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Comment by Mikeb85 | Hacker News Reader

I think the people who have coerced her into being a propaganda piece are the ones who have stolen her childhood. It's not like the earth is on fire right now. In fact, living conditions are better than they ever have been. There's more food security worldwide than at any point in human history. Less war than ever. Less poverty than ever before.

Yes, climate change will cause issues. Then again, the last glacial maximum was fairly recent, only ~20k years ago. Climate change has happened and will happen. And the world won't end. Either the Earth's systems will adapt, or we'll find a technological solution. Or maybe everyone will simply move to Canada, Russia, Greenland and Antarctica.

I'm all for solutions, but at the end of the day, people will keep on living and I suggest this girl do the same (then again, she's probably being bankrolled by someone so maybe she is actually living her dreams).

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> It's not like the earth is on fire right now.

Sure. Fires in the arctic are normal things [1]. 100+ degree summers in Germany and France are totes the norm. [2].

Reality has a climate-crisis bias.

> In fact, living conditions are better than they ever have been.

This is a false dichotomy - that improved worldwide living conditions don't indicate a looming climate crisis. It could be argued that it all gets better until it starts falling apart rapidly.

[1] http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190822-why-is-the-arctic-o... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2019_European_heat_wave

Your first statement makes sense. I don't agree with the rest though.

>> Yes, climate change will cause issues. Then again, the last glacial maximum was fairly recent, only ~20k years ago. Climate change has happened and will happen. And the world won't end. Either the Earth's systems will adapt, or we'll find a technological solution. Or maybe everyone will simply move to Canada, Russia, Greenland and Antarctica

There is a limit to the rate at which the ecological systems can cope up with the damage we are doing. We have no right to go on abusing the Earth's systems just because humans can save themselves using technology.

You argue that climate change is "normal". However, the rate at which it is happening is the problem. And moving the entire population "to Canada, Russia, Greenland and Antarctica" doesn't seem desirable. So we need to fight climate change to minimize it.

Mostly likely scenario: all-out war for resource or land.

> Or maybe everyone will simply move to Canada, Russia, Greenland and Antarctica.

So, which country is going to invade Canada to force them to allow in all these migrants? Or do you think they'll just do it willingly when people were screaming about 10,000 Syrian refugees? At the rate that global warming is progressing, there's no time for this kind of massive re-settlement without equally massive geopolitical upheaval.

> Either the Earth's systems will adapt...

I mean - duh - of course they will. The danger is not that global warming wipes out life on earth. It's that it sends human civilization back to the Stone Age or wipes it out completely (if Stone Age technology doesn't allow for survival). The idea that there's a technological solution assumes that we can manufacture and power such a thing without using even more fossils fuels to do so. I'm not convinced.

Nobody coerced her. She is autistic in a way that makes her unable to ignore the truth. Without the same filters of ignorance and denial that most of us have she is suffering more than most people.

I think we are all suffering somewhat trying to deal with this truth and work out how to find our place in the solution.

>Nobody coerced her. She is autistic in a way that makes her unable to ignore the truth.

does being autistic in that manner (your diagnosis, not mine) also give oneself free access to the worlds' media outlets and financial support to trot the globe at 16 years old, or could that be one of the so-called coercers'?

I'm absolutely against climate change, and on her side of the opinion, but to ignore the fact that she's being propped up as a media object is silly. Could you have had her impact at 16 without support from others? I bet not, unless you're really extraordinary.

>I think the people who have coerced her into being a propaganda piece are the ones who have stolen her childhood.

Do you have a list of names?

> Malena Ernman and actor Svante Thunberg ... her "fame-seeking", "stage-parents", particularly her "fading opera starlet mother" who performed internationally, were "pimp(ing) her out" without regard for Thunberg's alleged mental problems, which included Lowe's long list of disabilities, by which Greta and her sister were claimed to be handicapped. By so doing, Lowe wrote, they were subjecting her to "child abuse."[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Thunberg#Criticism_and_r...

Yea I've been aware of this for a while, and it's odd how no one brings this up. It's very clear she's from an extremely privileged background with ardent, political parents. The idea that "this is just a concerned child" is far from reality.

People are dying right now as a result of climate change.

Do you believe mass migration from whole world to Canada Russia Greenland and Antarctica would work out without war?

Well it's not going to happen in our lifetime (half those places are still covered in ice), and if it does happen, will do so gradually, and based on the world becoming more and more peaceful over the centuries I believe yes, it probably can happen without war.

A couple centuries ago there were wars all over Europe, Asia, Africa, in the US alone the Revolutionary war and Civil war, wars with the Spanish, natives, etc...

Yes, I think over the timeframe where global warming will actually force true mass migration (if we don't reverse it first), it'll probably be peaceful.

To paraphrase: "This is going to happen a long time from now, so it's not my problem and I'm sure humanity will have fundamentally changed by then."

This is outright utopianism. Look around you. The backlash to even modest immigration has become increasingly violent and reactionary (see: Brexit, Trump). Do you honestly think that at some point everyone will be OK with just opening their borders to billions of people? And how many do you think will die trying to make that journey?

200 years ago slavery was still rampant, war was everywhere, and the vast majority of people were serfs/peasants under the yoke of various tyrants/monarchs. We didn't have electricity, motorised vehicles, etc...

Given everything that's happened since, forgive me for being optimistic about our future.

Yeah I'm sure Canada will welcome a billion people moving from India without any issues.

India isn't going to be uninhabitable tomorrow. They're not even on the equator. It's doubtful it'll ever be uninhabitable and if it does happen, it won't be overnight nor within this century.

I'm not going to retire tomorrow, but I do have a retirement fund.

The news seems to disagree: https://www.clickorlando.com/news/international/are-parts-of...

A reactionary news piece on a local site called 'Click Orlando', who'd have thought?

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