I often wonder how the general population will react when they truly realize the impacts of climate change. I’d imagine there could be three reactions:
- Apathy, as in completely shutting down
- Panic, as in severe mental breakdown
- Action, protesting etc
Now that I think of it these are the fight, flight, freeze reactions. Any thoughts?
Adapt and put serious pressure on reform. Its important to remember Corporations and governments aren’t evil, they’re self interested just like the human beings that made and run them. They will be much more willing to make drastic change when the impacts of climate change knocks on their door and starts affecting their bottom line. Its hard to make a profit or collect taxes when everyone is either dead or revolting and that’s all they really care about.
Let’s not ignore the fact that there is some progress. The ozone is slowly healing last I saw. Carbon emission checks are decently enforced. The general population is taking climat e change more seriously compared to the al gore days, and most developed countries are moving towards cleaner renewable energy as it makes more economic sense.
Hot take but many climate advocates tend to be hyperbolic and reactionary doomsday worshippers who think this timeline is the worst possible. There were people 20 years ago saying we should all be under the ocean or in a complete hellscape by now. Guess what, the planet has been through a lot worse than us and both it and life in general Is a little more resilient than what fearmongers might think. Things aren’t great right now, but but they aren’t beyond hope either.
In case I sound likr aclimate denying right winger, I do my part to cut down on my personal emissions. I live off solar power completely, I make sure all my clothing and cloth is hemp, and I don’t drive unless its really needed. I take farmers baths more often than showers to cut down on water usage. I try to buy used things. I burn a clean fuel for heating my shelter. That’s probably more thought and effort than most people on Lemmy whining about the environment. Yeah its mostly corporations doing the emissions but we as individuals arent faultless either. The corpos wouldn’t existing we didn’t constantly desire convinence and trinkets.
One of the real issues that people will see the immediate impacts of is increased migration. People will not be able to live in coastal areas, Pacific Islands or near the equator.
It’s already happened in S.America with convoys of people on foot trying to get to better places but the spin has always been these are illegals and nothing more.
- Lots of wars and refugee crises.
- Almost certainly unilateral moves by middle-sized nations seeing existential crises to inject albedo-altering aerosols into the stratosphere.
- Depending on the timing of things in the next few decades we may be in an ice age very quickly from ice cap melt acceleration cooling the ocean. In an ice age the amount of arable land would dramatically decrease and if there is a harvest season at all it will be very short. Nearly everyone would starve.
