ultimately we have to reduce emissions as much as possible while preparing for their impact -- and I am not an expert, but I suspect reducing emissions is cheaper in the long run than dealing with the effects.
I'm not entirely sure. People seem to be convinced that climate change will destroy all civilization, but in the distant past the earth has flourished with significantly higher temperatures than what we have today. Once our climate reaches a new equilibrium, humanity will adjust and everything will probably be OK.
And we can be certain that there will be a new equilibrium, otherwise life wouldn't have lasted for hundreds of millions of years.
>And we can be certain that there will be a new equilibrium, otherwise life wouldn't have lasted for hundreds of millions of years.
Basically every time something this major changes, the dominant species does too. We're smarter than previous dominant species, but since 'not having to deal with all of this bullshit' is far smarter than 'scrambling to come up with solutions that may or may not work and are unlikely to be cost effective even if they do', maybe not as smart as we think.
Whatever remains of humanity will adjust and live the medieval or pre-medieval lives for the next many thousands of years.
The most fragile component of the climate change issue is human technological civilization. Once it breaks, it's game over. Most of us and most of our families won't make it. Current level of technology is maintained through a complex global supply chain involving millions of people. When that breaks, humanity will regress. Devices will die, there won't be a way to repair them. Survivors will regress maybe to early industrial era for a while, but since all easily accessible dense energy sources have already been used up, this won't last and the remnants of humanity will regress further, and stay there for God knows how long.
It's not a fate I'd wish on worst enemies.
As for how this collapse would happen? All the climate change-related "small" issues increasingly clogging our economy. More expensive food, more expensive water, less arable land, less habitable land, unprecedented migration. Eventually, there will be war. Or the global economy halts, and then there will be war.
That really depends on what your definition of "OK" is, I suppose.
climate change is likely not going to destroy all civilization (notwithstanding sensationalistic New York Magazine article) but adding decades or centuries of "adjustment" -- droughts, floods, crop failures, less predictable extreme weather, displacement of people in coastal regions -- is likely to be very expensive.
hard to imagine that all this cost over several generations is outweighed by oil and coal being somewhat cheaper than renewables/nuclear.