NEW VIDEO: WE Can Fix Climate Change!
Added 2022-04-05 14:03:00 +0000 UTCOur home is burning. Rapid climate change is destabilizing our world. It seems our emissions will not fall quickly enough to avoid runaway warming and we may soon hit tipping points that will lead to the collapse of ecosystems and our civilization.
While scientists, activists and much of the younger generation urge action, it appears most politicians are not committed to do anything meaningful while the fossil fuel industry still works actively against change. It seems humanity can’t overcome its greed and obsession with short term profit and personal gain to save itself.
And so for many the future looks grim and hopeless. Young people feel particularly anxious and depressed. Instead of looking ahead to a lifetime of opportunity they wonder if they will even have a future or if they should bring kids into this world. It’s an age of doom and hopelessness and giving up seems the only sensible thing to do.
But that’s not true. You are not doomed. Humanity is not doomed.
Comments
This video has made me really sad to see coming from you guys! I always loved your videos and I expect I will still see content from you that I enjoy. However this video was very much far from the actual reality we face. I’d go into specifics but to be honest I’m not good with explaining the why this video was so wrong, far better and more equipped people have made videos with the explaining the problems with this video that crossed my mind when first watching it. If whoever is reading it is wondering what I’m talking about, the “No, kurzgesagt, we won’t fix climate change” by BadEmpanada in YT goes into some details about the many I had with the video. I know it won’t make much of a difference, but because of this and other reasons I will stop being a patron to this channel. I’m sure there will be content coming from you in the future that I will still watch and enjoy, such as your series on Viruses. But would really hope (although I doubt it will happen) that you might want to rethink this video and the claims you have made in it. I expected better from you guys and must say I leave very disappointed.
Daniel Martins
2022-05-30 12:12:09 +0000 UTCYeah,I hope so
Maths Fan Samuel
2022-04-30 07:15:26 +0000 UTCHow do i change my payment method?
johannes
2022-04-24 19:31:05 +0000 UTCI love this video and I truly hope that we are finally making a difference!
Ben Tindall
2022-04-12 23:00:54 +0000 UTCI was just going to write something similar but your words are spot on from my U.S. perspective as well. I wish it weren't so, but it is.
Ben Tindall
2022-04-12 22:59:50 +0000 UTCHas anyone told you folks, lately, that you rock? Thanks for creating understandable, data driven overviews of complicated topics.
Brian Michalowski
2022-04-12 20:22:31 +0000 UTCI was thinking about your video the other day and it occurred to me that part of your reason for optimism might be where you guys are based. In Europe, you guys are making serious progress, on the housing and transportation side, towards reducing car dependency. Your trains and public transit are far superior. Your cities are denser, more compact, and if not already walkable or bikeable, it’s easier for you guys to make them that way. You’re working to make things even better. Yeah, maybe it’s not fast enough, but you’re headed in the right direction. I’m in the US. Suburban sprawl is continuing unabated. In fact, instead of slowing down, it’s accelerating. This will set car dependency into concrete for decades. Trains are virtually nonexistent in most places and the few that still exist stop at stations maybe 3 or 4 times a day at most. Our public transit is absolutely pathetic and getting worse thanks to budget cuts and driver shortages. I expect that, by 2030, most transit agencies will disappear (maybe only NY and SF will still have it). Don’t even get me started on our traffic choked multi lane mega freeways! Maybe if I also lived in Europe, I’d feel a little better about the future. But when it comes to countries addressing climate change, I fully expect my country to be last and least. Even though we were first and worst at causing it. But it’s good to know that the rest of the world is moving forward without us. Maybe we can get to 2 C warming in spite of US inaction.
Jeff Doll
2022-04-09 23:55:45 +0000 UTCI'm looking forward to seeing what concrete tactics you advise, going forward. Your previous videos only advocated for voting and investing, which don't seem effective enough at this point. Thank you for the well-made videos, as always.
Aaron J. Shay
2022-04-08 17:21:02 +0000 UTCSo much balance needed to make this video! Great work, thank you. I am looking forward to the followup--so often, the "what you can do to fight climate change" centers on consumerism or elections--I grant that those are part of the solution but I'd love better options.
Douglas Beagley
2022-04-07 14:20:41 +0000 UTCSo, young people finally turned their brains on. Great!
Dragi Raos
2022-04-06 16:24:08 +0000 UTCThe message of this video is that "it is too late to do anything, we are doomed anyway, so let's continue business as usual" is the latest fossil lobby strategy, after "climate change is fake", "it is real, but not man-made" and "it is man-made, but avoiding it would destroy the economy" all failed, and it is as fake as all the previous ones have been. We _will_ avoid human extinction, we will avoid crash of the civilization; fine, now that we established that, let's get serious and turn the whole mess into a mere inconvenience, because we *can* do it.
