What is going to happen when people realize the true consequences of climate change?
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?
There will never be some collective epiphany that turns everyone into a climate activist, so business as usual.
There'd still be denial.
Don't look up.
This is where we are now and I don't see it changing.
The weather here is fucked. It's really different to 10 years ago, before that it was pretty much the same.
We get massive heat waves and record breaking temps every year. The once in a decade major storms now happen several times a year. We hardly get snow in parts of the country that used to get it every year.
We're only mildly affected compared to many places.
Conservatives will never admit they are wrong if that’s what you’re asking.
Oh man, just wait till they pin it on the libtards causing crop failures and storms and flooding all because they didn't persecute people enough and didn't hand out enough free money to billionaires.
Dealing with it.
Weather gets hotter, more people get A/C. Disasters get more frequent, more people get fucked by disasters.
Areas become less habitable, some people die, some people deal, some people flee. Migration gets more pressing? Borders get closed with increasingly violent measures.
We just had inflation make life 10% more expensive in many countries. Life went on. That's about the impact of climate change people in "rich" western countries can expect from climate change, except it will happen more slowly.
As much as climate doomers would hope for collapse, climate change is a slow moving disaster. Humans are adaptable, especially when there is time to adapt. Even the more pessimistic among the realistic/scientific predictions are on the "life will get X% worse" side, not "doom, we all die, no food no water" side.
This ignores how interconnected our logistics is on a global scale. As other nations devolve into war, not only between themselves but against the west as well of we try to stop the migration, the world logistics will get severely disrupted, from food, to resources, to everything else. How will that look?
The west is not immune to serious consequences, and it is very likely we will see living conditions severely worsen to the point of mass unrest as well. The chaos very much will end up being global.
You mentioned the high inflation, and that "life goes on".. but does it? Or does it push more and more people to the breaking point, leading to more and more dysfunctional societies, planting the seeds for serious future unrest?
These things do happen over long periods.. but they do happen. I won't pretend to know how the future will look like, but it is far too early to say that things turned out fine.
Countries with resources won't have a reason to "devolve into war". Countries without resources won't affect much beyond that country. Why would logistics get disrupted?
I also think you're overestimating the effect. Optimistic studies claim something like 8% impact in 2100, pessimistic 18% in 2050, which is a tiny effect per year.
Again, humanity deals well with slow changes. We're mostly talking about "the economy grows by one percentage-point less quickly than it would without climate change" for the worst affected countries in the absolutely worst long term estimates (something like -65% by 2100), and a fraction of that for most countries. Just to be clear, we're not talking about "x% less than now", we're talking about "x% less than it would have been without climate change". It's likely that over time, despite climate change, the standard of living even in those countries will continue to increase, unless they, as you said, devolve into (internal/local) wars for mostly unrelated reasons.
Your first paragraph doesn't really make much sense. The countries with natural resources are almost all poor countries. Africa is very rich in resources, which the wealthy nations import. Do you even know where most of our resources come from? Especially for advanced technologies like electronics?
And, again, you're ignoring agriculture being disrupted. This is the most critical industry which is at high risk to be seriously damaged by climate change. We have already started to see the consequences, look at India stopping export of grain due to droughts, for example.
I don't get where you get your sources of the worst affected countries, because the worst thing that can happen is crop destruction on a mass scale leading to a famine. That can easily destroy a country, and it has in the past.
Countries have been devolving into chaos before climate change. Climate change goes on top of everything else, exacerbating current problems and starting chain-reactions of consequences. The world has been growing more unstable in recent times, what do you think will happen when more fuel is thrown at the powder keg?
Thinking that we will be fine through climate change if we don't do anything very soon is straight up delusional. There is so much that can go wrong.
I don't think there's consensus on the numbers you're quoting.
That's why I provided the ranges I was able to find.
"I was able to find something that aligned with my assertion"
It's refreshing to see something other than the usual perspectives "The world will end", "Humans will die out, but nature will be fine", "waterwars" or "There's gonna be more immigrants".
This narrative sounds nice and makes me feel safe, it must be true.
Some areas might even get more habitable!
People will slip from denial to acceptance because, by the time the vast majority of people realise it's as bad as the scientists have been saying, it'll be far too late to do anything other than scramble for the last rocketship off the planet.
To where? Like where you gonna go that is more suitable than where we already are? You gonna rocketship your ass to Mars? Cause even with global warming earth is still more hospitable than a rocky desert with no oxygen. A bigass bank account with lots of zeros isn't gonna keep anyone out of the we're collectively fucked line. Sure it might get you a spot at the back of the line, but we're all getting in it together no matter who you are.
