One thing that's really turned me off climate activists is that they claim that the issue is existential, but when I talk to them about nuclear or hydro power they say things like "what about the nuclear waste" or "but that disrupts fish migration". The former shows they've barely looked into the issue, the latter that they don't really see it as existential. Their lack of serious substance makes me feel like the whole endeavor is just about the thrill of being a radical.
Sadly that mentality describes most of modern activism. Thankfully I don't think that the environmentalist movement's irrational hatred of nuclear power and other verboten technologies is actively changing many people's minds about climate change as an issue, it just makes them look like idiots.
Turning into PETA. I might have some sympathy if they were doing ANYTHING meaningful, but it's like they found the most irrelevant places to make the most irrelevant protests. A product of our shallow decadent age; even our protesters maximize image at the expense of actually accomplishing anything.
It reminds me of little of Jean Baudrillard's "hyperreality", where spectacle consumes substance. You know it's pretty bad when you make 20th-century French postmodernists look like Steven Pinker by comparison.
It's fatalistic narcissism. You'll never actually CHANGE anything, so it all becomes performative. What matters isn't the effects, what matters is that you looked good (and virtue signaled) doing it. So when everything goes to shit, at least you can have a clear conscience. And by "clear conscience," we mean "smugly looking down at all those insufficiently virtuous people who are to blame."
I do wonder if the massive rollout of solar PV has had some effect. Personally I’m not too concerned about climate change anymore. It’s an issue but we are solving it. Solar PV and electric vehicles are being rolled out so quickly that we will get close to net zero by 2050, at least in developed countries.
One thing that's really turned me off climate activists is that they claim that the issue is existential, but when I talk to them about nuclear or hydro power they say things like "what about the nuclear waste" or "but that disrupts fish migration". The former shows they've barely looked into the issue, the latter that they don't really see it as existential. Their lack of serious substance makes me feel like the whole endeavor is just about the thrill of being a radical.
Sadly that mentality describes most of modern activism. Thankfully I don't think that the environmentalist movement's irrational hatred of nuclear power and other verboten technologies is actively changing many people's minds about climate change as an issue, it just makes them look like idiots.
Turning into PETA. I might have some sympathy if they were doing ANYTHING meaningful, but it's like they found the most irrelevant places to make the most irrelevant protests. A product of our shallow decadent age; even our protesters maximize image at the expense of actually accomplishing anything.
It reminds me of little of Jean Baudrillard's "hyperreality", where spectacle consumes substance. You know it's pretty bad when you make 20th-century French postmodernists look like Steven Pinker by comparison.
It's fatalistic narcissism. You'll never actually CHANGE anything, so it all becomes performative. What matters isn't the effects, what matters is that you looked good (and virtue signaled) doing it. So when everything goes to shit, at least you can have a clear conscience. And by "clear conscience," we mean "smugly looking down at all those insufficiently virtuous people who are to blame."
I do wonder if the massive rollout of solar PV has had some effect. Personally I’m not too concerned about climate change anymore. It’s an issue but we are solving it. Solar PV and electric vehicles are being rolled out so quickly that we will get close to net zero by 2050, at least in developed countries.
First the classic: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/M3TJ2fTCzoQq66NBJ/p/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p
Second, but there are a lot of competing explanations and factors to be made here
1) The companies might be greenwashing
2) Culture wars polarisation
3) Alarm fatigue
4) This is contrary to the expected radical flank theory
so yeah I would take this with a grain of salt
I wouldn't expect climate activism to directly lower the support