In layman's terms, how much are we screwed without hope of a solution, and what is the rough timeframe before the evening news starts looking like "The Day After Tomorrow?"
Not once has there been an "oh, it wasn't as bad as we thought" moment. It's always worse.
It's going to be bad. A little panic is not a bad thing. If we panic for nothing that's better than brushing it off and having the worst possible outcome unfold because of inaction.
It's always lose/lose for the skeptics:
Scenario A: skeptics were wrong - "burn them at the stake, they screwed us all over!"
Scenario B: skeptics were right - "well, they got lucky. It wasn't as apocalyptic as experts were claiming. They were still wrong to have rejected the evidence at hand and I was still right to have believed the evidence at hand"
If preventing climate change didn't cost anything, then nobody would be against it. But it will be pretty expensive and somebody will have to suffer to pay for that. That somebody probably doesn't want us to prevent it because they may well lose out, even in the long term.
Do you use any power generated by coal? Do you use a car or bus? Do you eat meat? If you do any of those things, it means preventing climate change is too expensive for you.
Scenario A: We spend a ton of money and resources on combating climate change. Energy and fuel become more expensive. There is economic crisis in some areas of the word. There is large scale refugee migration. Some small proxy wars break out. We manage to stem climate change and even slightly reverse it back to a natural level. We keep our modern technology. We keep most of the cultural status quo. Maybe a couple hundred million people lose their lives due to indirect consequences. The Earth still spins. Coastal cities aren't underwater. There is no global famine. Climate change skeptics will complain that combating climate change was a bad idea because they didn't see the worst of it.
Scenario B: We decide to not try and combat climate change. We don't spend any money on it. We think "everything will work out". Everything goes on just like normal for a few decades. Climate change skeptics are saying "I told you so." The economy prospers. Technology improves. We continue our dependence on fossil fuels, continuously pumping carbon into the atmosphere. We continue dumping waste into the ocean. The permafrost continues to melt more and more every year. It's all so gradual that barely anyone notices. Coastal cliff faces in California start eroding and taking beach front property with them as the sea level rises. Farms at lower latitudes start having more and more of a difficult time producing good yields. There is less snow falling in the mountains meaning that come spring time there is less melt. This causes droughts in many parts of the world. This drought starts to impact farmers. The global food supply dwindles. We are noticing massive numbers of oceanic lifeforms start to die off. Fisheries are not able to keep up with the demand. There isn't enough feed for livestock. The global food supply falls even lower. The drought is getting worse over the years due to less snow melt. Smaller countries with sub-par infrastructure start seeing a massive exodus of their population. These refugees migrate to large developed nations causing cultural strife and putting a strain on their economy and food supply. This cultural and economic strain leads to warfare. This warfare leads to even larger migrations. Soon we have world war 3 in the midst of the greatest global famine and drought the world has ever seen. Billions of people die. Human civilization as we know it is destroyed. We regress culturally and technologically.
This is just one set of possible scenarios. So, I ask you; Why not spend a little bit of money now and avoid what is essentially the apocalypse later? Let's say I'm wrong. Let's say scenario B could never happen and climate change isn't as bad as we think it is. Well, you have insurance on your house, don't you? Your car? Think of combating climate change like car insurance. Even if an accident is unlikely, it's still nice to know that you have it covered if it does happen.
It doesn't. It just means shifting employment from one class of jobs to another class of jobs. Either you have people mining coal, or you have people making renewable power. Either you have people digging for oil, or you have people building batteries for elecric cars. You can steer the private sector with subsidies and incentives just as the have for the last hundred years.
Reducing emissions does not mean reducing employment. It means shifting. If you have two possible jobs that pay equally, one with high emissions and one with lower, incentivize the lower one. A carbon tax mechanism is one way to price the cost of emissions into the job and that naturally makes the lower emission one more rewarding.
> Do you use any power generated by coal?
No. We got off of coal about a decade ago. Now it's mostly nuclear, hydro-electric, and for boost, natural gas. The power company was able to phase out coal power plants ahead of schedule becaue power consumption has been declining, everything is getting more efficient.
> Do you use a car or bus?
I walk.
> Do you eat meat?
Mostly chicken, occasionally fish. Some people eat astounding amounts of red meat and they're the ones that can move the needle the most. If they cut back by 20% that's a huge shift. If I cut back by 20% it's irrelvant.
You mean the Republicans get voted out of office completely and the other party isn't completely incompetent? On that day.
And the politicians actively choose to maintain, and reinforce, the policies and actions which contribute to that difference.
They couldn't be more wrong.
The Dems are already cleaning up their act, and if the system works, and Trump is impeached for treason, the GOP will need to clean house too.
We might just end up with an actual, honest to goodness, functioning democracy in the U.S. as politicians seek to regain trust.
Currently the fossil fuels industries and other "old school" extraction industries tend to align with the Republican party in the United States.
The issue is less "Republican party" and more those certain industries that stubbornly resist the notion a concept that could damage their businesses. I get the impression, for instance, that the much-maligned Koch family privately is aware of climate change. However, being in an industry that would be impacted by any regulatory push, they put up all psychological blinders to not only deny it -- but actively pursue an agenda against it. And they are not the only extraction industry leaders that do this.
That Upton Sinclair quote comes to mind: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it".
I do not know if there is a similar situation in other countries; it's going to take more than just United States industry direction to slow down climate change, after all.
This is not unrelated. This is directly related.
If the US was some little country in the Pacific where they could do whatever they wanted with little consequence it wouldn't matter, but they're not. They're one of the largest polluters in the world and the largest economy, so it's absolutely important that they steer in the right direction to avoid disaster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_New_... - sort the hydroelectric by capacity - most of the major dams are in this area.
You may be a multibillionaire on earth, but being able to sell widgets to the masses isn't a skill that's going to be needed (or appreciated) on Mars for quite a while. Cut off from your wealth, you're just another mouth to feed.
:)
If you care about your offspring, try not to reproduce. With the various positive feedback loops (permafrost methane, arctic albedo, antarctic ice shelves), things are going to get ugly.
And while you're at it, you might want to cancel any insurance that you have. Afterall, what's the point? That will make more money available to blow.