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.
What is he waiting for, his feet to cook under the sun?
His statement isn’t really about the severity of the issue, he just says that people are prone to give up
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
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.
