In short, we aren’t on track to an apocalyptic extinction, and the new head is concerned that rhetoric that we are is making people apathetic and paralyzes them from making beneficial actions.
He makes it clear too that this doesn’t mean things are perfectly fine. The world is becoming and will be more dangerous with respect to climate. We’re going to still have serious problems to deal with. The problems just aren’t insurmountable and extinction level.
His statement isn’t really about the severity of the issue, he just says that people are prone to give up
Well by all means, let’s make it seem less serious than it is! That’ll get people moving
Signed, an actual fucking climate scientist
deleted by creator
The exact same thinking can be applied to the other side though. Guy says it’s not an imminent threat, so we don’t have to do anything right now. Worry about it next year. Which is arguably what’s been happening for a long time now
His whole point is that we should try not to think that way. Not “this side” versus “the other side”. There’s an endless space between “we’re already fucked no matter what” and “everything is perfectly fine no need to act”. And that’s the point.
And you can very much notice what he worries about already. People are already utterly numb to news about climate disasters. We need a better way to show issues and showcase solutions that makes people motivated and hopeful to keep everyone pulling in the same direction.
Yeah exactly, you can already see a “welp we’re fucked, no point in anything” opinion that’s becoming more pervasive.
A good question is if not wanting kids because of climate change falls into this nihilistic thinking or if it’s reasonable. Certainly, life will get more difficult. We have more stake in changing the future however if there’s young people we care about.
I’m just rambling now. I think regardless of all else, the point is that things are not irreversibly fucked, and we should do what we can to unfuck it.
What we need is politicians to fucking listen to their citizens who want them take real action on climate change.
What we personally think means jack shit if the capitalists in charge don’t want to hear it.
Maybe liberal democracy isn’t so democratic.
Where did he say it’s not an imminent threat? All he’s saying is that it’s not extinction level and the worst outcomes are not yet inevitable, which are both true statements. I do actually see a lot of climate apathy around and focusing on solutions and policy rather than doomerism seems like a good thing to me.
Also shout out Climate Town on YouTube for good solutions-focused and entertaining climate videos!
You’re not wrong, I think I had some misconstruing of the point of his statements.
I think the apathy has started popping up because the onus is being placed on the individual at multiple levels. It’s on me to change my habits to the level of environmental conscientiousness which I’m trying to reach; LEDs, efficient appliances, electric vehicle (arguable at this point), recycling efforts across many spectrums, supporting public policy that encourages green practices, etc. But even as a population, that doesn’t effect much change when considering corporate practices. Surface level changes to some operations to take advantage of rebates or subsidies, but only so far as it’s deemed profitable. Manufacturing and material acquisition still being “dirty”, use of international labor to sidestep stricter policies, general obfuscation tactics, lobbyists and generally vast amounts of money actively seeking to stop or reverse policies.
I as an individual can enact much change in my life and those around me. But it falls well short of what a single company could do if they really wanted to take the leap.
I could also just have a narrow-sighted perspective on the situation, but that’s largely where I fall currently. The focus on individual efforts vs societal (largely meaning the tools at my disposal beyond what I can provide myself) leaves much to be desired.
Well, do you want companies to spin “Eh not a big threat right?” or “Look at these crazy guys”
I think it’s harder to win attention if people think you’re wearing tinfoil.
I’d prefer to stop trying to win over unwinnable people. Whether they join or not, the problem exists. Climate change doesn’t care that we may want to placate the more dense-skulled in society. The problem marches on whether they have changed sides or not.
The science is in, has been in, and continues to be in.
I don’t think there is such a thing as “unwinnable people”. They’re unwinnable from a single conversation with a single person, sure. But they’re not unwinnable if the currently ongoing concerted effort by climate-denying mass media were instead directed towards delivering climate science.
Tldr: the problem isn’t the people who are brainwashed, the problem is the people doing the brainwashing.
Let’s say I’m motivated. Wtf can I do that will actually. Make a difference. I could live off the grid or I could just spend all my money buying gas to literally just burn.
In the end, the planet will be exactly the same.
