
51% of young voters believe humanity could be wiped out within 15 years - makerofspoons
https://scottrasmussen.com/51-of-young-voters-believe-humanity-could-be-wiped-out-within-15-years
======
ralusek
The two major problems with the discussion on climate change:

1.) Right-leaning, free-market, anti-authoritarian types need to understand
that climate change is a negative third party externality, and there isn't a
free market economist that wouldn't agree that the state has a role to play in
ameliorating that. Focus on the strategies you think are best suited for that
role, such as carbon taxes.

2.) Left-leaning climate advocates need to realistically prioritize objectives
according to their tenability and impact. Airplanes contribute 2% of
greenhouse emissions, how about we don't start there. Energy production
constitutes by far the largest impact, how about we focus energy there, and
not to beat a dead horse, but also seriously advocate on behalf of nuclear.
They also forget that the other half of the equation, carbon capture, is
almost unilaterally popular. Focusing efforts on where the most leeway can be
achieved is a much better solution, particularly since carbon capture is
capable of handling carbon emissions of states unwilling to regulate their own
outputs.

They also need to cool it with the catastrophizing. It is a _bad_ strategy.
All the opposition has to do is point out how incredibly off-base the
predictions were in an An Inconvenient Truth, and they're done. Accurately
identify where the feedback loops are that cause enormous leaps forward, and
focus on those precise thresholds. Near linear progress in the way we've seen
it creeping does not scare people, but that doesn't mean that we can just be
wildly inaccurate with the predictions in order to scare people in to action.

Lastly, don't shoehorn in other political policies alongside climate
propositions. Green New Deal, for example, is first and foremost a bundle of
socialist policies using climate activism as a vehicle. If this is truly the
greatest threat to humanity, decouple it from adjacent political policy.

~~~
codingdave
> how about we don't start there.

How about we start everywhere that can help? This trope that goes around that
we should only focus on the biggest problem, and let everything else slide...
that is why nobody does anything.

So how about we improve everything that we personally can, large or small, and
drive a cultural change that shows big business/energy that the world does
care about this, and they should, too.

~~~
ch4s3
> How about we start everywhere that can help?

Some things just aren’t worth the effort, in terms of outcomes. Additionally,
doing useless things gives people moral license, and absolves them of feeling
like they need to do more.

If we pay attention to both outcomes and psychology, then it makes sense to
focus on big things.

~~~
cj
> Some things just aren’t worth the effort

This is a false dichotomy.

Government (and industry) is not a single-threaded organization incapable of
doing more than 1 thing at a time.

It's absolutely possible to do BOTH high impact and low impact things at the
same time.

Whether or not airlines adopt better emmission standards _does not_ affect
whether bigger ticket items get addressed, too.

(Yes, if you're talking about the media or politicians, they of course are
much more single-threaded in the sense that they may need to pick their
battles, but generalizing that to absolutely everything doesn't make sense)

Edit: Perhaps our difference in viewpoint is that you're looking at it from
the perspective of "what can the consumer do" versus "what can government /
regulators / industry do". If you're talking about strictly what consumers can
do to help, then I agree, reducing personal air travel probably won't make a
difference for most people.

~~~
parineum
> Government (and industry) is not a single-threaded organization incapable of
> doing more than 1 thing at a time.

It's resources are also not infinite.

Things need to be prioritized and tackled in an intelligent order. The
government can handle several initiatives that attack the problem from
different angles but it can't do everything. Airplanes, for example, are a
small part of the problem and fairly integral to the connected globe.

We could probably make more headway attacking just the power plant issue in 5
different ways than than attacking issues 2-6 simultaneously.

> Yes, if you're talking about the media or politicians, they of course are
> much more single-threaded in the sense that they may need to pick their
> battles, but generalizing that to absolutely everything doesn't make sense

This is all going to be done politically. This is a government level problem
and there isn't a government office that is apolitical. You can help the most
by voting for it. The things you can do as an individual are good but they'll
be dwarfed if you win on the political stage.

