For those say in their 60s or 70s here. When you were in your 30’s or 40’s did you have the feeling that the world was a fucked up place? So much has been going on since I entered adulthood in the early 2000s and I feel like it’s getting more and more intense. It’s never ending.
Is it unique? Or has it always been this way?
No, no it was not.
Example: when they found out what caused the hole in the ozone layer, they fixed it.
If we found out now, people would say that you can’t trust Big Academia or Big Science and nothing would be done. And don’t get me started on vaccinations.
We’re sliding rapidly backwards.
People who say it isn’t are just too lazy to do anything.
Stopping climate change is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE harder than protecting the ozone layer. Protecting ozone requires switching the chemicals we used in refrigerants and propellants to other, viable alternatives. That affected products worth, generously, maybe 1% of GDP?
Stopping climate changing the vast majority of the vehicles on the planet, along with the majority of our electrical power plants. It also necessitates stopping deforestation and overhauling a wide number of industrial processes, including for basic materials like steel and concrete. And that’s not even getting into methane emissions from livestock.
All of these things add up to a massive chunk of the planets GDP. It’s an extremely heavy lift, and it’s not fair to say that the world has gotten worse because we’re struggling more with climate change than the ozone hole.
I feel @starlinguk@lemmy.world was saying more than that. I don’t recall any serious studies or news articles suggesting the ozone hole was a hoax or that debunking a human cause. Although it was kinda an aside but the anti vaxine thing he points to. I mean one of the most effective medical interventions since soap and sterilization has people acting like its some sort of evil witchcraft that will actually harm you despite the clear evidence both clinical and personal to its effectiveness.
But there were a lot of news articles suggesting at that time that global warming was overrated.
But at that time the science was just solidifying so overrated was not that contrary to say its overrated or inconclusive or something. Its like at one point there was a microbiologist that thought hiv was a passenger virus and did not cause aids. Which at the time was reasonable given koch’s postulates although they are basically impossible to apply to aids but eventually we had some much evidence built up that it became moot. Which is very similar with global warming. Someone might say we don’t know enough or have done enough studies and that might be reasonable in the 50’s but becomes silly by the 90’s
I don’t know of any for the ozone hole specifically, but you can look to the fight over cigarettes to see the same science-denying approach during the 50s and beyond. That was literally the blueprint for climate change denial by the fossil fuel industry in later decades.
I think that is an apt comparison and it just outlines the things to me. We really did not know smoking was bad till the 40’s and the 50’s is when it was much more conclusive and the industry was able to push off legislation for like a decade into the 60’s. The greenhouse effect although known for awhile similarly did not really become conclusive till the 50’s and still it was like the late eighties when congressional hearings brought it more into the us public sphere although many folk still did not really know about it till gores 2006 movie put it more into the common culture. The industry fud started with the congressional hearings when there was indication it might lead to regulation. So they have pretty effectively stalled it for the most part for over 30 years! In addition we have had some regulation and then had it pulled back. I think it really highlights the decline compared to before when you look at cigarettes compared to greenhouse gases.
I guess. You could also look at things like plastic pollution where industry straight up won, and during the 60s-70s successfully pushed the responsibility onto consumers to recycle while continuing to crank out single use plastic with very few restrictions.
At least in the US there are more trees now than when the settlers landed at Plymouth Rock.
I don’t think that’s true, we have more trees than we did 100 years ago but I couldn’t see anything about more trees than pre-European settlement. I am inclined to doubt that.
I find this hard to believe.
It certainly is, but it makes sense if you know about logging practices.
Generally, logging companies will cycle through parcels of land and replant parcels that have been clear cut so they can have guaranteed lumber in the future without having to negotiate new leases and such.
And with the massive amount of protected forests, the places they’re allowed to cut is way less than it used to be.
I mean maybe. If you count little seedlings or such. there was this thing about how a squirrel could go from one ocean to the other without ever touching the ground. I mean the logging practices prior to the settlers landing on plymouth rock were pretty anemic. I mean the natives had few buildings. All our towns and cities and buildings in general were for the most part forest or prarie and even prarie had trees especially long water sources like lakes and rivers.
Two things:
Native peoples very much built buildings.
Lots of where towns are now in the south and in the plains weren’t prairie as is commonly thought, they were lowlands populated with bamboo.
ok. So just to be clear we just care about if there are technically more trees like saplings in tree farms than any type of environmental thing yeah?
No? I care about accurate representations of Native American environments. My comment was specifically directed at your comment, not the entire thread.
I honestly think there’s no way to know if there’s really more trees now than there was. But I kind of doubt it, unless like you said, we’re specifically counting saplings on farms versus old growth forests.
You must realize terrible stuff was happening over that time period too. Yes, there is a ton of regression happening right now, but compared to any other time in history some things are better some are worse. One can probably select any two points in modern history and say the same. There are always great and terrible things happening.
I think it depends how we slice it. last century compared to previous. yeah will take this century. this quarter century to the quarter century before. Ill take before. I mean if we are at the tail of of a falling post world war 2 blip that is not a great thing.
People said the same we can’t fix it about the ozone layer.
But it was still done. Regulations were put in place and corporations were made to comply.
Tje only place that still happens is here in Europe, and I’m afraid that might begin to deminish soon.