To New Zealand, apparently: "New Zealand, Iceland, the UK, Tasmania and Ireland are the places best suited to survive a global collapse of society, according to a study"
I guarantee we'll all be underwater before you can get to us
Well billions of people will die, but not likely the ones reading this. The ones reading this will quietly keep the others from getting where we’re kept safer.
Apathy for as long as possible, then outright panic when it no longer is.
People who are unlucky or dumb enough to own property in an obviously bad place (like the desert or coast) will see its value drop like a rock (of course, the rich won’t care as much, because that was only their vacation home anyway). People won’t really shit their pants until groceries start to become scarce and/or unaffordable. That’ll be a major problem. As people gradually realize that their situation is hopeless, the government will have a harder and harder time maintaining order.
Has anyone seen the movie Children of Men? I expect that, at some point, everyday life will be like the beginning of that movie (I’m imagining the main characters’ bus ride to work, where he watches riot police beat people up from behind his bus window that’s covered with a metal grate.)
The final scene with Bexhill immigration camp getting bombed may have been the best depiction in film of Palestine right now.
The quietus pills from children of men haunt me.
Denial that humans have anything to do with it.
Severe crackdown on any sort of migration, which of course is incompatible with liberal democracies, so they’ll be replaced by autocracies of various sorts.
If you look closely, it’s already happening.
Oligarchs funding a resurgence of fascism in order to protect the global system that is wrecking the environment, successfully it seems.
Controlling who can come and settle doesn't make a state authoritarian.
Current day Switzerland is not Nazi Germany.
I’m primarily talking about pushbacks.
But any state that claims to protect human rights also must have a way to get asylum.
Missing that, it’s in violation of international law and any liberal constitution that was formulated with the idea of human rights.
This is what democratic parties are unable to do, and in response we see all over the West the rise of right wing populist and extremist parties. Once in power they move to change the judicial system so they can unhindered crack down on human rights. of course they don’t stop with the crack down on migrants. The next group is always the gays, along with critical journalists. That doesn’t instantly instantiate tHe nAzIs, but it is an autocratic system where human rights are no concern to the whims of the political leadership.
I don’t know how far along Switzerland is in this process, but given that we see this happening basically all over Europe and in the US it’s hard to imagine that it’s not happening there.
It's going to be so hard not to deck the person who will eventually say "it was all a part of God's plan"
I'm doing all three every day. doom scrolling intensifies
Really, I think you nailed it as far as the three categories of reactions go. Of course, the manifestations will be as varied as humans are.
I'm working towards building intentional community that's equipped to help it's members and hopefully neighbors to get through. But that's because I'm a super-privileged north american who is located in what I consider one of the least-likely-to-be-unlivable spots. Other than the unpleasantness of the collapse of society, I'm just hoping that climate refugees don't decide to come murder us all for our resources.
Probably a lot of people are going to be like "why didn't anyone do anything about this????", completely forgetting that's happening right now, with likely the same people being climate deniers.
Revolutions happen, they happen fast, and then they spread.
And right before, even though everyone is angry, they also swear its impossible. That the
kingcapitalist state can't be defeated.Consequences are happening now, cat 5 hurricane hit Acapulco Mexico and destroyed the city.
For the vast majority of (American) people, their reaction to the true realization of climate change is going to be one of:
Or as we call it in America, Tuesday. It's already here, people don't realize it. People already have acclimated to "wildfire season," for example, a thing that didn't exist until the last 5 years or so in this area, as a totally normal occurrence.
Gotta remind myself I grew up in a doomsday cult and most people didn't have go bags in their garage their entire childhood.
Don't forget starvation, that's a big one. Climate change hits your food supply before it hits you.
First-world countries will be able to afford relocating farmland, building sea walls, and otherwise mitigating the effects of climate change. Once that gets too expensive, they will resort to geoengineering like deliberately releasing large amounts of sulfur into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight or crushing rock to speed up chemical weathering that traps atmospheric carbon dioxide as limestone. People might wish that they had reduced carbon dioxide output in the past, but reducing carbon dioxide output in the present will remain unappealing. Even the absolute worst-case scenario, a return to the climate of the Cretaceous period when all the world's ice had melted and large regions of the continents (not just the coasts) were flooded, would not be the end of technological civilization.
People in poorer countries will not be able to afford such mitigation but their suffering will be largely irrelevant to global climate policy.
During this whole time almost no one denying climate change now will admit to making a mistake.
People will just slowly move to northerner places. When those get back, they'll move again. Lots of borders will close. There will be some wars over the likes of Siberia but they won't last.
Eventually people will run out of places to go too up norther, and they'll just deny the existence of an issue.
We are in the apathy stage right now.
Wait, when did the action happen??
That's the neat part - it didn't!
second time today im replying "painfully true" today
Don't have kids.
