I doubt that even younger folks in developed countries will be affected as drastically as "livability" perhaps implies.

I get the feeling that many are confused and fear the literal destruction of our planet by accelerating warming.

The reality is that the underlying physics fundamentally work in the opposite way, with warming slowing down rather than accelerating. I understand that for warming below 2C, the confidence is high that it is roughly a linear relation to additional CO2 emitted.

I'm optimistic about most things in life, perhaps it's a flaw of mine.

I do think we have decades, if not centuries, to develop solutions to climate change. Our planet will remain livable.

That said, I understand some ecological damage that may occur with global warming could be irreversible, and it makes sense to reduce emissions as soon as possible.

Do the voters matter?

A third of CO₂ emissions come from a country that is not a democracy.

I'm middle aged and have no kids so I probably fall into your category, in the sense that as long as it doesn't bite hard before I go it's in my top 5 political priorities but not at #1.

However my friends who have kids and grandkids care a great deal about climate change and generally do what they can politically (i.e. vote for Greens and so on) within the constraints of life (i.e. they're not out there throwing soup at paintings or whatever).

Maybe that's what it will take. I expect ecoterrorism to become a serious thing in the next decade or two. Who knew the Amish were right all along?

I just don't fully agree anymore.

I always cared. But I care more as I age. Why? Because I know (vaguely) the danger and I have ____KIDS____.

Older people usually have kids too. For anyone, ANYONE who accepts/knows the dangers we face to just shrug, knowing it's their own kids and grand kids that will suffer (wars, political upheaval, riots, deaths, migration) - no. I don't buy it.

Principally, it's the ignorance of the people to the things that matters most. Maybe they are partially sticking their heads in the sand a bit. But if it truly was properly reported on prime-time news and so on, they would know, and they would care.

> That is a fundamental problem that you will not solve by asking youger folks, who are actually affected and have all reason to agree and comply, to make a change.

Younger folks tend to be more enthusiastic about "making a change" by direct action means, so you shouldn't count them out!

I'm not sure your age cut off is quite right, I'm 50 in a few months and my wife and our friends are all quite "pro climate" (just to easily sum it up), most people I know from the younger end of GenX are... the problem lies just a few years beyond that with the older GenX and up into the Boomers, which is where all the money is.

Democracies in general are suffering the fallout of losing its information economy.

From the death of local newspapers, the end of classifieds and the pressures on ad revenues, journalism had no real options but to shrink and consolidate.

The more content we create, the more the market focuses on creating content that could garner attention.

People are going to vote based on the information they have. If they are part of a captive market, then they are going to pick between the choices they are presented or decline to participate.

It’s some sort of irony, that as a society we developed ways to neutralize free speech and expression by flooding the zone with more content, not by controlling content.

> and are the worst offenders regarding CO2 production

Unless you're doing those strange mental gymnastics of entities like oil companies are the emitters and not the consumers, that's not true. Old people who have gained large amounts of wealth have also lost large amounts of mobility and tend to not produce much co2 because they don't do much in life anymore, comparatively speaking. The data is clear that peak carbon emitters are in their 30s-40s, and they're still the ones most often seen crying about not being able to afford a home.

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