Draft UN climate report warns of drastic changes over 30 years

> “We must redefine our way of life and consumption.”

Judging by our failures so far, there is absolutely no chance of this happening on the time frame needed to have the desired impact. It would take a mobilization similar to the WW2 effort on a global scale and I don't see anything like that happening.

In fact, from the people I talk to, they don't even consider this a high priority. The fate of society is not a high priority in the lives of the average person. When the inevitable tsunami of refugees crashes on the shores of the rich countries they will blame the poor guys for being poor, not even contemplating the idea that our way of live was one of the main contributors to their fate.

Voting for political parties that have this issue as a priority has almost no effect currently. Individual lifestyle changes have negligible impact. The super powerful people seem to think they will be fine in New Zealand. Any ideas on what we can do?

Only if it makes economic sense or improves their quality of life will the rich countries adopt green energy massively. We need to subsidize, develop, and deploy cheap forms of nuclear that scale well. Small Modular Reactors have me hopeful. Thorium is promising, but still has difficulties to overcome. Without mass nuclear development, I don't see how we will adapt fast enough.

> In fact, from the people I talk to, they don't even consider this a high priority. The fate of society is not a high priority in the lives of the average person.

I feel that's partly due to the fact that there is no common "us" anymore, even inside of individual countries. No feeling of a greater good to serve. It's all about individualism/individuality and small in/out groups. Politicians don't even see the future of their country as a priority anymore, it's all about "winning" against their opponents and productivity/economy, everything else is at the bottom of the list. Most people are struggling too much in their daily lives to care about these things anyway (and rightfully so).

"People" won't redefine their way of life by themselves simply because we don't know anything else anymore, we've been raised on consumerism, indoctrinated from birth that getting a 9 to 5 job and that accumulating money and gadgets are the main goals of the game, you can't tell people the rules of the game changed. People who aren't stuck in the hell of living life paycheck to paycheck are stuck in the rat race of consumption, projecting and planning their next moves to acquire a bigger house, nicer car, the new macbook, the latest camera, a larger TV, more bitcoins, &c.

The funny thing is that the system is so twisted that we think buying a Tesla and solar panels is somehow part of the solution, our whole economy is based on merchandising goods and we managed to merchandise ecology itself, as if it was a matter of simply finding an ever so slightly less catastrophic way of life instead of evolving into a whole new paradigm

> When the inevitable tsunami of refugees crashes on the shores of the rich countries they will blame the poor guys for being poor, not even contemplating the idea that our way of live was one of the main contributors to their fate.

Already the case in Europe so yeah, absolutely no way it'll play different next time.

> Any ideas on what we can do?

I think we're fucked, humans aren't wired to think about the wellbeing of large groups, even less about the entirety of the world.

Covid is at the same time the proof that we can stop a lot of things at once and somehow reduce unnecessary pollution/production/consumption(of goods and destinations), but it equally is the proof that people simply don't want to live like that, it's not enough to have a quality shelter, good food, more time, &c. we need to consume new things regularly, we always want more. I know people who had existential crisis because they couldn't go to their monthly weekend in an airbnb in Barcelona. "People" won't slow down willingly because it's inconvenient, countries won't slow down because it means their death on the geopolitical scene. My best guess is that we'll slowly adapt to increasingly harder life conditions, probably with some social uprisings and wars here and there. The actions needed for the long term prosperity of the group are viewed as hell on earth on an individual level.

Humans do care about large groups, in the form of nationalism, or their religious or ideological equivalents. Those groups can be very large.

Unfortunately, those almost by definition involve opposition to some other group. It's not just the politicians who see the conflict more in terms of winning over their opposition. The politicians do it because it's popular with their supporters.

Actual advances are hard. Defeating the opposition is much easier, and often more satisfying because it pays off today.

You won't fix that by fixing the politicians, who are just responding to what the people demand. Any politician you convince will be defeated by the next demagogue. Getting the people to stop enjoying the polarization so much seems more doable, if only because they're right around you. You can see them on HN every day.

Whether they can be convinced... honestly, I doubt it. But I think that for those optimists who believe that something can be done, I think they should consider looking around them rather than away to distant politicians and other shadowy figures. The real causes are right here.

I personally consider that much scarier.

From the article:

> They [effects of global warming] are also deeply unfair: those least responsible for global warming will suffer disproportionately, the report makes clear.

There is a lot truth to this. On the other hand side, effects of global warming often hit in surprising ways at places which have contributed a lot to it. For example, global warming has the consequence of raising sea levels. But because of melting of ice in Antarctica, and gravitational effects, the rise is much larger in places like Miami, than in higher latitudes. Also, it causes heat waves and droughts, which disproportionately affect Australia (the country that exports most coal) and the US (which has the largest per-capita carbon footprint in the world).

So, from the fact that the effects of climate change are distributed unfairly, the most polluting nations can't conclude that they are any safer from its consequences.