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A comment on Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds. Parent comment

Re:Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Thei... by jakeogh on Monday May 20, 2019 @03:36PM (#19964193)
In elementary (late 80's) were constantly propagandized that the whales were going to be extinct, the ozone layer was going to be gone, and killer bees were going to get us all.

Not a peep of optimism that we could solve problems. It was presented as inevitable.

There are strong forces that need people to be in a constant state of worry. Power is derived from it.

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Re:Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Thei... by wcoenen on Monday May 20, 2019 @03:55PM (#19964436)
The panic about the ozone layer was the correct response. It lead to the Montreal protocol which banned CFCs. Quote from a NASA page[1] about what would have happened without that CFC ban:

> By 2040, the ozone hole is global. The UV index in mid-latitude cities reaches 15 around noon on a clear summer day (10 is considered extreme today).

[1] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/38685/the-ozone-lay...

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Re:Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Thei... by refurb on Monday May 20, 2019 @04:32PM (#19964856)
China laughs at your Montreal protocol.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/climate/china-ozone-cfcs....

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Re:Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Thei... by gmanley on Monday May 20, 2019 @03:53PM (#19964408)
The ozone hole actually existed and was solved by legislation. If people weren't panicking about it I don't think that would of happened. I'm not sure why you are calling it propaganda.
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Re:Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Thei... by hnhg on Monday May 20, 2019 @04:43PM (#19964976)
We're now living in a widely recognised mass extinction event, and many species of whales have gone extinct, or are highly endangered. I don't think we solved that one...
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Re:Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Thei... by MrRadar on Monday May 20, 2019 @03:59PM (#19964474)
> There are strong forces that need people to be in a constant state of worry. Power is derived from it.

Who is "deriving power" from sounding the climate change alarm? The people with the most power (the wealthy) seem to be trying to silence/defund/disempower the entire scientific community over it.

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Re:Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Thei... by antod on Monday May 20, 2019 @04:05PM (#19964559)
Would those problems have been solvable if the general attitude was an optimistic view of "don't worry, someone will solve it"?

Humans tend not to solve difficult problems unless they are a crisis. Convincing them a problem is actually a crisis is usually the first step in solving it.

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Re:Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Thei... by opportune on Monday May 20, 2019 @05:35PM (#19965483)
The first two were legitimate issues that were solved through international policy (international whaling restrictions and CFC restrictions, respectively). People were right to make a big deal about them, because unmitigated they would have had quite bad consequences
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Re:Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Thei... by segfaultbuserr on Tuesday May 21, 2019 @11:56AM (#19971368)
> whales were going to be extinct

They were. Environmental movement successfully "solved" this problem. https://i1.wp.com/slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/enviro_whal... "See that tiny micro-bump at the end? That represents progress."

* What Happened To 90s Environmentalism?

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-e...

See section 7, "Saving The Whales".

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