Can't we just finish stopping the C8/CFC/Pesticide/whatever before we try to stop everything all at once with some nebulous, all-inclusive climate change plan that mostly causes people to only focus on oil use?
Yet we have a few billion people on the earth. I think we can spare a few thinking about other problems.
I would argue PFAS isn't about damaging the environment either. It's about human health. Same goes for CFCs.
It is getting problematic that 'being green' these days can either be caring about the environment and biodiversity like green-peace. Or it can mean 'doing whatever is needed to stop climate change and keep harmful (to humans) chemicals out of the environment'.
Those are actually two very different thought processes with different people who support them. Sharing the term is not working out very well.
It is the biggest environmental threat facing civilisation, but if only the climate warriors would give up in the face of powerful vested interests and economic intertia, perhaps they'd have time to plant a few wildflowers? /s
Most of this comes down to figuring out what's harmful and regulating it. We can't outlaw "chemicals". And, of course, there's the whole cooperation in other jurisdictions problem, which affects the next point...
> some nebulous, all-inclusive climate change plan that mostly causes people to only focus on oil use?
Look, uh, the climate change thing is bad. Really bad. And avoiding burning stuff is really hard. We can live without PFAS and glyphosate if we decide we really should. Avoiding burning stuff for energy is really hard.
The chemical harms are complicated: there are some that are long-standing risks, but most of our concerns do not raise to the level of something that screws up climate, agriculture, etc, for centuries.
FWIW, this was understood quite a long time ago. Consider that the EPA "SuperFund"[1] program began in 1980. And it's not like that was the first time anybody understood that some chemicals have very harmful impacts "in the wild."
Because then the conversation will just be dominated on focusing on a smaller issue, with a similar impasse. Just because a bully gets outraged when somebody stands up to them is not a reason to stop standing up to them, and the same folks opposing environmental protection will fight just as hard on other issues.
/every s
I'm tired on hearing entitled little sh1ts like you that have lived incredibly pampered lives and don't have a clue of what is like to have to live without a refrigerator, hvac or modern medicine.
This is what Daniel Quinn calls "living in the hands of the gods". We are not really fit to do anything else. Humans have survived for hundreds of thousands of years living off what the land provides them in its natural course. Civilization will probably not make it much past ten thousand years, if that.
So tell me again which is the bigger nightmare: living and dying according to the whims of nature, being one small part in a society that adapts and harmonizes to nature; or the death of billions, and the extermination of considerable amounts of other life, all because we wanted to rule in place of the gods and never learned not to shit where we eat.
If you go by that logic we are only fit to live in tropical savannahs in Africa where modern humans originated.
What I find supremely arrogant, though, is any Westerner who, while living in comfort and safety amidst high technology, proposes that everyone in the world should just be content with not having the comforts they are currently using (including some, like vaccines and modern medicine, which arguably have vastly less negative effects than PFAS and burning fossil fuels).
Anyone actually serious about this philosophy should try as much as possible to make their lifestyles like what they want for everyone. It probably wouldn't convince everyone, but it would certainly earn them a lot more respect.