Don't criticise the messengers if you don't like the message.
This isn't just a debate between normal people and 'eco-fanatics' or whatever you want to call them. On the other side you have multi-billion dollar industries that want to maintain status quo until the rivers are on fire and have learned from the tobacco industry on how to spend millions in 'doubt-seeding' to keep making billions in profits.
Being alarmist about real issues is like being a fire alarm for a real fire.
[1] https://www.aqmd.gov/home/research/publications/50-years-of-...
Step 2: Hey no need to point fingers here or say "I told you so", we're all dealing with this.
Are we? It looks like the vast majority of people are looking away and blaming climate change scientists and activists for not doing enough or doing it wrong or whatever else instead. Some of us are dealing with it, the rest don't realize we're all in the same sinking boat.
Here is an example of an actual climate activist reacting to an actual policy which he helped influence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw5zzrOpo2s
We need to push positive solutions (nuclear power and carbon capture) that aren't thinly veiled religion and politics.
Also, I think there's optimism in people talking about how living a happier, more social life can also be one that happens to be lower in carbon intensity. I currently live in a very car-dependent detached house on an island (so reliant on planes to go anywhere) and am viewing flats now in a place where I can live car-free and go places via train.
And on top of all that, every time I have lived in a place where I could walk, bike, or take public transit, I was happier, healthier, and saw my friends _much_ more. But people have been sold a lie that living near their friends and being able to take a train or bus places is a "downgrade".
Thing is, denialism and stopping progress makes people looking for solutions also more extreme.
So who knows. Maybe part of the answer is partially ignoring or severely discounting certain Internet discourse.
It is important to also make broader policy changes, like regulating wasteful plastic packaging in the pipeline (not just at the retail, but storing manufacturing/processing materials).
We have billionaires like Bill Gates telling us to eat bugs instead of meat to “save the planet” while he forcibly e-wastes billions of devices with Windows 10’s end-of-life. We have EV manufacturers pushing to mine lithium, which like most mining is incredibly ecologically damaging, while simultaneously making repair (and thus the sustainability of their cars) nearly impossible. Petroleum products produced en masse and discarded into literal trash islands in the oceans. The destruction of wildlife habitats such as the rainforests. Hell, entire cities in China are nearly uninhabitable due to mass pollution from corporations moving production there.
While we are all to blame, some are more to blame than others. And no, going “carbon neutral” doesn’t mean anything when you’re still actively dumping waste products onto the Earth.
I just want to ride my bike and take the train for most of my daily needs, maybe using an hourly car hire for the other trips.
If that's what you want, cool, you almost certainly can find a life situation where it's possible. It's people who want to forcibly make everyone live that way that are the problem.
The opposite, really. Car-dependence is the default and being able to live well without a car, especially as a family, is very challenging. Sadly we've forcibly made everyone live that way (imagine that!) except for the few who can afford well designed places.
What if what we really need to do is wonder what we should do?
Every species needs population control. If we want air conditioning, commercial jets, and bottled water, then we need to get global population under a billion people.
Good news, we already are. Most countries now are below population replacement level. Many countries like Japan are near panic because the population is going to drop very quickly in the next 20 to 40 years.
I don't believe that guys like e.g. Just Stop Oil in the UK are genuine people.
There might be some who got taken in by the movement and have good intentions, but the actual antics that go on just turn off literally everyone I know, to the extent that the entire environmental movement is now seen in a bad light.
The people on the ground are genuine alright. But genuinely useful idiots for the likes of Dale Vince.
I feel like it's not about the form of the message, but who has the money to have it framed in his preferred way in the media.
this is such a bad pitch that it makes me wonder if it's actually a conspiracy funded by the energy incumbents.
live in a well designed suburb (like Houten, NL, for instance https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/may/16/welcome-cycle...)
use AC powered by solar or wind or nuclear
use an induction stove (they're way better)
build enough excellent rail that flying is unappealing for most options aside from transoceanic journey.
Doesn't sound like a bad life to me. It's the one I'm trying to achieve.
I guess, a large portion of climate change activists give the same effect as flat-earthers do with some legitimate conspiracy theories but to the people trying to enact straight forward environmental legislations. A sort of, shitting-in-the-pool effect.