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
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.
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.
I hope, greatly, for the future. But know that any real change will have to include everyone, everywhere. Even the chuds that drive jacked up pickups covered in skulls and toting firearms. And they will never change willingly. The oil industry will continue to sow doubt and enable these idiots with cheaply available petrol, so it’s not likely we’ll even be able to get serious mpg regulations, much less a renewable transportation network. When florida’s coast is under water, maybe that’ll change a few minds… but I’m sure they’ll turn it into some kind of conspiracy to persecute them even then.
Really hope I’m wrong tho.
The chuds driving jacked up pickups aren’t contributing very much to global CO2 emissions actually.
The tendency of individuals to place far more blame on passenger vehicles (of which medium and heavy trucks constitute less than 1/4th in the US- likely far less elsewhere) as a contributor to global warming than they are actually responsible for actually had a name; The Transportation Fallacy.
Exact numbers vary by year and country, but it seems like passenger transportation accounts for about ~7% of global CO2 emissions. To put that in perspective, the same source indicates that we can remove the same amount of CO2 by eliminating food waste as we would by taking every passenger vehicle on earth off the road.
The auto manufacturing lobby wants you to sell your current working vehicle and buy a Tesla or a Prius, even though the carbon debt of manufacturing that vehicle won’t break even with an IC engine for ~300,000 miles. And even when it does break even with your current vehicle, if everyone on earth did the same thing, it would barely dent our global emissions.
They want you to feel satisfied about doing your part in a way that earns them revenue, instead of focusing your energy on things that will cost the energy lobby money but actually have an effect.
Sorry, long rant, but I wish more people realized how convenient of a scapegoat the type of car someone drives is. Yes, a more fuel efficient car is better than a gas guzzler, of course. But that’s such a small part of the problem, yet it gets such a huge amount of the mental energy that people spend trying to reduce personal emissions. Eat less meat, push for nuclear power generation, make sure your home is well insulated and uses efficient appliances, fight for working from home where possible, switch from grass to native plants. Drive less. The chuds rolling coal are idiots, but they’re a very, very small part of the problem. So many better ways to spend our energy.
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.
they want a slow boil, keeps the panic down and diminishes the odds there will be a ‘bastards up against the wall’ moment for the ones responsible.
Yes but my point is that the world is already burning… People are dying… Homes are sinking into the ocean… Countless species are being lost. Pray tell, when is it bad enough that it is no longer sensationalistic?
Oh, if only people were as passionate about abortion. I mean, they’re not killing that many babies, right? Why the fuss?
Edit: also, 1.5 C is catastrophic. Millions will move or die. Refugees will be pouring out of countries in numbers like we’ve never seen. Food production won’t keep up with demands. Entire ecosystems like corals will be decimated and survive in only tiny pockets. Stop me if I’m being too hyperbolic and making anyone feel paralyzed with inaction though. Better we gently sweep it under the rug as we have done since the 1970s, because then it’s not a problem!
Millions will move or die
So not an existential threat to humanity, then.
This person was picked for the job because their job is to encourage effective means of fighting climate change, and encouraging hopelessness is not effective.
We are likely to see 1.5C. The world will go on, because it has to. Being prepared to deal with 1.5C means not assuming 1.5C is the end of the world.
Stop me if I’m being too hyperbolic
Stop.
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
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…
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
I am sorry that other Millennials just gave in to their trauma and were unable to do anything to fix the problem. I am sorry Boomers and Gen-Xers caused it in the first place.
I am a millennial and I am going to act to solve the problem in my lifetime. I might need your help, but I don’t expect you to be burdened with responsibility for older generations’ actions. We all can hold the evil shitty people accountable, and build a better and brighter future if we work together.
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.
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.
Honestly I think we should stop trying to stop climate change and start adapting to it.
Because at individual scale all actions to limit climate change are almost meaningless, whatever we do we will not see the consequences of it. On the other hand we can adapt to climate change at individual and community level.
Start planting trees in our community, build a way of life that does not require fossil fuel since we are running out of them, installing solar panels and improving home insulation to help during externe weather events, buy less products and focus on repairing them instead …
All of that can directly improve our life, present and future, without relying on everyone doing their share
AND, as a side effect, all the action we do to prepare yourself to live in a post growth world are also great to reduce our CO2 emissions.
Because adapting is the same situation. Yes, you can make changes personally, but there are overwhelming societal issues that you can’t begin to touch, that require huge investments, but is from politicians and corporations. Most importantly, adapting is more expensive than prevention
I’d love to install solar panels, I have a flat rubber roof with no tree coverage that’s perfect for it. A $35,000 upfront cost is an absolute nonstarter for me. I have it, but that’s basically my entire emergency fund. If someone would pay me to have them installed, hell yeah, let’s do it.
That’s a good and healthy way to approach this. Nicely put.
Bettering the world’s situation is a legislative/political issue. Bettering you and your immediate community is something you can help with, even if it’s only at the margins.
The problem with all this, however, is that there are a lot of the things that you can do to help your personal situation that are definitely not helping the overall situation. For example installing air conditioning, watering your lawn, etc. They might make things more comfortable for you, but they’re by no means better for the world. We still need to incentivize the right things through the right tax breaks and financial/industry incentives, which lead us back to politics being the actual thing that we need to make meaningful personal and global change possible.
Add a few wildflowers to your grass, it’s better for insects (and should not be that expensive).
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?
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.
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.
The political agenda of… checks notes making the world a better place to live.
It’s how you go about that that gets political. Just an example: Nuclear or Solar? EVs, bike lanes, or public transportation? I know you’ll say it doesn’t have to be one or the other and there’s no one size fits all answer, but you bet your ass when money is involved it’ll get political.
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
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
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!
We need something like the doomsday clock but with the degrees C change forecast based on current emissions and efforts.
We have this:
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Give it to me straight Doc, how much money do I need to survive the apocalypse?
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/
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.
