There are other problems in addition to global warming. The scientific reports I’ve heard of conclude that this is not a civilization killer. It’s a serious problem, but it’s not at the 100% serious level that it’s portrayed at.
And that 100% serious level is not a place you want to be, in terms of responses, if your responses might cause other problems that could reach the 100% serious level.
Like nuclear war. Nuclear war is a real possibility, and it’s something to avoid at all costs. It would be worse than global warming’s projected effects.
So if we cause a nuclear war by taking actions to avoid climate change, we fucked up and killed ourselves by overreacting.
I’m not saying it’s likely. I’m just giving some context into how the major changes being proposed scare some people. A lot of people see the economy and the power structures of the world and all of our fossil-fuel burning industry as a delicate system that is keeping us all fed enough to not be starting wars. Some people are more worried about fucking with that system than they are about climate change.
An analogy would be if you were in a little shack in the wilderness, in the bitter cold winter, and you had a heater that was producing noxious fumes like carbon monoxide.
It’s a really fucking serious problem to have th carbon monoxide in your air. So you’re like “let’s shut off the heater and replace it with blankets”. But if the blankets aren’t effective enough, you freeze to death.
Another analogy would be facing a man-eating tiger while there’s a minefield behind you. Two dangers. And someone who only sees tiger will be like “what the hell are you doing?? This is life or death! Get away from that tiger!” but there’s a legit worry about that minefield too.
Global warming is a new enemy of humanity. But we have to be careful that we don’t resurrect the old enemies of humanity while we’re fighting global warming: famine, war, disease, etc.
Another analogy: human culture is a gigantic codebase that somehow runs. The code was written by developers who aren’t here any more. There’s very little documentation. And this program is running and providing us with food and peace. Mucking about in the code, even for very good reasons, could disrupt existing features that we rely on heavily.
There are other problems in addition to global warming. The scientific reports I’ve heard of conclude that this is not a civilization killer. It’s a serious problem, but it’s not at the 100% serious level that it’s portrayed at.
And that 100% serious level is not a place you want to be, in terms of responses, if your responses might cause other problems that could reach the 100% serious level.
Like nuclear war. Nuclear war is a real possibility, and it’s something to avoid at all costs. It would be worse than global warming’s projected effects.
So if we cause a nuclear war by taking actions to avoid climate change, we fucked up and killed ourselves by overreacting.
I’m not saying it’s likely. I’m just giving some context into how the major changes being proposed scare some people. A lot of people see the economy and the power structures of the world and all of our fossil-fuel burning industry as a delicate system that is keeping us all fed enough to not be starting wars. Some people are more worried about fucking with that system than they are about climate change.
An analogy would be if you were in a little shack in the wilderness, in the bitter cold winter, and you had a heater that was producing noxious fumes like carbon monoxide.
It’s a really fucking serious problem to have th carbon monoxide in your air. So you’re like “let’s shut off the heater and replace it with blankets”. But if the blankets aren’t effective enough, you freeze to death.
Another analogy would be facing a man-eating tiger while there’s a minefield behind you. Two dangers. And someone who only sees tiger will be like “what the hell are you doing?? This is life or death! Get away from that tiger!” but there’s a legit worry about that minefield too.
Global warming is a new enemy of humanity. But we have to be careful that we don’t resurrect the old enemies of humanity while we’re fighting global warming: famine, war, disease, etc.
Another analogy: human culture is a gigantic codebase that somehow runs. The code was written by developers who aren’t here any more. There’s very little documentation. And this program is running and providing us with food and peace. Mucking about in the code, even for very good reasons, could disrupt existing features that we rely on heavily.