But in a vacuum it wouldn't be required. It's about making choices regarding those issues we allow to take media attention, and more importantly, play the role of the 'enemy', literally the 'bringer of death' in this meme. Not poverty, not corporate greed, not the pathological indifference to suffering of the Big Mac munching consumer...

No. One bloke who's probably not even calling all the shots and will be dead and gone in a few decades whilst the whole bloody monstrosity carries on because everyone's attention is just on the next Disneyfied super villain.

The words should all be in here

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/

I'm undone. Have you considered debating for Harvard?

So... we should add poverty deaths in Ukraine and Russia to Putin's illegal invasion of another country?

Yep. That's about it. Well done.

1. Do we have infinite media space? No.
2. Do people have infinite resources? No.
3. Do people have infinite capacities to act? No.
4. Do people have infinite attention spans? No.

So it matters which issues are brought to the fore, doesn't it.

half of the people don't believe it's an existential that needs addressed and most of the other half are either morally opposed to such political action or feel like it can be managed without resorting to it just yet.

Yeah, pretty much my point. Hardly an 'existential crisis'. Screaming about the end of civilisation and then starting a leafleting campaign to prevent it is pretty much textbook virtue signalling - the 'signal' is out of proportion to the act.

burning those companies to the ground doesn't do anything to the demand for their product

I can guarantee it would cause more discussion in the (ashes of the) boardroom than a strongly worded letter to The Times. And we don't have to worry about demand. Just refuse to pay them for it until they provide a better alternative.

Monetarily incentivizing their creation is our primary need

Why 'monetary'?. Why not violence? Civil disobedience? Strike action? Rude gestures? Not inviting them to your dinner party?

Why does the incentive have to be money? Isn't that pretty much what got us into this mess?

That's just not what they are incentivized to do on their own. Consumers can sometimes influence those incentives, but there is not always enough market choice to put that kind of pressure on corporate behavior.

So why doesn't the same apply to governments? If the alternatives aren't there we can't vote for them.

If everyone refused to pay their gas bill. BP would collapse in a week. But of course there'd never be such action because people don't care it's all just virtue signalling.

Apparently we're supposed to be in a 'climate emergency' that represents an 'existential threat' to humanity, and the best humanity can muster as a response is a very strong leafleting campaign.

If it's really an actual threat to the survival of humanity then just storm BP headquarters and threaten to burn the place down if they don't stop funding new oil. No one will, might break a nail.

Antibiotics and other prescription medications are more often prescribed to older folks

But https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6996207/

In this study, we also analyzed antibiotic prescription rates according to age. The highest prevalence rates were observed in patients aged 71 years (80.3%) followed by 4-year-old children (60.7%).

Since 71 year olds wouldn't show any long term effects, that leaves the four year old group.

as a prescriber, I do warn my patients of the dangers of taking antibiotics willy nilly.

Of course you do, I've no doubt you're very diligent. Because now we know they have serious negative consequences. 40 years ago, however, the people this article is about would have merely been told they were "safe and effective". That's exactly the point I'm making.

You now have to take precaution with a medicine because of new information about its safety that wasn't known at the time it was developed.

Same is true for every other factor mentioned in the report. Human innovation is absolutely suffuce with things we thought were safe and effective at the time, but later turn out to be quite unsafe.

Yet taking this unequivocal fact and applying it to a rational scepticism about new medicines has, since 2020, become 'misinformation'.

None of it is 'clear', and of course we don't 'know'. The question is what on earth you have on your list of reasons to give Antony Blinken the benefit of the doubt.

I'd love to know what it is about his record in office that inspires such trust.

Honestly, the level of fawning obsequiousness to the government these days is like something from Mccarthy's America, I thought we'd moved on as a society.

The point isn't whether he actually did approve bombing aid trucks. The point is that he, like any government official, should be terrified of the response if he did, because it's only that fear that reigns in the abuse of power.

Do you think Antony Blinken is going to be terrified of "oh, we don't have absolutely conclusive proof he actually said those exact words so we'll just drop it"?