> What if climate change was perpetuated by giant sloths who want to drive humans to extinction?
Then we should question the assertion & by directly seeing giant sloths, one can know that giant sloths are indeed destroying the climate. However, we don't have any direct evidence that humans are causing the climate to change. We have direct evidence that solar cycles, geomagnetic field effects, & the general naturally occurring cycles do affect the climate directly, and always have throughout Earth's history. Instead, we have institutional funding directly incentivizing an opinion, which is "humans are the primary driver in climate change". If many scientists don't have that opinion, those scientists don't have a career.
We can use Bayesian inference to understand that the climates in other planets in the Solar System is also changing. Given that humans, to my knowledge, do not populate other planets in the Solar System, that makes the probability of natural cycles are the primary driver of climate change quite high. Given the potential & historically validated risk of tyrannical governments & class warfare causing genocide & mass effects on the broader population, hanging our hat on the small chance that the same people who lie all the time are now telling the truth in this one case, despite their contradictory actions, seems like an irrational choice.
I know that there's many people who want us all to just follow the self-imposed authority figures because they benefit from that arrangement, but that can become an epistemological bias in it's own right.
Likewise, this comment above adds very little to the discussion, because it seeks to distract from the central point, which is about people of power & wealth using lies, fear-mongering, shaming, & pseudo-intellectual arguments to gain even more power over everybody else.
> Can easily extend to individual consumers under a completely free-market solution.
Can also easily extend to the institutions directly responsible for the social conditions, such as the military, banking establishment, political figures, bureaucrats, technocrats, etc. The increasing consumptive behavior of these classes of people directly contradicts the "crisis" we are all facing.
If the people in power who caused these problems really are concerned about the "crisis", they should give up ALL of their power over others so the broader spirit of humanity can solve the problems that they have caused.
And my offer still stands. Give me Trillions of dollars of wealth & liquid cash and I will gladly save you from the problems that I say you created. I'll even include some statistics & Science in that package deal!