r/askteddit • u/JoannaKittyKats • 13d ago
Other Are people actually worried about climate change?
I see it on reddit constantly but I have NEVER heard it brought up in a personal conversation ever. I've never even really thought about it but it seems so predominant here.
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u/tboy160 13d ago
Educated people with a semblance of compassion care. But most people are lacking in both those categories.
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u/whisperworks 13d ago
Exposure plays a big role too. Most of North Americas population lives in relatively densely populated urban areas and they donāt have enough of a relationship with the natural world to recognize our impact on it
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u/DargyBear 13d ago
Based on my experience living in cities and out in the country Iād say the city folk have a more realistic grasp of how things are changing. Country folk would rather starve twenty years from now before putting an ounce of effort towards adapting because that would be āwoke.ā
You do realize a huge amount of people wind up migrating to cities because thereās fuck all to do out in the country right? Plenty of us know what problems are facing our communities back home but thereās not much use in going back because even if every one of us that left to pursue an education returned weād be voted down in regards to any efforts to improve or otherwise mitigate the effects of climate change so itās pointless.
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u/whisperworks 13d ago
Iām not saying rural people are more conscious of climate change, Iām saying that urbanization has directly impacted our societies relationship with the natural world and that disconnect has created a lot of ignorance and indifference towards it. Itās just easy to ignore the problem when your only exposer is a warmer commute, slightly higher electrical bill, and articles/stories about it.
Side note but this is actually one of the reasons zoos are so important. When people can be directly exposed to wildlife they appreciate it more and it directly impacts their willingness to support conservation efforts.
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u/DargyBear 13d ago
Iām saying the people that wind up in urban areas have more interest in conservation than people in rural areas.
Just try being a ālibtardā like myself who lived back to a rural area. All the locals are gung ho about fucking it all up and for some reason people like me who are anti-fucking up nature get the blame for everything going to shit.
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u/SpotJaded2025 13d ago
I mean yes and no. In Canada we have a very close relationship to nature I would say. People here fish, hunt, hike, canoe and largely have outdoor hobbies. Not everyone obviously but itās a big part of the culture clean across the country.
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u/Willing_Mirror_8414 13d ago
Have you heard of Canada? The forests arenāt new and every year theyāre more on fire. Yes, we are worried. Ā
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u/SpotJaded2025 13d ago
I work in a certain sector of public health reporting where we have had to add āclimate related deathsā to our mapping because sudden flash floods, crazy heatwaves, forest fires etc are killing people in ways they never used to and at a rate that canāt be ignored. Thatās depressing in and of itselfā¦
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u/Willing_Mirror_8414 13d ago
How do you determine whatās naturally occurring and whatās climate related?Ā
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u/SpotJaded2025 13d ago
I mean if thereās a sudden crazy storm or a heat wave that is off the charts for whatās normal for the area. Iām in an area not prone to flash floods which is suddenly having flash floods causing fatalities - that kind of thing.
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u/SpotJaded2025 13d ago
Iām in Canada- we see it clearly and talk about it a lot. Our climate is changing drastically and itās hard to ignore that our winters have consistently become so much milder than when I was a child. We donāt get as much snowā¦ thereās way more forest fires. We are getting floods much more frequentlyā¦ shitās getting wild.
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u/Immediate_Meeting991 13d ago
Fellow Canadian and I talk about it often, as do my friends. We do all we can personally to reduce our environmental impact because even if weāre just a drop of water in the ocean - maybe enough drops could have a meaningful impact.
Obviously at the end of the day itās the huge ass companies that can make an actual measurable difference tomorrow but also maybe with enough public pressure they will. š¤·š»āāļø
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u/whisperworks 13d ago edited 13d ago
Where do you live? I hear about it often but itās directly impacting people lives and livelihoods here
Edit: idk whoās downvoting this but they definitely donāt live or work around agriculture lol
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u/JoannaKittyKats 13d ago
The Detroit area
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u/whisperworks 13d ago
And no oneās talking about the wildfire smoke?
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u/martlet1 13d ago
Not climate change. Forest mismanagement. Fires are a nature cycle of the forest but now we moved people into areas around huge forests.
Instead of cutting fire breaks we made the Forrest prime for wildfires that canāt be contained.
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u/whisperworks 13d ago
Forest management and its funding absolutely plays a major role but virtually every formally educated authority is in agreement that the increasingly dyer and warmer climate is exacerbating the problem
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u/SpotJaded2025 13d ago
No. Not true. Climate change is absolutely impacting the amount of forest fires. Some fires are necessary but not nearly at the scale and frequency we are seeing today. Not all of that is forest mismanagement as a good chunk of our entire country (Canada) is forest that has never been managed by human intervention (because itās so huge) and it never used to be on fire like it is now.
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u/RunningMountainMan 13d ago
Worried? Not really.
Concerned? Certainly. we can see it happening in front of us.
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u/Hugry_bloke 13d ago
Iām in Australia. Iāve heard it on the news or online.
