What I hear some acquaintances say is like “who cares, I’ll go to the beach, turn the AC on, what’s the big deal” .
As if the floods we had in Italy this year, or the wild fires, or the storms, or the draughts, or the Alps without snow, the glaciers disappeared, the sea turned green, the invasion of jellyfish weren’t connected.
Some people, most people, are just too fucking stupid.
To be fair, I think both sides blow it out of proportion and that can stifle discussion. It won’t be the “end of the world” where everyone will die, but we will have the “end of the world” as we know it.
I think one of the main points that need to be stressed to the kind of people in your example would be droughts.
Droughts will continue to get worse and will affect everyone. With a bad enough drought, we won’t be able to feed entire cities. And that’s when things really start to fall apart.
Yeah, people expect the earth to suddenly start cracking and spitting out hot lava or something.
No, it’s gonna be a slow, steady march towards the end, just as it always has been. Slow enough that we feel like we can put it off for another day.
Slow enough that one day we will look up from our phones, see the oceans of fire and shrug. Too late now, just switch on the AC and go back to scrolling.
As an example of this, the North America wildfires this year don’t really seem to be due to climate change… but people keep tying the ideas together.
The extreme weather swings and the droughts are bad enough. And it is guaranteed to get worse. No reason to stretch the truth.