------
simonsarris
The doomsayer crowd should be ashamed of themselves for promoting this kind of
emotional burnout.

Even the worst IPCC projections don't speak of anything remotely like humanity
being wiped out within 15 years. Panic does not jump start change nearly as
much as it seems to jump start despair, bitterness, and contempt for anyone
with doubts, which apparently now includes people who do not think we are
doomed.

These things that are very orthogonal, or in the way of, solving any actual
hard problems that lie ahead of us.

~~~
Mountain_Skies
And in fifteen years when humanity still exists, how will these no longer
young folks react? Will they feel mislead and turn against those who promoted
the ideas? Turn their backs on such issues forever, no longer entertaining the
possibility that it is a problem but longer term? Or just move the goal posts?

~~~
sremani
They will understand human nature if they are bright enough, and live the rest
of the life with healthy skepticism.

~~~
kgwgk
And the high-schoolers will be angry at them for not understanding that the
end is nigh and will organize weekly demonstrations, etc

------
standardUser
I've never understood this type of apocalyptic thinking. Humans are the most
adaptable and most widespread of the large animals. We are arguable the best
at surviving, at least in our 'class'. And while it's true we've come up with
some pretty devastating ways to destroy each other and ourselves, that is very
different from destroying _all_ of humanity. We've faced plagues and global
wars before, but even when huge portions of humanity have died off it's still
not even close to all of it.

Even trying to devise a way to guarantee that humans go extinct seems like an
almost impossible thought exercise. How do you exterminate 7 billion people
spread over ~57 million square miles of land?

~~~
29_29
We are living in very scary times.

[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/threat-limit-capital-flows-
ch...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/threat-limit-capital-flows-china-
pending-impeachment-conflict-dalio/)

~~~
thfuran
What about that portends extinction?

------
lacker
I find this headline to be misleading. I'm sure humanity _could_ be wiped out
within 15 years. There is some non-zero chance that a gamma-ray burst in the
Milky Way wipes out life on Earth. But really these people are saying it is
_likely_.

 _Over the next 10-15 years, 29% of all voters believe it is at least somewhat
likely that the earth will become uninhabitable and humanity will be wiped
out._

I don't think 29% of voters actually believe this. I think that nowadays,
people frequently answer polls according to the emotional stance they would
like to support, rather than the side of it they view to be factually correct.

~~~
mjw1007
I'm not sure it's a matter of emotional stance. It could just be that many
people view the opportunity to answer a poll as a means to an end, and don't
feel any obligation to be truthful.

In that case for some proportion of the respondents the poll question is
equivalent to "would you like to take the opportunity to ask people to take
climate change more seriously?".

(This is probably particularly true in cases where the response option
includes some vague undefined term like "somewhat likely", so that it's hard
for selecting that option to be an outright lie.)

------
martythemaniak
I was reading an interview with Naomi Klein not long ago on the subject of
"eco anxiety" amongst the young, and had a funny thought: Her work reminded me
of the pre-reformation Catholic church.

The practice of selling indulgences was the target of Martin Luther's theses,
that is the church would preach Original Sin, fire-and-brimstone, etc, the
offer convenient ways to purchase your way out of this terribleness. Authors
like her preach a doomsday fire-and-brimstone of their own and very
conveniently offer absolution by buying her books, implementing her views as
laws (see Leap Manifesto in Canada) etc.

I mean, I'm a pretty firm believer in taking a strong course towards a carbon-
free future, but I don't think whipping up such a fear frenzy will turn out
well.

~~~
verdverm
Would carbon neutral be sufficient? It's going to be pretty hard to be carbon
free considering it's fundamental role as an atom in chemistry.

Consider the benefits to the cause of carbon nano materials

------
excessive
Perhaps in another 25 years, after they've seen a few more rounds of "we're
all going to die" (from Ebola, H1N1, AIDS, Killer Bees, Zika, etc...), they'll
become a bit more suspicious of doom and gloom predictions.

