Lukewarm take: we need to stop using mental health/therapy buzzwords in day to day life. Not everyone you dislike is a narcissist. Being sad doesn’t mean you’re depressed. There’s a resounding difference between being nervous and having anxiety. You’re not ADHD because you don’t like to sit still. You’re not autistic because you’re quirky. OCD doesn’t mean you’re organized. And for the love of all that is holy, not every situation that made you uncomfortable is “trauma”.
It says an awful lot about France - and not in a good way - that there is "political divide" on using air conditioning when temperatures literally exceed those of the Sahara desert, and when France has one of the greenest energy mixes in the world (thanks to nuclear).
And it says even more that those who oppose AC are often the same as those who oppose nuclear: the view - presumably - is that you should neither adapt to climate change (AC) nor prevent it (nuclear).
Also the same people, incidentally, who oppose pesticides and fertilizers - basically modern farming - and push for all-organic: a prescription that, if universally applied, would literally starve billions of people (and, ironically, would require so much additional farmland it would devastate the world's remaining forests).
It's all part of the same logical fallacy, the notion that if something causes a problem, then that thing is the problem.
Yes progress and technology caused and continue to cause plenty of environmental issues. And there is indeed something seductive in saying "we've gone too far, let's change tracks, let's head towards a simpler, slower life, we used to be like that."
But not only is this just not feasible without causing far greater harm to ourselves, it's also a fundamentally nihilistic and mortiferous ideology. One that rests on a profound discomfort with what's arguably the single most defining feature of humanity: our ability to shape our environment to suit us, to fight our circumstances rather than surrender to them. That's been the case ever since we discovered fire and invented farming.
It is, at the end of the day, the transformation of humanity's genius - our need to create and improve our condition - into a vice. They make it sound like a humanistic project but how could it be since the core premise is fear of humans and contempt for our very nature?
Conclusion: yes, 100 times yes, use AC. You'd need to be a complete moron to let yourself boil under 43C heat in order to "save the planet." If climate change is to be solved, it will be by getting the ideologues out of the way of the people who actually fix things.
@united This is brilliant, and I just completed the application for the status matching program and was accepted! I have also just booked a trip coming up in ~2 weeks from CLE to LHR on United, so I'm excited to get reacquainted with being a valued @united MileagePlus customer!
Hey @united , would you match my existing Platinum status with @AmericanAir ? If so, you win my business moving forward. @AmericanAir is a clown show where every flight with them, whether domestic or international, is constantly delayed, cancelled, or both.
If you believe free speech is for you but not your political opponents, you're illiberal.
If no contrary evidence could change your beliefs, you're a fundamentalist.
If you believe the state should punish those with contrary views, you're a totalitarian.
If you believe political opponents should be punished with violence or death, you're a terrorist.
my growing up moment was just realizing that the US-Israeli alliance actually is just unequivocally a force for good in the world and all anti-zionism is coping
Khaled Abu Toameh, an Israeli-Arab journalist, was asked about "Israeli apartheid":
"If Israel were an apartheid state, I, for example, would not be allowed to work for a Jewish newspaper or live in a Jewish neighborhood or own a home. The real apartheid is in Lebanon, where there is a law that bans Palestinians from working in over 50 professions. Can you imagine if the Knesset passed a law banning Arabs from working even in one profession? The law of Israel does not distinguish between a Jew and an Arab."