Dragi Raos
2022-04-06 16:20:21 +0000 UTCI don’t think they ever said, “hey look, we’re avoiding climate change, it’s all sunshine and rainbows now!” What they were saying in the whole video is that we’ve avoided apocalyptic, extinction level climate change. They were pretty clear that where we’re at will still suck, just suck less than the 4 C projections of 10 years ago were showing when we were doing literally nothing. The whole point, I think, is to not let the fossil lobby get away with “weaponizing hopelessness” so that we keep going and maybe bring the trajectory down to a much more manageable 2 C. Again, that will still suck for a lot of people, but it will be way less bad than the 3 C path we’re on now. Resilience is much more achievable at 2 C than 3 C. But it’s not going to happen on its own. Hope without action can be as dangerous as paralyzing hopelessness.
Jeff Doll
2022-04-06 14:46:35 +0000 UTCMaybe. There have been protests in San Luis Obispo, California over the closing of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power station. Curiously, many, if not most, of the protestors are young climate activists who want to keep it open. It’s caused head scratching from utilities and local politicians who remember that a few years ago, greens and enviros were demanding that it be closed. I always suspected, and this seems to confirm, that enviros and climate activists aren’t always the same people. For my part, I’m pro nuclear and have been for awhile. I’m also an engineer so I understand the safety built into the Gen III & Gen IV reactors. Solar, wind, and other renewables are fantastic, as are batteries, and we need more of them. But they still have siting issues that are not a problem for nuclear, and we will always need a baseload power supply, which nuclear can provide.
Jeff Doll
2022-04-06 14:20:56 +0000 UTCSadly, this seems to be a long gone virtue for the majority of the population 😕
Thorben Menne
2022-04-06 13:45:01 +0000 UTCThat's a somewhat limited view/perspective to the message they're trying to get across. Oh, the worst case projection is no longer mass extinction of all life on earth, but "just human suffering". The optimistic point of view is that in a couple of decades we've went so far to reduce the pessimistic outcome to something imaginable, and we're still just gathering steam right now. I think (respectfully), that you're missing the whole point of the video.
Tin Marković
2022-04-06 11:19:39 +0000 UTCI really disagree with this video. The main argument seems to be that we are making progress, so we need not fear an apocalypse. But right at the start you mention that with the current projected warming it will still leave a large portion of the (largely poorer) world in crisis. You know what happens then? People migrate. And unless you're from a country for which people are happy to welcome immigrants (or as depressing as it is, a race people are happy to accept), this ends up creating political crises of their own and ends up with human suffering anyway. So even if it's not a "the sky is burning" apocalypse we're running straight into, I can'tagree that the situation is as positive as you make it out to be in this video.
LonMcGregor
2022-04-06 09:44:00 +0000 UTCThis was a beautiful episode and exactly what I needed. Thank you so very much.
ghostman
2022-04-05 21:55:53 +0000 UTCI just saw it pop up in my YouTube feed about an hour ago, so it should be live.
Jeff Doll
2022-04-05 21:34:34 +0000 UTCI wonder if Hannah Arendt might have said that, your definition of "hope," that is restoring hope by taking action because the powers that be are weaponizing hopelessness, is really what she would call natality. She was pretty clear that hope can be a hindrance and that hope can also be weaponized by the powers that be, as in her own experience in the holocaust. I highly recommend the piece from Aeon Magazine called: "When Hope is a Hindrance: For Hannah Arendt, hope is a dangerous barrier to courageous action. In dark times, the miracle that saves the world is to act."
Jeff Doll
2022-04-05 21:27:29 +0000 UTCThank you so much for making this video. We need more positive ones to spare the drive to fix the mess we and our ancestors created.
John-Patrick Goodwin
2022-04-05 18:21:30 +0000 UTCThank you, Kurzgesagt - just what I needed to revive me from my COVID slump. I look forward to being able to share it. Could you let us know when these videos are published and shareable?
Tim Hewison
2022-04-05 15:44:33 +0000 UTCDear Birdies, could you please make a video on the source of irrational fear from nuclear energy prevailing in Germany? Yes, we know it is the fruit of decades of tireless work of fossil fuel lobby (with lots of help from clueless "greens"), but they are also trying in, say, France, with far less success. Why? Germans are believed to be rational folks...
Dragi Raos
2022-04-05 15:02:40 +0000 UTCThat was a nice thing to see in an otherwise shitty day and reality to live in. Thank you for that :D
ajuanjojjj
2022-04-05 14:26:34 +0000 UTCI never really thought about it but it would be a huge load of my back if we could fix climate change. Honestly the will to fix climate change would imply the will to fix alot of the problems that stress me out. I have my own issues and I'd appreciate it if Climate Change and Globalization were the least of my concerns.
Fame and fortune guaranteed in the state of Tintucky
2022-04-05 14:11:15 +0000 UTC