~~~
wgerard
Most of those "doom and gloom" predictions never came true because of tireless
work by people to prevent it from happening. For example, the amount of effort
that went into making AIDS more treatable is astronomical.

See also: Ozone holes, Y2K, etc.

~~~
excessive
There's no way for me to _win_ an argument like this. If I dare question how
much effort was really spent avoiding any particular apocalypse, I'll just get
labelled insensitive, stupid, tone deaf, and/or something worse. I've probably
already said too much to avoid that. We can't even talk about talking about
disagreement sanely.

However, maybe you'll pay attention to all the dire predictions in the next
ten years, and maybe ten years after that you'll notice that the world just
keeps getting better despite all the people claiming it's worse and will end
soon. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so.

~~~
wgerard
> There's no way for me to win an argument like this

The way for you to win would be to counter my argument: Show the amount of
money/time/etc. that went into resolving the AIDS crisis was minimal (and of
course, you'll have to argue what minimal means). I can easily find resources
to the contrary [0] [1].

> However, maybe you'll pay attention to all the dire predictions in the next
> ten years, and maybe ten years after that you'll notice that the world just
> keeps getting better despite all the people claiming it's worse and will end
> soon.

It keeps getting better because people keep devoting time, energy, and money
into resolving these problems. "The condition upon which God hath given
liberty to man is eternal vigilance" and all that. We've seen what happens
when people stop being vigilant: Things like the return of measles in the US.

I'm mostly shocked to hear this sentiment on HN of all places; IT is notorious
for encountering "the servers run fine and never go down, what do we pay you
for?" attitudes. Surprised you don't understand how it applies to other areas
of life.

0: [http://www.healthdata.org/news-release/first-long-term-
study...](http://www.healthdata.org/news-release/first-long-term-study-finds-
half-trillion-dollars-spent-hivaids) 1: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/WPcap/1999-11/18/077r-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/WPcap/1999-11/18/077r-111899-idx.html)

~~~
excessive
> The way for you to win would be to counter my argument ...

Honestly, I'm not interested in winning this one. I've seen this all before,
and someday maybe you'll have seen it all too.

~~~
wgerard
k ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

------
mnm1
That's absurd. People have been living in harsh conditions (120°F desert
weather, <32°F freezing temps for big chunks of the year) for millennia and
likely hundreds of thousands of years with none of the technology we currently
enjoy. There are more people now than ever before. I can't even see an all out
nuclear war combined worth +6°C average temperature increase leading to
extinction. Some people somewhere will survive. Maybe many or even most might
die in such a scenario but to wipe out humanity, I don't think that
possibility currently exists.

------
KoftaBob
This nonsensical hyperbole only weakens the push to mitigate climate change
and go green. Turning the movement into a doomsday cult only strengthens
climate change deniers arguments.

------
joefourier
There's no way climate change can wipe out the entirety of humanity and make
the earth uninhabitable, especially in the next 15 years. Are greenhouse gases
supposed to turn Earth into Venus in 15 years? That's the only way I see that
it can truly become "uninhabitable", and I don't see how that can happen.

Even then, a small percentage can always survive in closed-loop habitats
shielded from the outside world, ala Biosphere 2.0.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
The nearest humanity has got to a closed-loop habitat, that works on an
ongoing basis, were the Soviets in the seventies during their lunar programme.
We are _far_ away from one that's viable.

It can be the new fusion: "ready in twenty years"... indefinitely.

------
wolco
What happened is a culture of fear around climate change that started with the
Al Gore movie. That generation is being told if we don't act immediately you
won't have a future.

What ends up happening is in 15 years nothing happens and these people get
more jaded.

------
metabagel
This poll seems suspect. I wouldn't draw any conclusions from it, until it's
corroborated or we know more about the methodology (which I couldn't find in
an admittedly cursory search).

------
KaoruAoiShiho
Says a poll by someone selling a book about how we are too scared of the
future.