Withdraw from being politically active and concentrate on short term fulfillement while it lasts.
Don't bother with long term planning or worry too much about pensions or career advancement.
The Chinese concept of "lying flat" in response to immense amounts of insignificant, monotonous work.
This is already me.
Me. Don't have any ambition left in me.
You're second two points are terrible pieces of advice
They really are.
Every generation since the dawn of mankind thought that the world was about to end.
Things are gonna get a bit shit in the coming decades - but really that's all the more reason to save some money.
Apathy. It's already going full swing.
You ever heard of the boiling frog analogy? Yeah, that.
Chaos. Pandemonium. Mayhem.
By the time we're feeling the full effects, it's too late to mute them. We need to be acting now. and I think the general population knows it. Even if they're unwilling to mutter the words 'climate change' or 'global warming' or admit that it's a problem.
Like a conversation I had with my grandma:
"it's so weird. we've had... [sites really weird weather that's happening local to her]..."
"You think that might be because the climate is changing?"
"No! climates don't change- .... "
Line from Unforgiven
Kid, “He had it coming, didn’t he?”
Muny, “We’ve all got it coming, kid”
When Americans do? Shut the border to climate change refugees. Keep on trucking.
I think were gonna see climate wars kick off before any kind of mass realization happens.
I think we're already starting to see some climate wars kick off.
they don't call them as such, as yet. but I think resources are definitely becoming an issue.
Oh yeah, the climate wars will absolutely start before we even know they are the climate wars, that's basically a fact.
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.
Normalcy bias for sure. Just like at the start of covid.
Eventually the gulf stream will collapse causing a mini-ice age, making northern Europe comparatively cold to the Pacific North West, for one, moving the arable/habitable band down towards Africa.
After that? Who knows honestly.
I think we can already seethe consequences. Not fully, maybe, but we do. So whatever people are dping right now: some would be spurred to action, some will panic, some will go to denial nd act as kf all is as it should be (or as you called it, apathy). And some will try their hardest to make as much money as possible while they can despite the consequences.
Imo, nothing and if asked: blame others.
Europeans will migrate to the highest point in Europe - Switzerland. You guys are literally Europe's lifeboat.
Highest point in Europe is the Mont Blanc peak, between France and Italy
We're coming to Switzerland.
We already do where I work since we do a bunch of infrastructure work. It is simple enough, keep dealing with it. Size motors bigger so they can deal with heat, add cooling to control systems, waterproof sensors because of flooding. Just going to keep dealing with a hotter wetter world.
Not much.
We can easily solve climate change. We have the technological capability to do it.
Once it gets bad enough, we will solve it.
Probably with cooling stratospheric aerosols for a few years to buy some extra time to make up for the lost time of the last three decades.
The only way to solve climate change is to make it more profitable for businesses than pollution. That's it. That's the only way that humans can solve the problem.
As with 95% of human problems, it comes down to eradicating greed. Which is a problem humanity can never solve. As long as humans exist, greed will cause them to mistreat other humans and anything else that stands between them and whatever they are greedy for. Power, money, posessions, whatever.
I hope you are right, but I don’t bet on it.
Well, definitely not easily, but reversing climate change is doable. But there are lots of secondary effects caused by climate change that are impossible to reverse, like the extinction of species. And for that reason it's important to stop climate change as soon as possible, even if the heat and air pollution can be reversed.
Line from Unforgiven
Kid - “He had it coming”
Muny- “We’ve all got it coming, kid”
All of the above.
People know. But they're comfortable, and they see any change as a threat.
They won’t care because the right kind of people (nonwhite, nonChristian people in less developed countries) will suffer first.
I guess they'll either drown, freeze, burn or starve.
I don't have the impression they'd act before they're dying.
They? Are you not a human living on the Earth?
I deny everything, and even that.
The general population wants 2.3 kids (we have none), at least 3 holidays a year, preferably by plane (last holiday here was 2016, by car, but within 100 km),... As long as the general po[ulation breeds like rabbits and keep on flying, for one, I give our species not to much chance to not go extinct.
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.
Well don't forget that humanity always has one last trump, and that is geo-engineering. At the moment, that is deemed too dangerous and the current effects of climate change do not yet justify it, but eventually, the large-scale modification of our atmosphere might be a method employed to offset the greenhouse gas impact.
Many people have already given up, which is a very common sentiment here on Lemmy. They're waiting for "humanity to die". Personally, I find such helplessness and indifference to human life and civilisation appalling. In the end, our species will do much better without such people, so I am considering them legitimate casualties of climate change. I will not miss them.
I would agree with you if it wasn't for the fact that your said: indifference
It's not indifference, it's just being able to see things how they are and still be able to bounce forward and keep on fighting for what you want. Even though you know you can't survive probably.