The only way to get real change is through large governments and beyond voting or talking to peers, hoping to convince them to vote for climate action, I just don’t see what I can do.
get organized with people and bring fear to the people who won’t change policies. YOU cannot do anything, but WE can. No one can fight climate change alone.
Did you even read the article, Mr/Ms climate scientist?
He’s asking people not to talk like the world is going to catastrophically end once we hit that 1.5 degrees milestone, because it’s making people feel hopeless and apathetic, which is actually slowing our efforts to change.
And he’s totally right. If the government told people a meteor the size of Texas was going to impact earth in 12 hours, there would be effectively zero effort to stop it. If you tune in to a lot of the conversation around climate change from people who are not climate scientists, but who want to leave a better world for their kids and believe climate scientists, they feel hopeless. It feels like a foregone conclusion that we are going to go over the 1.5 degree goal (probably because it is), and if we think the biosphere is going to collapse when it does, it is really, really hard to take action.
It’s not saying to undersell the risks, he’s saying to be truthful about the risks. We can definitely still salvage complex life on earth with optimistic, consistent effort, but recent media coverage has been giving the impression that it’s too late. This is bad and counterproductive.
Keep on fighting the good fight brother/sister.
because it’s making people feel hopeless and apathetic, which is actually slowing our efforts to change.
That’s the thing I don’t get. How to come to such a conclusion?
If you ever have been on a sinking ship, you know how suddenly even the worst enemies will cooperate willingly quite well in face of time pressure and a life threat. Some might even be willing to sacrifice themselves when in such a situation, even a few minutes gained can make a huge difference. But aswell if the situation seems hopeless.
It’s totally atypical for most humans to just accept fate and relax in any life threatening situation. Humans tend to die fighting/ defending.
climate change unstoppable != scary life threatening consequences
Those are two entirely different narratives.
(And I didn’t get past the paywall.)
Homie I’m trying to explain what you’re obviously not understanding about this, and you keep responding with arguments about how you’re correct to not understand or something?
Guy said “don’t be hyperbolic about the 1.5c goal because if people feel hopeless they are less likely to act.” We shouldn’t be acting like the scary life threatening consequences of climate change are unstoppable. That is one narrative, you silly goof.
Guy said “don’t be hyperbolic about the 1.5c goal because if people feel hopeless they are less likely to act.”
Then he’s wrong. But it’s more likely you misread the study since that’s not the conclusion.
My guy I can only imagine how hard it must be to go through life completely illiterate.
“The belief that climate change is unstoppable reduces the behavioural and policy response to climate change and moderates risk perception.”
He’s technically right, though; climate change isn’t going to drive us to extinction. Yes, it’s going to cause the total collapse of modern society in our lifetimes and more death and sufferring than any other event in recorded history, but there will almost certainly be tens or hundreds of millions of survivors. Maybe even billions.
Yes, technically it’s not really about the planet or the environment, or society. It is about finding a solution of an optimum between money spent and living conditions for the majority of people. I actually think we should start talking about it more from that angle.
We could go to almost zero emissions tomorrow but it would wreak absolute havoc and billions of people would die. We could go full zero carbon emissions in our energy grid, but it would cost an absolute shitton, which means the living conditions go down. More realistic is a mix of investments between avoidance and adaptation. And I don’t think there is any realistic chance without nuclear energy.
People need to get it through their thick skulls that we cannot dig ourselves out of this hole without hurting ourselves in the short term. It’s decades too fucking late for that. Fixing this will cause unavoidable suffering; not accepting that is going to cause exponentially more suffering. Suffering that has already begun. We as a global society had every opportunity to avoid it, but we chose not to. There is no painless solution anymore. We can all suffer now and mostly make it through to the other side, or we can try to cling to our cushy lives of excess and convenience while the vast majority of us die. Pick one; those are the only choices.
The problem is that we are talking too little about actually quantifying this. You make pretty bold statements that sound good, but that contain not much we can use to guide policy decisions. And that matters.
How much will we suffer? For how long? How much will the climate impacts cost, how much adaptation measures, how much will avoidance cost? In terms of money, human lives and living conditions. Who is impacted? We have to put numbers if we want to find an optimum solution.
