General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsLemme be Blunt
I marched against the Vietnam War so I don't need to tell you how old I am.
So it occurred to me, who opposes climate change the most? Sadly, it is the people who will not live long enough to see its devastating effects on the world.
What a bunch of selfish Americans, willing to trade away the future for a few coins today.
Rex
(65,616 posts)The very last people on earth will be found fossilized, killing each other over money. Aliens will just shake their heads and wonder what could have been.
Faux pas
(14,583 posts)stage left
(2,934 posts)Skidmore
(37,364 posts)I am concerned about climate change because as I leave the world, I leave behind my children and grandchildren. I am concerned about the stewardship of the land and the planet. I do agree that Americans are largely responsible for the demands being placed on the resources of the world. Over the years, I have written any number of posts on the impact of our destructive consumerism and penchant for collecting doodads and stuff. Yesterday, I read something in passing that kind of illustrates this. America has something like 3% of the world's children and consumes 40% of the world's toys. That's a lot of junk, plastic or otherwise. Just junk. And that is just represents a portion of the consumerism related to children alone. We consume too much junk, nonessential junk.
CrispyQ
(36,231 posts)If you can find it you should read it. It simplifies the problem a bit, but I still thought it was a good read. It's was worth it for the Horsey cartoons alone!
Response to Roy Rolling (Original post)
antiquie This message was self-deleted by its author.
Voice for Peace
(13,141 posts)Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)I'm 71 and I marched against that wretched slaughter after I got out of the Marines.
To me, now, climate change is the most important issue facing humanity. I don't march any more but I'll sure as hell vote against any politician who denies or enables climate change.
Ratty
(2,100 posts)Inhofe won't live long enough to see what his greed has done to his grandchildren. He'll go to his grave smugly thinking he was always right.
Voice for Peace
(13,141 posts)we made a good start.. there is a powerful wave of young
folks who are awake and active.
roguevalley
(40,656 posts)could be the environmental movement started in our generation and we have children and grandchildren who will be scrabbling for the soylent green when we're long gone. I can hardly breathe sometimes thinking about it. I hear you, Roy Rolling. I am actually glad this time to be older but worry about my babies too.
hunter
(38,264 posts)Sure maybe it's not your problem today, but there are millions of people around the world, and even here in the U.S.A., who are already getting slammed hard.
Too many people won't notice until it hits them personally and they start tearing down the "welcome" signs at the state borders.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)I really have met as many people younger than me who don't accept climate change as I have met people older than me that don't accept it.
The motivations don't seem generalizable.
totodeinhere
(13,037 posts)unless something radical is done about it now. Our grandchildren will suffer a lot more than we are right now. And even if we did make some radical changes some damage has already been done. All we can do now is mitigate it somewhat.
hunter
(38,264 posts)...the grandchildren of people most responsible for the suffering wont be hurt. When their beach house is flooded, or there's no more water to fill the swimming pool of their desert house, that's okay, they'll still have other nice houses, and the income to buy real food.
Selling a full spectrum of Soylent brand nutrition products to the starving masses, and showing disaster porn from faraway places on the television news (See! Your life could be much worse! Keep voting for The Party!) will still be profitable.
ananda
(28,783 posts)... it also shows a certain careless shortsightedness
on non-activist young people.
I blame all the distractions.
ChiciB1
(15,435 posts)their kids who TUNE me out. Only then co I say, tongue in cheek.... "Well, it's YOU who will have to live through it!" Of course they then say I have at least 25 more years to live.
When I try, and I guarantee you I try extremely hard to get them involved and they keep telling me I'm just too SERIOUS and I need to let it go. They tell me I stress myself out far too much and need to find a "hobby!" Well, I do have a hobby, but it's more of an addiction, it's being politically active!
AND, I love my tennis and watching some truly fantastic tennis on TV.
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)I have shown them time after time, reduce reuse recycle and they just don't get it. They'll understand why I was always "harping" about it when their world heats up. Sad.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)We will fall sooner than climate change does us in...because the lack of concern for the environment is just one of the symptoms of a greater sickness in our society.
We went from the virtues of community and family to the virtues of greed in just the time I have been around...and I am around your age.
Things changed in the 80s...well it started before that but it was more pronounced then...we (not all of us of course) adopted the principles of greed and taught it to the next generation through TV and media and created a genre of media I like to call "My future's so bright I gotta wear shades" that inflected a generation of young people into the mystic rights of Ayn Rand's virtues of selfishness whether they ever read her books or not...and it has been a down hill slide ever sense.
And then there is the war thing where we now see war as a great adventure full of heroes killing the evil ones...and this is how we will fall before the climate has a chance to do us in..
abelenkpe
(9,933 posts)Kinda hoping we move forward fast to repair the environment and work to counter climate change. Seriously disappointed that our society hasn't already.
asiliveandbreathe
(8,203 posts)time in our history - so many young men of my generation coming home wounded or didn't come home at all -
- we were fed so much propaganda - the draft caused so many to flee to Canada - or be jailed....Mohammad Ali comes to mind...all the while people the likes of cheney differed....over and over...
