A generation’s fault =/= the fault of every individual in that generation
Correct. But climate change is specifically the fault only of this Grandma.
Correct. What many don’t know is that this Grandma used to be an Exxon Executive.
She also burnt our crops, poisoned our water supply and sent a plague unto our houses.
If she voted for the cowboy, she’s to blame.
No snowflake thinks they’re responsible for the avalanche
No but snowflakes are arguably more equal in their role and function than humans in society are. Powerless people exist, and it’s most people.
In democracies people have the option to vote for people who will regulate businesses. A business will only optimize for profit, if you want them to make environmentally friendly choices you must either make those choices mandatory or profitable. The way to do that is through politics, and people who voted for the avalanche share the blame for it.
But snowflakes literally aren’t responsible for an avalanache. A cow in a stampede has no choice but to follow the herd, it’s the whoever or whatever started the stampede/avalanche that’s responsible.
Except for cows at the edge and back, who could get out.
Which makes a new edge of the herd, which lets more cows out, and all of a sudden the stampede is just one angry bull.
No metaphor is perfect, but I think this one demonstrates rather handily that much of the “stampede” is social pressure that would dissipate rapidly if the people who could leave it did.
I wish people would see it that way. But on Lemmy when it comes to climate change the majority seems to be in favour of not doing anything personally, because it wouldn’t have lot of an impact.
Making jokes about how not using plastic straws is a scam, a vegan diet too hard for the effect or how the cars of individuals don’t matter in the greater scheme…
That’s exactly like people in past generations thought as well.
If snowflakes aren’t responsible for an avalanche then what is?
The thing that causes an avalanche, the loud noise or whatever it was.
You could try and blame the snowflake for being there, but even if that was a valid criticism it would only give them limited responsibility for the avalanche happening. Blaming the snowflake is like blaming tinder for the fire, when without the spark no fire would have happened.
An avalanche cannot occur without an outside force acting upon it?
Yes, something needs to trigger it.
Thinking a bit more though, I was only thinking of a snowflake in the avalanche, rather than a snowflake falling on the top causing everything to fall down - like messing up the last card in a house of cards. If that’s what they meant then it makes a little more sense, but still doesn’t really hold true. 90% of all avalanche disasters are triggered by humans.
An avalanche requires that certain types of snowflake form a “weak layer” in the snow. Some snowflakes are kind of smooth on the sides, these don’t have the jagged edges that hook onto other snowflakes. When a force is applied, this weak layer breaks and the snow on top of the layer slides down the slope. A single snowflake will not apply enough force to break the weak layer - the amount of force it applies would be negligible even compared to things like the wind. Something else will trigger the avalanche before a snowflake ever could.
The snowflake provides the conditions for an avalanche, but doesn’t apply the force that triggers it.
That’s because they literally aren’t.
Except it literally is the fault of like 30 people. We can directly pinpoint the cause of the problem onto the actions of specific individuals.
Everyone else could have voted for regulation to prevent them from doing those things. You can’t just expect corporations to not do evil if you allow them to. They’re heavily incentivized by the system to be as evil as possible. The solution is to limit the amount of evil they’re allowed to do.
All this rhetoric does is make people feel good about not doing anything, though. If your government is ruining the world and you blithely sit by and even actively vote for that very same government, you are absolutely to blame.
We all have a moral obligation to fight for what’s right, obviously not everyone can be an armed revolutionary but almost everyone can organize and spread knowledge.
Your correct. The USA is a democratic country and climate change was known about for a while now. So it’s probably more accurate to say that most of the individuals in that generation. Had a responsibility to address it and they didn’t.
Now, I sympathize. A lot of the corporate pressure to do nothing about it back then is still here today. But it doesn’t change the fact that nothing was done.
I am not placing morale judgement on anyone here. Life is hard and complicated and when you have big business working against you it is doubly so. But that doesn’t change the fact that they messed up and it’s causing a lot of damage.
Let’s learn from their mistakes so we don’t mess up in the same way.
I mean, it’s reasonable to say they could have done something and failed to do so. However, when you start to dig into what they could have done, it’s hard to think of anything particularly effective and easy to see why they could have been convinced into inaction. So you could say they made a mistake, but were not fully at fault. The ones at fault are the ones who have been convincing them.
