from Hacker News

Stop telling kids they’ll die from climate change (2021)

by Quillbert182 on 6/16/23, 12:32 PM with 101 comments

• by timmg on 6/16/23, 1:57 PM

  I'll say two things that will be controversial. But first, just want to be clear: global warming is real; human caused; and will have negative effects on many parts of the world.

  1) We are not heading for "the end of the world". There are lots of projections of what things can go wrong. But the climate changes slowly, we are becoming richer and we'll adapt. Also a lot of what is reported is on "worst case" (or things might get as bad as so-and-so) that are often based on CO2 projections that have almost no chance of coming true.

  2) Even if you disagree with #1: we are already on our way to solving the problem. We will still have warming, for sure. But we will likely be at or near the goals we've set for end of century. Tech is improving: we are deploying solar, wind and (suddenly) more nuclear; electric cars; heat pumps; and so on. We will eventually run out of fossil fuels. And, population growth is slowing faster than anyone predicted.

  Yes, we should be vigilant and continue to try to reduce CO2 emissions. But the idea that "we're all gonna die!" -- or anything close to it -- is wrong. And it's not supported by the science at all.

• by fallingfrog on 6/16/23, 2:30 PM

  It’s not that we’re all going to die. What has died is the myth of progress- the idea that every generation will have it better than the one before. It’s hard to be forward thinking if you believe that your country is going to be worse off in 50 years than it is now, no matter what you do. I don’t think people really understand the degree to which any country is held together by belief. Progress is our national religion, and it’s dying right in front of us. Some will find scapegoats, some will lash out in anger, some will respond with denial, some will blame generations that came before. But how can you hold a nation together when they no longer believe in its foundational mythos? That’s what is being lost, and you can’t just gaslight us into believing it again as it becomes more and more clear that it’s really dead.

• by perrygeo on 6/16/23, 2:05 PM

  I'm a father and very concerned about climate change. I talk to my son about greenhouse gases, fossil fuels and their unique role in our economy, and the current impacts to extreme weather. Importantly its all about observations of today's bio-geophysical-economic reality. Not speculation about tomorrow's. Building a solid foundation in the scientific method is far more important than scaring him with worst-case-scenarios.

  Don't get me wrong, climate models and predictions of their impacts are important for planning our future. I keep up on the literature but I don't expect an elementary school child to. Until he has the foundation to understand the models and a framework for how to do risk assessment with them, we'll be working on the fundamentals.

  Also important to emphasize that climate in not the only issue. There is a "polycrisis" of other environmental, economic, and social problems that threaten our civilization; climate change has to be dealt with (or adapted to) alongside these concerns, not with blinders on.

• by lilboiluvr69 on 6/16/23, 1:31 PM

  "This is out of line with the science, and scientists should call this out more prominently."

  I completely agree with this. I'm also familiar with people I've talked to, and myself at times, falling into doomsday scenarios.

  No, we aren't all going to die, not in rich countries st least. It's just going to really, really, suck.

• by eesmith on 6/16/23, 1:13 PM

  Some pop culture context. In the hit TV series "Family Ties" episode "Rain Forests Keep Falling on My Head" from 1989, Jennifer becomes very concerned about the environment, worried that if people don't act, the rain forests would be destroyed, the ozone layer destroyed, and we would live in a long hot endless summer.

  Later, she's depressed since it's 1°F hotter than it was in 1956, and doesn't want to go to school, feeling like she's dealing with the end of the world.

  The episode is available at https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8gyxf5 if you want to verify this yourself.

  That was a fictional portrayal, certainly, but I doubt it was made up whole cloth. If so, the writers were extremely good at predicting how kids would react!

  Things are significantly worse now than in 1989 - why wouldn't even more kids be worried?