In my mind - my lost generation suffered much - the people in Wash. who do not recognize climate change - global warming - call it what you want - are not our representatives..they are in it for greed - bought and paid for by big corp donors...
Climate change will be and is the cause of the wars today and for generations to come if we don't stop polluting our great home we call Mother Earth.....
I don't need to tell Du this - check it out - http://guardianlv.com/2015/03/violence-in-syria-linked-to-drought/ NUFF SAID!
niyad
(112,435 posts)airplaneman
(1,237 posts)sulphurdunn
(6,891 posts)I fought in the Vietnam War, so I don't need to tell you how old I am. And it occurred to me that I agree with you.
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Hearing someone say it's all a conspiracy by commie, liberal, anti-capitalist types who want to destroy the American Way Of Life ®.
raven mad
(4,940 posts)Although my daughter does work hard and does her best to rectify global warming. She's doing it for her daughter. We should all have the same amount of concern.
anotojefiremnesuka
(198 posts)If Democrats, ALL Democrats don't start fighting back the survival skills many of us have acquired while working for the US Government Spreading Democracy all over the work will come in quite handy when the shit hits the fan, and it will unless things change very soon.
Only a few us have first hand experience of what chaos and war is like and saw it is other places, now imagine what it will be like here. That is where we are rapidly heading towards.
To put it in perspective for those who do not have the experience of spreading democracy, would you kill some one for a meal or water in order to survive? Because that is the reality that most will have to confront.
yeoman6987
(14,449 posts)Solution to stop Climate Change. We hear that it may be too late of that we have to reduce carbons which we have done. If we had a real tangible way to stop the climate change then maybe we would see more exceptance. Honestly I think some may find it too overwhelming to deal with.
Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)I, for one, do think that it is already too late, but that doesn't stop me from trying to turn things around. But I have realized that whenever there is something to outrage me, when there is no solution that I can work toward, I want to give up.
I remember that there used to be a weekly segment on the nightly news about some problem that really pissed me off. It was always something monumental and it was something that needed changed, but there was never a solution or an action that the pissed off people watching could do to stop it. That was the flaw....people need to feel that they have something that they can do to fix a problem, and with climate change, it just overwhelms all of us.....this is global.
On an aside, because of my anger at not having options to pursue presented to me, every time that I speak at meetings or regulatory hearings, I make a point of listing several things that ordinary people can do to help.
airplaneman
(1,237 posts)Arctic Methane Emergency Group and 1250.now
http://ameg.me/
http://1250now.org/
-Airplane
Cha
(295,925 posts)limbaugh types.. egged on by Big Oil and Koch bros
They couldn't care less about babies, kids, or their mothers and fathers or anything unless its a fetus.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Oneironaut
(5,462 posts)avoid destroying the planet. We're made to consume resources, but like any other animal, we'll keep consuming resources until it eventually kills us. Nobody is willing to give up even a penny to save the future now. Nobody will care until the worst happens, and then everyone will scratch their head and wonder why it's happening.
treestar
(82,383 posts)he was glad he was old and wouldn't have to worry about these problems. He actually quit doing it after I wondered did he care about his grandchildren?
kairos12
(12,817 posts)person who plants trees under whose shade he will never sit?
DFW
(54,055 posts)It's the fact that the ones who are yelling loudest about there being no climate change are more than a little bit successful at convincing too many young people that there is no climate change. When the water is lapping at the knees in Miami, they will insist their feet are dry because Sean Hannity says they are.
*I marched against the Vietnam War, too. Was there at the Pentagon in 1967 watching the National Guard wondering how to react when girls were putting flowers in the ends of their rifles.
Thespian2
(2,741 posts)Blunt it is. Have we considered the water shortage that is only a few years away, if we are lucky? All us old folks here who have done our best to work for politicians who would lead the country in the right direction awoke one morning to hear Raygun pronounced president. The Republican greedy bastards took the cue and immediately began planning to take control of the country. Democrats twiddled their thumbs and whined. Carter's destruction by criminals such as the Bush family should have been enough to energize the Democrats into action. Didn't happen. Democrats began to work hard to be just like the Republicans so they could hold on to their jobs. Now, we are left with Republicans controlling 22 states and the federal government. Major decisions are in the hands of the oligarchs who don't give one shit about ordinary American citizens. Water is running out. Corporations are bottling water every where they can steal it. California has a year's worth left. The Oglala aquifer is running dry. The Biscayne aquifer is being filled with salt water. And on and on. Do the oligarchs care? No.
world wide wally
(21,719 posts)I can certainly understand why, but they are the only hope right now.
paleotn
(17,781 posts)...when the negative affects begin to take place before they die.
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)Stop war, then the climate will begin to cool.
whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)Last edited Sat Mar 21, 2015, 03:32 PM - Edit history (1)
might offend their benefactors. In fact the Democratic Party doesn't just discourage protest, they are arming police and creating a massive police state infrastructure to make sure your voice is never heard again.
I'm told by the centrists that if I don't like it, I can buy my own investment bank and buy my own candidates.