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  1. You must read the article before you can comment on it.
    • thorgalle
      Top reader this weekReading streakScoutScribe
      2 years ago

      This article reframes things. I don't agree with all of it, but it's a really valuable perspective for today.

      I’m not alone in having reached this conclusion. But there continues to be a reluctance to broadcast it.

      This is an important point. I appreciate his arguments that it makes no longer makes sense to keep using terminology like "save the planet”. We’ve been hearing that for years, but for the people that need to feel it most, the urgency just isn't that real right now.

      Our resources aren’t infinite. Even if we invest much of them in a longest-shot gamble, reducing carbon emissions in the hope that it will save us, it’s unwise to invest all of them. Every billion dollars spent on high-speed trains, which may or may not be suitable for North America, is a billion not banked for disaster preparedness, reparations to inundated countries, or future humanitarian relief.

      True, not all of them, but I still think we should invest much of them. If we want to keep living in changed conditions, let's make sure we don't actively make those conditions worse in the future (globally).

      In this respect, any movement toward a more just and civil society can now be considered a meaningful climate action.

      Loved that train of thought. Top highlight!

    • Jim4 years ago

      Not really early morning reading.... I prefer to be slightly more optimistic. Actually, if climate change is inevitable, Well ........ I DUNNO!

      • bill
        Top reader of all time
        4 years ago

        Lol, you don’t like waking up to the end of the world (as we know it)?

        I think it’s the “as we know it” part that makes it all okay for me. I don’t think it will be 100% human extinction, just a radical reorganization of society. We probably need more words for “apocalypse”

    • bill
      Top reader of all time
      4 years ago

      Wow. Jonathan Franzen is one of my favorite living novelists, so it feels really damn good to find out that we see eye to eye on the topic of climate change. This whole thing is spot-on. Suit up, folks. Shit's about to get real. What a time to be alive!

      • Jim4 years ago

        Bill, you were kinda missing a glaring fact, you mentioned a great to be alive! More accurately addressed would be 'the ONLY time to be alive' or 'the LAST time to be alive' or 'Too damn scary to be alive'.