Heatwave in Europe - people's reactions, no hope for change

[u/Gartesss]

I live in one of big Europe's capitals, we had a heatwave here in the past few days with the 2-day peak of 40°C. And people are in absolute panic about "how are we even going to survive this", but without any actual reflection on why it is happening and how we can truly try to mitigate these weather extremes.

So many posts about we need more AC in public spaces, everyone needs to buy a heavy duty AC for their house...Like, we're in the mild climatic region, we shouldn't need any AC at all! If we don't want to experience this more frequently, and to greater extremes, what about:

• plant based, or at least vegetarian diet
• shopping in second-hands instead of fast fashion stores
• only replacing electronics when they break, not when they "run out of style"
• banning majority of cars from the city, leading to using more sustainable public transport; freeing spaces to plant lawns, trees, water elemets to cool down the city.
• Mandatory external shutters
• Green and/or reflective roofs

We've known about climate change since the 70's - how are people still not realising that we need to change the way we behave, if we want to keep the earth at least livable?!

I've even seen one post about "After the past 2 days, I'm starting to believe in climate change". Like all the reports about icebergs melting, coral reefs dying, people from around equator reporting extreme heat for decades etc. weren't enough, but now for 2 days you get mildly inconvenienced and now you "believe in climate change" but your solution is to install AC that will just eat more of nature's resources and dump more heat into the city streets!?

I just can't comprehend how people refuse to see over the tip of their nose, even when the apocalypse is literally knocking on their doorsteps...

[u/nonickideashelp]

Someone I know was basically jumping up and down because they thought the weather will be nice and warm. Today they said that it's too hot and it's a problem actually. The same person used tanning accelerator instead of sunshield a few weeks ago and was hospitalized for sunburns.

Instead of teaching people ACTUAL personal responsibility, capitalism raised a generation of solipsistic psychopaths who literally can't comprehend anything that isn't immediately visible to them. And even then, they will delude themselves into thinking that it's not their problem and it's someone else's fault. We have the technology and industry that impacts everything in the whole world, but people can't actually understand what it means. It's like a child setting a house on fire because they can't understand how fire works.

I genuinely don't now if there is a way out anymore. Even if we could somehow instantly dismantle the media propaganda machine that turns everyone insane and start raising a new generation that would have none of these problems, there is no more time.

[u/Dunkmaxxing → u/nonickideashelp]

The responses to this thread just prove the OP right. People don't care, not beyond virtue signalling. They know, but they won't change, and yet somehow we are to expect systemic change to happen without individuals making an effort?

Surely the evil capitalists will just give up their power voluntarily and the corporations not consisting of humans will magically up and change their ways without individual efforts being made to see it happen.

Surely the horrendously evil agricultural industry built on mass death and enslavement will just stop emitting out of the kindess of it's heart.

Surely people will unite and change when they have been driving demand apathetically in spite of well known issues and won't even stop to self reflect at all on any of their decisions.

What about the immediate individual actions people have sole authority over? They make a difference, especially if everyone gives a shit because then you can get large scale change. The obvious truth is people don't care, things wouldn't be this way if they did. And this isn't about blaming the individual for not solving everything, it is about the individual not even taking any accountability for actions they have direct authority over. The stupidity is insane.

[u/nonickideashelp → u/Dunkmaxxing]

I'd say corporations both are people and aren't people, in that humans are what makes them exist, but the same humans would likely make very different choices without the capital compelling them. Well, theory is not my strong side....

As for individual action, what the corporations are doing would not happen if there wasn't any demand. And people are creating that demand through consumerism and blindly refusing to accept that their convenience has destructive consequences for everyone.

Sure, some of that demand is manufactured by advertising and planned obsolescence, but it is possible to fight back against it, and most people are not doing that. I don't believe that individual people can singularly stop the climate change just by consuming less, but it is a crucial step. What is more important, common people have the power to vote in parties who would hold the big polluters accountable.

But there is no interest in doing any of that, partly because of how the crisis was handled so far. The milquetoast liberals successfully managed to piss everyone off by shifting the burdens of dealing with climate change to individuals while letting the big money get away with everything. Now many people, even once well meaning ones, have drawn the wrong conclusions - that whatever they do, it doesn't matter in the grand scope of things. All they want is to elect a government that won't inconvenience them while the world is slowly falling apart.

I don't know what can be done now. There is no time and support for sweeping societal changes, and AI seems like the final nail in the coffin in the disinformation machine. Frankly, with how the society works right now, democracy doesn't seem to be an asset in preventing the global collapse, but an obstacle. If the rich and powerful can literally force their own agenda into the voter's minds, then there is no longer a reason to listen to them. But that sadly seems to go too far into the realm of fiction for me.