Don't believe this data at all.

------
danschumann
Everyone has probably always thought this way... then they live for 15 years
and see that nothing much has changed. I do think that 'adulthood' is hitting
people harder and harder. Our kid phase is kiddier and kiddier, and when your
parents no longer take care of you, and you're staring at working for 20-40
years until you can experience that endless summer vacation (retirement), you
could feel desperate.

------
tempsy
The only reasons I can think of is nuclear war and a second black plague

~~~
umanwizard
What about a runaway climate change feedback loop making the earth
uninhabitable? Or even more moderate climate change causing a collapse of the
food chain?

~~~
mieseratte
And how likely are either of these?

~~~
audessuscest
very unlikely

------
wongarsu
The only scenarios I can come up with for making earth uninhabitable or wiping
out humanity within 15 years are biological warfare or freak astronomic events
(giant meteor impact, being hit by a supernova etc). Maybe a pole shift. None
of these seem likely (well, the pole shift might be happening right now, but
we likely have a millenia left to figure that one out).

I can imagine that we have set the feedback cycles in motion that will make
Florida uninhabitable. But I fail to imagine how we might make Germany
uninhabitable within 150 years (small coast completely covered by costal
defenses, most of the country over 200m above sea level, well equiped for snow
so a local ice age could be managed, fairly far north so warming isn't a major
threat to agriculture). Even if we managed to make that uninhabitable we could
just move to Siberia.

~~~
zzzcpan
Not biological warfare, just wars, humanity is still armed to the teeth with
nuclear weapons. And ebola-level threats can rise on their own without
warfare.

~~~
wongarsu
However we are fairly good at containing ebola-level threats. Sure, the ebola
outbreak of 2014 shut down three countries and required a big international
effort to clean up, but in the end only 11300 people died. Killing humanity
would require a lot worse.

All out nuclear war would be pretty bad and might end humanity, but US and
Russia have a well practised routine of interference and proxy wars that gives
aggression a less deadly outlet, and the other potential match-ups like India-
Pakistan or Israel-Iran would be very localized.

------
henryw
51% seems very extreme. Is Silicon Valley living in a bubble? On a side note,
Foster City will be flooded with just a 1M [1] rise in sea level 20 years out
[2].

1\.
[https://ss2.climatecentral.org/#13/37.5341/-122.3201?show=sa...](https://ss2.climatecentral.org/#13/37.5341/-122.3201?show=satellite&projections=0-K14_RCP85-SLR&level=1&unit=feet&pois=hide)

2\.
[https://riskfinder.climatecentral.org/state/california.us?co...](https://riskfinder.climatecentral.org/state/california.us?comparisonType=county&forecastName=Basic&forecastType=NOAA2017_int_p50&level=3&unit=ft)

~~~
fooker
It will take far longer than 20 years for 1m rise in sea level. Even in the
very unlikely scenario that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere quadruple, it
will take about 250 years. Why panic instead of coming up with feasible
solutions?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise#/media/File:Pro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise#/media/File:Projected_change_in_global_sea_level_rise_if_atmospheric_carbon_dioxide_concentrations_were_to_either_quadruple_or_double_\(NOAA_GFDL\).png)

~~~
yread
That's not true. This graph is "Thermal expansion only" so it doesn't count
melting the glaciers at all! According to the worst case predictions from the
article it can take ~50 years for 1m rise.

------
man_in_agharta
Just a few days ago I encountered a Patagonia campaign with the banner 'facing
extinction' superimposed over a slideshow of somber, adolescent faces. While
I'm sure it's well-intentioned, apocalyptic messaging of this sort damages the
credibility of actual projections that are genuinely alarming.

Conflating 'catastrophic climate change' (ie. more thousand year floods) and
'apocalyptic climate change' (ie. a big flood will kill us all!) muddies the
water and lends ammunition to climate deniers.

Even nuclear war would likely leave a few stragglers to rebuild some semblance
of society that worships a manna-giving snack machine.

------
austincheney
Weird. If I were to really feel that way I would forget any career, education,
and public service aspirations and move to an idealistic mountainside
community working off the land. I would build things for my immediate use and
enjoy the scenery with beautiful natural landscapes and no road rage traffic.

If people really believe humanity will be wiped out in 15 years and yet still
concern themselves with their checking accounts and sense of fashion I would
really wonder if there is some kind of mental health illness at play.

