I mean, we've been hearing crisis warnings for decades. When I was a kid, it was acid rain, then styrofoam cups, smog, leaded gasoline, ozone holes. Each, it was promised, would surely destroy the environment for good. And when one didn't cause Armageddon, the next one would definitely destroy the environment any day now. Today, it's climate change, next decade maybe something else. It's the same song, just a different verse. Somehow, my generation mostly escaped the pessimism the next ones somehow got. Not sure what changed--maybe the persuasion tactics are more mature and effective these days, or they're just starting kids on it younger, I don't know.
Ha - those examples are all environmental nightmares that were dealt with because of “songs” that accurately explained the danger we were in as a society. See: Y2K as a non-environmental example.
Agree that it’s the same song and somehow the generations feel it differently … maybe because they really are the first generation to have lower life expectancy compared to their parents. Or maybe because climate change is so much harder than acid rain due to the full-civilizational scale of it…