I like to say that responsibility isn’t neatly divided up into percentages. Someone can be fully 100% responsible for something that happened, but other people can have some minor responsibility also. There’s no threshold between being responsible or not, either, it’s a sliding scale. When assigning responsibility and blame it’s important to remember these things.
it’s hard to think of anything particularly effective
A communist revolution. And don’t give me that “they didn’t know” crap, there were communists fighting the good fight back then.
Hey man, I love communism as much as any far left lemmy user, but can you explain how a communist revolution would have impacted climate change?
The primary motive to pollute was the profit motive of fossil fuel companies, and automotive manufacturers. Today, the biggest argument against closing mines is jobs, and the biggest argument for cars is getting to work. A communist system has universal basic income. Better planned neighbourhoods such as the Soviet 15 minute cities would also reduce transport emissions, though the soviets were not communist. There should exist no such thing as mining or energy companies, and under communism, that’s the case.
Hmm. Under communism, even with UBI, people would still have jobs, or hobbies, or would go on road trips or vacations, so you’d still have people driving cars.
I agree that better, more walkable city planning and functional public transit is important for reversing climate change, but lots of people think that, not just communists. I don’t see what a communist revolution has to do with that - even your example is of Soviet cities, not communist cities.
And even if there are not energy companies under communism, there still need to be power plants, electricity would still need to be generated. What about communism would make those power plants be powered by renewables instead of coal?
Isn’t it obvious that a people who work to better society would do more altruistic work?
It’s really not the fault of any individual. Well okay yes it is, but it’s like 200 individuals at the very upper echelons of society.
Are we gonna ignore that literally everyone voted for Reagan in the 80s?
Except based Minnesota? Weird.
Wow. This looks like USSR, but worse
No more than we will never forget that Trump is the president that millenials voted for.
At least if we’re using ‘generational blame’ logic: good luck on explaining how you let trump in to the future generations.
“Trump lost the popular vote, kids. The Electoral College allows for small states to have oversized impacts on presidential elections.”
There you go.
So, are we going to do something about that? Did we just whoopsi 200 bad people in the upper echelons of society? I think some systemic analysis is needed.
Grandma must pay for her sins. We might not be able to save the world, but maybe we can avenge it.
I wish she would. But nooooo they are just gonna die while guzzling down her payments, for which I have to work 10 years longer for and will get less no matter what.
I AM SO SICK OF IT
Edit: I don’t want to avenge anything anymore. I am just so tired of this hopeless situation, where no one who could do something, does anything to prevent it.
Maybe avenging some stuff will make you feel less tired.
I wish. People are getting called ecoterrorist already, if they glue themselves to the street and hold up traffic a little. I would have to blow up the government or sth to really make a point. Thats nothing I can do.
Now in cinemas: The Avengers vs Climate Grandma
Rather ‘The Avengers vs Climate Activists’
The world is getting what it had coming. Fuck the earth!
Too many superhero movies for yall.
Hilarious, but in all seriousness let’s leave grandma alone.
She gets the “You will go to sleep or I will put you to sleep” retirement home.
Such a weird take. As if millennials and Gen Z/X would have behaved any different if we were born in grandma’s generation.
Yea but at least now we can blame it on boomers.
I wonder what things Gen Y through Alpha are doing which will negatively affect Gen Beta through Delta…
This is absolutely true. But goes to show it isn’t the individuals, the judgement based on actions taken.
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I remember when we used to have to squeeze our Halloween costumes over our snowsuits in Canada because it was too cold to go without. I don’t find it that cold anymore. And snow every December. I only ever saw one green Christmas as a kid in the 1980s.
I hate this timeline so much.
Every time there is snow we make damn sure to get our kids outside to enjoy it. I hate to say it out loud but at the rate we’re going I’m not at all certain we’ll still have snow here in a few years. And I’m in Wisconsin, we’re supposed to be part of the frozen north.
Every single year winter gets milder. It snows later and thaws earlier. I have to make sure my sump pump is ready to run year round. We used to ice fish around Thanksgiving. Now I barely get to go ice fishing at all unless I drive north a couple hours.
You say that but I currently know middle managers from the gen x and millennial generation expecting people to drive into work when they could be running their businesses from home and should be minimalizing the emissions. Grandma didn’t make them do that.