Yet I don’t see why we need any suffering - we have the technology to take us a lot of the way.
While you can argue the focus on cars, EVs will make a big difference, are available for essentially no lifestyle change, and getting close to price parity. We are at the point where scaling up will tip us past. While it’s too little, too late, this is only 10-15 years. The only losers are companies that can’t change but at that rate the global car companies will be Tesla, Hyundai, and a couple Chinese brands
While you can argue storage, renewable energy generation is growing even faster. It’s 20 years behind what we need but it is getting there
For my part,I just paid ridiculous amounts to an electrician, a plumber, and an appliance retailer, to convert my cooking from gas to induction (one small step to reduce my carbon impact and improve my respiratory health). The technology exists, it should not impact my lifestyle, but at least here in the US, it needs people willing to pay more to establish the market
And these are assuming you don’t change anything. It will be such a huge lifestyle improvement to plug my car in overnight just like my phone. Such a huge improvement to only visit a refueling station a handful of times per year. Such a huge environmental improvement to watch the whole gasoline refining and distribution industries dry up and blow away. Such a huge lifestyle improvement as more people can get convenient transit through high speed trains. So much less pain if/when the entire natural gas infrastructure is no longer needed: so much less digging and construction, so much money that could be invested elsewhere
Literally none of this is viable on a massive enough scale to matter in the slightest. 2/3 of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and spending power has been steadily plummeting for decades with no positive change in sight. Most people can’t afford a new car, or even a relatively new used one, and wil likely never be able to. For most, owning a home in their lifetime, or even renting from a decent landlord, is also pure fantasy, let alone the idea of overhauling one to be green and energy efficient. You’re part of a very small and shrinking bubble of people who have the extreme luxury of making even one of these choices, let alone all of them. In poorer countries, the situation is far worse.
It is entirely viable though. I am far from wealthy but do recognize the privilege of above average financial situation.
My state has set a deadline of 2035 for all new cars to be EV. After that point, all recent used cars will also be EVs. Ten years after that, most used cars will be EVs. It will happen. The goal is to make it realistic before then
Natural gas hookup bans are also a really good idea but much longer term. When you’re building a house, is the only time it doesn’t cost to convert to electric everything. Of course houses last much longer and most places don’t build enough, so this will take a very long time. My house is pushing 80, and we certainly can’t afford to wait that long for less polluting houses. However encouraging people who can, to convert when replacing a major appliance, will eventually make a difference
I think he is just saying people shouldn’t doom post. I think there is a fine line because a lot of zoomers i interact with are hopeless and have given up. This is a generation who never experienced a functional (American) government who worked for the people. So they just don’t care and you can see it reflected in their memes.
I don’t know the rhetorical path we should take. We need to get people motivated and fired up but not apathetic and despairing. I mostly want to see politicians crumble and the rich eaten and i think that’s messaging many will get behind.
It’s not even that Gen Z doesn’t care. Many of us just hit a point where everything feels numb. You can only get so upset/depressed/etc until your brain just kind of shuts down a bit.
There’s grief over everything that we’ll probably never get to see/have. There’s grief over the backsliding of progress that actually seemed real to us at one point. There’s grief over the many people who just die, everywhere, for terrible and avoidable reasons. There are many animals we will already never get to see.
Everywhere you look, people almost seem to feel pride in not knowing things. One member of Gen Z managed to have her voice heard about the planet, and she was ridiculed by grown adults. Multiple governments are now trying to decrease education, and some people somehow see that as a good thing. Wildfires are blazing like never before, the smoke is totally hazing new areas, yet people still refuse to see. Why is Gen Z expected to be the magical cure to global warming? People won’t even listen to Greta! We’re just as human as any other generation. Of course we’ll try, but the focus on solving the climate problem should have already been happening generations ago. Just THINK of all the progress we could have already made!
Lucky us, huh? We’re also regularly encouraged to shove all of these emotions down because we could not possibly have similar problems to older adults. Fuck that, respectfully.
Yeah, I’ve got to say, sometimes it’s damn hard to have any hope.
