Wendell Berry and Stewart Brand
I think I would like to talk more about the topic in general and elaborate on what I said during the Zoom. I think time is probably the most important measurement there is in our life. I honestly cannot imagine a time without it, clocks literally dictate our life. How would we know when our Zoom class starts or when the next due date is? They are visualizing movement and progression. Every second a baby is born, and a person dies somewhere. The question how to urge people to do more about climate change and to make it a priority is so hard because for the most people it is nothing, they are confronted every day. Either they do not connect happenings like the wildfires in California with that or they do not see Glaciers melt and Arctic Ice vanishing. I agree, part of it is, because even the leader of the country denied the correlation between the fires and Climate Change, but what else could be the problem? Are we really that self-centered or just oblivious? Do we just not care? I think we have talked about this a lot this semester and there is probably no real solution. I guess people that are already interests/involved/believers will try their best to help and educate others, while the others will just go through life hoping it will not get as bad as everyone says.
In a world that is so reliant on technology, we need to use that to our advantage and reach the people on the kind of media that they use the most. Newspaper, Social Media, Ads, magazines and TV. What is better than having an environmental Ad playing at halftime on Sunday Afternoon Football?
Lastly and most importantly, we need the effort of the government. We have the United Nations, we have the NATO, we have almost every country in the world connected to each other. How can we not make valid points to convince every leader of the importance of this? Pressure them into a better and more responsible way of leading their countries. If only just a few leading CO2 emission countries would get it together, we could have a great impact on everyone.
I think the time has passed in which we can ignore everyone and just be out for ourselves. There will never be a way to convince everyone and to make everyone care about others as much about themselves, which is why I believe that authorities are the last and only thing that is missing right now to make us reach goals. Laws, Regulations paired with Education might just be the only way we can turn this around.
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I agree, Carolin. Time is the most important measure here. I think a lot of people here are more focused on time when it comes to very short-term deadlines. But there seems to be some mental block for issues that extend beyond a day, week, or year. I think for a lot of people it's just too easy to push off any work to "tomorrow."
ReplyDeleteI wonder sometimes if we talk about climate change too generally to the point where it sounds kind of elusive to people. Maybe we need to try a different approach, like focus on messaging the issues a little differently depending on the community (talk about how climate change has and will affect a community's local area and go more in depth on the specifics to that region). I don't know if that would ultimately make much of a difference, but if it feels more personal to people I think it may feel more urgent...I think when many people hear "melting ice caps," for example, they probably start tuning out from there because they don't immediately see the connection to their own community.
I do agree with you Carolin that society needs to change, but in keeping in reference to time as you mentioned any sort of political change of this scale takes a lot of time. For example, it took Nelson Mandela years to end apartheid in South Africa.
ReplyDeleteI agree that laws and regulations are what we need, the problem is that lobbyists and campaign contributions have too much influence in the government, and the people have too little influence. I think there needs to be a greater accountability to the people of politician’s finances. We elected them to represent us, we have a right to know where they're getting money from.
ReplyDelete"paired with Education"--That's the key. We have to reach a tipping point of numbers and perceived urgency, in educating the rising generation that will inherit responsibility for this anthropogenic crisis. Will that happen in sufficient time? Let us hope...
ReplyDeleteCommented on Tyler Brooks and Ed Craig
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