Taylor swift and her private jet are of the millennial timeline.
I don’t know a lot of grandmas with a private jet.
And grandma isn’t providing you all with the plastic bottle waste. She isn’t forcing Coca Cola down your throat. Which btw is still being enjoyed by millenials who still are keeping these giant assholes in business. Grandma didn’t make you do that.
Grandmas aren’t forcing you to drive a combustible engine car.
Grandmas aren’t calling up to make the oil companies dump into the sea.
Grandmas aren’t releasing c8 into all the water infecting everyone just so you can have some non stick floss.
These are current day decisions. They are STILL current day decisions of the current generation in power of decision to continue to use, take advantage of, build on top of or change.
so don’t shuffle off the blame off yourself and your own generation are doing to your grandma for what these fuck faces are continuing to be doing in the current generations running the show. They have their own free will and choice to fuck us all up with their selfish behaviour.
And who, pray tell, voted for the populist shitbags that ushered in the capitist coup that perpetuated fossil fuel and consumerist lifestyles at an accelerating rate and borrowed against their childrens’ and grandchildrens’ futures?
Carter tried to warn them, but it turns out boomers didn’t like being called out on their shit, so they replaced him with one corporate stooge after another.
Boomers aren’t entirely to blame, but they are far from blameless.
If you’re talking about Ronald Reagan, he won literally won or tied in every age group, except for the 18-21 block, which he lost by 1 percentage point. https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-1980
Friendly reminder that ageism is a ploy used by capitalists to distract from the only meaningful difference between groups: their class. Because the Boomers are gonna be dead pretty soon and posting memes blaming them for societal problems which existed before them and which will exist after the fact is going to do about as much to improve the material conditions of the world and the people in it as it does today. Which is to say: dick all.
The 18-21 year olds in 1980? The Baby Boomers who are 61-64 now?
Capitalism is to blame. Not individuals or generations…
Ok Boomer
First, it’s a meme. The context is the grandma is of the generation since the meme is a known thing. It’s not specifically calling out grandmas. That seems a bit lost on you.
Second, they did make the decisions we are currently in and fought to make it conventional knowledge. They allowed the mechanisms of balance within the government to go so far off the scale that coming back it so daunting I am not sure how it can get there.
And third, it’s a joke. Jokes have hints of truths and hints of fiction. They should provocative healthy discussions. It comes off as super aggressive at some meme. No one is attacking you personally by posting this.
If you are pissed at the situation, I understand. I’m pissed too.
Nestle and Shell “yeah Grandma”
So is your grandma a member of congress or equivalent for her country, a billionaire or a mega corporation?
She voted for the pro billionaire politicians and was a very good customer of those mega corporations.
Or maybe I posted this on me_irl because I feel like the grandma.
And what are you?
I guess those two persons symbolize the conflict between the young and old generations. As generation X, I would be in between. I do many things to save resources but I also know that I am still part of the problem. Every consumer is.
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Entered the comments looking to correct the narrative. Looks like that work is already done :)
I like Lemmy
Edit: blame the system, not the people bound by the system.
And who, apart from those who came before us created the system?
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Maybe for boomers generation we should bring back throwing the elderly off cliffs, then stop. It’ll make future generations wary of the tradition returning. 🤔
It’s 34° C here I want to fukin die
'Round here it hasn’t really ever gotten cold until the day of Halloween for as long as I’ve lived here. It’s always so wild, too. 80-90’s up until the 31st then bam low 50’s to mid 60’s, windy and rainy. Like instead of using a dimmer to gradually change seasons, it’s a binary switch from summer to winter.
it’s supposed to be 90°F next week 😭😭😭
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Where I am it’s 35 deg C. It’s second summer going on. Had to start using AC again in the night to be able to sleep.
A friend told me some trees are blooming in Milan
Where tf is that?
It’s cold in Canada too, well about 10 degrees. Not quite frost but definitely chilly. The dog needs his coat this week. Hello to you in Poland.
I really miss warm weather
You live in Poland, why do you even need a car?
This makes no sense.
Even if it’s not as cold, going from 120 for weeks to 80 suddenly makes me feel like I’m fucking freezing all the time.
