Submitted 1 year ago by munderzi@feddit.ch to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
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:
Conservatives will never admit they are wrong if that’s what you’re asking.
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. 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.
Some areas might even get more habitable!
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.
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 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”
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.)
Has anyone seen the movie Children of Men?
The final scene with Bexhill immigration camp getting bombed was probably the best film depiction 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”
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 king capitalist 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.
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.
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.
Don't have kids.
Withdraw from politics and concentrate on short term fulfillement while it lasts.
This is already me.
The Chinese concept of “lying flat” in response to immense amounts of insignificant, monotonous work.
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.
It's not advice.
Me. Don’t have any ambition left in me.
We are in the apathy stage right now.
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 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.
You ever heard of the boiling frog analogy? Yeah, that.
Line from Unforgiven
Kid, “He had it coming, didn’t he?”
Muny, “We’ve all got it coming, kid”
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.
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- … "
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Normalcy bias for sure. Just like at the start of covid.
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.
When Americans do? Shut the border to climate change refugees. Keep on trucking.
UntouchedWagons@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
There’d still be denial.
fluke@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Don’t look up.
Lmaydev@programming.dev 1 year ago
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.