~~~
frogpelt
Simply change the question;

"Do you think you will still be alive in 15 years?"

You would probably get a different answer.

------
Peckingjay
While I believe there might be some possibility that we might see some
catastrophic events caused by climate change or human conflicts, I highly
doubt that they would completely wipe humanity and/or make Earth wholly
unhabitable. I can think of some scenarios that would lead to devastating
losses and long-term consequences but I have a hard time picturing a complete
extinction happening within 15 years, barring some crazy unlikely scenario
like a big meteorite impact.

------
WhompingWindows
Sorry, this is too vague for me...humanity as a civilization "could be wiped
out", well of course we could. If a meteor hits us or we accidentally and/or
intentionally set off a bunch of nuclear weapons...yes, we "could" be wiped
out. But will climate change, a long-run issue, wipe out humanity in 15? I
don't think even pessimistic forecasters are predicting that 2034 will be the
end of civilization due to climate.

------
socialist_coder
Ok, I guess I'll be the first to bring up red meat production.

Our love affair with eating meat (specifically red meat) has 3 pretty bad side
effects:

* greenhouse effect (something like 18% of the total greenhouse effect is from farm animal produced methane).

* uses a ton of fresh water (hundreds of times more water used to product beef than vegetables).

* uses up valuable farm land to grow animal feed crops (something like 33% of all arable land on Earth).

So, lets pass some fucking taxes on red meat, eh?

------
nec4b
Young people are constantly bombarded with the climate change hysteria and
their grasp of time is usually less accurate than that of an older person.

------
eqdw
Unless "could" is doing a lot of heavy lifting, there is no conceivable way
this is true. Young peoples' actions do not support the idea that they believe
this.

You'd see a lot more people doing insane things to cross items off of their
bucket lists if this was true. Instead you see these young people going about
their lives as if nothing is any different.

------
carapace
The uniformity and prevalence of the head-in-the-sand responses here on this
thread are _exactly_ the thing you would expect to see right before people
start to panic.

In a way this is very hopeful.

------
Grue3
Young people are wrong about something: news at eleven. I can see how people
who didn't live through any war, or catastrophic event in their entire life
would believe that.

------
SAI_Peregrinus
Climate change won't be what directly kills humanity. The global thermonuclear
war started by the political/economic disruption due to climate change will.

~~~
vixen99
According to some reports the number of near Earth objects is now of the order
of 2000 per year and several of those have been undetected until only a few
days prior to nearest approach. I'd factor in this eventual inevitability as
well.

One day some large object will be on course that will spell the end for us.
Time to gear up in preparation given that our present defensive resources are
pitiful.

------
fallingfrog
15 years? Very odd. I mean the decisions we make now are very important but if
humanity gets wiped out it will be sometime in the 75-150 year timescale.

------
RHSman2
There are some good words being written for and against.

But words are stupid compared to methane being released from the permafrost
which intensifies the green house effect by 3 times that of carbon dioxide.

We ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

And it’s unbelievably fucking sad.

In 15 years we’ll have a good idea of how truly screwed we are.

But it’s ok. Elon will send us to Mars.

------
znpy
If this helps with handling the climate emergency I am okay with that.

A lot of people believe a lot of things some serious some stupid. I don't see
why we should be concerned if people believe that a real problem is, in fact,
real.

------
DannyB2
Maybe humanity won't be wiped out in 15 years.

What is the possibility that in 15 years it is too late to turn around climate
change? (I don't know the answer.)