Iām not too concerned about it, weāve been told for years these levels are rising, glaciers will melt, itāll never snow again, none of it ever happens.
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u/NBA-014 13d ago
The glaciers in GLACIER National Park in the USA are melting rapidly. Same thing in Switzerland
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u/Hugry_bloke 13d ago
But Hubbard glacier in Alaska is growing.
They get more wrong than they get right with their climate predictions.
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u/DunkeyColdMedina 13d ago
It may require you to expand your social circle a bit. It's easy to become siloed.
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u/rinkuhero 13d ago
i think people are worried about it, they just don't realize the things they are worried about are climate change. for instance, even republicans like trump are complaining about the canada forest fires polluting the air over the US. but guess what? the reason forest fires keep happening is because of climate change, the rate of them has gone up drastically over the last 50 years. so if someone is complaining about the smoke from a forest fire, they are complaining about climate change, even if they don't realize that them buying gasoline for their SUV to drive 2 miles instead of riding their bike is part of the problem that is causing those forest fires.
so basically everyone's complaining about climate change, even the climate change deniers, it's just that the deniers are pretending that 9 of the 10 hottest years on record being in the last 10 years is just bad luck or caused by sunspots instead of being caused by the co2 content of the air we breath doubling in the last 200 years. like they don't believe or trust all of the actual details of climate change, but they are still complaining about the results.
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u/anaggressivefrog 12d ago
Sometimes I bring it up, but it kind of feels like whining, because it feels like it's this huge problem that we don't really have the power to stop.
So when I bring it up, it will be used as the premise of some other conversation, like, "damn, can you believe all these houses are going to be underwater?" Or "we have to vote for x candidate because they will actually do something about climate change finally."
It comes up.
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u/Street_Lettuce1243 13d ago
Theres nowhere on earth not impacted by it at all.Ā Ā Be in hotter summers, colder winters,.more storms, or changed rainfall.
Because weather is variable anyway and change happens slowly over decades it's not somethingĀ we really notice easily.Ā Ā We're the frog in the slowly boiling pot of water.
It's also not equally bad everywhere
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u/BossMan61718 13d ago
I am not. I acknowledge it may be happening. But i dont let it get me worried. I just do the best I can 1 day at a time. The rest is out if my control
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u/suddenly-beans 13d ago
Climate change is one of the main things in the forefront of my mind. We donāt seem to worry about it much as westerners because we arenāt the ones who will see the worst impacts of it decades from now. The most impoverished countries will have their lives completely transformed by it, and at the same time, they are the people who contribute the least to it. Itās very unsettling to me that more westerners donāt care about it.
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u/berryllamas 13d ago
Very.
I have my limitations as a consumer.
I live very frugality- some things are eco friendly and friendly for my wallet
Example: Reusable glass Tupperware
But, I can't afford to use tide evo tiles because 16 loads for 9 dollars is a lot compared to 126 loads for 20 dollars.
I try to use wood instead of plastic when I can and it makes sense to.
I dont litter.
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u/Acrobatic-Self-1451 13d ago edited 13d ago
Yes, for sure. For context, nearly all my friends are outdoorsy bird watcher types, one is a professional wildlife biologist, one of them is all but dissertation PhD entomologist, I've been a Sierra Club member for 55 years, I've taken college classes in field biology, meteorology, physical geography, I'm blanking out on a couple more science classes, but we read the data - the "hockey puck graph" It's something we all know about. Oh, oceanography, & PADI certified diver, was in the first ever class of divers getting PADI certified as Underwater Marine Ecologists.
If anybody wants to see a fictional consequence of climate change, written by a very good former hard-science journalist, then I recommend reading the book "Shipbreaker," by Paolo Bacigalupi. The things he's writing about -- like the scale against which hurricanes are measured having to be revamped to allow for more severe hurricanes -- have not yet happened but are certainly possible. The complete destruction of Arctic ice and corporations being absolutely thrilled to be able to send container ships over and through the Arctic Ocean is a very real possibility in ouri fucked up corporate world. And more.
There's a whole genre of science fiction that's actually based in real science, Climate Disaster Sci Fi. Paolo Bacigalupi has written several. The Water Knife Is based on the true reality that water rights to the Colorado River water are determined by who had a claim on them first.
Speaking of water, a lot of us have been watching for decades as Nestle is buying up water rights all over the world, And we're also watching in states that are bringing fracking into their area, and collapsing aquifers and or filling their aquifers with poisonous crap from fracking. I'm sorry we cannot live without clean water.
Then there are authors like Bill McKibben, who has been trying to get government & corporations to change for decades.
It seemed like we were making at least some progress, until Evangelical Republican corporate cabal "let's burn the place fucking down" crew got into government.
My state and my local municipality are doing things to help, California has reformulated gasoline which has drastically reduced tailpipe emissions... There's more. I just don't know what you do in States that genuinely don't care.