I do think more of us need to vote, even if it only feels like there’s a 3% chance that something actually changes for the better…
No one expects Gen Z to be the magical cure to climate change. Rather, it is expected that Gen Z will continue and escalate work that is already being done.
That’s a pretty normal thing to expect of upcoming generations.
Was the pressure the same, though?
The pressure isn’t on you. The pressure is on older generations right now, and things are moving. Your job there is to continue the work.
Ideally by the time Gen Z is 40, they’ll have a whole new crisis. Nearly every generation does.
Right, we got the plastics/forever chemicals crisis lined up
You lazy idiots aren’t about to demand anything of a young kid. Shut the fuck up, grow up, and do it yourselves.
Title rage baited?
What’s weird is you claim to be a scientist yet don’t understand fundamental social science.
Any scientist worth their weight has a basic understanding and any effective scientist understands how to use the field to their advantage. He is not wrong at all.
LOL WUT
So first off, climate science is data driven. Social politics should play no part in how to interpret the result that shit is getting hotter and people are dying… That’s pure statistics baby
But in terms of communication, sure, understanding psychology helps. But look where a poor understanding of social psychology got us…
And social science is not the same as psychology. Social science means integrating diverse perspectives into environmental decision making. Which many in this thread are failing to do
You’re overly ignorant of social science and you’ve shown to have zero understanding of what it is. Statistics are a huge component.
Climate change is human created and you think we can fix it without the human science. Good luck with that.
lol no
Statistics are a summarization of data
All fields use it.
A statistic is that the climate will increase more than 1.5 degrees by the end of the century
How we operationalize that information requires other statistical summaries BUT that does not negate the fact that we have passed a tipping point and people are dying because of it…
That doesn’t absolve us of action now… Or risk of overstating the threat
Another statistic is that most people don’t understand statistics
Signed, an actual fucking statistician
Again ignoring the point and proving mine to what, prove an elementary understanding of…statistics? So you don’t understand social science at all. Got it.
Sorry to have disappointed you. I’ll go ahead and tender my resignation later today. I guess I can’t help the planet after all… 😢
While I understand the intention here is to reassure people that not all is lost and there’s still time for action, a take like this is going to be paraphrased into “climate change is overblown and isn’t something to worry about” by Big Oil and other major polluters.
I have not seen a single piece of evidence that we’re going to do anything about climate change unless we come up with some magical solution that somehow: doesn’t upset the status quo and also makes existing rich people even more rich.
The status quo is the problem, so it would have to be some basic logic defying magic.
Exactly but talk to anyone, even the enlightened internet people who share climate change articles on here, and they seem convinced that the only way to fight climate change is to literally do nothing and wait for corporations to have their hearts grow like the grinch. They will aggressively atrack any suggestion that we are going to have to actually do something and also change out lifestyle.
It is going to take massive change, collective effort, and organizing. As well as individual changes to our daily lives. Even if those corporations and politicians all had a magic change of heart. The policies and economic changes would still result in a massive upheaval of our daily lives.
The problems just aren’t insurmountable and extinction level.
Maybe for humans. Animal and plant species are disappearing faster than ever. Fuck you Jim Skea!
Humans cannot live without a healthy ecosystem.
Not with that attitude.
1.5 degrees can mean the collapse of entire marine ecosystems, widespread shift in farmable land and water shortages like we have never experienced. will every single human be wiped out and our species end? no. Could billions (with a B) die and society as we know it irrecoverably collapse? quite possibly. And thats not just dooming
Of course they can. Now stop arguing and eat your algae stew!
What is he waiting for, his feet to cook under the sun?
Removed by mod
For real. What a joke. Trying to temper the already absurdly tempered response to the dangers of climate change? Wow. What a noble cause.
Not to mention, every lame attempt humanity under the spell of capitalism takes to limit our carbon output doesn’t “help.” It just…hurts the tiniest amount less. Because we are still pumping out insane amounts of co2 and the rate we’ve slowed down is nominal at best.
