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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 12th, 2023

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  • The Kurzgesagt climate videos explicitly encourage political action to combat climate change. I think they even encourage it as the most important thing an individual can do. They don’t push ‘let capitalism solve everything’ , they push ‘vote in green candidates + regulation’.

    I saw one of those videos taking them down for receiving Bill Gates money and frankly I think it’s a pretty empty hitpiece.

    Don’t get me wrong, the Gate’s foundation does push this ‘never question the market’ ideology, and any organisation that relies on their funding deserves to be scrutinized to hell and back. But Kurzgesagt does not push this ideology.

    ’ The problem with Kurzgesagt’ never found any factual issues with their content, AND the broad message of their videos is ’ lobby the government for regulation + here’s the technology’ . If Gate’s Foundation money has caused them to compromise their values, it’s not done a good job of it.

    Funding is not the same as editorial control, and the amount recieved from the gates foundation is not even a large portion of their income, so it’s not like they have much leverage.

    Gate’s Foundation and similar spend money literally everywhere, so I worry about people writing good orgs off so quickly.




  • The pollution from EVs is far lower than ICEs even if they are powered by 100% coal - the absolute worst electricity source. This is because a large generator is inherently more efficient than lots of small ones simply due to the efficiency of scale. And most grids are far cleaner - the UK uses almost ZERO coal.

    The problems that you’ve just described are real and I support your solutions to them - but they apply to the entirety of modern industrial society. Public investment should absolutely go to these things, but since people are spending their private money on EVs ( which in many cases makes economic sense AND are better on emissions ) , why push against that? They are two totally different revenue streams. Spending on one doesn’t detract from the other. A private individual can’t buy a bus. American suburbia is not going to become walkable any time soon.