[grecht]

I personally have a small carbon footprint, considering I live in Europe. But I know that it’s no more than virtuous wishful thinking if I were to start a vegan diet out of love for the environment. What we need is practical, economic solutions that actually make a difference - and to get there we need an unemotional discussion based on facts.

A tempo limit on the German Autobahn wouldn’t have a big positive impact on the environment. I'd support a general CO2-emission tax (there‘s already a europe-wide emission tax for some industries [0]), but not as big and grand as Fridays for Future demands it - it'd make a lot of things much, much more expensive, and mostly low-income households would be affected, while the green upper middle class would just pay the premium.

However, like Greta Thunberg said: The fast and emotional exit from nuclear power for example in Germany was a wrong move. It could’ve been the best transition to renewable energies. Now, energy in Germany is crazy expensive, but thanks to coal they’re even further away from reaching the paris agreement.

It’s a good thing that Fridays for Future caused lots of discussions and that young people are getting active in politics. But scaremongering does not help. The whole thing smells like climate-populism.

Who says life will be over in 50 years?

[0] https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en

[leokennis]

I’m assuming you’re from Germany. This makes you (and me, from The Netherlands) a huge over consumer of “carbon”. See for example https://www.theguardian.com/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02... or https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_... and compare European countries to the “third world”.

Let’s face it, with our long hot showers, far holidays, cars and meat eating we are making withdrawals from Earth, hoping the people in Africa will stay poor so they cannot, to balance it out...

[grecht]

> hoping that people in Africa will stay poor so they cannot

That’s a pretty far-fetched allegation which does not contribute anything to the discussion, but instead makes it seem more black/white or rather good/bad.

[raarts]

Frankly I don't believe in enough people changing their behavior to make any difference.

Past experience shows that the stable door only gets locked after the horse has bolted, in other words things will need to get worse before action will be taken.

And I believe even then only science, innovation and entrepreneurship (read: private initiatives) will save us.

In the future mankind will need to be more adaptable to climate change because changes will keep happening just like it always has been.