Cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/12956314
"I push back on doomism because I don’t think it’s justified by the science, and I think it potentially leads us down a path of inaction,” said Mann during a talk last Thursday at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
“And there are bad actors today who are fanning the flames of climate doomism because they understand that it takes those who are most likely to be on the front lines, advocating for change, and pushes them to the sidelines, which is where polluters and petrostates want them.”
it’s not that doomers are denying that it can be stopped. it’s just that, given the data an behaviour of people&politics, they don’t really see that it will be stopped
Yeah that’s my thing too - I have no doubt that scientifically it can be stopped - there’s even a real example with how crazy quickly nature started to recover during the COVID lockdowns - but it would require people to not be selfish, stupid assholes so it’s never gonna happen.
Well tbf, it will happen as the selfish stupid assholes die from climate change with everyone else
That’s the same thing.
Those are different things.
Of course, that’s a political problem not a scientific one.
Yes but the outcome is just as bad.
Which I think bolsters the argument for anti-doomerism (yes, I’m making that a word now).
We’re all on this bus that’s going 150mph towards the edge of a cliff. I know it can be stopped, but the people driving are talking about ‘slowing to 120mph by 2050’ (but breaking at this pace we will be like 135mph by then) and these armed thugs are protecting them so no other can get up and take the wheel. Call me a doomer all you want but we’re fucked.
Accepting this notion I feel like the best thing to do is to harden and make more resilient our ability to survive the extreme weather and tenperatures coming. If we can survive on Mars or whatever we can survive on a warmer Earth.
We as a species will survive global warming, assuming the societal collapse doesn’t lead to nuclear armageddon.
We as average people typically will not.
Many people will not reproduce and perish. Certainly.
Many people who do reproduce will likely see their children die, which is why many will not reproduce
Which on its own will help to mitigate the problem. This is why it’s not an extinction event.
It’s just that it’s not really a very good “solution” because of all the misery it causes.
The greatest barrier to reducing climate change is the ultra wealth financing denialism of climate change and the tight grip they have on what the average person thinks is real through immense lobbying, owning media outlets and controlling what they publish, and unlimited disinformation campaigns. Maybe it’s frowned upon to talk about those things at such a rich university, but if you’re not talking about those things are you really helping the situation or are you maintaining the delusional status quo of “we can get to it when we get to it”
Doomerism is the result of fossil fuel propaganda. The open strategy of O&G right now is to convince the public that no progress has been made, the world is already over and it’s not worth trying to fix.
I think the real problem is not understanding that it’s not a binary bad or good (not understanding might be understating motivations… it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it and all that).
Yes, realistically we are already well committed to a path that is going to cause great hardship for future generations. But it isn’t going to be an extinction level event by itself. We most definitely can still make things worse, even if we’ve already messed up rather badly.
Hell, even nuclear war wouldn’t necessarily be an extinction level event- like something like 97% of people would die, but for that remaining 3% of people, life will suck while they restart the 1000 year process of bringing humanity back out of dark ages II.
The problem about doomism is that it promotes inaction in the less educated “because things are fucked anyway”.
To be honest I think the doomers are right, not because there isn’t still time to fix most of it (there probably is) but because the political will to actually do it isn’t there. Which is an uphill battle because the more we delay the more drastic measures are needed which require even more political will to actually do. Those two things are getting ever more out of sync. The political will has been slowly increasing but not as fast as as the urgency and need for measures.
But the sentiment that results from doomism makes this political will even worse.
If only this were what people/govts disagreed on regarding climate change.
Yay, it can be stopped. Somebody else get on that right away.
