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this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2023
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Yeah, in a way, I still find it shocking how we've come out of a year of climate-related crisis and the COP, which could have been a crisis taskforce meetup was just a handwaving event.
There were several nations represented there, that got hit hard this year by climate change. Why are these not demanding measures to limit damages?
Honestly even, why are there still people working against this? What the hell are you going to do with your immorally amassed wealth in a world that's falling apart?
I've been reading about what some of what the rich and powerful openly state they believe, and it's pretty scary. They are extremely out of touch with reality. I wonder what they believe that they're not open about.
So far, I've read about:
Effective altruism
Effective accelerationism
Peter Theil
Back in the '90s I worked at an Internet startup that was playing the usual game of desperately seeking venture capital money to keep going. At one point we were wooing RJR Nabisco, a conglomerate that included the former RJ Reynolds Tobacco company that had branched out into venture capital because it was the fucking '90s and what else were they going to do with their gigantic piles of cash? One day some RJR-N executives came to visit and although we were a non-smoking company in a non-smoking building (our lease even disallowed smoking) we put ashtrays in the conference room and these motherfuckers spent the entire day chain-smoking. We had no ventilation to speak of and by the end of the day the smoke everywhere was so thick that you couldn't see the end of the 50' hallway. The office stank for weeks afterwards. My bosses almost fired me because I made a point of coughing really loudly every time I walked past the conference room door. And it was all for nought because they never gave us a penny.
The thing is, these executives had so thoroughly bought in to the corporate need to suppress factual information about the negative health consequences of smoking that they were perfectly willing to suffer those negative consequences themselves (and it's highly likely that they're all dead now thirty years on, which warms my heart a bit). It's no surprise at all that the people making gobs of money from fossil fuels have convinced themselves that global warming isn't really happening.
Didn't you see Don't Look Up? They're all hoping for a golden ticket to the naked people planet.
On a more serious note, it's because all the rich and powerful people killing the planet will be dead before it gets really bad.
That's why they have no reason to care, but it's not a reason why they're actively working against humanity. They're hopefully not planning to bequeath their wealth, because of, you know, the whole destroying-the-planet thing.
So, once they're rich enough to live the rest of their lives in prosperity, just like, stop? Their life won't garner more meaning by having the bank account high score. In fact, they're destroying meaning, because of, you know, the whole destroying-the-planet thing.
I'm sorry, this rant isn't directed at you. I just get angry thinking about that asshat with his self-righteous smile.