@dredmorbius posted a link to a 1h long keynote speech by Carl Sagan at the Emerging Issues Forum at NCSU in 1990. The speech begins at 6:12.
Here is an issue where the risk is very high, the issue is removed from every day life, the solutions can not take place in the course of a year or two, it involves scientific issues which are distant from the familiar every acquaintance of many people, and for this constellation of reasons, it poses difficult public policy issues. – Video of the Carl Sagan Keynote Speech at Emerging Issues Forum (1990)
I will transcribe his entire speech for posterity. I will break up the text into paragraphs as well as add headers and images that may be of use to understanding his speech. – Transcript by James O'Neill, on the Free Xenon blog
Video of the Carl Sagan Keynote Speech at Emerging Issues Forum (1990)
Transcript by James O'Neill, on the Free Xenon blog
As Doc Edward Morbius says: “If you want to have some idea of what we knew and what was recommended at the time, and how many decades we’ve lost ... Watch and listen.”
I wonder when people will finally react. Is it just a question of the old generation having to die, or are young people also unable to make the right decision? Sometimes I wonder. All I know is that my generation has not managed to turn the ship around.
It had never occurred to me that maybe it was simply a question of demographics. We were the first generation after the boomers and of course we would never outvote them! – 2019-11-16 Boomers and Generation-X
2019-11-16 Boomers and Generation-X
🔥 🌍 🔥
The very least, the absolute very least you can do, is that whenever you get to vote, vote for a candidate that helps mitigate the climate catastrophe. That almost never includes policies involving the stimulation of the economy, tax breaks, supporting our existing economy, companies, and jobs, the securing of our borders, patriotism, or anything like that. So if you can’t tell who’s green, at least vote against those that want more of the same because it sure isn’t helping, whatever they are doing.
#Climate
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
⁂
It’s a question of money. When it costs more to do nothing, something will be done.
– patrickmallah 2021-11-21 20:19 UTC
---
I think that this explanation ignores the fact that it already costs money but it is hard to see. Sometimes it’s other people that pay the price, sometimes it is well hidden: crops reduce in quality, refugees, or the measures to prevent their immigration, all cost money and are indirectly linked to climate change; the wars in Syria and the Arab springs might have cost a lot of money and they might have had their sources in widespread crops failures. But a simplistic accounting does not account for these externalities and therefore the numbers cannot be trusted to make rational decisions. On one side, crops fail and war breaks out, and mysteriously money is lost. On the other side, the military industrial complex benefits, and mysteriously money is made. Our accounting practices cannot link the two, and therefore “When it costs more to do nothing, something will be done” sounds a bit like a platitude to me. No reasonable policy can be derived from it, no countermeasure can be devised. Instead the accounting itself must be changed.
– Alex 2021-11-21 20:48 UTC