And another thing! Saying “the world will not end at 1.5c” is, I mean, technically true. If humanity dies, the world doesn’t end. If humanity is almost entirely wiped out and all that’s left are a few stragglers surviving in a hellscape of our own making, the world hasn’t ended. But 1.5c has long been a significant step, and one at which the snowball effect of warming very well may kick in. “Don’t worry about what these sCiENtiStS have been saying is a significant milestone! I’m the figure head of a feeble organization that blusters on about this vitally important issue! Listen to me now. A 70 year old with little skin in the game! When have my people ever steered you wrong!?”
Imho, we’re not going to change anything big enough to make a change. We’re going to adapt to whatever consequences will arise. At least the ones that have the resources to do so. Let’s not talk about the poor countries…
This is a lit comment. Thank you! We need to grieve now so we can start moving onto the acceptance and action phase
it’s a slow boil folks, nothing’s really wrong, it’ll be fine… don’t hold anyone responsible or try to change the path…
well. 1.5C° maybe not an existential threat, but I don’t see a single sign it would stop there, and not going further into 4.0C° ya know
I don’t recall seeing anyone saying that 1.5 degrees warming was an existential threat to humanity. That said, its already killing some humans at less than 1.5 and that will only get worse
I get what you’re saying and you’re not wrong that it will definitely get worse, but I just want to caution that while more people may be dying from extreme heat, any figures to that end should be contrasted with the number of people dying from extreme cold.
Seems like everyone forgets that a nontrivial number of humans die from freezing to death every year… While it sucks that x% more are dying from heat, if more than x% fewer people are dying from the cold, then the point is moot. Though more people are dying from heat, fewer people are dying from environmental exposure throughout the year, and so, over all, the heat can be argued to be a good thing.
Climate change affects both points of the spectrum, so no the heat can’t be argued to be a good thing.
Yes it does, but average global temps are going up, not down.
Omitting the environmental deaths by cold only tells some of the story. If both are going up, that’s far worse than any other scenario. Fact is, we have no idea either way. So from this assessment we only have half the picture, and that’s the problem.
The argument that it’s good is if 10% more people die from exposure in the summer, but that also means 10% fewer die in the winter from exposure, but 10% that 10% represents more people for the winter numbers, then fewer people are dying from exposure overall, which is where it could be argued that it’s a good thing.
I’m of the mind that it’s easier to give people sweaters, blankets, jackets, scarves, mittens, etc, to keep them alive during the cold months, than it is to somehow make them not die in the summer from the heat, so if we want these numbers moving at all, we want them to go towards the winter, because we can’t exactly air condition the outside in the summer.
Just because I see that the argument can be made, doesn’t and shouldn’t imply that I agree the argument should be made. We should be doing everything we can to slow down, prevent, and otherwise reverse the damage from pollution, including, but not limited to, preventing it from continuing, cleaning up the environmental pollution that’s possible to be cleaned, and finding new ways to do the things we need to without creating a new source of possibly worse damage to the environment, as well as doing what we can to restore the environmental areas that have been lost from the damage we have done.
Some things are extremely difficult or impossible with our level of technology, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s not like we have a good way to find and remove radioactive elements or oil that has escaped containment and have been floating around in the ocean… At least, we can’t right now. But keeping things like that from being repeated, using better, clean, energy sources, and advanced and ecologically friendly ways of storing and using that power will be key to preventing the need for things like oil to be dug up from the ground.
As you’re probably aware, there’s a laundry list of things we can and should be doing, and the majority of the time, that’s not what is being done… We have to fix it, but Rome wasn’t built in a day, and a lot of powerful people with deep pockets have an investment and interest in keeping things as they are, keeping people reliant on fossil fuels and dirty practices that result in pollution so they can keep making more and more money, so that they can simply have more money. It’s a difficult fight, but knowing the arguments people might make against that progress is going to be important to our future; so we can be prepared when those arguments are made by people opposed to a better, more environmentally friendly future, so those without the vision to see how damaging things are, can be convinced to make the right decision for everyone.
It’s going to be a long, tough, battle to fight.
Wow, what a ridiculous straw man.
I haven’t heard anyone referring to 1.5 C as apocalyptic. I HAVE heard it described in terms of being a threshold at which climate scientists predicted a certain set of consequences.
