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.
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.
