
Planet is 'way off track' in dealing with climate change, U.N. report says - makerofspoons
https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/multi-agency-report-highlights-increasing-signs-and-impacts-of-climate-change
======
jl6
Can’t help but feel the coronavirus lockdowns are a good trial run for a low
carbon world: limited travel, local food and entertainment, less consumption
of non-essentials.

~~~
svara
It's also a great demonstration that it's really hard to get people to believe
that something they can't see is real.

Coronavirus cases have been growing stably and predictably for weeks.
Epidemiologists (and not only they) saw it coming. No panic would have been
necessary if calm, decisive action had been taken early on. But somehow the
panic seems to be necessary. Normalcy bias is real.

These past weeks have been really instructive about collective human behavior,
and have me really worried about our ability as a species to address climate
change.

~~~
avip
Otoh you see collaborations s.a China sending medical aid to Italy, which
makes me feel maybe we do deserve to survive after all.

~~~
shoo
We're still only demonstrating ability to react to a sudden media-worthy
crisis that is putting people (including decision makers) at a very minor risk
of death in the very short term.

For climate change, we need to demonstrate the ability to proactively avoid a
creeping catastrophe that will occur in the medium-long term, where the harm
may not happen to current decision makers, but will instead happen to other
people who don't get a vote in the decision today, and isn't media worthy
since nothing is really changing ("outlook remains bleak").

------
_bxg1
Poor timing for the publication of this report, to be honest. People have
finite emotional capacity for dealing with stress/threats. Most people right
now, with the coronavirus going, probably don't have the energy to spend on
caring about this, so instead they'll just detach from it (I know that's what
I find myself doing). Waiting a month or two would've likely meant a stronger
impact.

~~~
lotsofpulp
People have been ignoring it for decades now, and it's not going to change due
to another UN report regardless of timing. Everyone wants the upper middle
class US lifestyle, and the future will have to pay for it.

~~~
_bxg1
If they did the report, it's because they hoped to make an impact. All I'm
suggesting is that whatever impact they were hoping to make, it could've been
larger with better timing. Your defeatism has no relevance to that question
one way or the other.

------
CiPHPerCoder
I don't believe we'll ever succeed in dealing with climate change. It's going
to kill us all and the people in power will refuse to accept responsibility
the whole while.

Happy to be proven wrong!

~~~
hirundo
It's not going to decimate us or kill half of us or most of us, it's going to
kill us all? What scenarios get us from here to there, such that _nobody_ can
adapt to the changes? Is this hyperbole or do you really think that human
extinction is the probable result of AGW?

~~~
geddy
It's an interesting thought. Mass displacement will be a huge issue though.
While we do have plenty of landmass in theory, migration of major cities is
just.. I cannot possibly fathom how that could ever be organized. We'd panic,
loot grocery stores, rob pharmacies, etc. I mean look at what this pandemic
has done. You can't even buy cans of beans or toilet paper! My local store is
out of bags of dry rice. Of _rice_.

I don't recall where I heard it but before I knew it was a quote, I used to
say this all the time: humanity is three square meals away from total
annihilation. One day without food and humans will revert right back to our
caveman "attack other human, take food" lizard brains.

I definitely went a little off topic from your original post but, "adapt to
the changes" isn't honestly something I can fathom happening. I don't know
where you live - be it a city or suburbs or otherwise - but think about 30
million people showing up and tell me that doesn't end in a massive disaster.

~~~
hirundo
Massive disaster can be a huge distance from human extinction. A 1% die off is
a massive disaster but even a 99% megadeath is 75 million people short of
killing us all. I haven't seen any likely AGW scenarios that get us close to
that. Maybe someone could point me that way.

~~~
CiPHPerCoder
I was using the Planet Venus as a historical precedent of what happens to a
planet in our solar system in the conditions of a runaway greenhouse gas
effect when I wrote that.

I'm a cryptography-focused security engineer, not a climate scientist.

~~~
hirundo
Here's a credible paper asserting that the net feedback is negative:

[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/16000870.2019.1...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/16000870.2019.1699387)

I'd have to know a lot more before deciding that either a runaway greenhouse
or net cooling is plausible, let alone likely.

------
DoofusOfDeath
I don't want to be pessimistic, but I'm working on the assumption that we
won't (collectively) enact any plan that (requires coordinated sacrifice of
multiple countries) but (allows some country to gain economic / military
advantage by gaming the system at others' expense).

So I'm assuming that it's smartest to assume climate change _will_ happen
without significant mitigation, and try to minimize the suffering that
results.

Now that I think about it, this reminds me a lot of our response to covid-19:
I always assumed people lacked the political will for real containment, and we
should focus our efforts on "flatting the curve" instead.

------
vaidhy
I am always amused by headlines like this. I do not understand why the people
expect earth to react to keep humans alive. Earth does what it does. We do
what we do and should be willing to face the consequences.

~~~
JohnFen
Indeed. This is a point I frequently make to people who say things like "we're
destroying the Earth" or "we're destroying nature".

We're not. The Earth, and nature, will be just fine. The question is whether
or not the planet will remain conducive to human life.

~~~
boo_boo
The people you talk to must be so grateful for having a pedant around to
correct them

~~~
JohnFen
I am most definitely a pedant, but this isn't an example of pedantry. This is
an important distinction that has escaped a lot of people.

------
jvanderbot
Now here's a crisis we can deal with. I hope COVID's rapid and haphazard
response will teach us drastic changes are not so terrible and not so scarey
when implemented slowly.

~~~
SamBam
Honestly, I feel like the world leaders' confused, belated, contradictory, and
deceitful response to COVID is still miles better than their response to
climate change.

Just _imagine_ if climate change today were being met by the kinds of panicked
direct interventions, quick decisions, and money being released the way is
(fortunately) happening for COVID.

The problem is that climate change is still more like the proverbial frog in
hot water, while COVID is more like a frying pan.

~~~
DFHippie
COVID kills old people, so the people in power (the ones competent to protect
their own interests) have taken notice.

------
Toine
Only way to deal with this problem is to reduce world GDP by 90%. Won't
happen. Prepare for the worst.

~~~
Der_Einzige
hahahahahaha you're going to eat your words when this is all over

Coronavirus might not get it down by 90% but 50% is certainly possible.

~~~
MFLoon
That's an inane take. Even in the absolute worst case scenario of 3% global
mortality, how would that possibly result in a 50% global decrease in economic
output?

~~~
oblongx
I think the main assumption is the remaining 97% of people are working with
reduced output if they are working at all. Just because you didn't die doesn't
mean you went to work and put in 100% of normal effort.

