> This massive lie can best be summed up as “when it comes to climate change... we have more time.”
This time we have no more time but 25 years ago when we had no more time it was true?
Or we've never had more time?
back
3 comments
Limiting temperature change by every additional 0.1°C is still worthwhile from a human welfare perspective.
In that sense it is never to late. We can always do something to limit the damage. It’s just that it gets harder and harder and some damage becomes irreversible at a certain point.
Had we done more 25 years ago it would all have been cheaper, easier and led to less damage overall. That doesn’t mean doing something now is suddenly not worth it.
I suppose millions can die in slightly more comfort.
Limiting temperature change by every additional 0.1°C is not really about comfort. Either way rich people will be comfortable and poor people will be uncomfortable or dead. It's about buying everyone more time to adapt.
With respect to human lives it could mean the difference between tens of millions of deaths and billions of deaths. With respect to wildlife it could be the difference between losing 10–20% of the planet's species in the Holocene extinction versus 40% or more as per the IPCC. With respect to migration it could mean the difference between levels that are painful versus globally destabilizing. With respect to geoengineering it could mean that we have significantly more time to refine the technologies before they're inevitably deployed.
Millions fewer people will die. That’s the difference.
It’s just a sliding death scale, not a binary one. Sure, there might be steps, it might not all be linear, but still: doesn’t mean at some point doing something is pointless.
Alternatively, think of an alcoholic telling his doctor ‘you told me to stop drinking 5 years ago but i’m still fine’
It’s a slow train, but the damage is cumulative and it will get us eventually.
in some way i guess thats always been an issue with the messaging on climate change and the issue in general.
its always a problem and its slow moving enough and cumulative enough that it will always be better to fix it sooner but the real dangers are many years off.
when the jet stream collapses overnight then we'll be forced to deal with it