re: #157 LudwigVanQuixote

We have about ten years to start taking real action. If we do we can limit the world to three or four degrees in the coming centuries. It will be a hard life, but not one that collapses everything.

If we wait 20 or 30 years to take serious action, and our present emission rates keep going as they are, then we are doomed as a civilization. Game over. Done. Doomed. End of America and Western Civilization as we know it. Billions dead. New dark ages. Done. Starving bandits will prey on the weak who scrabble in the blasted ruins of the past.

I’m not really optimistic. We are, for the most part, utterly terrible at evaluating future risk, especially when it seems abstract and distant. Especially with how successful anti-science propaganda has been in the U.S., as well as other parts of the world, and the fact that people don’t want to give up luxuries or goodies they have now (Or want to get) in order to protect the planet from a ‘future’ threat that they can easily refuse to see.

Sure, once things get bad, most people will want to do something, but it’ll be way too late by then.