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.
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
He’s not wrong. If people think they’re already doomed and mass extinction is just a matter of time, what’s their motivation to change?
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.
Dr Nihilism here, my older teen questioned whether it’s really a good idea to bring kids into tho world, so I hit him with the population implosion coming right after climate catastrophe, population going beyond sustainability before plateauing, mass die-offs …. Don’t test me before coffee
I can agree with that
We need something like the doomsday clock but with the degrees C change forecast based on current emissions and efforts.
We have this:
https://climateclock.world/
But I think it would be useful to have the current trajectory (in degrees C) along with a table showing the consequences of each 0.5 to 1C
The thing is the Doomsday Clock is for something that may happen any time, and in only minutes
The climate crisis is longer term than people seem to grasp. There is no instant fix, nor instant apocalypse: it’s slow moving and long term. I just looked this up to fact check myself: CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 300-1,000 years. That’s right, we already locked in at least 300 years of climate change, and we continue to make it worse.
Even with the anomalous weather we’ve been having around the globe this year, I think people don’t grasp how long term an issue this is, and how that’s the core of the problem. How do we get people who expect next years weather to be different to understand enough of the problem to help?
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.
However the science is not in on what would sway those unwinnable people and where we hit the tradeoff of hitting the alarm enough to win over a few more vs overwhelming and numbing the very people we need.
I find it interesting (in a dark way) that he thinks we’ve reached this point. I have to admit I’ve mostly dismissed a lot of the complaints as mere internet kvetching. Nope, that’s real too
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.
Millions of people think Kennedy is still alive and running the deep state with Trump as his appointed and anointed by god successor to the kingdom of America and Heaven.
There are absolutely unwinnable people
I disagree. I recently saw a video of someone saying “if the Bible said 1+1 is 3, I’d be finding ways to make the math work so that 1+1=3.” How is anyone supposed to have discussions with someone who’s views subsist in that mindset?
There are absolutely unwinnable people, to me. Additionally, they may be winnable, but we’re on a clock, and we can’t wait until it’s done to decide to leave them behind.
I do agree that there are factors larger than them causing the issue, and that needs dealt with as well.
I keep trying to remember how we won the great lightbulb war, as a possible parallel. There were so many people getting so emotional about more efficient lighting, there was culture war, there were people vowing to hoard cases of incandescent lightbulbs, there were actually people threatening to take up arms against anyone restricting their right to “traditional” lightbulbs. It really sounded about the same as those refusing to help fight climate change. Then the war was over, LEDs are expected now, but I don’t know how. It seemed to fade away.
Maybe it was improving prices and technology, or maybe it was just familiarity once the newer technology reached some critical threshold of adoption, I don’t know. I was hoping to pull a lesson from it but I have nothing
I think if you consider that group unwinnable, you should move on to whatever the next step is in your mind. I think anyone who would join from that already has.
It just doesn’t sound like you have any desire to win over anyone else anyway.
I have no desire to continue trying to win over those people. There are absolutely still people to discuss these matters with. But we can’t abide by the lowest common denominator.
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.
As always, you can vote with your opinion, your dollars, your vote.
The only ray of hope I see is that we do seem to be changing peoples minds, we do seem to be doing some of the right things. Finally. It’s taken decades to get acceptance from half the population, taken decades for technology to get to the point where there are real alternatives, taken decades to get past active sabotage and denialism. There is progress. Some. Too late and too little is better than not at all …… or maybe I just live in a state that takes climate change seriously
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.
Literally “This is fine.”
Ignore the triple digit temps in the ocean, that’s not apocalyptic! Relax!
So what if a few people died of heat exhaustion just by… Walking outside for a few minutes. Normal. Not apocalyptic.
So what if regular rains are delivering hurricane levels of flooding. That’s just nature doing it’s thing, dude. Quit overreacting.
Malaria is in NJ, but like, mosquitos fly so that was probably bound to happen.
And really, like, 110 isnt that hot, especially if it’s not humid.
Relax.
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.
Give it to me straight Doc, how much money do I need to survive the apocalypse?
$3.50
God damn Loch Ness monster creating global warming so he can get my tree fiddy!!
No joke, there are billionaires scouring the futurist community looking for a reassuring answer to that question.
Douglas Rushkoff wrote a whole book about it.
https://rushkoff.com/books/survival-of-the-richest-escape-fantasies-of-the-tech-billionaires/
I think he means that doomsaying is going to make even more people not take it seriously…
I think there are loads of people who take it seriously but can’t do anything about it. The biggest CO2 polluters are mega corporations and things like airplanes and cargo ships. Ordinary people can’t fight that. One family living off the grid and producing zero CO2 won’t help anything.
Ergo, most people are apathetic, as they should be. You’re not going to change the minds of governments and mega corps.
