Because global warming means not just a slightly less comfortable summer season, but also rising ocean levels that displace low-lying coastal communities (to include not just island nations like Micronesia and The Maldives, but also large sections of major harbor cities like New York City, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Sydney); more violent and more frequent tropical storms and monsoons; drastic changes to crop viability in semi-arid agricultural regions such as those in California, North Africa, Yemen, and Afghanistan; increased wildfires in California and Australia; worsened air quality in and around major cities (especially megacities); acidification of our oceans; and heightened turmoil in and around arid regions with existing water and refugee crises.
I think there's a latent suggestion in your language that reducing consumption discards all of the technological social progress of the past three centuries, while climate change presents a negotiable inconvenience. The balance is quite the opposite. You can keep cellphones, the internet, food security, modern medicine, and clean, running water. If anything, many of these advances are secured, rather than threatened, by curbing human-driven climate change.
>If you want to go back to stone age, please feel free to go: I'm not retaining you.
Beyond misjudging the gravity of the problem at hand, I think this comment is also a little short-sighted in appreciating the nature of the problem and our collective responsibility for it. The choices we make as consumers, designers, and voters have impacts that affect the whole world, including populations with clear stake but no voice in those decisions. It's particularly callous to tell someone whose island will be washed away by rising sea levels that they're free to eschew any technology they want to curb ecological impact while our own emissions (by absolute value or per capita) far exceed their own contribution to atmospheric CO2 levels.
> Beyond misjudging the gravity of the problem at hand, I think this comment is also a little short-sighted in appreciating the nature of the problem and our collective responsibility for it.
I don't agree. I think you are seriously misjudging the actual possibility to convince billions of people to give up quality life in order to, maybe, have some positive return on climate.
I've just found a last minute offer for a nice weekend, but I have to fly to get there. Sure, I could skip my flight and those islanders will be happier. But no, they won't be any happier, unless enough people skip their flight for the flight to be cancelled. And even if this flight is cancelled, those islanders will not notice, unless a good fraction of the flights are cancelled, and for most of the year, and for several years. And still, they will not notice, unless most cars get converted to bycicles and heavy industry gets severely reduced or regulated worldwide, which means every object will become more expensive. And finally, in a couple of decades, those islanders may notice a difference... You know what, I'll hop on my plane! I'm really sorry for those islanders and for everybody who suffers for global warming (which includes me) but I don't have the power to make a dent into the problem.
"Tragedy of the commons" works against us, I'm sorry!
What you are proposing is simply unattainable given human nature. I am proposing a more pragmatic vision: global warming is true and it is here to stay. Let's learn how to cope with it, and in the meanwhile let's keep looking for solutions which do not impact quality of life, if any exist.
I think there's a latent suggestion in your language that reducing consumption discards all of the technological social progress of the past three centuries, while climate change presents a negotiable inconvenience. The balance is quite the opposite. You can keep cellphones, the internet, food security, modern medicine, and clean, running water. If anything, many of these advances are secured, rather than threatened, by curbing human-driven climate change.
>If you want to go back to stone age, please feel free to go: I'm not retaining you.
Beyond misjudging the gravity of the problem at hand, I think this comment is also a little short-sighted in appreciating the nature of the problem and our collective responsibility for it. The choices we make as consumers, designers, and voters have impacts that affect the whole world, including populations with clear stake but no voice in those decisions. It's particularly callous to tell someone whose island will be washed away by rising sea levels that they're free to eschew any technology they want to curb ecological impact while our own emissions (by absolute value or per capita) far exceed their own contribution to atmospheric CO2 levels.