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.
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I don’t think humanity is doomed. What I do see happening is a lot of areas that are landlocked becoming wayyyyyyy too expensive for normies to live in. You’ll see the coasts become stupid expensive to live as domestic climate refugees roll in. You’ll see tensions between locals and newcomers. And you’ll see it on the macroscopic scale with wars and tensions over resources like water rights, jobs, immigration, and racial tensions. You’ll see the rise of idiotic nationalism and people waving their country flag as justification for the “good old days”.
We’ll make it halfway, but we will still see devastating climate events often. Big floods, big drought, big hurricanes, skyrocketing insurance, weird stock issues on certain things like some medications, olive oil, cotton, etc. Humanity will be distracted by some of the dumbest shit imaginable while the grownups (scientists) try to focus on drawing down carbon to stay on target.
Luckily humans are very adaptable. History will judge companies like BP and standard oil harshly though, for basically fucking up the planet for centuries.
I agree with everything you’ve said and I know big oil has used the “individual responsibility” as a way of dodging their responsibility.
Big oil has a lot to answer for.
But so do we. In almost every country there’s been a “Green” party and choices for electors to make in regards to what regulation we’ve desired.
And the fact is we all have a lot of answer for.
I think we’ve fucked it. Without some drastic measures being taken we are on track for a minimum of a 2-2.5C rise and that is itself bad but will likely see certain feedback loops (defrosting permafrost, melting deep sea methane deposits, etc) ramp up hard to the point climate change will spiral out of control.
The remnants of human civilisation will be any billionaires with a sufficiently advanced escape plan in place, looking back on a boiling world in their rear view mirrors as they head off to eke out a pitiful existence on a barren rock somewhere out there.
Yeah, I doubt industrial society is going to survive for another 100 years. I’d be surprised if things don’t go to shit in the next 20, and that’s not even accounting for some sort of “black swan” event triggered by a feedback loop or something like that, that suddenly kicks off a speedrun to turn Earth into Venus.
We’re fucked, and we’d be fucked even if humanity went carbon negative starting right now. While the human race will likely be fine, this current lifestyle and economic system we’ve got in most of the developed world will go tits up and billions will end up dying, if not from the direct effects of climate change then eg. social instability, war, disease, famine. While we could still make the future slightly less bad for ourselves, it’s simply not profitable and there’s so much inertia in global capitalism that things won’t change without fantastic amounts of violence and social upheaval, and I doubt the next change will be for the better considering how popular far right and conservative parties are in many places around the world right now. They’re gleefully making things worse and then blaming leftists / black people / atheists / science / The Gays / etc
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.