Exactly. At least 70% of emission are caused directly by corporate and military activity, and that’s just the sanitized, conservative, government/corporate approved statistic. Realistically, the number probably much higher.
Using paper straws, sorting your recycling, and turning the hallway light off does fuck all for climate change, and it will never make a meaningful difference without a harsh crackdown on, if not a total overthrow of global corporate hegemony in this decade. We all know how likely that is…
The 70% that comes from corporations comes from people. The people who use the products that the corporations provide. So, if Exxon is one of those major polluters, that is based largely on the people who purchase Exxon products and use them.
This 70% number comes from a 2017 study that measured emissions from 1985-2015. So while those corporations are selling the product that pollutes, when we order some stupid shit from Amazon and it has to come from China on a ship to get here, we are responsible for using that product. When we get UberEats delivered, we are responsible. Ordinary people can fight that by not buying stupid shit we don’t need from China and in so many other ways. Yes, the corporations produce those products, but it is US that consumes it and we are ultimately responsible for the emissions. It’s a fun way to try to say “it’s not me, it’s them,” but the fact is, it’s all of us.
People buy the shit because corporations make it and, at best, tell us we want it, and at worst, design our entire infratstructure and society around it so that we more or less have to buy it.
Nobody was asking for cars, or at least very few were, until companies started pushing them on people. Same goes for the vast majority of shit we own.
Well if everyone is just buying shit because corporations tell them to and the world is that fucking stupid, then we deserve what’s happening.
It’s got nothing to do with stupidity. We were all born and raised in, and indoctrinated by a society that pushes intense consumerism in every aspect of our lives. That didn’t happen overnight, and it’s not the result of a person making astupid choice. It happened incrementally over centuries, slowly enough that most people take for granted as just the way things are and never really question it.
That’s why only strong government regulation can fix this, and why “durr just stop buying stuff” is an ignorant, asinine take.
Probably because people give up
As opposed to what, Soviet style revolution? People today don’t have the same mettle as their forebearers, it’s not going to happen. Occupy Wall Street and the George Floyd protests showed to the powers at be that people aren’t willing to embrace violent protest for change.
sounds like giving up to me
No, this is a misunderstanding. Cargo ships are a major source of sulphur pollution, not carbon. Cargo ships use the cheapest fuel they can. Cheap fuel is rich in sulphur. They can do this because there are no emission regulations on the open sea. A commonly cited figure is that a single cargo ship releases more sulphur than all the cars in North America.
This figure is then misinterpreted by people who failed basic chemistry to mean that cargo ships are a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. In reality, the opposite is true; cargo ships are one of the most efficient ways to move stuff over large distances. Only electric trains are better, and only if the source of the electricity is not fossil.
Perhaps I too failed basic chemistry, but I do believe you are grossly incorrect – maritime shipping is a massive contributor to CO2 emissions:
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/06/shipping-carbon-emissions-biden-climate/
Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352484722020261
What makes you think that? None of the sources you provide disagree with what I wrote.
Perhaps it’s just poor word choice or phrasing, but it reads like you mean that “the opposite is true” in that they are NOT a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, when in fact they are a huge contributor, more than California and Texas combined.
Fair.
The point was not to imply that shipping is not a large source of CO2, but:
It would only take between 50 and 500 people to save the human race. We had a population bottleneck event back during the Toba eruption that reduced humans to about 10,000 people and we were fine afterwards. 500 is the limit for genetic drift and 50 is the limit for severe inbreeding.
We’re we fine afterwards, are you sure about that?
Are we taking applications for the 500?
I want to be one of the 50!
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.
Nuclear power takes a long time to build which is a problem because action should have started 40 years ago.
Too many people can only think in binary. They see your argument and decide that doing anything would result in higher prices, lower living standards, etc. they don’t seem to be able to grasp a goal of riding that line for best results
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.
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
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.
Why would living conditions have to go down?
Because it costs money. It’s not just “jobs”, it’s actual time and effort that we can’t spend on other things, which ultimately increases prices and means fewer people can afford things. And while in the West that means maybe cutting back a little, in other regions it can mean a life in poverty and premature death.
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
I prescribe reading this list until you feel better. Yes the worst of humanity was the noisiest as usual, but there was also a lot of recognition
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Thunberg#Honours_and_awards
Never experienced a warm summer day nor a windshield full of dead bugs.
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I understand his sentiment. I have an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness because most CO2 emissions aren’t even made by normal every day people but the entities that do create a majority of it don’t care. This means anything we attempt to do is as a whole is only a drop in the bucket compared to what these entities are producing. I purchased a hybrid vehicle to curve my driving emissions and I recycle. I planted grass and a tree in my yard to prevent run off and produce oxygen. I am looking into getting solar power for my home but I am not a rich man so the price is a little beyond me right now. Things I can do I try to do but in the end regardless of what I do entities are polluting our water and air, producing plastics, and are trying to place the blame on normal people. It can be a little heavy on the soul.
