Alright, Boomers, did we change the world?

Meanderer said:
I think the World changes us, more than we change the World.
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Last I looked, the world is populated by people mixing it up and causing the uproar. Unless you mean changes like in natural disasters.
 

RadishRose said:
It stands for Ecology and was almost as popular as the Peace symbol.

We failed at both. We knew, way back then, the earth was being polluted and there were attempts to raise consciousness about it, but most people just ignored them.

I think this ad ran in 1971
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Completely disagree that we "failed at both."

First, we have gone 75 years without a major global conflict. Second, we defeated the Soviet Union without firing a shot. Third, Europeans no longer kill each other in wars. Fourth, we have made massive progress in the US toward cleaner air and water.

We didn't know about the effect of CO2 on the climate until relatively recently and we still don't know much about what will really happen -- we are relying on computer models to anticipate climate change. Market forces are driving rapid adoption of renewables, and coal use in the US is way down.

Read Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now for some good reasons not to be so gloomy.
 

retiredtraveler said:
I'm totally disappointed in my fellow boomers. They pushed up house sizes, pushed up automobile sizes, polluted and didn't care (and still don't), have overburdened the healthcare system by giving themselves Type II diabetes with poor health habits and obesity, and a whole host of things that could have been done to better the world, but didn't do much except buy bigger and more stuff.
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Well, autos used to get 8 mpg and now get 25 to 40 mpg. Major rivers like the Cuyahoga, the Hudson, the Potomac were choked with effluvia but now run clean. The biggest burden to the health care system is people living longer and extraordinary efforts taken to keep them going very late in life. And I thought we couldn't buy bigger and more stuff because, you know, of capitalism and income inequality and the one percent taking all the goodies?

Your fellow boomers like Bill Gates spend billions of dollars developing vaccines, eradicating polio and providing clean water and sewage disposal around the world. How evil of them.

Here's a suggestion: Send Greta Thunberg to China and and have her tell them to shut down their coal-fired plants. They put a new one on line every week. Same with India.

It's easy to point fingers at someone driving an SUV, less easy to tell someone who burns charcoal or wood scraps to cook dinner that they can't have gas or electricity.
 
fmdog44 said:
Despite the bad the good hangs on trying to make things better. Meanwhile The Doomsday Clock continues it's journey toward Doomsday.
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Meh. 65 million years ago we got hit by an asteroid that wiped out most forms of life on Earth in a flash. Pardon me for not worrying about the Doomsday Clock, a PR stunt by a group of ultra-liberal academics.
 
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