Didn’t Biden also make a big deal around 2016 to cure cancer? I view this climate change PR stunt about the same as I viewed that one back then.
The simple truth is that humans won’t change en masse. People are still denying climate change even exists, and those that are now finally admitting something is off just blame it on natural planetary cycles vs being caused by humans.
I hate to sound pessimistic, but I think we’re just going to end up adapting to the new norms rather than actually changing habits. People will stop mass consuming meat (meat farms are a huge contributor to greenhouse gasses), but not because they want to, they’ll just be forced to adapt to the fact there aren’t any resources left to actually raise cows at industrial scale anymore. People will stop driving ICEs, but only because there’ll be fuel shortages. People will stop buying shit from industries that pollute the most, but only because of economical depressions caused by global ecological collapse and social unrest. Etc, etc.
Edit: just to clarify, I am not saying we should give up. I would love to see governments around the world force much more aggressive, extreme measures to combat climate change. I just have doubts that they’ll go far enough.
Biden wasn’t running for election in 2016, so I don’t expect that he made any campaign promises that year. He has over time put money into a “moonshot goal” of addressing cancer. In part due to this, US cancer death rates have been falling for decades:
Government paid for research into causes and treatments
Government efforts to discourage smoking (a major cause)
Government efforts to encourage vaccination against HPV (a major cause of cervical cancer)
Government restrictions on pollution (a cause of a variety of forms of cancer)
Government improving access to health care so people can get screening and treatment
Right, his 2016 promise had nothing to do with a campaign. It was due to one of his kids dying of cancer and it understandably deeply effected him, spurring his crusade.
I’m not saying it doesn’t help, but we’re still a long ways from curing cancer, despite the great progress we’ve made in reducing deaths. And to me, promising to end climate change is also one of those things that’s so vastly complicated and far outside of one country’s control, especially since so much of the problem is caused by private industry which is fueled by consumer demand.
I will be extremely happy to be proven wrong. And I should emphasize that my previous comment is not me saying we shouldn’t do anything. I’m just worried that these efforts aren’t going to go far enough.
Here’s the deal… Nobody thinks he’s going to fix climate change, or that it’s possible that could even be accomplished by one administration in one term. When someone gives a speech to rile up their base and get voters emotionally invested, they don’t say things like, “We’re going to take steps to slow climate change”, because that’s boring. They go out there and make big statements like, “we’re going to take climate change, and kick its ass” because that’s what people want to hear and that’s what’s going to help get votes. As voters we then hope that steps are taken towards accomplishing that goal, knowing that climate change is going to get cured over night.
IIRC, curing cancer was (one of?) Obama’s moonshot goal.
And to be fair, landing on the moon is about seven orders of magnitude easier than “curing cancer”, at least imo. Cancer is a constellation of different mutations in different tissues such that even something like “lung cancer” is really an umbrella term for a multitude of disease causes, the same way that the “common cold” is an umbrella term for all kinds of different viral infections. That means that the things you need to do to silver bullet each different cancer are likely different, which means Obama was pushing for several hundred penicillin-like eureka level discoveries in his administration. That’s completely zonko-bananas.
Tackling climate change, by comparison, is a much easier, much more realistic and attainable goal. We know the cause of climate change (too much GHG), we know how to fix it (less GHG), AND we know what to do to get there (reduce and remove GHG emissions).
I’m no expert or anything, but curing cancer is getting pretty close, from what I’ve heard. The mRNA vaccine research is having great impacts on being able to fight cancerous cells.
We may be closer than we realize to living in a cancer-free world.
That’s great news! I’ve heard a few snippets about the mRNA vaccine, but it all sounded like early research, not something to lend a lot of credibility to yet. Has there been some recent updates on that?
Significant climate change played a big part in ending hereditary monarchies during the Little Ice Age. Maybe climate change will have similar positive benefits.
Didn’t Biden also make a big deal around 2016 to cure cancer? I view this climate change PR stunt about the same as I viewed that one back then.
The simple truth is that humans won’t change en masse. People are still denying climate change even exists, and those that are now finally admitting something is off just blame it on natural planetary cycles vs being caused by humans.
I hate to sound pessimistic, but I think we’re just going to end up adapting to the new norms rather than actually changing habits. People will stop mass consuming meat (meat farms are a huge contributor to greenhouse gasses), but not because they want to, they’ll just be forced to adapt to the fact there aren’t any resources left to actually raise cows at industrial scale anymore. People will stop driving ICEs, but only because there’ll be fuel shortages. People will stop buying shit from industries that pollute the most, but only because of economical depressions caused by global ecological collapse and social unrest. Etc, etc.
Edit: just to clarify, I am not saying we should give up. I would love to see governments around the world force much more aggressive, extreme measures to combat climate change. I just have doubts that they’ll go far enough.
Biden wasn’t running for election in 2016, so I don’t expect that he made any campaign promises that year. He has over time put money into a “moonshot goal” of addressing cancer. In part due to this, US cancer death rates have been falling for decades:
Right, his 2016 promise had nothing to do with a campaign. It was due to one of his kids dying of cancer and it understandably deeply effected him, spurring his crusade.
I’m not saying it doesn’t help, but we’re still a long ways from curing cancer, despite the great progress we’ve made in reducing deaths. And to me, promising to end climate change is also one of those things that’s so vastly complicated and far outside of one country’s control, especially since so much of the problem is caused by private industry which is fueled by consumer demand.
I will be extremely happy to be proven wrong. And I should emphasize that my previous comment is not me saying we shouldn’t do anything. I’m just worried that these efforts aren’t going to go far enough.
Here’s the deal… Nobody thinks he’s going to fix climate change, or that it’s possible that could even be accomplished by one administration in one term. When someone gives a speech to rile up their base and get voters emotionally invested, they don’t say things like, “We’re going to take steps to slow climate change”, because that’s boring. They go out there and make big statements like, “we’re going to take climate change, and kick its ass” because that’s what people want to hear and that’s what’s going to help get votes. As voters we then hope that steps are taken towards accomplishing that goal, knowing that climate change is going to get cured over night.
Would have a lot more substance if we didn’t keep hearing the great news about how we’ve extracted record amounts of oil during his administration.
IIRC, curing cancer was (one of?) Obama’s moonshot goal.
And to be fair, landing on the moon is about seven orders of magnitude easier than “curing cancer”, at least imo. Cancer is a constellation of different mutations in different tissues such that even something like “lung cancer” is really an umbrella term for a multitude of disease causes, the same way that the “common cold” is an umbrella term for all kinds of different viral infections. That means that the things you need to do to silver bullet each different cancer are likely different, which means Obama was pushing for several hundred penicillin-like eureka level discoveries in his administration. That’s completely zonko-bananas.
Tackling climate change, by comparison, is a much easier, much more realistic and attainable goal. We know the cause of climate change (too much GHG), we know how to fix it (less GHG), AND we know what to do to get there (reduce and remove GHG emissions).
I’m no expert or anything, but curing cancer is getting pretty close, from what I’ve heard. The mRNA vaccine research is having great impacts on being able to fight cancerous cells.
We may be closer than we realize to living in a cancer-free world.
That’s great news! I’ve heard a few snippets about the mRNA vaccine, but it all sounded like early research, not something to lend a lot of credibility to yet. Has there been some recent updates on that?
Significant climate change played a big part in ending hereditary monarchies during the Little Ice Age. Maybe climate change will have similar positive benefits.