I'm trying to get my anxiety attacks under control over this. It's going to happen so much faster than we were thinking.
What adds insult to injury is that if the global community treated this as a life and death situation, we could probably find a way to mitigate it so that it's not too horrible. It won't happen, and that lack of activity is being led by the current "Leader of the Free World".
It might impinge on GDP by 10% come a century from now. A life or death analysis of the issue would say that development of poor developing countries is much more important, as are other pollutants that really kill.
It might impinge on GDP by 100% by ending human civilization. That 10% figure was the "median" outcome at the time, and increasingly it's looking like a hopelessly optimistic best case scenario.
Virtually every mass extinction in the history of the planet we now think was caused by climate change caused by CO2. The K-T asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs is the outlier. The worst in history, the P-T extinction that nearly wiped out all complex life, happened after a volcano in siberia flowed into a coal bed. We're currently releasing CO2 10x faster than that.
Relax. I've seen a dozen such imminent crises announced over the last half century, and nothing has changed. There is nothing different about this one.
Famous last words. I don't think humanity ever faced a similar crisis. The effects of climate change won't become too dramatic before it's already too late to change anything about it. It's a tragedy of the commons problem where you only face catastrophe decades after you had any control over the matter.
Once the permafrost starts melting in earnest, or the Greenland ice shield is gone, there is literally nothing we can do to stop the climate spiralling out of control. Right now it looks like these tipping points will be reached much sooner than we anticipated.
There is nothing differentiating this one from all the others I’ve lived thru.
We’re at a natural cyclical high, and the century-hence dire predictions are objectively well within noise levels (1° and 1 foot).
Capitalism is moving us to lowered emissions because we prefer them when possible (my office is 100% solar). Emerging nations will get there too. Strange how the imperative of radical change is directed at US, not others producing far more emissions.
What adds insult to injury is that if the global community treated this as a life and death situation, we could probably find a way to mitigate it so that it's not too horrible. It won't happen, and that lack of activity is being led by the current "Leader of the Free World".