What’s apocalyptic about the situation is our acceleration towards even greater climate change, and world governments’ unwillingness to take the situation seriously.
In the US, for example, Biden passed the greatest climate mitigation law of all time … and it’s grossly inadequate. They’re treating it much the same way that the Obama administration treated health care. They patted themselves on the back for passing the ACA, which still left the country in a health care CRISIS, because it was a half measure.
In many ways the absolute worst way you can respond to a crisis is with these types of half measures. Why? Because it acts as a pressure valve, removing all the momentum for real, meaningful change.
Much like the ACA, Democrats will pretend that this is a stepping stone for the next set of reforms… But we only need to look at the ACA to see how flawed that reasoning is. We have not built on the ACA. We have spent a decade watching Republicans chip away at it.
Now we’re playing the same game with climate change mitigation. And the price will be hundreds of millions of climate change refugees, war, and famine.
To be 100 percent clear: while the Democrats are incompetent here, the real villains are the Republicans, who are WILLFULLY ignorant of the science, and are the ones forcing either impotent compromise or no mitigation at all.
deleted by creator
It is important to recall of IPCC’s mission to be “policy neutral while being policy relevant and never policy prescriptive”. They try their best to be scientifically accurate, discuss the state and suggest solutions. One can wonder why IPCC won’t take sides and but that’s the way it has always been. The burden of what to do with their message is always upon the commons.
This statement is on a similar vein. While it was possibly guided at consoling common people from climate grief, it has all the risks of being misquoted.
The news;
- we are fucked
- just kidding no we are not
- yes we are
- no we are not
Don’t even know what to believe anymore. All I know for fact is what I can see and trend myself. I know about 7 years ago or so I definitely noticed more wildfires than I ever have. Never had I had memories of every summer being smoked out. This summer I’ve felt autumn chill in some mornings when I normally would not have. Heat domes… Didn’t even know why that was until last year or the year before.
I think shits fucked.
Climate change? Pfft. My fridge has been a steady 3°C for the past 10 years.
pretty sure we’re fucked.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/30/world/antarctic-sea-ice-winter-record-low-climate-intl/index.html
when the AMOC goes, we’re gonna see ecosystems collapse. When the ice shelf breaks off into the sea, we’re gonna see sea levels climb rapidly.
can human civilization survive? perhaps if we can get everyone to work together. ww2 levels of mobilization and federalization of resources.
I think this would require the UN to have a no-bullshit-session with the worlds top climate and systems folks, then each and every country declaring a national emergency to address the climate crisis. Which means we’re going to finally have to get the assholes rolling coal in their giant pickup trucks festooned with trump flags to give up their bullshit. And everyone will have to cut their energy consumption and face changes to their lives and diets that will help us prepare for the really hard times ahead and feed the starving that are already resulting from mass drought & the war in Ukraine.
I doubt we’ll ever get the rolling coal big truck assholes to give up their bullshit, so… No, we’re fucked, we’re going to die badly in most cases, and it’s almost entirely our own fault. I let the last few generations off because they didn’t enjoy the excess, they’re simply going to get stuck with the bill.
Cheers, hope I’m very very wrong.
…Changes which will never happen and will themselves cause untold suffering and millions of deaths, so no one will ever support them.
What we need is a method that would not negatively impact human standard of living. Human expansion into space would do it; we’ll require the energy and resources up there to geoengineer in a non-stupid way and get the energy and resources to get off Exxon-Mobil’s oily cock and undo ocean acidification anyway.
So let’s do that instead. We can prevent the civil war that would erupt from climate austerity too.
We don’t have time for that.
The way I see it, we have 3 main paths
We cut everything we’re doing, go local and human powered, and adapt to conditions as they change.
