Western countries are already clean enough. Very far from what it was in the 70s and earlier. There is a point of diminishing returns for everything. After that is seems to be more about returns to the individuals that claim to be for the cause, than to society as a whole.
There are orders of magnitude more serious threats to the future of humanity than climate change, such a imminent war. In part due to resource shortages, like energy, which in part was caused by prioritising misguided policies inspired by those same ideas.
It's not just climate change. Roughly speaking there are three goals around environmental regulation:
1) preserving at least some nature and biodiversity. Not much elaboration needed, we are causing a mass-extinction, some would like to limit the impact of that. And we profit from some of those species too
2) Climate Change. This one gets all the media attention, and it is a valid cause. Most Western countries are in a relatively good position in regards to impact of climate change, but even for us any dollar spent today to fight climate change will save us multiple dollars over the coming decades. We can deal with extreme weather and build better costal fortifications, but those things aren't cheap. Also nobody wants to deal with the upcoming migration crisis as poorer countries become ever less livable due to climate change
3) Imminent Health Concerns. European cities suffer from high concentrations of airborne particulate matter, primarily from residential heating and car exhaust that lingers in the air in densely built cities. This is the primary reason city centers become inaccessible to certain vehicle types and governments push for heat pumps. Particulates are linked to a range of health issues. Heart disease, respiratory infections, chronic lung disease, cancers, preterm births [1]. Sure, China is much worse, but that doesn't mean we can't make people's lives better and save on health care costs by reducing the amount of particulates we emit in densely populated areas
Climate change has the potential to radically change weather patterns, possible causing severe disruptions to global food production. If that happens, I guarantee you the likelihood of a world war will be even higher than today.
Besides, there is no real energy shortage. Renewables and nuclear work very well for most of Europe. The only problem are the Germans who thought being dependent on gas supplied by an insane dictator is better than operating nuclear power plants.
Yeah, nice on paper, easy to shout all the time, and I agree. But - even if whole Europe went to caveman era, we won't make dent big enough to matter at all or change trajectory of future in any significant way. We are just little above 5% of the world, even if we pollute more than average its just a small drop in a bucket. But we are literally destroying prosperity in whole Europe, while most of the world gives significantly less fucks about this topic so we endeavor on some quixotic quest for glory where none is found.
That's the problem with well-meaning fanatics - you can't discuss consensus with them, middle ground is their ground only. Even extreme moves are never enough. So what we are seeing - people like trump who don't give a fuck about environment are winning, slowly but surely. There is no reversal in next decades, its hard to accept since I wish it to be true but it won't.
Inability of far eco left to have any sort of meaningful dialog and find middle ground is the reason why all these at glance well-meaning policies are going to backfire massively, and they already do as OP mentions. Why should we head to poverty while all developing world coast on us, steal our tech like germany's solar cells tech and we are just left behind.
I'll never vote for any green-related party despite being a massive nature and wilderness lover. Those people are literal personification of 'road to hell is paved with good intentions', IMHO a form of simpleton's eco-terrorism.
Me? I am insignificant. But I talk about opinions of large parts of Europe, just look at recent elections (and US is exactly the same). Extremism never leads to good future, just more extremes and inevitably conflict where few profit and most suffer.
Yes, people believe the same thing as you - that everyone who disagrees with them is unable to have a dialog - and votes for extremists who try to eliminate the people who disagree with them so they won't have to worry about it any more. Tale as old as time. Are you trying to blame that on the people you disagree with?
There’s no threat of imminent war for the West. And any non-nuclear war is a much less danger than climate change. At worst, the WWII-scale war may cost a few hundred percent of GDP. Climate change will destroy trillions worth of property and may affect human population for thousands of years.
Yes but preventing what we can of it at this stage (which isn't much) will cost as much as a world war and will have huge impact on people's lives. So will climate change but not as equally distributed. Many areas will be fine and some will even improve (eg Siberia and Northern Canada might become a lot more habitable. The Soviets even had a plan to screw up the gulf stream by damming up the Bering Strait for this purpose.
I just don't see it happen. Most countries are democracies and turkeys don't vote for Christmas. It's not fair and I don't agree with it but it's realistic.
Add to that the 20 year delay in CO2 emissions and effect and most of it is already locked in.
> Yes but preventing what we can of it at this stage (which isn't much) will cost as much as a world war and will have huge impact on people's lives.
You seem to have gathered the wrong impression here. Yes, a certain amount of global warming is pretty much locked in, and that levels is high enough that it's gonna cause some pretty big problems. That doesn't mean that continuing to emmit CO2 at current levels for the next several decades won't make things significantly worse.
> Many areas will be fine and some will even improve (eg Siberia and Northern Canada might become a lot more habitable.
This also isn't true. While there are areas that will grow more temperate for growing crops, that doesn't mean those areas will be fine (or have good soil to do so). Sure Alaska might be able to grow more giant vegetables, but could lose a significant part or all of their fisheries and will face more problems with wildfires that it does today. Permafrost melting will destroy infrastructure. These northern ecosystems tend to be pretty fragile and warmer temperatures could cause significant ecological collapse.
There are areas where the impacts will be greater and lesser. There aren't significant areas that will be better off due to climate change.
WTF you talk about Ivan, we have a dictator that repeatedly claimed he will wipe out most of Europe's capital cities with nuclear strikes. Desire to stop his war campaign at atlantic. The only reason its not already done is utterly shitty state of russian army, otherwise 0 reasons. Existence of NATO is another one.
For americans this is easy peasy squabble far from home about topics you don't care nor know enough, for Europe and its democracy this is existential threat.
Funnily enough russia will mostly benefit from global warming so they have 0 reasons to act in any good way. Their burning military warehouses blowing up so big time earthquakes are detected far away produced more pollution than whole Europe driving around.
If you measure world-war scale conflict damage just in amount of GDP cost then its hard to discuss reasonably topics with Ivans of this world.
It is unreasonable to expect any meaningful discussion not just with Ivans of this world but basically everyone else, when you make only baseless claims influenced by propaganda and generally do not fit in format of this forum.
Please fact-check your first paragraph for the start.
Los Angeles after it rains (scrubs the air clean) and during the pandemic (drastically less traffic) was stunning. So, no, at least here, we’re not “clean enough”.
Climate change doesn’t just pause because there are more imminent threats. Human-exacerbated or not, it is changing, and it won’t wait for us to notice.
There are orders of magnitude more serious threats to the future of humanity than climate change, such a imminent war. In part due to resource shortages, like energy, which in part was caused by prioritising misguided policies inspired by those same ideas.