Ask Me About My Grandparents

[sheshe2]

Frankly, I think the kid has it a bit wrong. It wasn't the grandparents. Some of us tried. Back then we elders did not have I phones, Tablets, Dvrs 75 inch TeeVees or Xbox. We weren't the ones charging up all the devices 24/7. We did not ride around in huge gas guzzling SUV's with the AC blasting and a Tee Vee playin' in the car.

We opened windows to get cool and used fans when needed. I find it amusing when people are freezing when it is 60 degrees and turn up the heat to 75 and then turn on an AC in summer and turn the temp to 60.

I grew up in a household that turned out a light when you left a room. I drank water from a glass and wore a sweater when it was cold. Oh yeah, several quilts at night as well.

So kiddo? Look closer to home, your parents and an inward look at yourself. Kiddo, it ain't your grandparents, it is you and your parents, look inward dear child.

[pnwmom]

1. Except the majority of the oldest generation also voted for Trump,

unlike people under 40.

https://www.businessinsider.com/exit-polls-who-voted-for-trump-clinton-2016-11#more-young-people-voted-for-clinton-but-that-bloc-did-not-include-as-many-voters-as-those-over-40-who-as-a-majority-voted-for-trump-2

[BigmanPigman]

2. I still do all those things that you mentioned...

Drink tap water and from glasses, put on sweaters and extra socks, plenty of quilts, etc. Too many people are wasteful and thoughtless and have the theory "I'll be dead before it gets really bad so why should I do anything now" or "the world is already screwed up to the point of no return so why bother".

[Mariana]

3. Yes, yes, we know how righteous you are.

The old CRT television sets sucked up much more juice than a 75 inch LED TV does today. The charging electronic devices require only a tiny trickle, as do the LED light bulbs. And please, lets not pretend those big old ugly ass station wagons didn't guzzle gas, and didn't spew pollutants.

As someone else has pointed out on this thread, most of the old people voted for Trump in 2016. Why is that, do you think?

[912gdm]

5. boom.

[llmart]

16. This isn't really a valid argument. Not everything is about Trump.

Lord knows I can't see one reason to excuse Trump for anything he does, but the environmental problems have been going on for way before Trump was elected.

There's a wonderful quote that I think can be attributed to Maya Angelou which Oprah also uses quite often and that is "You do the best you can with what you know, but when you know better, you should do better." Blaming baby boomers for using CRT televisions or not driving electric carts is just silly. There was no such thing back then. Most of us owned only one TV, not four or five. Everyone I knew in my neighborhood had only one car, not two or three. Most of us didn't travel in a car more than locally. Most of us didn't fly on airplanes. It was too expensive. We didn't buy water to drink in plastic bottles or take a plastic shopping bag for buying one small item.

What would be a better argument would be to show what the younger generation is actually doing en masse with what they now know. I love hearing about and seeing what some younger people are actually doing to help the environment. I really do. But what I see is usually a story or two about a handful who are adopting more environment friendly practices. Keep in mind, that I just retired from a university and was surrounded by young people every single day.

[Mariana]

22. I blamed no one.

The OP clearly blamed younger people only: "So kiddo? Look closer to home, your parents and an inward look at yourself. Kiddo, it ain't your grandparents, it is you and your parents, look inward dear child."

I just countered a few of the OP's more idiotic arguments.

And what does voting for Trump have to do with it? Well, Trump promised to neuter the EPA when he was running for office, and he has in fact done a lot to fulfill that particular promise:

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-epa-spends-year-rolling-back-environmental-regulations/story?id=52162794

[912gdm]

4. my grandma introduced me to a hot toddy when I woke up with a cold.

That was some good shit.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. At what point has any American generation done a significant amount to cut greenhouse gases?

Nathaniel Rich published his 30,000-word account of the years between 1979 and 1989 — the decade humanity missed its chance to fix climate change — in the New York Times Magazine last August. The response to the piece was so staggering that Rich put aside his other projects and started turning it into a book the very next week. Losing Earth: A Recent History is out on the shelves April 9, just eight months after the magazine version hit newsstands.

Our near-constant companion throughout the whole sordid tale is an environmental lobbyist by the name of Rafe Pomerance. In 1979, when the story begins, Pomerance happened upon a report warning that continued use of fossil fuels would cause “significant and damaging” changes to the planet’s atmosphere in the span of a few decades. Alarmed, Pomerance, with the aid of a geophysicist named Gordon MacDonald, decided to try to bring the issue to the attention of the U.S. government.

At first, serious progress appeared to be underway. The Carter administration commissioned a report to ascertain whether the issue was really as dire as some scientists were saying. (It was.) But when a team of scientists, policy experts, and government officials convened at a hotel in Florida to craft a framework for addressing the problem, they couldn’t even agree on what the opening paragraph of their statement should say. Thus began an excruciating decade of indecision, delay, and obstruction.

https://grist.org/article/nathaniel-richs-losing-earth-tells-lost-history-of-our-current-climate-predicament/

Before there were gas-guzzling SUVs, there were gas-guzzling sedans and station wagons. An OED example of its use:
1968 Time 16 Aug. 62/3 What George Romney called the Big Three's ‘gas-guzzling dinosaurs’.

