My interpretation has always been “I love you, just not enough to inconvenience myself”.
Often not even inconvenience, just do something a little differently than they are used to.
I’ll be dead before the worst happens
Sadly not just boomers any more Gen-x and millennials are buying the Tonka trucks for big Bois and hiding their companies responsibilities to the environment.
To be fair, that’s not just boomer love but anybody that’s wealthy and heavily invested in Big Oil/Gas.
And what demographic would that be :)
Well, there are some early Gen Xers that are part of that demographic but to your point!
Mid Gen-X here. The Gen-X sub on Reddit shows the clear difference between old Gen-X (1965 to ~1970) and everyone else. The running joke was that the dividing line was banana and BMX bike seats.
The cultural differences are huge between born in 1965 and 1975.
I would say Gen X doesn’t actually exist, except on paper, that they’re just a continuation of Boomer and Millennial, right where that split happened.
No. There’s a marked difference between Gen-X and millennial mainly due to life experiences. Maybe not elder millennials (xennials) but definitely the rest. I think if we moved the dates forward about five years for both Gen-X and millennials, the cultural differences would align more.
They really are. The differences between, say, 1975 and 1985-1990 are much less. I love the music of the 70s, 80s, 90s. I am 46.
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You don’t have to trust people in power, you can just look at the climate disasters happening all over the world at an accelerating pace each and every year.
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If you genuinely believe that then you’re beyond hope.
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It’s not hard to tell at all from the events that things are getting worse. One has to be utterly ignorant of what’s happening in the world to claim that. The fact that somebody could genuinely believe what you’re saying is frankly depressing.
You don’t even have to look at the news to find out things are getting worse. It’s hotter with more heat waves and more extreme weather happening basically everywhere. Less and less snow in the winter too for the places that get snow.
Even without looking at the news, I have noticed things have changed from my childhood.
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This is the first year in history that our winter has been warm enough that our canal didn’t freeze. This is the first year I’ve ever witnessed that there have been smoke warning due to wildfires. I’ve never seen wildfire smoke in my city period, and we had it for weeks! This isn’t just happening where I live, it’s happening everywhere.
Ah yes, all these powerful scientists running the world…
Not to be the bad guy here, but as an average person, somewhen you reach a point of feasibility where it is just so freaking hard. Like, ok, we don’t own a car, we don’t drive. We rely on walking, public transportation and biking every now and then. We barely ever eat meat. We try not to buy imported fruit and vegetables, that one avocado every other month is more like a celebrated treat for our toddler. Try to avoid stuff wrapped in plastic. We avoid, reuse, recycle. Don’t buy new clothes, hardly buy clothes for us grown ups at all. Most presents our girl gets are pre owned, too. We line dry our clothes that we wash with as little detergent as possible, as rarely as possible, at the lowest temperature that still does the job.
But we live in a rental that heats with gas (as do a lot of Germans). We try to heat to a bare minimum despite having a small kid at home, we tried adjusting to cooler temperatures but below 18° room temperature during the day we just couldn’t do it in the winter. Not to mention the mold. We buy the organic, fair trade coffee, knowing fully well that we shouldn’t drink coffee in the first place. I type this from a phone that is not even 18 months old since my other phone got so unbearably slow it was unusable in everyday life.
And I feel bad about those things. I feel bad about every time I buy a coffee in a paper cup (and if I knew I would need a coffee to go I would have brought one from home to begin with so of course I don’t have a reusable cup on me either). I feel bad about our toothbrushes because they have plastic in them and about my mascara coming in a plastic container. I feel bad about picking up a toy kitchen with a family member’s car instead of using public transport. I feel bad I cannot afford to go to those shops where they sell foods unwrapped and that I cannot always get the organic options. Hell I feel bad because I don’t know which option is the better one, the regional apples in a plastic packaging or the imported ones without or the organic ones from somewhere in between and I feel like I should know for every item.
But I just don’t know how to go further. I don’t want to brush my teeth with sticks and I don’t want to make my own deodorant. But I feel like I will forever be at fault and owe my daughter everything until I literally live in a cave. Maybe it’s like this 80/20 rule but I feel like 80 is just not enough. That kid deserves 100, she doesn’t deserve excuses that something is too hard or not feasible.
We’re trying. We really are, my dear. And I am so sorry we are failing you and we cannot give 100%, be it for financial or practical reasons.
You seem like a good person but damn your life seems exhausting
Life itself isn’t exhausting, it is actually pretty easy, but my mind exhausts me. There is this feeling of guilt that I cannot shake off. Whatever I do, I will never be able to escape the use of fossil fuels completely. I will always need to choose the lesser evil of two options. Maybe there would be a better way of life but as so many other things, you need to be able to afford that kind of lifestyle. And in some way I realize that whatever I do is miniscule on the greater scheme of things. But it doesn’t eleviate the feeling of guilt. Yeah my individual impact is so miniscule I didn’t even try to bother isn’t exactly what I want to tell my child when they grow up and ask what I have done while the world was being set on fire (not just ecologically speaking).
