this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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It's astounding how consensus can be achieved on certain topics. Our planet is burning, yet we struggle to come together and agree on the urgent need to take action. However, when it comes to a change in Reddit's API plan, we suddenly find ourselves capable of mobilizing en masse for a common cause. Humans are truly peculiar beings.
It's unfortunate, but I think it's because in this specific instance, there is a clear and immediate impact on people's lives. Meanwhile, climate change is a gradual change over a longer period of time and a much larger area. Climate change also requires action beyond stopping visiting a website and actual cooperation among the entire human race. It's short-sighted, but it's also an example of how hard it is to get people to care about things that don't clearly and immediately affect them (see also: people who are militant homophobes until someone close to them comes out).
Yup. Climate change is too big, and the changes we would need to make to save ourselves from it are too drastic, and the consequences are "too distant". (Though we're already experiencing the consequences and have been for decades, they have come upon us gradually. We are boiling frogs.)
On top of that, there are plenty of people who justify their inaction by either assuming that humanity is going to spin up some last-minute miracle solution (these are the "technology will always prevail!" folks), or that they will personally devise some last-minute solution for themselves ("I will escape to a climate-controlled New Zealand bunker!")
Climate change is such a big problem precisely because of the way it is enabled by our short-sighted, self-serving nature.
...anyway.
Because it takes a lot more to make a difference on climate change. It's not like people aren't fighting.