Guest essay by Eric Worrall
An attendee at the Harvard University event “Hope and Despair: Communicating an Uncertain Future” expressed concern about how few undergrads bothered to attend their climate doomsday event.
Climate Change Panel Talks ‘Hope and Despair’
By YASMIN LUTHRA and AIDAN F. RYAN, CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Climate change researchers, professors, and journalists debated how best to present the severity of climate change to the public Wednesday evening at an event hosted by the Harvard University Center for the Environment.
The discussion, titled “Hope and Despair: Communicating an Uncertain Future,” was held in the Geological Lecture Hall. Elizabeth M. Wolkovich, an assistant professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, moderated a discussion about how to best motivate the public to take action on climate change.
David Wallace-Wells, who is the deputy editor of the New York Magazine and wrote the article “The Uninhabitable Earth” this year, advocated the use of fear about the planet’s future as a way to inspire more people to become “climate agents.”
“I think that there is real value in scaring people,” Wallace-Wells said. “When I talk to colleagues it just seems so obvious to me that when you think about the relatively well-off Western world, that complacency about climate is just a much bigger problem than fatalism about climate.”
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Henry G. Scott ’18, who attended the event and is writing a thesis on how humans have historically impacted the environment, said that he enjoyed the panel but was bothered by how few undergraduates attended the event.
“When I first sat down, I was kind of looking around and noticing how few undergrads were present, which kind of built into my preconceived idea that this isn’t something that we’re aware of or we’re concerned enough about as a student body,” he said.
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Read more: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/11/30/climate-change-panel-debates/
Obviously one event isn’t much of a sample; for all I know it was half price beer at the student bar that night. But it is inevitable that the climate movement will fall out of fashion. Being a student rebel, occupying Wall Street, trying to bring down the system to save the world, all seems kindof exciting; until the “rebels” realise their parents are camped out in the tent next door to them.
No free beer. No interest.
(True at all scales right up to Global.)
So they’ve gone from “Hope and Change” to “Hope and Despair”. How sad. I guess that Hopey-Changey thing just didn’t work out.
“A tactic that drags on too long becomes a bore” Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals #7. I think 30 years is too long for climate change hysteria.
I’m surprised that no one has pointed out that an incoming freshman has not experienced rising temperatures during his or her entire lifetime!
except when copulating. Doing this rises a lot your body’s temperature.
The parents have become bored for sure and the students are easily distracted. That leaves staff and programs out of date for messaging, priorities, and time allocation.
Oh you mean that old movie? They moved on.
I think the point is: the world is changing so fast now, they don’t have time to catch up with the new new NEW thinking…so hey, lets just have some beer and play a video game.
Seriously, when Buzzfeed goes under (sometime next month), most of them won’t have any knowledge that doesn’t come from listicles.
I think they are moving on now with real jobs, new home purchases, and other activities that appeared stunted or delayed over the past eight years.
Maybe some of these college students have been hearing scare stories of “OMG, carbon dioxide is going to cook the planet and flood the cities” since they have learned to talk, and have noticed that it still snows at Hahvid every winter, and the weather and sea level haven’t changed much over their lifetime, so they’ve become blase’ and will maybe worry about it when they get older.
Well, it’s like anything – the new generation isn’t that interested in the previous generation’s hang-ups and we’re about thirty years in, or so.
It’s just SO last season.
Remember “never trust anyone over thirty?”
(yeah, when you’re a kid, thirty years ago is ancient history)…
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to 21 I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” (Mark Twain)
I guess kids generally matured sooner in his day than in ours.
I was about that age when I got the best advice from my older cousin: “LISTEN to your parents. You wouldn’t believe how smart they are. And they’re also the only ones really looking out for you.”
Was Al Gore in the area that day?
Maybe they couldn’t find their parkas? 😎
They heard someone wanted to take away their glitter.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/glitter-ban-environment-microbead-impact-microplastics-scientists-warning-deep-ocean-a8056196.html
Some people might be forgiven for wondering what science a “Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology” studies that is not encompassed by traditional biology departments.
That the subject moderated is “a discussion about how to best motivate the public to take action on climate change” indicates that their discipline is probably politics or sociology, and that they are not actually interested in any branch of science at all.
I must be careful how I read things at speed as I first got a very odd idea of this department at the university.
Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology,
I’ll say no more but it did make me laugh when I read it!
James Bull
Don’t recall if it was here, but there was a piece about a study, the results of which showed millennials were not big on recycling personally because their individual contributions would be too small to make a difference. They felt someone else needed to do the heavy lifting. Aside from short attention spans, they may be losing interest here because they don’t think their individual contributions to fixing the “problem” matter. It’s for someone else (government) to do.
And as not a one of them has ever actually changed their habits anyway, maybe they are subconsciously acknowledging the fact.
They met a few of the dragon slayer types who mock them to their faces for their leadership not even being able to calculate the temperature of Earth’s global atmsophere right. And for claiming a cold nitrogen bath is a giant heater.
Students being mocked for not understanding what a Conservation of Energy violation is, don’t last long in the science darkening business.
It takes professionals to darken science to the degree the modern Climate Sheiss’ters have.