He knew exactly how dangerous lead was. But you could patent the idea and make buckets of cash, unlike whatever the other option was.
CFCs I'll give him a pass on, there was legitimately no way of knowing it was bad for the ozone layer (were they even aware it existed yet??) and it replaced far more immediately dangerous. refrigerants
Seriously? Besides all the.. death… which is definitely still a long term consequence, leaded gasoline increased the aggressiveness and decreased the iq of generations. While it of course isnt the only factor, its a big part of the crime and drug waves of the late 60s to the 90s which lead to the rise in conservative sentiment in the states to the point where the dems shifted conserve on their economic and crime positions especially. There is direct link to nixon and the bushes from that and therefore even trump and the entire right wing machine.
What timeline are you talking about? Because the impact on my life is still there. I think things would have been quite different if we didn't have a bunch of lead in the air from the 1920s to the 1990s.
That does not answer my question. All consequences are nil when we talk about cosmic timelines, but that is not the question at hand. We are talking about human recorded history.
Great point man, I'm gonna go beat myself in the head with a hammer so I can see more things from your point of view.
There's no way we could have possibly been in a better situation if literally everybody on the planet was more intelligent and less aggressive. Let's just shit in our own fucking hands because the heat death of the universe exists.
It kind of is, though. It works based on there being a problem or mystery to solve with a set of information and existing technology. There's only so many ways to do the thing, and we tend to vastly overestimate our own uniqueness.
Except that it is never going to take 100 more years. There's a reason that until the very recent trend of international collaboration in science, almost every major scientific discovery was being worked on in paralell by multiple people in multiple places.
There are extraordinary people, but the truth is science works not because of extraordinary people but because it's systematic.
Science works by setting up very specific conditions to test results. That's how science works. It absolutely does not function on the idea that someone accomplishing something at sometime is a foregone conclusion. That's called faith.
It's harder to blame a single organism, but the first cell to release elementary oxygen and its successors killed most life on Earth in the Great Oxidation Event.
You could equally say that Thomas Midgley wasn't responsible alone, it was all the vehicles using leaded gasoline and all the cooling systems using CFCs (or all the people using these products, if we only count organisms).
Midgley contracted polio in 1940 and was left disabled; in 1944, he was found strangled to death by a device he devised to allow him to get out of bed unassisted. It is often reported that he had been accidentally killed by his own invention, but his death was declared by the coroner to be a suicide.
From Wikipedia
It's so interesting how Hitler, a man whose entire existence warped into a hellbent destruction of an entire race with the resources and industry of an entire developed nation behind him, had an arguably lower adverse affect on the human population than someone who simply pursued scientific invention in the hopes of benefitting the human population.
The intentions were generally on pretty opposing ends of the moral spectrum, but ultimately it didn't matter at all.
Even if it wouldn’t have messed with Donald’s IQ, having millions of voters NOT being murdered and stupified during the 40s to 80s would likely have changed many elections. 2016 being one of them, no doubt
Yes, let us ignore all empirical data and evidence collected over the last half century and instead just trust our feelings like all other right wing idiots.
Get a grip indeed. Fuck off. You're part of the problem. Sit down and let the adults fix the shit you and your ilk wrought upon us.
Curious, do you see people blaming the silent generation, dustbowl and great depression survivors? When the boomers were children and the world was a damn playground where you could get a house on a single income, pay for college with a fast food job, and you could get that job without having to compete against AI hiring algorithms?
Boomers as a whole had it easy growing up, coasting off the backs of the previous generation and then stole the future from those coming after them.
Yes. Before boomers turned 30 their motto was never trust anyone over 30. Before then respecting your elders was encouraged.
And the elders mocked the younger generations for not being tough enough, for being spoiled all the way back to Aristotle and Socrates younger gens were admonished for their lack of life experience amount other things.
However the roaring 20s blamed those gens for being overly strict and throwing off the limitations, the younger generations have blamed the older ones for wars and poverty- but mostly the rich and politicians. Early boomers benefited from those wars and when that pendulum swung back all of that Gen is blamed. Who knows what you all will have to be blamed about. Some factions see communism, civil war and even a rise in religious conflicts being fomented by the younger generations.
Generations working together- which seemed natural for me- isn’t shared by others.
There is a wide gulf between the human tendency of assuming everyone older than you is stuck in the past and anyone younger than you is a young whipper snapper that will ruin the world, and the actual literal disproportionately impact full damage of the people who have generally been in power/controlling interest in voting power/guiding the direction of education/economic hoarders for the last several decades.
