If the Great Filter theory is correct, climate change will most likely be our Great Filter.
Our species is simply not equipped with the ability to deal with the problems it created. Many people can, but they’re not powerful to do anything, and there’s too many uneducated people for the masses to rise up about this problem.
We think so short term, it’s impossible for some people to think about the future and accept that we’ll need to change the way we live now so that we can keep living then. They’re hung up on Chernobyl because it was a big bang that killed lots of people at once and it was televised everywhere that has a society and TVs, but they are unable to see that in the long term coal and gas have killed and are still killing way more people than nuclear accidents, because it’s a process that’s continuous and kills people in indirect ways instead of a big blast.
This is the same problem/argument you have with the argument/perception of planes being unsafe.
In 2022 almost 43000 people died in “motor vehicle traffic crashes”. And yet many believe that Planes are much more dangerous to use than cars because hundreds of people die all at once in a Plane crash.
A Plane crash is automatically a sensation, something that doesn’t happen every day but a car accident happens every day but this isn’t reported as much because it is already a daily routine.
The same goes with the “Coal kills more than nuclear” argument which is even less likely to be grasped by the normal population.
I mean just look at the climate change denier who say “but it is snowing so climate change isn’t real” while at the same time complaining that each summer is so incredibly hot.
All of those things are so incredibly complex that the vast majority can’t understand and outright deny them because they read/heard somewhere that they actually can understand, that it is a hoax. I mean, I wouldn’t count myself to the people that understand climate change but I can understand that it will have a drastic impact on our lives if this goes on.
Apple and oranges. It’s unhealthy and unsafe to live near Chernobyl. It took nearly a decade for people to start moving back to Fukushima Prefecture after decontamination and subsides to lure people back.
The actual cost of a Nuclear disaster is incredibly costly.
It still requires mining, processing and it still produces waste, waste which has to sit at the site of the nuclear reactor or be transported across country to some other temporary site. To my knowledge there is still no permanent disposal site for nuclear waste in the United States.
I’m with you most of the way, but it’s also extremely unhealthy to live near a coal power plant. That’s why they keep building them in or next to neighborhoods where the residents are too poor to be able to effectively sue them for all the cancer and other nasty deaths.
I agree that we need to get away from coal and natural gas. I don’t think Nuclear is the answer though. You’re trading one set of major health and financial problems for another.
Agreed. At CURRENT technology levels, renewable energy is the most cost-effective, creates more and better jobs, can cover 100%+ of the world’s energy needs and is much more reliable and flexible than fossil fuel or nuclear to boot. All that on top of being the only kind that never runs out. Only thing missing is the political will to break with the fossil barons and their cousins the radioactive lordlings to make the transition.
I think it’s worse than that. We humans are inherently selfish and self-preserving.
People who live far away from any coal mines do not feel threatened by coal, because it will not impact them directly (besides fu**ing up the planet, of course, but that’s another issue humans have with big pictures and long term effect correlation to present small scale actions).
But most people can’t tell where a nuclear plant can be built, so it could be close enough to expose them to a risk of disaster?
Therefore: “Nuclear is more dangerous than coal (for my personal case)”
Holding up coal as a strawman argument in support of Nuclear power is a fallacy. Both are massively toxic in different ways. One does not legitimize the other.
Climate change isn’t really an existential threat. To be a filter it has to kill all humans and even the bleakest models don’t predict that.
Also for it to be a Great Filter it has to be something that ALL civilizations do to kill themselves. Seems unlikely that all civs wou ld even have analogs to gossil fuels in quantities sufficient to do this kind of damage. And the idea that zero of them actually course-correct when they notice it seems equally implausible
If the Great Filter theory is correct, climate change will most likely be our Great Filter.
Our species is simply not equipped with the ability to deal with the problems it created. Many people can, but they’re not powerful to do anything, and there’s too many uneducated people for the masses to rise up about this problem.
We think so short term, it’s impossible for some people to think about the future and accept that we’ll need to change the way we live now so that we can keep living then. They’re hung up on Chernobyl because it was a big bang that killed lots of people at once and it was televised everywhere that has a society and TVs, but they are unable to see that in the long term coal and gas have killed and are still killing way more people than nuclear accidents, because it’s a process that’s continuous and kills people in indirect ways instead of a big blast.
Coal has the same yearly death toll and chernobyl’s total death toll. 80,000.
This is the same problem/argument you have with the argument/perception of planes being unsafe.
In 2022 almost 43000 people died in “motor vehicle traffic crashes”. And yet many believe that Planes are much more dangerous to use than cars because hundreds of people die all at once in a Plane crash.
A Plane crash is automatically a sensation, something that doesn’t happen every day but a car accident happens every day but this isn’t reported as much because it is already a daily routine.
The same goes with the “Coal kills more than nuclear” argument which is even less likely to be grasped by the normal population.
I mean just look at the climate change denier who say “but it is snowing so climate change isn’t real” while at the same time complaining that each summer is so incredibly hot.
All of those things are so incredibly complex that the vast majority can’t understand and outright deny them because they read/heard somewhere that they actually can understand, that it is a hoax. I mean, I wouldn’t count myself to the people that understand climate change but I can understand that it will have a drastic impact on our lives if this goes on.
Apple and oranges. It’s unhealthy and unsafe to live near Chernobyl. It took nearly a decade for people to start moving back to Fukushima Prefecture after decontamination and subsides to lure people back.
The actual cost of a Nuclear disaster is incredibly costly.
It still requires mining, processing and it still produces waste, waste which has to sit at the site of the nuclear reactor or be transported across country to some other temporary site. To my knowledge there is still no permanent disposal site for nuclear waste in the United States.
I’m with you most of the way, but it’s also extremely unhealthy to live near a coal power plant. That’s why they keep building them in or next to neighborhoods where the residents are too poor to be able to effectively sue them for all the cancer and other nasty deaths.
I agree that we need to get away from coal and natural gas. I don’t think Nuclear is the answer though. You’re trading one set of major health and financial problems for another.
Agreed. At CURRENT technology levels, renewable energy is the most cost-effective, creates more and better jobs, can cover 100%+ of the world’s energy needs and is much more reliable and flexible than fossil fuel or nuclear to boot. All that on top of being the only kind that never runs out. Only thing missing is the political will to break with the fossil barons and their cousins the radioactive lordlings to make the transition.
I think it’s worse than that. We humans are inherently selfish and self-preserving.
People who live far away from any coal mines do not feel threatened by coal, because it will not impact them directly (besides fu**ing up the planet, of course, but that’s another issue humans have with big pictures and long term effect correlation to present small scale actions).
But most people can’t tell where a nuclear plant can be built, so it could be close enough to expose them to a risk of disaster?
Therefore: “Nuclear is more dangerous than coal (for my personal case)”
Holding up coal as a strawman argument in support of Nuclear power is a fallacy. Both are massively toxic in different ways. One does not legitimize the other.
I still don’t think it will be our great filter. It will be a filter. But not the end all/be all.
Climate change isn’t really an existential threat. To be a filter it has to kill all humans and even the bleakest models don’t predict that.
Also for it to be a Great Filter it has to be something that ALL civilizations do to kill themselves. Seems unlikely that all civs wou ld even have analogs to gossil fuels in quantities sufficient to do this kind of damage. And the idea that zero of them actually course-correct when they notice it seems equally implausible