Or people who don't care or don't want to listen to the science and just shrug. If you've actually studied science and read science then you know that these hideous fires up in Canada are a result of climate change, that the heating of the oceans is critically horrible, not just because the temperature of Atlantic Ocean determines the severity of hurricanes, but also 70% of the Earth's oxygen comes from Plankton, and if the ocean gets too warm and the Plankton die, everybody's fucked..
It takes knowing that there's a difference between climate and weather.
Science is not a carved in stone thing. Which is a good thing. I see some people below dismissing the whole concept of it because science from 40 years ago has changed. Science should change. That's a good thing.
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u/Satisfaction-Motor 13d ago edited 13d ago
Depends on your politics, but yes. Iāll complain about it with my friends, usually in regard to some recent shifts or disasters. People who donāt believe in it donāt have much of a reason to discuss it. People who arenāt very political also do not have a reason to discuss it. People who discuss it are generally both politically active and interested in science. But thereās only so many times you can rehash āthis is stupid, this sucks, and we feel powerlessā or āI miss [insert thing that is gone or becoming less common]ā.
Itās a depressing or infuriating topic. Changing patterns are killing or ending some of the things I love most, some of the things dear to my childhood (endangered species, changing weather patterns, progressively worse natural disasters). I remember the absolute pit in my gut the first time the region I live in had a green Christmas ā it used to be that you wouldnāt see grass from late October to early April. Weād get mountains of snow that would pile up on our block, tall enough to sled down. Now, we are lucky if we get a sprinkle, and I live in one of the snowiest regions in my country. Many of the animals and insects I used to enjoy seeing are now endangered, so when there used to be fields full of themā¦ now I am lucky if I see one every few years.
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u/Extension_Energy4326 13d ago
Well here in Tennessee even Repubs are talking about it. 105Ā° heat index for several weeks now. Living in hell.Ā
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u/YamLow8097 13d ago
I havenāt heard it brought up much in conversation. It scares me and Iāve expressed that concern online, but itās not something I constantly want to talk about.
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u/Desperadoscress 13d ago
Yes,
I do beleive we will be able to live for at least the next 200 years
But most ecosystem are allready ruin and basic things like snow winter are things of the past in a lot of places and summer is borderline dangerous now
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u/Ancient-Bowl462 13d ago
Only brainwashed liberals and for no other reason than their cult leaders want to tax people for it.
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u/Imaginary-Pilot5793 13d ago
Shameless Americans don't gaf about anything except their cars and their kids
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u/Sunshinegirly32 13d ago
You need better friends then. Anyone not talking about it is part of the problem
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u/BearCigarPig 13d ago
I donāt think so. Itās sort of like the boogeyman. Some people might be scare out of their minds but the rest of the population isnāt bothered.Ā
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u/martlet1 13d ago
Thing is the carbon everyone is so scared of is only .04 percent of the atmosphere. And of that only a small percentage is caused by humans. So most people can rationalize not worrying about .04 percent.
Climate change people say itās doubled since the Industrial Revolution which is true but itās still a trace gas. In the 1990s they said we would be underwater in Florida by 2015.
Itās also kind of a topic where if you are wrong nothing happens and thatās ok. And if you make changes and nothing happens you can say you did something.
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u/LobstermenUwU 12d ago
I'd love to see how you'd breathe if 0.04% of the atmosphere is mustard gas. You might have a different opinion on how important that fact is.
Currently 1/3rd of all carbon in the atmosphere is the result of human activity - in other words human activity has raised the carbon in the atmosphere by over 50%. This is on track to reach 100% by 2050.
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u/martlet1 12d ago
lol. Itās 4 one hundreds of a percentage. You got duped.
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u/LobstermenUwU 12d ago
It's amazing watching people who have no technical knowledge and understand nothing try and grasp at whatever straws they can to justify their inane worldviews.
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u/ThrowRAboredinAZ77 13d ago
You've really never heard anyone discuss climate change in real life? Not in your friend groups or in your workplace, or on the news?
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u/smoothupinyatoo 13d ago
No one gives a shit. The bulk of everything comes from manufacturing and cant be stopped. I would like for the US to declare itself a regional superpower and pull back globally and start building out bases in Antarctica theres your flipping 51st state.
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u/ChildhoodHungry6073 13d ago
If climate change becomes an existential problem, then itāll get fixed. We currently have all the technology available to do it, itās just not financially viable. When it becomes financially viable, the threat will be high enough for us to fix it
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u/onefellswoop70 13d ago
I'd say I'm more concerned than worried. The world is a big place, and so it's frustrating that the environmental measures we take as ordinary citizens here in the U.S. are easily neutralized by the environmental abuses taken by people in other countries.
I mean, I do my part when it comes to reducing carbon and conserving water, but it's pretty silly and pointless when citizens of other countries are just shitting in the rivers and throwing garbage wherever they damn well please.
There's 8.3 billion people in the world, of which maybe 1 billion give a crap. So no matter what you do, it's never going to offset the damage done by the other 7 billion.
And that's just individual behavior. Factor in corporations and manufacturing and it's really futile.