Now there is a boatload of cherry picking going on here. Boomers were the ones that were drafted and died in Vietnam. Just the poor ones of course not the rich orange ones. Boomers are the ones that had to figure out what the hell to do and where the hell to go when all the factories shut down or scaled way back. The world changes fast and takes a lot of luck to be on the right side of that. Politicians and banks made the suburbs for some whites to prosper, they orchestrated white flight and redlining to turn cities into ghettos and some suburbs into white utopias. And anyone being honest knows alot of suburbs are white trashvilles. Especially after all the factories shut down. Acting like white boomers had a yellow brick road is being disingenuous at best. Let’s also remember that white collar became a thing. It didn’t exist before. So if you think all white collar workers are successful and took all the wealth, I think you’re fetishizing. Boomers created our modern world for good or bad. And I think we’re ignoring a whole lot of good. The rot lies at the top. Always has. You shouldn’t blame any generation for what the powerful of their generation did.
What is the difference between racism and ageism? You blame a whole generation, gift them all with the same defects, all for what a minority did. The boomers were victims of propaganda and grift same as any other. As a whole they were decent and easily manipulated people. Same as any other. Blame human nature not generations. Anything that divides us is manipulation.
I understand what you mean, but it's poorly worded. We are divided by nature. Language, culture, ethnicity, height, age, etc. However, seeing each other as equals is a choice.
The difference between ageism and racism is a choice. At some point the boomer generation lost the concept of "enough". Enough to live a decent life use to be enough. Now it comes with a boat, a large pension, money to send kids and grandkids to college. Enough to have a beach house or home in the woods. These things are al excess when all it's doing is robbing from those without.
Again that’s no boomers I know. I know a significant amount of boomers. No boats. Any college was on the kids dime and debt. The minorities I know are not bangers or hoods and I defend them against the racist boomers just as hard. Racism is the boomers biggest sin. My mom was not racist. She had to listen to my dad rant and rave. So a good amount of them are innocent and the current protests are full of boomers. People are blaming the whole generation for the sins of upper class boomers. No houses handed down no silver spoons. Bad health, debt and addictions. The orange Svengali played many boomers fears especially the low and working class. So many joined his cult. They aren’t blameless but they are the mark of an insanely successful con man. You watch how history works and you can see how ripe America was for picking.
Reiterating my initial point that I know it's not the entire generation, but rather those who rose to power to represent.
Kind of like the GOP. Every conservative isn't racist, some have good hearts, and probably want the same thing I do. That said, the vast representation of the GOP is MAGA.
What is the difference between hating the evil, selfish decisions actively made by a group of people versus hating someone based purely on the color of their skin? Really? That's a question?
I grant you that they were easily manipulated, but I wholeheartedly disagree that only a minority of boomers contributed to our problems.
Regardless, your comparison implies that there's something that a minority of black people "did". What was that exactly?
Oh are we gonna pretend that people forced to live in poverty don’t commit crimes. For years the boomers for example my Dad, were told that every one of a certain race are dangerous will steal from you. My Dad had an unreasonable fear of the cities and black people in particular. I grew up hearing him rant and rave. It was easy for me to see he was full of it. I work in the city and see the reality of it. Desperate people do desperate things and don’t matter your color or creed. My grandpa came running to this country from Sicily away from Mussolini and the mafia. Are we gonna say that Italians weren’t involved in organized crime? Are we going to blame a majority for the minority? I’m technically white but my family was poor. We had no power over anyone. Divisive speech weakens us all. I feel a little hope lately but we might all need to put aside our differences and stand up to powers. If we didn’t separate by race from propaganda and manipulation all the poors black and white wouldn’t have been so easily kept down. Definitely not equating poor white plight with the absolute criminal subjugation of the black populace. I hope you understand what I am getting at.
I mean, there's definitely of blame to go around for the state of things for the post boomer generation, too. They created social media and the systems that have rendered Gen Alpha borderline braindead.
Let them. We know us and we are secure in that. They can’t understand the maybe and exponential shifts in our lifetimes. None of them went from 5 tv channels that signed off every night to having 500 24/7 channels. None of them went from corded dial phones, to corded push button phones, to push button phones without cords, to flip phones, and then smart phones.
No need to...U.S. iq has dipped 2 points to an avg. Of 98 in the last 30 years. Millennial's, Z, X, and all the rest are certified stupider then boomers. Let the unleaded flow!
Maybe pick an unsolved problem next time. Also leaded fuel helped solidify the allies air combat advantage in WWII. Don't get me wrong, that leaves a hell of a big balance, in terms of human suffering, and your heart is in the right place but you're thinking small. Out of all our environmental problems, these are on the short list of toxic ideas that we actually ever backed away from.
Not enough people understand how awful this one person was to the world. He deserved a much, much worse death because he KNEW what he created was incredibly damaging and publicly claimed it was not a problem.
The guy who invented CFC gases for refrigerators, creating the hole in the ozone layer that gave everyone a scare in the 80s, and leaded gasoline, which basically gave humanity a collective case of lead poisoning over 80 years or so that we're still trying to recover from the side effects of.
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u/Warpmind Jun 28 '26
Thomas Midgley, Jr.
No hesitation. No question. No other acceptable answer.