The big world ending fear of the second half of the 20th century was nuclear holocaust, which suddenly felt a lot less likely with Gorbachev and the end of the USSR. The next dire thing that popped up was the hole in the ozone layer, which the world actually acted on and had stabilized by the late 90s. It wasn’t until the 00s that global warming entered people’s awareness. So I don’t know I’d describe it as “delusion” to feel good in the late 80s to 90s when the major problems that people were aware of were legitimately getting better.
I remember this is exactly what it felt like. Yes there were some things to solve, but in the end it will all work out. Read Fukuyama if you want a taste of what it was like. We beat communism, famine will be solved, no more wars, everything will be fine because of economic and political stability and technological progress forever. Any crisis is just a bump on the road, never a regression
Global warming, climate change, has been known to become an issue since somewhere in the 1890’s, iirc.
I’ll agree that the general public cannot really be blamed here, especially how information was available back then (basically nobody really was in the internet until end 1990, and even then this type of information wasn’t widely available yet) but humanity as a whole really fucked up badly on this one.
We’ve known for well over a century, yet even today there are “skeptics”, be they either idiots or paid shills, that deny global warming is a thing and even those that are not skeptical don’t seem to worry too much.
Politicians still are more worried about their local economies that must expand and keep expanding infinitely, somehow, and spend weeks arguing how bad we’re willing to let it become before taking actual real steps, ignoring that we might be standing on the edge of a cliff here.
We’ve been pumping extra CO2 into the atmosphere for a good two centuries, receiving useful energy that we used to shape our world as it is today. That extra CO2 has been partially taken up by oceans, acidifying them in the process, and some has been taken up by the rest of nature, but most CO2 is right there in our atmosphere.
Wanna get rid of it? You’ll have to spend pretty much that same about of energy that you got (adding in loses, I’d even argue twice or tripple) from burning CO2 for those two centuries to get that CO2 out again. Effectively this means that (adding in the losses) if we double our energy production today, and have ALL of it be wind, solar, or nuclear, and counting for other CO2 sources we can’t really stop (electrical airplanes likely will never happen) we’d still be spending 50% of our energy budget for the next century or two to get that done. I’m being generous here, it likely will be more than that.
This is still ignoring pretty details like 'how to do this efficiently" and what will we do to stave off global catastrophe within the next two decades.
Like it or not but humanity is going to have to pay the bill for the party is had, or die.
Meanwhile, politicians are nowhere near about talking about that, they’re only talking about how long they want to continue the current path towards destruction because local economies and reelections and whatnot
It’s not that the common citizen is delusional, as that they are badly educated about the sheer scope of the problem, if they would be, the world would revolt. So far people know there is a thing called climate change and it will have weird consequences that they do y really understand but they trust their politicians to solve it.
It’s not being solved, we’re still actively making things worse and arguing on if we really should switch to a non CO2 energy economy THAT fast…
Sorry, this may behave shifted into a rant, perhaps, but I’m tired and angry with the world for being led by anti-scientific scum that will end the world for us so that they can still enjoy another day on their yacht.
I don’t think people are misinformed or unaware. We have a collective action problem. People think they can’t do anything about the problem, it’s to big for us, we can’t do those drastic things because greater society isn’t transitioning. My personal solution is to do what I can that helps, but don’t expect anything to change. It’s like voting: Your vote counts, but you can’t decide the outcome.
The big world ending fear of the second half of the 20th century was nuclear holocaust, which suddenly felt a lot less likely with Gorbachev and the end of the USSR. The next dire thing that popped up was the hole in the ozone layer, which the world actually acted on and had stabilized by the late 90s. It wasn’t until the 00s that global warming entered people’s awareness. So I don’t know I’d describe it as “delusion” to feel good in the late 80s to 90s when the major problems that people were aware of were legitimately getting better.
I remember this is exactly what it felt like. Yes there were some things to solve, but in the end it will all work out. Read Fukuyama if you want a taste of what it was like. We beat communism, famine will be solved, no more wars, everything will be fine because of economic and political stability and technological progress forever. Any crisis is just a bump on the road, never a regression
That was the thinking in the 90’s
Global warming, climate change, has been known to become an issue since somewhere in the 1890’s, iirc.
I’ll agree that the general public cannot really be blamed here, especially how information was available back then (basically nobody really was in the internet until end 1990, and even then this type of information wasn’t widely available yet) but humanity as a whole really fucked up badly on this one.
We’ve known for well over a century, yet even today there are “skeptics”, be they either idiots or paid shills, that deny global warming is a thing and even those that are not skeptical don’t seem to worry too much.
Politicians still are more worried about their local economies that must expand and keep expanding infinitely, somehow, and spend weeks arguing how bad we’re willing to let it become before taking actual real steps, ignoring that we might be standing on the edge of a cliff here.
We’ve been pumping extra CO2 into the atmosphere for a good two centuries, receiving useful energy that we used to shape our world as it is today. That extra CO2 has been partially taken up by oceans, acidifying them in the process, and some has been taken up by the rest of nature, but most CO2 is right there in our atmosphere.
Wanna get rid of it? You’ll have to spend pretty much that same about of energy that you got (adding in loses, I’d even argue twice or tripple) from burning CO2 for those two centuries to get that CO2 out again. Effectively this means that (adding in the losses) if we double our energy production today, and have ALL of it be wind, solar, or nuclear, and counting for other CO2 sources we can’t really stop (electrical airplanes likely will never happen) we’d still be spending 50% of our energy budget for the next century or two to get that done. I’m being generous here, it likely will be more than that.
This is still ignoring pretty details like 'how to do this efficiently" and what will we do to stave off global catastrophe within the next two decades.
Like it or not but humanity is going to have to pay the bill for the party is had, or die.
Meanwhile, politicians are nowhere near about talking about that, they’re only talking about how long they want to continue the current path towards destruction because local economies and reelections and whatnot
It’s not that the common citizen is delusional, as that they are badly educated about the sheer scope of the problem, if they would be, the world would revolt. So far people know there is a thing called climate change and it will have weird consequences that they do y really understand but they trust their politicians to solve it.
It’s not being solved, we’re still actively making things worse and arguing on if we really should switch to a non CO2 energy economy THAT fast…
Sorry, this may behave shifted into a rant, perhaps, but I’m tired and angry with the world for being led by anti-scientific scum that will end the world for us so that they can still enjoy another day on their yacht.
You’re right to be angry.
I don’t think people are misinformed or unaware. We have a collective action problem. People think they can’t do anything about the problem, it’s to big for us, we can’t do those drastic things because greater society isn’t transitioning. My personal solution is to do what I can that helps, but don’t expect anything to change. It’s like voting: Your vote counts, but you can’t decide the outcome.