this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
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I don't know anymore.. I'm more confused about the severity of climate change as time goes on.
Climate change is not a big deal if the life a person is expecting to live is only a slightly more stressful version of a life without climate change (I think this is where we are currently). It is a big deal if it has the same degree of impact of that a mental health disorder might have - work, relationships, and overall lifestyle are significantly impacted and that person needs to make major adjustments to learn to live with it. I don't see a middle ground here, but I'm also not thinking that hard about it.
I don't know where we are going. And yes... I know the world is a big place and some people are going to feel the worst aspects, but to keep things simple (and relevant) I'm only thinking of other "middle" class Canadians living in large urban centers. If this argument takes into account every person on earth then the answer is just going to be a meaningless 'yes'.
Edit: I'm eager to hear from people about this. If you have something to say please share.
Famine, war, collapse of civilisation, rise of warlords, loss of knowledge. Everywhere. Within our lifetimes.
Just look at the first of those and the rest follow. Think about how likely it is that our civilisation will be able to grow crops in the quantity it has up until recently, even five years from now, given the increased frequency and severity of extreme climate events.
That's what I find confusing. We (global we) have already had enormous crop failures and disasters recently. https://www.agweb.com/news/crops/crop-production/farm-bureau-finds-2022-weather-disasters-amounted-21-billion-crop-losses these events can get amplified on social media and then it's disorientating to me when the effects slip away.
I think what I want is data:
https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-production
I don't doubt it's going to get worse, but I'm struggling to understand the details of that. You're saying famine in Chicago, full on North Korean style society? War, yes I said already we already do that all the time. Not new. Warlords, not new. Loss of knowledge? Vague. I'm sorry but this is what I'm talking about. How did you reach these conclusions, if you know?
I don't follow. What is it you find confusing?
Unfortunately, due to the way time works, nobody can give you data from the future.
Yes.
I don't know what you mean by that.
Again, I'm not sure what you mean. What is what you're talking about?
Firstly, the accelerated pace of global warming compared to predictions; we've already exceeded 1.5C globally for a short duration and things are getting worse not better, fast. It looks like we're going to go well beyond 2C and we're going to get there very quickly. The greatest fears of climate scientists 10 years ago now look like optimistic pipe dreams.
Secondly, the inaction from society as a whole. The time to have acted in order avoid the issue was 60 years ago. We're now well into the situation where people are dying and billions, even trillions of dollars of damage is being done by extreme weather and yet there are people in governments who are still literally in denial about the scale of the problem or even whether the problem exists at all. And most critically, the populace is not holding those people to account. Governments are still issuing new oil and gas drilling licenses. Airports are still adding runways. Our civilisation continues to increase CO2 emissions which is the wrong direction if you want to save humanity.
As a civilisation or perhaps species, it seems that we do not have the capacity to deal with this problem. The reality of the situation seems to be beyond the grasp of most people. We don't, as a society, have the means of identifying and fixing the psychological shortfalls that inhibit most people from acknowledging the scale of the problem. It's like the problem is so big and its consequences so dire that people cannot bear to look at it with their eyes open. They would rather keep their eyes closed, even if doing so reduces the likelihood of them and their children surviving. Humanity is like a rabbit, frozen in the headlights of climate change.
I have a suspicion that many governments have already concluded behind closed doors that they cannot prevent global calamity and so are just trying to put off the inevitable downfall of their respective societies and live in comfort for as long as they can.