Super-intelligence and/or full automation (whichever comes first, we soon get both). It makes capitalism pointless, it lets us expand into space scaling geometrically, and it tells us exactly how we can change things here to maximize habitability
We keep doing what we’re doing until the “just in time” supply chains we use to minimize costs collapse. Either the US military’s plans for this are good and we minimize loss of life, or we starve. Industries collapse immediately, and maybe we lose the ability to produce higher technology - at the very least it won’t be nearly as common. Hopefully we can still work on AI and robotics or there’s no real way out of it
Path 1 is probably not happening. Path 2 and 3 are just a race between the next revolution in technology and the climate. It’s looking pretty close right now - so doing anything to tip the scales, however slightly, is a great idea
Removed by mod
I’m not sure what kind of point you’re trying to make here. Obviously every wildfire ultimately originates from an ignition source, be that a human made fire, some glass focusing the sunlight, a cigarette or whatever other source you can think of. They don’t spawn into existence.
Drought caused by extreme heat makes it much easier for these small fires to spread into an actual wildfire though. It’s not mutually exclusive.
Removed by mod
1.5C was never a threat, it was a target. The IPCC produces simplified “stakeholder” report, it would be a superior use of one’s time to just give it a skim than spend time reading clickbaity website titles. https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/
Policymaker summary report: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_SummaryForPolicymakers.pdf
If I may indulge myself one more edit (and then get back to work), why 1.5C is a natural question. As far as I recall it was the middle scenario for the end of the 21st century as calculated much earlier (easy to check if you go back to the early 2000s reports). We’ve since reached ~1C of warming. In the above summary, they state that the most realistic scenarios: (C7= 4 degrees by 2100), and C6 = 3 degrees by 2100), do not have peak warming by 2100. The reports never seem to stretch beyond 2100, and I wish they would to illustrate this point properly. My biggest fear (though not one I want my kids to have nightmares about) would be that warming continues towards 5C, which apart from everything else, brings the climate close to conditions experienced during the Permian-Triassic mass extinction:
I think the peak 4 degrees this century is extremely possible. A lot of the community studying this now thinks we have underestimated feedback loops, much of what is currently happening was not supposed to happen as quickly as it has.
I agree, our track record since the establishment of the IPCC has been only very slightly better than “business as usual” scenarios. The current decline of the AMOC current was not predicted to happen as quickly as it has, and the early 2000s IPCC reports didn’t even factor in Greenland ice sheet meltwater. I’m not a climate scientist, I think if we have one or two in this community, their input would be fascinating.
It’s terrifying.
We won’t get to 2100 before things really get awful either. We’ll get to 2035-2050 and then things like cascading crop failure will happen, causing a global collapse in the food supply.
If we reach that event occurring it will functionally prevent governments from cooperating to reduce carbon emissions. They will all be focused internally on turmoil and massive unrest generated by mass famine. Many will turn up the carbon dial in order to try and address this. Others will simply have revolutions that take considerable time afterwards to stabilise making organised effort unviable.
oh look people in the comments who are missing the fucking point. I’m honestly so sick of this shit. You either have rainbows and unicorns and “we’ll just figure it out”/climate deniers to “WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH” apathetic fucks who won’t do shit* because “what’s the point we are all doomed anyway” which…causes the same problem as denying does.
honestly i’ve delt with more people who refuse to change anything because “what’s the point” than I deal with outright deniers anymore.
*not sure if anyone in the comments is an apathetic "do nothing though tbf and honest. So there is my disclaimer don’t @ me.
Ok, sure. Please tell me what I can do that will actually make a difference other than having it be a major influence in the way I vote?
This is a problem that only governments can solve and voting is the only way average people can hope to really influence them.
One person recycling or driving an EV makes no difference to the entire planet.
Oh don’t worry, voting to me is something that you do and then get back to the real work. You need to organize with people around you and fight everything and anything in your area. If it feels like you can’t do that in your area, then if you can, try moving to an area you think you might be able to find your community. (it doesn’t have to be far, it can literally be a town over, or even down the street). No one can fight climate change alone. It will take many people working together to make the change we need to see. Also you may be able to radicalize people in your area for even more direct action. Get people to feed into their anger, and channel it at the people in charge who refuse to change anything.
