Corporate execs right now: "If it's not happening next quarter then it's not my problem!"
You know who else has, dangerously short-term intelligence? My two year old son...
this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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Hi, just an inter-generational message:
25 years ago, I used to be a colleague of a lead author of that report. Like the others, he flew to global conferences, gradually built up a portfolio of papers, and so became a a famous professor with an interesting life, and can now release such reports with obvious timing to influence COP28 (and thereby get government support for the team to continue such research projects...).
But the contents are not really "news", most of this was predictable by those of us who knew the science back then 25 years ago, which was also reported the hottest year for a millenium. My thoughts then were similar to some of those some you write below (->above?). So I went to protests, and (by train, bicycle) to COPs to try to bridge the gap between science and policy, and instead of papers tried to spread knowledge via interactive web tools (really new tech then). I didn't nurture a career, because I didn't expect society to survive for so long. I assisted for a while near the core of IPCC and EU policy, but without papers and flights for networking, was easily disposable. Now 25 years later I sit shivering, in relative poverty, with little influence. To keep trying, I revive my interactive climate model (admittedly needs much more at the impacts end - no such big team), still hoping such tools could communicate something papers don't. I'm not judging who was right, just telling younger people - be aware this is a long-term game.
As I wrote in another post recently, tipping points are real, but thresholds vary by region and sector, and we don't know them accurately. So if you integrate over risk you get a curve - non-linear of course, but not showing that any year is particularly special - unless we make it so, socially.
The world won't do anything until mass migrations start happening, wars break out and people become desperate. The rich and wealthy will wall themselves out as long as they can while we kill one another.
The rich are betting that they'll be the survivors to continue the species .... but chances are they'll just last a bit longer then everyone else and die out along with everything.
Humans survived and thrived as long as they did because they did things together. They won't last long if not enough of them are around. Especially in a hostile environment that we're definitely creating for future generations.
That is already happening and I don't see people do shit.
Having children is the single most potent pacifier there is, once people have children they have the perfect excuse to mask their fear and subjugation by saying they now only and singularly care about their fucking children, and therefore will fight to maintain their status as slaves at any cost, and go against their fellow slaves fighting for freedom.
Not having children is the single most biggest reason why people don't give a fuck about life after they've died. They only care to maximise their individual fun for their lifetime. And what happens with the people that come after them, they couldn't care less.
(Just to show how bland such general statements are.)
Empathy, self awareness and an awareness of all life and all the lives of others now, in the past and into the future is the single biggest reason why people give a fuck and are absolutely appalled at how so many people of every kind could be so aware of their collective destructive behaviors yet not want to do anything about it.
I added a sentence to hopefully make clear that it was a response to the comment above mine.
We're already toast, just don't feel it yet. Mankind's time is over, it's just a slow decline, until it isn't.
but.....money!!!
FINANCIAL RUIN?!? SHIT IS ON NOW!!