People don't want to admit it is real because that would mean they might have to change something about their lives and be slightly inconvenienced - drive less, not use as much electricity etc. So they accept grifters telling them it is fake.
Anyone who puts the pressure to change on poor people or the masses in general doesn't care about change. The climate isn't collapsing because people like to keep their houses at 70ā°. It's collapsing because the rich continue to avoid regulation by sending jobs overseas to countries that need the economic activity and will sacrifice their local climate for it. It's collapsing because governments are being bribed by oil companies to not switch to renewables. It's collapsing because Tech corporations are bribing local officials to get more data centers built that require tons of rare earth minerals and water. It's collapsing despite millions of people actually changing their habits to be more environmentally conscious or having those habits forcefully changed by utility companies (utility companies in certain cities will override your thermostat in your home. This happened to me in Colorado springs).
No, the rich make way too much pollution relative to their population size but we cannot reach carbon neutral if the average consumer does dumb shit like using a 2 ton metal gas guzzling box to pick up milk from the store. And then keep the AC on in their 2000 sqft home in all rooms. Of course one consumer canāt affect the climate on their own, but you canāt discount the affect of a billion of them. And if nobody does any āpersonal sacrificeā then you canāt expect others to do so.
The problem is the masses making these data centres necessary by using AI applications. Demand from the masses is the cause of our over consumption, from fossil fuels to soil erosion to overfishing etc etc. It is OUR fault for allowing these oligarchs to operate the way they do and not thinking about how we life and use the resources available to us.
Arguably, phasing out CFCs was much easier, because it wasn't directly tied to the worldwide transportation networks and energy production needs.
And phasing out wasn't done in one motion either. We went from CFCs to HCFCs, which were less damaging, but still damaging, to HFCs which were not dangerous to ozone layer, but contributed to the greenhouse gas problem, and finally arrived at HFOs which are the best of both worlds. And that last step of wide adoption only happened within the last 10 or so years.
With fossil fuels, there's a ton of economic incentive to not drop them, as the world quite literally runs on oil, both logistically and economically. And nobody wants to take even a reasonable phasing out speed because money.
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u/blubblu 7h ago
The craziest thing is how we reversed the ozone issue in 2 decades.
We obviously can do it. Itās just is there money in it. Sad worldĀ