This can start out as small issues but you can wake people up that they DO have power. If we build up a coalition of power from the ground up, it will get easier and faster to do. Many hands make light work and all that, and eventually people will be willing to make people in power fear them again. Cause i’m going to be honest with you, I believe power corrupts absolutely, so anyone in power is so removed from the rest of our realities, that I do not think you can reason with most of them. The only thing you can do against power, is make it fear you. Ironically to all the “just vote UwU” people, voting means nothing if there is no consequences for going against the will of the people. Which we see time and time again. I have finally been able to be more active as of late, despite my disabilities and it gives me a way forward that I wouldn’t of had otherwise.
oh, even more things you can do. While I can go on and on about the complications of social media and the internet at large, and while direct action in person is the most effective, there are things you can do if you just can’t work in person for a variety of reasons. Before I got my boots on the ground, I was able to help out with community work with social media management. With the internet and our ability to connect long distances, you have options from home in regards to helping build community, and if you do this it may give you connections to help you get out of your situation so that you can be more physically involved in the future.
I know this is a lot, but there is just not a quick easy answer to “what should I do?” Our individualism has warped our reality to how things work, and trust me I battle with it every day too. There is no big savior coming to help us, and there isn’t some big magic fix. It will take a lot of tiny things that will build up to big changes. That’s how it has always worked, but it’s easier to conceptualize when we break it down into big chunks for history. Let alone the hegemony of the Great Man Theory of history
It’s hard to tell you what YOU can do, because I don’t know you. What CAN you do? Use the skills you have to help out a group or org in your area, if there isn’t one, then try making one if that is something you can do, or help online. Our changing climate talked about dual vision when dealing with climate change. It’s the idea of looking at what is possible in both a good and bad way and trying to walk that line. I don’t know if my organizing and work will make a difference, but all I can do is my best and constantly work for something better. The people in power have taken much from all of us, I refuse to let them take my one life without a fight, and without me finding happiness in the dark times. We don’t get to choose the times we live in, but we can help fight and build something better so those in the future will have something better. That’s just how I live and it’s what works for me.
This is a trying time, and sorry I did not mean for this to turn into a novel. Like i said it’s hard to answer the question “what do I do?” simply without coming off as uncaring or hand-wavy. TL;DR shit fucking sucks
I wish you luck in your journey and as much peace as anyone of us can have with our climate anxiety.
TL:DR kinda defeats the purpose but, Shit fucking sucks, and it’s hard. But we gotta try, organizing and direct action to the point of making those in power fear us is our best option.
honestly i’ve delt with more people who refuse to change anything because “what’s the point” than I deal with outright deniers anymore.
But most of the people who express that opinion aren’t saying it because they think that climate change is unstoppable.
They are saying it because the changes that we know can help fight climate change, that we’ve known about for years, that international leaders can implement, aren’t being done.
And this statement, from someone with a lot influence on global carbon emissions than the average person, seems very out of touch. He is telling off the people whose house is burning down, while ignoring the arsonists.
actually, a lot of them do think climate change is unstoppable in some way shape and form, I know cause i get told that almost every day. There are people doing it in these comments right now.
Also, I read the article, he is not ignoring the issue here, and honestly, i think this is directed at the leaders too. Who do you think is spreading this gloom and doom in the first place? Who benefits from people giving up and we just live in a worst world when there is much we can do to fight? The fossil fuel-backed “leadership”.
There are plenty of ways to fight, you just can’t do it alone. No one can fight climate change alone. Our individualism has warped our brains so that we cannot even fathom what to do at first when we ourselves cannot fix a problem by ourselves. Another outcome of hegemony and our corrupt society.
only through building community and threatening the power structure can we effectively fight for real change. “leadership” (aka people with power who are all corrupt to a certain extent) will do nothing if they do not have a legitimate fear of the people, and that will not come without community building and throwing off the shackles of individualism.
Hey jackass, people aren’t apathetic because they believe it’s too late to do anything. People are apathetic because people like you haven’t done anything and now it’s too late. The “beneficial actions” you are calling for are half measures that won’t help at all, and the people who care are already doing what they can while the real polluters, the real destroyers of humanity, are building bunkers and hoarding gold to survive the coming storm.
deleted by creator
Fucking knew it! Their neutrality sickens me
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
What an absolute dogshit headline - this old white man certainly needs to better at avoiding giving clippable highlights but the journalist absolutely knows what they are doing.
