Climate change has been a pressing global issue for decades, often characterized by dire predictions and bleak future scenarios. Many people feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem and uncertain about the effectiveness of efforts to combat it. This sense of inevitability often sparks a debate about whether the focus should shift from prevention to adaptation.
Because if we are too optimistic and prepare for the wrong future, hundreds of millions of people will die that didn’t need to.
Climate adaptation is necessary to prevent people 50 years from now from resorting to fossil fuels, war, or ecosystem destruction to try to avoid starvation.
I’m optimistic about our ability to affect change. The difference between 2.5K warming and 4.5K warming is hard to comprehend, and we still have that to play for. How soon will New Orleans or Miami or Amsterdam be surrendered to the sea? What refugee infrastructure awaits their inhabitants? How much has the world economy prepared for the loss of these cities and the surrounding regions? It depends on us. There is so much we can still do that matters.
Being optimistic is not the same as being completely delusional. Optimism by itself will not lull everyone into compliancy. Only the feeble-minded believe that their belief is sufficient for success, but they’ll get farther than someone who doesn’t believe success is possible. Too much pessismism will cause many to not even try.
Why’d you come back to this conversation after 2 months?
Because I usually browse and comment without reading replies, but when I do read replies I don’t really care about how long ago it was.
True, optimism will not lull people into doing nothing, but it can lead them towards doing the wrong thing, which can make things worse by taking the air out of more pessimistic projects that do prepare us for reality.
Optimistically, one might advise Jews and queer people in 1932 Germany to join advocacy groups or revolutionary movements. Pessimistically, one might advise them to flee. In the short term, the former would get farther and the latter would look like cowards. In the long term, only the latter would be alive to do anything anymore.
So when you said that climate change took two steps forward for every one step back, I felt the need to correct you so we could prepare for the world we’re going to live in.
7 months? lol.
Why are doomers so persistent? You want the bad outcome, don’t you? You have no real stake in the future so don’t care, is that right? Career, kids, general altruism for those yet to be, anything at all? I hope you never find one, because you’ll be wracked with guilt by your years of complacency. Stop trying to drag others down into your pit.
Your comment reminds me of the five stages of grief. Denial, anger, fear of the paralysis depression would bring. But depression is not the final stage of grief, that honor goes to acceptance. I am not complacent, I am not paralysed, I am motivated by what I can still do in this apocalypse. Reading the news does not shock me or surprise me or fill me with anguish or horror; it is only a reminder that I am on the right path.
I don’t know your situation. I don’t know if it’s safe for you to unpack your grief and your trauma, because, yeah, that depression can knock you on your ass for months or even years. But you deserve to face the world with open eyes, and your activism will be better for it. Dismiss this comment as pretentious garbage if you need to, and I can take whatever words you throw at me. But one evening, when you sit down on your bed feeling particularly satisfied with how your week is going, remember it.
I wish you all the best, from the bottom of my heart.
PS: Please let me know if it helped: I don’t know for sure if this sort of attempted egg cracking is beneficial. Maybe I’ll comment in a year or two to ask.
That probably helped you, but did nothing for me, but that’s what you do. You gave up, assuming you even tried, and want to justify it. I’m invested in the future. I can’t give up. I quit a pointless research career to install rooftop solar. My body couldn’t take it after two years and now I’m back doing research relevant to the climate as a low level technician. I have a kid. I want them to have a kid because having a kid is amazing. People like you who assume we’re in a unrecoverable downward spiral are going to miss out on a future you thought wasn’t possible. I hope you never realize you’ve been wrong, because when you do it’ll be too late to go back and invest in your future.