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Comment by poulpy123 | Hacker News Reader

> One possible reason, suggested by Taylor Lorenz, is that between climate change, inequality, precarity, and Covid, the world is just a much worse place than it was in 2011. But as I pointed out in a post last week, most of these things (except for Covid, obviously) were looking worse a decade ago:

Sorry but no. I was there ten years ago and climate change was much less clear for the average person than now.

In my country the inequalities and precarity were also less worse (I don't know for the US though)

I'm not downplaying social media and phones, they have a big responsability too

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When I watched Inconvenient Truth almost 20 years ago, I left with the impression that Florida would be under water by now unless we made massive corrections in path. I’m now under the impression that while much of the science we knew back then still holds, some of it was exaggerated, and the lived effects hasn’t been as drastic as we were being told. Perhaps the average person, whomever you’re thinking of, is more aware, but personally I’ve seen a transition from sky is falling hysteria (underwater Florida) to real pragmatism and nuance in our predictions and models. Seems like the author got it right.

> some of it was exaggerated, and the lived effects hasn’t been as drastic as we were being told

Or we're still in the "insertion sort is faster than quicksort" part of the graph.

> I left with the impression that Florida would be under water by now unless we made massive corrections in path.

Yes, and those were absolutely lies then. And they knew it. No one but the people selling a tax plan seriously said that stuff.

It’s silly in retrospect.

In the US, inequality has been increasing pretty steadily since the 1970s, with periodic brief dips. 10 years ago, we thought that we could hold global warming to 1.5°C over the course of the century. Of course, we've blown past that already, and if everyone cooperated, which we won't, we could probably hold it to 3°C now. Current median predictions are worse than the "worst case, won't happen" predictions of 10 years ago. Covid and other zoonotic diseases are deeply intertwingled with climate change; Covid is not the last pandemic we're going to see in our lifetimes.

When I was a kid in the 80s, we were living under the shadow of nuclear annihilation. That threat seemed to recede, but really, we just forgot about it. Now it's worse than it was then, because it seems that the social mechanisms we had for preventing it during the Cold War no longer exist.

It's true that we probably aren't going to hit the 1.5 C goal but so far we are only at 1.2 C total, so we haven't actually "blown past" it.

Actually the worst case predictions of the past have proven to be wildly pessimistic. I think we're even doing better than the average case predictions, primarily because of less use of coal.

And COVID has nothing to do with climate change, that's just silly (especially with the recent evidence in favor of lab leak).

If it’s climate change then wouldn’t we see teens raised in families who don’t believe in it having happier lives and less suicidal tendencies.

I mean we were taught extensively about climate change 30 years ago when I was in school, I don’t really thing the urgency has changed that much, if anything it feels less doomsday than some of the things we were told in school back then. Don’t recall anyone being that dramatic about it either beyond making sure to recycle.

Climate change has become mundane. Eventually the shock wears off and resignation sets in, especially because seemingly nobody is doing anything about it that is sufficient to move the needle. Or even stop it from going the wrong direction fast.

May I recommend http://readdesert.org/

I imagine its hard to internalize that sort of denial when you grow up with everyone talking about the weather changing noticeably over the last decade or two

There's also the possibility that even things that are better or at least not-worse, are not moving in the right direction anymore.

For decades, almost everybody agreed that civil rights, human rights, democracy, equality and all that sort of thing, were good things, and it at least seemed like the world was slowly but steadily moving towards more of that. These last couple of years, it seems to have become appallingly popular to openly support and admire dictators, argue for authoritarianism, against democracy, etc. Especially after the fall of the USSR, there was a widespread belief that the threat of nuclear armageddon was over, those former communist countries would become democratic and everything would be better.

Perhaps these new obsessive and reactionary tendencies are also encouraged by all the phone time?

Was a teen in the seventies. I got to see cars not driving due to the energy crisis, read of the Club of Rome predictions, saw the anti-nuclear energy movement starting and lived in the reality of the Cold war which among other things implied the draft (in the US with a chance to travel Vietnam). And did I mention the baby boomers crowding universities pushing them to a point where late comers struggled to get in. Happy times.

Similar. Teen(ish) in the 80s. Only during my early 30s did I learn that during that era, the nuke to end us all could very well drop, and it had one of the worst economic crises ever.

Had no idea during it all, didn't notice. Nor do I think I'd worry much about it had I known.

What that tells me is that modern teens over over-informed, it is non-stop, and the messaging is extremely negative.

When I was 8 years old in the 90s I was already worried about climate change. But I did read a lot more than most kids so I probably was kind of weird.

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