• by poulsbohemian on 6/16/23, 4:29 PM

  The point that gets overlooked in a lot of these conversations is that while my kids (and grandkids, and their kids…) may not die from climate change, their lives could (and I think will) be altered by it. So for example if you are in an area that is going to be under water (or at least all those underground sewer systems will be…) then what’s it going to cost your coastal city in property taxes to fix the problem? Can’t get your home insured in CA or FL any longer? What’s the cost to you then when a fire or hurricane wipes out your house? Massive investment needed in water systems? - more property tax. I suspect we will reach a point where the kinds of food available in our grocery stores is altered by all of this too. So maybe nobody in rich nations actually “dies” but that doesn’t mean they aren’t impacted in very serious, life-altering ways.

  I was reminded of this watching my garden this spring… things didn’t germinate until we had a freak day cool enough so the seeds could pop. Think food is expensive now, see what it’s like when temps rise and we’ve got to develop even more new varieties and growing techniques to accommodate.

• by Clent on 6/16/23, 1:24 PM

  Some of the concerns here are economic. Children are smart.

  I'm not sure gaslighting them will work.

  It's definitely a sign that the children are correct.

• by photochemsyn on 6/16/23, 2:24 PM

  Bit of a straw man argument. We should be telling kids not to think twice about buying properties in any zone with high flood risk, high wildfire risk, high hurricane risk, high coastal erosion risk, etc. and that they should expect greater frequencies of extreme weather events (heat waves etc.) and this should be taken into account in their own personal planning for the future.

  It's rather like teaching kids why signing onto an adjustable-rate mortgage is a bad idea. It just makes them better prepared for the future.

  However, the fossil fuel sector and its financiers don't even want to admit there's a problem, as that increases the pressure to stop using fossil fuels and switch to renewables, which is probably what motivates articles like this.

• by Workaccount2 on 6/16/23, 3:00 PM

  More accurately: Stop telling kids they'll die from climate change. They won't. We are first world publication preaching to first world parents. Its the third world kids who will grow up to starve and die.

• by xracy on 6/17/23, 6:26 AM

  I think that this narrative (about kids dying from climate change) has likely come out of the responses that attempt to downplay climate change, but also, for what appears to be a hot take on this issue here... I don't think it's bad.

  We are an incredibly polarized society, and not even leastwise because we are spread across many different countries. There are so many ways that we are polarized.

  I think, that makes climate change the best thing that could be happening in terms of a unifying common evil. While it is human caused, it can be human solved. The fixing of it is something that could unify humanity. And the only thing we really need to do to get there, is to focus on how it is a common evil for all of our children.

  My only concern is that I don't actually know if we can unify/fix this in time to save our planet. They seem to think we can. I don't know if I'm that optimistic.

  The big change isn't actually one that I need to see from kids. It's one I need to see from the parents of those kids. Cause there is a controlling minority of this country that is throwing caution to the wind as if this is already solved. That's the real danger, to me. I think kids understand that better than pretty much all baby boomers I've talked to about this...

• by markwalllberg on 6/16/23, 1:31 PM

  Its funny for a large publication to tell their readership to stop scaring kids with death (did i say that right?).

• by LatteLazy on 6/16/23, 1:19 PM

  Success in the modern world requires ever increasing cognitive dissonance: You know climate change is coming but have to pretend not to, you know the economy is stacked against you but have to remain hopeful, you know you cannot access the sort of life you want, but have to pretend to like what IS on offer.

• by freediverx on 6/16/23, 1:25 PM

  Mastodon needs a downvote button.

• by fantasticshower on 6/16/23, 1:30 PM

  What book(s) can I read to hear a realistic perspective on climate change? Even better, what book(s) would be best for someone skeptical of it?

• by weard_beard on 6/16/23, 1:19 PM

  Stop telling your aunt it’s ok to cry. Your mother is dead and crying won’t change it.

  Progress is a process and, like grief, there are no short cuts.

  Stop short circuiting acceptance. It’s step 1

• by pcdoodle on 6/16/23, 1:31 PM

  Sometimes people have nothing fun in their life to look forward to so they obsess about something which they have no control over except their perception that if we all did "X" everything will change. But the funny thing is, most aren't giving up car ownership, most aren't trying to offset their energy consumption in a meaningful way, most aren't commuting sepiku, they're only blaming systems without any personal change.

  Leave the kids out of your delusion. It's hard enough to become a well balanced person with everything else going on.