Greta Thunberg

Lord-Jaffa said:
Untill China and India sort themselves out it's a losing battle, China used more concrete in two years than the USA did in the entire 20th century (cement production 8% of total co2 emissions). Not to mention the raping and destruction of river banks for sand.
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As I mentioned earlier in this thread for all practical purposes Africa hasn't even started yet

Anything that the developed world countries do, or not do, is utterly irrelevent.

"Preventing climate change" is not something we should be diverting resources towards.
 
do_ron_ron said:
China first then America.

https://www.activesustainability.com/environment/top-5-most-polluting-countries/
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Co2 sure, what about the 10 rivers (8 in china/india) and 2 in Africa that create 90% of plastic pollution in the oceans?

But yeah, it's always "the west" who should change their ways to save the planet, send Greta to India and China if she cares so much about the planet (she could have even walked there), her head would explode when she sees the Yangyze River in China carrying 1.5 million tons of plastic a year (83,500 times more than the Thames), untold amounts of feces/sewage and industrial chemicals into the ocean.

LOL what a joke this whole saga has been.
 
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4K8KW10 said:
I think the most important thing right now is to optimise the global economic system, to reduce the consumptionism/capitalism/profitalism, while redirecting more resources for a normal living to the less developed countries.
We must seek more advanced energy generation technologies, we need more efficient system - for instance - if we can invent an energy system with high enough 'over-unity' coefficient, we will limit a lot of the waste thrown in the environment, a lot of unnecessary garbage thrown in the environment.

Burning fossil fuels is the least efficient energy source possible.
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Agreed, but are you willing to give up your car and take public transport?

Unfortunately most people in the west will not be willing to reduce their standard of living low enough to make a real difference.

Energy is not the only issue. Food is a massive one. Our current system is damaging the planet more than anything else. It's contributing significantly to climate change and is the main driver of the Holocene extinction, including everything from the historic collapse of megafauna and recent collapses in insect and fish biodiversity and populations alongside all the other extinctions.

One thing to consider is we as Brits hold rather hypocritical/blinkered views on this because we consider the industrial landscape that makes up around 70% of the British Isles as scenic and "natural", while we chastise countries like Brazil for chopping down their forests. All they're doing is following in our footsteps - the mass destruction of the environment to turn into farms and fields for crops and livestock. Unfortunately they are following us down the rabbit hole of environmental destruction.

Electric cars are not going to make things much better on that front. Yes, they'll help reduce the the severity of AGW/CC, but where are we going to get the resource for them? The seabed - mining of which is going to happen in the near future, both in hydrothermal vents and abyssal plains, both extremely fragile ecosystems that will cause major extinction events in the oceans, in places that have so far largely avoided the human caused extinction on land and in the shallow(er) seas. They're another prime example of technology not being the solution, but quite often just solving one problem and creating another. EDIT: And before Anglian pipes in with his anti tech straw man, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be moving to electric cars from ICE cars, but that they're still a problem and won't solve the overall issue - humanities use of too many resources due to the size of our population.

Angilion said:
I think we're talked out on most of this, so I'm just going to address one point:

Why anyone thinks that dismissing language as "semantics" is a valid argument I don't know - semantics is a key part of language. But anyway..."genocide" explicitly refers only to targetted mass killing. It literally means "killing a type". It is not a catch all term for mass killing. If you killed a billion people at random, that would not be genocide. If you killed the last remaining 50 people in a tribe specifically because of their tribe, that would be genocide. You brought up genocide. I didn't.

1) I did not bring up reducing population by a large enough amount quickly enough to solve the problem of CO2 emissions. You did that. I just pointed out that mass killing is the only way to do that. Natural population reduction by voluntary reduction in breeding occurs far more slowly and as a result of improved standards of living, not as a cause of them. As I said before, you have the cart before the horse.

2) If you don't understand what a word means and you don't understand the importance of semantics, that's not my problem.
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Because the semantics argument you're using is irrelevant. It doesn't matter whether its targeted mass killing or not, at least for my argument, because I'm not advocating mass killing.. The semantics argument is a convenient way for you to divert the argument however...

And secondly no I did not bring up "reducing population by a large enough amount quickly enough to solve the problem of CO2 emissions." That's one of the strawman arguments you've been using since the beginning, as I've also explained multiple times to you. No point discussing this with you any more, as you seem intent posting irrelevant drivel unrelated to my posts.
 
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FoxEye said:
Awareness is only useful if it changes attitudes or viewpoints.

I don't believe she is doing so. As I said, she's mostly preaching to the converted.

I don't know of a single policy-making body that has been influenced by her. I don't know of a single individual who has made lifestyle changes because of her.

Awareness is not lacking - in general most people are either concerned about, or dismissive of, environmental concerns. I have yet to see anybody change sides because of Greta Thunberg.

It's the same as the 11-16 year olds on "climate strike". Upon seeing them, who is persuaded to do anything different in their live or make different decisions?

This is marketing/spin/PR and it's mostly empty and hollow. Although it's great for raising the profile of Team Thunberg (it's very successful marketing on that level), it fails to make any impact when viewed from through the lens of solving climate issues or changing attitudes toward them.
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She's the figurehead of a global movement of young people. She may not be influencing policy among older people herself, but the groundswell she is part of and is promoting will most certainly be a thorn in the backside of governments for a long time to come. This is especially true as more and more reach voting age.

Unfortunately policy is generally made by the older generation (usually the Boomers and Gen X at the moment), generations that are far less environmentally "sensitive".

Basically you're too old to be the target. (As are most of the people in this thread, change is generally tormented by the youth, not the "old" who are too set in their ways).
 
Threepwood said:
Are we not in the midst of a Holocene extiction then? Is it all lies? Can I not believe my own eyes in that regard with british plant and wildlife?
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To be fair to him, the majority of the Holocene extinction is not and will not be due to climate change.
 
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