With evidence mounting on the failure to limit global warming to 1.5C, do you think global carbon emissions will be low enough by 2050 to at least avoid the most catastrophic climate change doomsday scenarios forecast by the turn of the century?
I am somewhat hopeful most developed countries will get there but I wonder if developing countries will have the ability and inclination to buy into it as well.
If capitalism is still the dominant economic system and wealth inequality is even higher then it is now, then there is no chance at all of meeting climate goals, there never was.
I think some humans might be able to survive on the tropical Antarctic archipelago…
It is very important to understand that the most apocalyptic visions of a climate change future are unlikely. Credible prognoses of the future predict that the world will suffer, and development will slow, but overall humanity will survive and even continue to grow.
I say this not to deny the effects of climate change, but because I sincerely believe that people use apocalyptic predictions to justify slacktivism. By deciding that the world is doomed, and they will go extinct regardless of what they do, people absolve themselves of their responsibility to agitate (including violently) for change. The world is genuinely unrecognizable compared to even 10 years ago, let alone 50. People are far more resilient than the worst predictions give them credit for, and even marginal victories will have real consequences for the future that we will live to see.
Every time I see the optimistic outlook in regards to humanity, I am reminded myself how hard it hinges on a sense of belonging among the “we”. I look for the reason for that optimistic attitude and I am expected, no, borderline mandated to feel a patriotic pride for humanity.
I actually don’t anymore. My mind change one too many time.
Extremely Controversial Counterpoint: Cruel Pessimism. No, it’s not that I don’t care anymore alone. I actually want to see humanity suffer now. I tried to fix it, and in return, the world hurt me and I now want it to hurt itself.
YOU live, not “we”. I’ll have no children, and hopefully die before the worst. Probably not. But whatever. I got not pity and intend to exchange none back.
I’m one of the people that thinks the world is probably going to shit (mass migration from uninhabitable land, wars over water / farmland etc.) but I don’t use that as an excuse to not do anything. My reasoning is that even though I honestly think everything is going to shit, I might be wrong, so the best I can do is plan to go down fighting to make the world better. Either the world burns, and I can say with integrity that I tried my best, or we somehow pull through and prevent the worst prognosis from becoming reality. Either way, slacking is a bad idea.
I daresay India and China will be CO2 free before the western states. The West is too concerned with not loosing an inch of the status quo of current behavior. It’ll shoot itself in the foot by electing fascists with their go-back-to-the-good-old-days-without-migrants promises.
But the developing countries also will be much too late.
I don’t think 2-2.5 degrees are realistic. I mean for 2050, probably yes, but it won’t stop there. There are several tipping points that’ll help shoot far beyond that.
I think the world will settle between 4 and 5 degrees late this century and it will be a world with quite a smaller number of humans than we have nowadays.
It wouldn’t have to be that way. Siberia could become farmland and take on half of the African population, for example. But Russia won’t stand for that.
Yep in the UK.the electorate just punished a party in a by-election for brining in controls.om.vehicle.emiasions.(ULEZ) in one of the most connected cities on the world. The area of.uxbridhe and Ruislip has no less.than 3 tube lines another mainline rail and busses with wait.times measured in minutes. But no when the. Chips.were.down the mayor is bad for.trying.to clean air.
4 degrees is the apocalyptic scenario. The vast majority of oxygen in the atmosphere is provided not by trees or any plants, but by the algae and cyanobacteria in the ocean. At the 4 degree threshold, they can’t do aerobic respiration anymore, so they switch to anaerobic respiration. This means they stop producing oxygen, drastically reducing the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere and drastically increasing the carbon dioxide. This does two things: kills any large fauna, humans included, and the additional carbon dioxide continues to act as a greenhouse gas, accelerating the effect even further. Eventually, after almost all oxygen breathing life is dead, we reach equilibrium, assuming your definition of 'we" includes insects, because that’s basically all that would be left. If there’s a risk of reaching the 4 degree threshold, we would be forced into taking our chances with the literal nuclear option of deliberately inducing a nuclear winter.
Nope. There is no hope.
Only time anyone will make real, substantiative movement on climate change, is when we’re in the middle of the absolute worst of it with nothing left to do but sit in and die slow, miserable deaths from heat, or quick miserable deaths from F7 tornados, Hypercanes, and biblical level flooding.
But just imagine all the profits that the shareholders would have made in the mean time, Thats really the most important part! /s
The fix was in on our climate by the 90’s, the Co2 levels are above 450 ppm. This doesn’t have an equivalent in many millions of years. The effects of heat building is cumulative, the earth still has plenty more room to store heat energy, and we’ve already put more than enough Co2 in the atmosphere to warm well past 2C. We’ve got years left, not decades. Wait till food distribution systems break down, that’s when it’ll hit everyone that this is already a done deal. Things will begin to break down rapidly in the next few years.