Hang in there. It will eventually get so bad it will mandate action. Humanity is resilient. But I do feel for the many people who have died and will die, or be left homeless, or without a country to call home on the way there…
Also, put pressure on your elected officials, vote in every election, encourage your friends and peers to vote. Run for local office where a lot of decisions are made that can help
I live in Colorado and I feel we have a fairly good turnout for elections and the state is move quickly to renewables. However, this does not stop other state and companies from polluting to their hearts content. Companies need the hammer brought down on them.
I’m actually pretty optimistic about EV adoption. There’s too large a portion of the US hostile to the idea, but a dozen or so states establishing a 2035 deadline to phase out new gas powered cars. However those states are also some of the strongest economies
I believe many European countries, or maybe the EU have similar targets.
That may be enough for car manufacturers to completely switch over. If you needed to focus on products for the leading economies.p, why would you even build gasoline cars that couldn’t be sold there. The backward states may have no choice
I believe that we need to switch to EV when the solid state battery is more easily manufactured. A real concern with everyone switching to EV is the power grid and it’s ability to handle that.
So true, but it’s a problem of coordinating and prioritizing thousands of corporate entities over more than a decade. In a mostly capitalist economy, the only realistic way is to set a deadline and milestones
Electric grids very add only need a lot of improvements plus we need more power generation, but these are costs to utilities, not profits, so won’t happen unless forced to
Agreed
I already feel helpless. I try to use my vehicle less and use public transport. I just moved somewhere walkable so there are days that I don’t use my vehicle (will be weeks eventually when I get used to it). I try to buy local and reduce my waste.
I live in a southern state though so my vote doesn’t do shit. Even if I did, this feels like a political issue at this point and neither the right or the left of the country has the will to “do what needs to be done”.
Capitalism is exploitative by its nature and the market will never solve the problem until we have extracted all the fossil fuels in the earth.
I know it is not your problem, but how can we NOT feel helpless?
I think the issue here is who you’re looking at for the audience. At this point, we can agree that anyone who doesn’t think there’s a problem is delusional, and it’s a waste to time to convince them otherwise.
If we assume the audience is all people who believe this is an issue, then this message makes sense. It’s trying to convince people that they should still care and not be nihilistic about it.
I think climate change is a big fucking problem, full stop.
That being said, do you know how much of a relief it is to read “we’re not going to turn into Mars, just keep trying to fix the problem we got this humanity”? I legitimately have had existential dread due to the messaging around climate change. At least now I can continue trying to do my best to fix it without asking “what’s the fucking point?”
Exactly. It’s not like this is an existential threat to human civilisation and the current ecosystem of the planet… oh wait, that’s exactly what it bloody is!
The reason for all the apathetic people is because they see the writing on the wall. It’s not too late now, but by the time the assholes up top actually pull their heads out, it will be.
No youre not
Lol, what do you disagree about? Is a 1.5°C rise apocalyptic?
There are quite a few hypothetical tipping points where the climate can go catastrophically wrong. We don’t understand them as well as climate change, can’t as easily predict how likely they are or when they’re inevitable, but we’d like to avoid them.
The 1.5°C target is where we expect significant disruptions to society, expensive impact, hardship for the most vulnerable. But we can deal with it if it stops there. However as we shoot past that target, those disruptions get bigger and more expensive but also those tipping points become more likely. I really really hope we can avoid them
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… 😢
What really got me worried was a warning ( warning collapse per 2025) about a projected collapse of the Atlantic Gulfstream.:
“The Gulf Stream system could collapse as soon as 2025, a new study suggests. The shutting down of the vital ocean currents, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc) by scientists, would bring catastrophic climate impacts.”
That would be very bad news for Europe and The Atlantic and other sea currents in general.
No. It wouldn’t. Yes, it would get colder in Europe, but there are lots of ways and means to deal with that. Heck, European homes generally are optimized for the cold and not the heat - which is where a lot of the issues and deaths regarding heat stroke come from. Also, European homes are not getting blown away by some heavy gusts.
Florida will get the most shit and probably will cease to exist. Though, one could argue that that’s not such a bad thing…
And the Gulf stream has stopped a few times in earth history, it isn’t the only current.
Stop fear mongering, FFS, and do things differently. Yes, it will get uncomfortable for a lot of people and we have to ask ourself as a society if we deal with it properly - or not and face the consequences, but even 2°C won’t collaps humanity at once. It all depends what we do with the cards we are going to get dealt.
cries in British