Thread by @jkfecke

One of the think the newbies don't get is that we actually have been screaming our heads off about global warming for the past thirty years. We've seen some movement when Democrats control things. We've moved backward when the GOP does. You aren't the first people to notice this.

I remember when the Kyoto Protocol was first negotiated, kiddos. I remember when Bill Clinton tried to get Cap and Trade through the Senate in 1994, and the GOP blocked it -- and then hammered him with it all the way to election day. I remember when Nader kneecapped Gore in 2000.

I remember when Barack Obama put all kinds of environmental funding into the bailout bill in 2009. You know how solar panel installation is a huge industry? Thank Obama. I first read about global warming when I was 10. That's 35 years ago.

The thing is, we've been screaming into the void for thirty years *just to get people to acknowledge that this problem exists*. It's getting some minimal traction now because all the neolib shill olds have been working our butts off to get the conservative olds to listen.

So when you tell us that we've wrecked your world -- folks, humans literally started wrecking the world 15,000 years ago and we've only just started to feel bad about it in the last half-century. I remember smog and acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer.

I remember bald eagles being almost extinct. We have an imperfect record, but by and large, Democrats have *significantly improved the environment over the past fifty years.* Is it enough? Of course not! But don't pretend you're the very first people to notice this issue.

We will manage to figure out global warming too. It will not be as quick as it should be, and it won't be as painless as we'd like. But the truth is that we have reached a tipping point, where people do recognize something is going to have to be done. And you can help do it.

But understand that what will be done is going to be full of compromises and half-measures and things that annoy you ideologically. There will be cap-and-trade options. People aren't going to eliminate airplanes. There will be geoengineering projects that won't work.

Nuclear power is going to be a thing. It's going to be a very big thing. We're going to cause environmental damage by covering deserts in solar panels. If global warming is as bad as we all agree it is, we're going to have to.

And when it's done? It won't be perfect. The world is going to warm a bit more than we'd like, and people will suffer for it. But society will endure long beyond the next twelve years, even under the absolute worst-case scenarios. And then there's the fun part.

Because your kids will curse you -- yes you, the ones shouting about how your personal future is being destroyed -- for not fixing everything when you had the chance, ignoring that the problem started millennia before you were born, and that it won't end until humans go extinct.

And like me, you'll be frustrated, but you'll also know the truth -- all any of us can do is try. Other people who want to try should be supported, and those who want to give up should be opposed. And those who demand your obedience were never serious about anything.