https://archive.is/2023.07.31-204536/https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/climate-change-obsession-is-a-real-mental-disorder-carbon-kids-anxiety-hot-temps-df0050fa

  • quarrk [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Homo sapiens couldn’t have survived thousands of years without air conditioning

    Correct, localized heat waves don’t kill the entire species. Just individuals in affected areas.

    This type of basic logical error is way too common. Just a complete inability to think critically, and when you point out the error they will literally lack the reading comprehension to grasp it.

    It is frequently excused that “the human brain simply isn’t designed to think about other people/large numbers/society/long time scales/things we can’t see/etc”. That is bullshit, we can and do understand such things, through science. The human brain has the specific capacity to conceptualize things through reason based on the phenomena we can observe.

    Humans existed for thousands of years without capitalism, but kicking and screaming will be the immediate response to any suggestion we overcome it.

    • Magician [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      The unwillingness to think about others is a construct, not an inability. I think about how kids hear about something terrible that's taken for granted and how immediately they want it to change.

      But then those kids are told it's normal and that it's mean to judge people you know because of it.

        • Magician [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          1 year ago

          So nice to live in a society that is indifferent to human suffering and also trying perfect audio and visual editing.

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Also she's right to say people could possibly adapt, but what is that even going to look like? Living in underground tunnels? Actual robot pods from the Matrix?

      This journalist has no idea and no one else does either, because the only projections we have say the global average temp will get so high to kill us all.

      • quarrk [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        It’s like saying, “Who cares if your house burns down if you make it out alive?” Um actually, I kinda like my stuff. I don’t want to lose everything for something totally avoidable like not storing a fire extinguisher or using smoke detectors.

        Global warming will probably not be the end of life on earth. Probably not even human life. But it has a very real potential for drastically reducing our way of life, even for the billionaires among us. We are facing the metaphorical loss of our house to a fire, to use the earlier analogy.

        I suppose it’s possible that humans gradually migrate to the poles. Antarctica is pretty big. But it won’t necessarily be a comfortable or fun experience, if that happens. And it probably wouldn’t happen for a few hundred years at the earliest. On a geological timescale, Earth will recover, the carbon will eventually sequester itself somewhere underground or in the oceans. But the timescales are immense, like on the order of the entire history of Homo sapiens, or longer.

    • Hohsia [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      You can think uncritically about the world like this and still get a job raking in 6+ figures lmao