"Ecological grief" grips scientists witnessing Great Barrier Reef’s decline

It's bleak, but pragmatic.

Re: kids, I have no idea. I can honestly only handle this with the level of detached analysis I do because I don't have kids. If i did... I would be seriously considering things that one shouldn't type onto message boards at this point.

FWIW, in an attempt to be constructive. If you do rudimentary math around the size of the problem and the timeline to address it, the only person who has even come close is Bernie Sander's plan. This will require an investment, from the US alone, in the 10 - 100T order of magnitude range. Bernie's plan is 16T. Everyone else is in the single-digit Ts.

So if you believe in science, math, and your childrens future... you kindof have to be like not just voting for but actively canvassing/phone-banking/campaigning for Bernie (assuming you're in the US).

I'd say as a parent it would be pretty irresponsible to say anything that would make the kid feel any sudden anxiety.

We don't really talk about it. If our kids express their worry the we will say the truth - biomes are not doing too good. But we don't really consider it as some major doomsday looming over.

Personally I was really anxious as a kid. I was really scared when I learned that one day sun will turn to red giant and destroy earth. Ditto about asteroids. The Amazon (30 years ago as kid I refused to eat at McDonalds for a while). And there were also actual bad things happening to people close to me - but you get the point. Easily distressed.

As an adult, I see no way this existential anxiety would have done any good to me.

So, as a parent I play it cool. And besides, we don't know what is going to happen. It's not going to be rainbows and sunshine ... but really. If you were with a kid on a train to Auschwitz, would you tell them me and him would soon be gassed to death, or lie to them it's all going to be fine. I'd lie.

You can't push adulterated foods out of the marketplace by telling individual consumers to make wise choices. You need something like the Pure Food and Drug Act.

You can't push water-polluting laundry detergents out of the marketplace by telling individual consumers to make wise choices. You need something like the Clean Water Act.

Telling Los Angelenos agitating for clean air, circa 1967, that they should buy their own cleaner cars (or find ways to avoid driving altogether) before supporting the government California Air Resources Board would likewise have been futile. They needed regulation, not more personal virtue.

Positive collective action is required to solve collective action problems. I already went vegetarian and drive less than most Americans. I've never mentioned my personal behavior in climate discussions here before because it's beside the point. I keep upvoting posts that propose carbon taxes and tariffs (or equivalent statutory phase-out requirements) because those are the things that will make a difference.

If they want the status of being captains of industry or business leaders, but they don't come through on matters of serious public concern where they can make a difference, it's not wrong for people point out their hypocrisy. Why is it the responsibility of the least powerful people to sacrifice first before those who profit from the status quo inconvenience themselves?

If your lake is being overfished, you can stop fishing all you want, it won't change a thing. You need quotas or a tax.

It's a tragedy of the commons and we need to move together on this.

I would love to dive the Great Barrier Reef while it's still great, but can't justify it on the grounds you lay out. But I wish people could get the sense of what is being lost. Seeing it in person, in situ, is very different from watching it on a screen.

I don't exempt myself from blame for the destruction of the natural world, but neither should you. I believe there is a sliding gradient of blame to be applied to all people, but really, except for a few notable exceptions (oil, finance execs in particular) it's a difficult and somewhat futile model to apply. Am I to blame for taking a vacation overseas every three years? Is a businessman more or less to blame for flying cross-country every week for meetings?

Unfortunately for those of my generation who are "woke" to the catastrophe of climate change, much of our lives have necessarily become a precarious balancing act between trying to live justly and trying to live happily. I sadly question my ability to bring children into the world with my SO in the face of a problem that is tantamount to Armageddon. But our own personal attitudes and wants shrink in the face of the enormity of the quandary that is climate change.

What I personally have come to believe is that change for the better flows from two things: willingness to forgo one's ego, and collective political action towards curbing our wasteful modern lifestyle.