much money spreading messages like yours: they grew fat on government subsidies and they need those subsidies to continue or even expand as the basic economics increasingly favor renewables. Trump has to force coal plants to stay open because otherwise the operators would switch to cheaper options.
Nice take on the trolley problem. "No amount of pulling the emergency brakes is going to prevent passengers from dying when this runaway train finally crashes. So let's be responsible adults and put the pedal to the metal."
I'm in the US and even here this is absolutely not true. It has disappeared as a government concern, because the government has been subverted by vested interests.
Denmark is having a parliamentary election in 18 days, and other than one of the left wing parties, it seems like no one gives a shit about environmental issues right now. Even the debate about clean drinking water is a bit one sided, where part of the left want to implement measures to secure it, while the right is "Fuck it, fixing it will hurt our heavily subsidized farmers".
Part of the problem seems to be that many countries won't do shit, so all the improvements that have been made are just completely negated by other poluting more.
Seriously? I see anti-global-warming propaganda every day.
Every f'ing time it snows someone has to snide in with "BuT I ThOuGhT GlObAl WaRmInG WaS ReAl!?!?!?!?!" And i have to take a breath.
We've had other existential threats to worry about of late.
People are way more alarmed by Rapid Local Temperature Rises By Mechanism of Thermonuclear Energy Being Suddenly Released.
Because of first COVID-19 and the post-peak economic chaos distracting us, and then afterwards Trump and Putin and Netenyahu and the global rise of erratic mayhem as a political platform.
https://xkcd.com/2275/
Eventually we'll have to deal with the Giant Spider Downtown, it's just that the to-do list is growing from the top.
It's foolish to assume this is not a calculated effort. It's make us feel good that there isn't people who are actually evil enough to coordinate these full-blown authoritarian campaigns.
Consider for a moment that there ARE people this straight-up evil....
Maybe for Putin, but for Trump it's hard to see it as anything but his completely mercurial nature just causing so much random melodrama that less-urgent problems completely vanish. The same people who love carbon also hate the damage he's doing to global markets. I mean except Putin again.
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Polls say otherwise. 63 percent of Americans are worried you about the environment.
Attempts to minimize the danger of climate change, as you have just done, are usually politically motivated.
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/yc...
Lol this is SUCH a great data set. People say "yes" to every question except "do I think climate change will affect me personally" and "I talk about it to people in my life" - two metrics that could actually translate to "care"
Rich people with no real concerns is one way to put it. The idea that my children, or my children's children, won't have food to eat or water to drink? I don't know that it is a concern reserved for the rich. That is certainly one viewpoint, and you gotta be some level of rich to have kids in the first place.
Nothing like fascism and war to take your mind off the environment.
Because of how policies are grouped together in many countries (particularly the US), the fight against fascism is necessarily concurrent with the fight against climate change.
I haven't seen much fight against either fascism or climate change so far in the US
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What a coincidence that any fight that might impact corporate profits is always the “left’s” interest.
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Yes, everyone is a gullible NPC, except you.
The messaging on "global tipping points" was over-done, and also many people are now aware that enforcing low-carbon policies is costing Western economies a huge amount of money while resulting in very little net reduction in global CO2 output.
Why care when we're already over the edge and there isn't anything we can do about it?