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Al Gore Is Still Sounding the Alarm About Climate Change
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2026
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Climate
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I was taught about global warming in the 90ies at school and have always been concerned about the environment and pollution. I'm from the generation that saw that Manbearpig episode, and even though I know South Park "makes fun of everyone", this one always seemed too much.
But I stopped giving a fuck during the pandemic when I realized that even a pandemic wouldn't change society.
We saw first hand how the environment could improve and benefit from making changes in our way of life, but most people wanted to go back to their commute and waste energy in traffic.
Even today, governments and public employers are still forcing their employees to go "back to the office" even if it's not needed for lots of jobs.
I care about the future of next generations, I have nephews and nieces, but apparently nobody gives a fuck because it would be too expensive and disruptive. We prefer cheap gas.
So I still maintain my lifestyle of not having a car and being careful when I can, but I was avoiding airplanes as they are the most polluting mode of transport, and I don't anymore.The majority apparently doesn't care and just wants cheap gas and cheap shit. They want to choke us while complaining everything is getting more expensive, amd won't change anything.
Every headline year after year is how we won't reach our climate "goals" and how we're passing thresholds one after the other.
So I don't give a fuck now. It's sad but I can see what people around me chose, and it's cheap gas and endless consumption.
Yeah im kinda where you're at. As humans we know better but 99% of us just act like animals anyway. Just eat and consume as much as possible and fight anyone who gets in our way. That's basically what it comes down to, everyone knows burning oil and sending the smoke into the air is a bad idea long term, they just don't care.
I'd argue that most people didn't want to go back to commuting at all but the owning class demanded it. The same people demand we build data centers now
Regulation and organizational optimization could make the difference, but the incentives are "make as much money as possible, everything else be dammed", not, "Work towards a better and more functional society by guiding our future with sustainable humanitarian practices"
Yeah I have to say I have been a doomer for awhile and honestly global warming was not even on my radar till the aughts. I mean environmentalism for awhile but not specifically the co2 problem. Feels that way anyway. What gets me is despite my doomerism I did not realize how bad it would be with the rich/powerful going nuts hoarding and pushing for more use of fossil fuels. Its like if we had done the best we could since the start of the millenium we were in for a rough ride and we consistantly stick pretty close to worse case.
When given the option the population chooses consume more every single time. When you ask voters if Climate change matters a super majority says it does but when they rank it alongside other issues its at the bottom of the list, with things that will pollute more higher in the list. Politicians are reading that signal correctly, consume the planet because all the caring is purely performative. When it comes to protests to try and change the situation most people find themselves wanting the disruption to end, and thus join the polluters side. They don't actually care and their own behaviour shows that they don't. Humanity doesn't have a future, we are going to shoot on through to the worst case scenario and extinction.
I'm glad to see you calling out that episode, as I was really confused by it when I was younger too. Al Gore wasn't in hysterics he was giving a boring power point presentation about a complicated topic. It just never sat right that they would make him out to be some kind of crackpot.
At least the creators went back and admitted they were wrong, by means of the same metaphor... albeit a bit late in the game for it to mean much.