[Mathgod]

Originally Posted by Table 5

Look, I get that you're angry and scared about the what-ifs, but just because you want something really bad, and stomp your feet and scream really loud about it, doesn’t make it so. That is how children think.

Just because you believe the world's ecosystems have an infinite capacity to endure the pollution we keep throwing at them, and stomp your feet and scream really loud about it, doesn’t make it so. That is how children think.

I'm not talking about what-ifs. It is well established that (for most of us anyway) our ability to live on this planet is what is at stake. Burying your head in the sand and pretending that climate change is not that big a deal and we can simply adapt to it, is a childish attempt to avoid accepting reality for what it actually is.

I don't know how anyone can look at global temperatures continuing to reach record highs, the record breaking fire seasons we've been having, polar ice caps melting at record pace, historic droughts, and other observations, and come to the conclusion that climate change is some "what-if scenario".

It's not something that "might happen in the future". It's something that's already beginning to unfold before our eyes.

Technology and human progress are capable of amazing things, especially in times of distress. But I just don't think you understand how fundamentally ingrained fossil fuels are in our life, and the scale of effort and cost this endeavour will take. To think fossil fuels can be completely eliminated, with new technologies fully baked in and functional at scale, in the next few decades, is completely out to lunch.

Why is that, exactly? Is it because we've spent the past hundred years getting our minds poisoned by oil industry lies and propaganda, to the point that we can't even tolerate a modest carbon tax to fund green energy research? Are we so preoccupied with living as luxuriously as possible that we've basically ignored all other considerations? I think the answer to both of those questions is yes.

We should have been doing much more to tackle this problem over the past 50+ years than what we've done. As a result, we're now we're in an extremely precarious predicament. The stakes are as high as they could possibly be.

With great luxury and convenience comes great responsibility. While we've enjoyed the advancement of technology and the introduction of modern conveniences into our lives over the past 140 years, we've horrifically failed to meet the responsibility that came with it. As such, we have no choice now but to take extraordinary action to combat this problem. Failure to do so is to commit the most egregious negligence in the history of humanity. Are we really ready to send billions of people to their graves in the name of raising their living standards temporarily?

at the end of the day literally everything we make is grown or mined out of the ground. There will always be an environmental trade-off. And when you're talking things on a global scale, that trade-off is always massive.

I always find it funny that no one bats an eye when coal, oil, or literally anything else is dug out of mines... but then when it's a mineral that's used in EVs or other green technology, suddenly it's a big issue.

Go ask the kids mining cobalt if they are up for a little temporary relief. I'm sure they are really interested in your ecocide credit cards.

What are you trying to imply here, that if those children weren't forced into the mines to dig up cobalt, that they wouldn't instead be forced into the mines to dig up something else?

Let me guess, child labour, therefore green tech bad. My question for you is, are you ready for Canada to completely stop doing business with any country that utilizes child labour? I sincerely doubt you are.

Let's be clear, the problem of child labour can only be solved by getting laws passed that ban child labour. It won't be solved by halting the development of green technology.

For the record, there's already a big push toward making EV batteries colbalt-free.

Progress marches on, but frankly, I think it will be easier for humanity to mitigate any environmental issues through technology, than it will be to completely overhaul our entire civilization.

That's not what I'm calling for. I'm calling for more aggressive carbon pricing in all wealthy nations to fund a much more aggressive green energy R&D effort. Yes, it will mean some economic pain, but this pain will absolutely pail in comparison to the pain that climate change will bring to humanity if the worst case scenarios are allowed to happen.

I'm rather depressed by the fact that we can't even seem to keep our current carbon pricing structure in place, let alone increase it.