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This is the best solution for today’s world. I wish I could upvote this a million times.
Except it simply won't happen because people will not stand for everything becoming more expensive and inconvenient. They will not vote for people who will enact these policies.
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Defining "the one single right climate" is hard. Defining "this change is bad" is substantially easier. Wet bulb temperatures of 35 degrees C in areas with billions of people and poor power infrastructure to run AC is bad, for example.
> Wet bulb temperatures of 35 degrees C in areas with billions of people I had to look up what that meant ... With this kind of nonsense being pushed around and with more than two decades of constant scary tales, no wonder the kids are nervous. I grew up without any air conditioning at all. Ever. In any building. Summer temperatures between 35 - 40 C with high humidity. I do not know what the "wet bulb" equivalent of…
> Even heat-adapted people cannot carry out normal outdoor activities past a wet-bulb temperature of 32 °C (90 °F), equivalent to a heat index of 55 °C (130 °F). The theoretical limit to human survival for more than a few hours in the shade, even with unlimited water, is 35 °C (95 °F)
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When I was in elementary school (early 90's) we were taught that half of New York would be underwater by 2020. Obviously didn't happen. Stop reading the news, they're fear-mongers and outlandish predictions have been happening for decades.
More than 50 people just died from flooding of hurricane remnant in the Northeast just a few days ago. And Sandy really did put lower Manhattan under water causing huge damage. More of that is coming.
edit - a better link since someone didn't appreciate my google-fu: https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/544472-the-mo...
Stop moving goalposts. The media has a problem with peddling misinformation and shitty climate predictions.
> 56% agreed with the viewpoint that humanity is doomed, according to the study. Climate change is a serious issue, and one that stands poised to do a substantial amount of harm, but if the majority of young people think that humanity is doomed then I seriously suspect that there's misinformation about the impact of climate change at play here. Even the more pessimistic outlooks of climate change still leave substant…
The mere collapse of civilization and mass death should be bad enough that we take drastic action to prevent it, but I do also think it would be foolish to dismiss the possibility of human extinction.
Most smokers are unable to quit. Most fat people are unable to lose weight. I worry that most civilizations are unable to cut carbon emissions.
Interesting analogy but I don't think it holds up. Both of these are stereotypical examples of failure of willpower. Climate change does not require personal willpower when we have laws available to create carrots and sticks.
That seems like a bad survey. Why does 'guilty' get 'and/or' while the others do not? Guilty does not belong in the same question with the others. Maybe surveys like this one find what they are looking for because of the way the questions are asked.
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Those perspectives can be said to be extreme, but I’m not seeing you make a case that they are “detached from reality.”
Humanity isn’t “doomed”. Climate change may affect hundreds of millions and even so it is far away from an existential threat to humans. It also isn’t something that should cause someone to lose the ability to function day-to-day. That suggests immaturity, fragility, and a cognitive distortion ( https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/catastrophizing ).
So? WW2 was not an existential threat. Covid is not an existential threat. If you lose your job, your house, and spend the rest of your life as homeless, that's still not an existential threat to humanity. It's a meaningless criterion.
Today Paul Graham has tweeted about coal consumption of the world from 2000, it paints a good picture where to look if you are focused on green house gases. 150 years ago, there are billion of us. Now we are 7 billion going up to 9 billion.. 150 years from now, if we are going to be a billion.. I am fine with it.
Why is it okay to have less people? We have serious long term problems to solve aside form climate change, like how to become an interplanetary species and how to cure cancer. More people means (can mean) more brainpower working on things that benefit us all.
> 56% agreed with the viewpoint that humanity is doomed, according to the study. Climate change is a serious issue, and one that stands poised to do a substantial amount of harm, but if the majority of young people think that humanity is doomed then I seriously suspect that there's misinformation about the impact of climate change at play here. Even the more pessimistic outlooks of climate change still leave substant…
If we can't prevent - or based on comments here, completely reject the reality of - the massive and preventable degradation of the only habitat in known universe where we can survive then we are in fact quite doomed.
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Government might not be the solution here. I look at electric cars and soon they will require less maintenance, less money for fuel and be cheaper than their ICE counterparts. If you build something that emits less CO2 and it is BETTER and CHEAPER than the competition it's game over. No one but hobbyists will look at ICE again. This to me aligns with economic theory in practice more accurately than a carbon tax.
Internalizing negative externalities through taxation is literally Economics 101. That's not to say that that makes a carbon tax inherently a good idea (though I think it is), but there's nothing economically unsound about it and there's a reason lots of economists support it.
People won't evade buying cars that produce less CO2 if they're cheaper and better than the competition. This is why I think it's more likely to align with economic theory.