US per capita CO2 emissions, from 1960 to 2010 - source: https://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=2&series=EN.ATM.CO2E.PC&country=#
1960 16.0
1965 17.5
1970 21.1
1975 20.4
1980 20.8
1985 18.9
1990 19.3
1995 19.3
2000 20.2
2005 19.6
2010 17.4
(for comparison, the average EU figure all through this era has been under half the American one)

No-one can say "it wasn't us". Don't shift the blame on to others.

[IndyOp]

10. +1

[Habibi]

19. Thank you!

I really dislike generational blame games.

[JHB]

7. Cartoonist Steve Sack was born in 1953...

...so he was growing up in the 50s and 60s, back when a cell phone was the thing you used to make your call to say "Hello, Dad, I'm in jail."

But sure, let's use a cartoon drawn by a 66-year-old to berate "kids these days".

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. Edited - I mistook who your message was aimed at (nt)

[IndyOp]

9. Half of all greenhouse gas - released in the last 30 years

If you’ve been walking the planet for the last 30 years then you’ve contributed in a big way to the current crisis. So that includes this blokes parents and grandparents.

Learn lots of specifics, accept the truth and personal responsibility, communicate with others.

Everyone has contributed and everyone has to push for IMMEDIATE, RADICAL change.

[Gothmog]

11. Great cartoon

[lunatica]

12. In all fairness us "grandparents" were belching black poisonous smoke

Into the atmosphere with our factory chimneys and we put a hole in the ozone with our spraying cans. Remember the dust bowl pictures of the depression, caused by overworking the soil, which displaced thousands of farmers in the Midwest? Remember the meltdown of one of the three nuclear reactors in the Three Mike Island reactors in Pennsylvania?

We polluted with more abandon than any generation after us in our vain ignorance.

[FakeNoose]

13. Many of us Babyboomers are grandparents now

I get your point sheshe, because I have always been frugal as a mom and now as a grandmother. However as a generation we Babyboomers raised our kids to be self-centered and spoiled, and that is on us. Now our over-indulged kids are raising their kids, and they're the ones who are showing little restraint or frugality.

Of course I'm making sweeping generalities here, but this subject matter sort of requires it I guess. We can't make statements about entire generations without sweeping generalities.

We Boomers do share some of the blame in this, and we should have used more discipline and perspective while raising our kids. (I know I should have, even though my son turned out great and he's even more liberal than I am.) Now it's too late, the next generation are the parents and we're on the sidelines.

[llmart]

14. Sorry you raised your kids that way.

I didn't. I actually practiced what I preached, much to my kids's dismay back when they were younger. Now they realize why I taught them certain things and they're glad for it.

Just a different perspective for you to ponder.

[FakeNoose]

15. Awesome!

You must feel great about yourself. But look around and consider how your contemporaries did. Not so great, or this country would have turned out better.

[llmart]

17. I get it.

I see a huge difference in my age group and the younger boomers. First of all, I never considered those born in the 60's to be boomers. My definition is more specific. I know that demographers use the years of 1946-1964, but originally the term "baby boomer" was applied to those born right after the men came back from WWII and started their families. I was born in the 1949. I don't consider someone born in 1960 to be a true boomer, and yes, those people are more likely to have spoiled their children. I have not a lot in common with them. My friends and six siblings are quite different than them, but then again I don't really hang with people that I have little in common with.

My parents were depression era so I learned my values from them.

[FakeNoose]

21. I was born in 1951 so we're close in age

However the Baby Boom did continue until the mid-60s and even later. My youngest sister was born in 1976. But my point is that we didn't raise our kids in the same frugal manner in which we were raised. Now we're seeing even more self-indulgence in the parenting skills of our kids.

It's really two sides of the same coin.

[KatyMan]

18. Should they get off your lawn too? n/t

[bedazzled]

20. Plenty of blame to go around

I will take my share and try to do better

[hunter]

23. That's not the problem.

Our problem is this thing we now call economic "productivity" isn't a measure of productivity at all. It is in fact a direct measure of the damage we are doing to whatever is left of our planet's natural environment and our own human spirit.

We ought to be paying people to experiment with lifestyles having a very small environmental footprint and measuring our success in happiness, not productivity.

Human "work ethics" have turned into something damaging. Most of the work we do is not making the world a better place.

[maxsolomon]

24. Facepalm x Infinity

The Grandparent Generation dawdled while the planet heated - the Oil and Gas Industry's 30-year denial campaign wasn't run by Millenials. Rex Tillerson isn't GenX.

Everything you're bitching about a drop in the bucket when it comes to reversing ACC.

The Planet is fucked, but you (and I) will be dead before the shit really hits the fan.