I wondered where this article got the idea that "half the planet" would die "in 26 years or less" with 3°C of warming. It appears to be a misreading of the table in https://actuaries.org.uk/media/ni4erlna/planetary-solvency.p... "Figure 12: Planetary solvency risk impact and likelihood definitions (illustrative)" qualified by "A risk impact matrix is a methodology for ranking potential impacts, not a prediction or
central scenario."
In particular, they rate ≥50% mortality as Extreme and also rate warming by 3°C or more by 2050 as Extreme (this is relevant for the colorful severity/likelihood grids that are the focus of the paper) and somebody appears to have made the incorrect connection that an Extreme climate would cause Extreme mortality, and also by the time the Extreme climate is reached and not afterwards. Elsewhere, the paper mentions that "We have not
shown an assessment for mortality in this illustration, as very
limited research has been carried out on the potential for
large-scale loss of life in relation to these interconnected risks on which to base an assessment."
Unfortunately, that makes the article title highly ironic.
It's quite striking to note how media coverage of climate change and pollution have gone down so much. I remember in the 90's it was very much in the popular mileu.
What's more we are living through an actual green revolution. Solar power and batteries have never been so cheap - and still promising to get cheaper and better with sodium ion batteries.
Just in case you miss it: The author of the post, Adam McKay, "is the Academy Award-winning director of The Big Short, Vice, and Don’t Look Up and the founder of Yellow Dot Studios."
I think us people do not have the capacity as societies to effectively anticipate and solve problems that we can see approaching but have not become catastrophic yet. We always act shortsightedly and ..hope for the best. Most of the people will just not vote/support anything that might bring them some minuscule pain. Even if we know by logic that the problem is coming, we tend to follow whomever will tell us that it's not a problem and base our hopes on him/her. Think of a problem that we saw coming in the future and we collectively solved. I can think of none.
It is very hopeful that renewables are being pursued and developed by China at least to some degree and have become economically attractive. That's the only feasible way to minimize the damage that's already been done.
I guess time zones are driving a significantly US-centric response. My company works on climate repair. We're just a four person menlo park startup so far with some pilots in the field but we have a couple of billion in our sales pipeline, entirely based on people who have sought us out. Global spend on climate doubled last year and is on a tear this year. Recent events, from the closure of the gulf of Hormuz to the huge fires in Europe have stiffened peoples' resolve.
Sure, the US cut spending since early '25, but even before those cuts, the US was less than 8% of global spending on climate intervention. But it's destructive: though we're based in the US, there is no commercial interest in the states and all our pipeline is outside the country.
Climate denialism is extremely destructive, but it's pretty much entirely a phenomenon of USA, Russia, Germany, Netherlands, France, UK, Canada, and Australia (crudely ranked by % of population), plus of course some gulf states. One of our three founders is an anthropologist and her field work has found that hardly anyone outside the top of the OECD has any doubt that the climate is changing and affecting them directly.
There's not enough happening but the derivative feels strongly positive.
Our economy is an abstract intangible system which requires infinite growth and debt issuance, this in reality requires more caloric expenditure and resource consumption. Thermodynamically this is pretty bad news. At one point the see-saw is gonna tip the other way, then it might cool off for a spell.
Sadly I think the only solution is to invest to build more energy infrastructure and more AI, so that in the future when the shit really hits the fan we have enough energy and assistance from AI to create a scalable technology to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere proactively.
In my view there is no credible future in which the world will become carbon neutral in 1 or even 10 years. It just ain't happening. This is one of those problems where the train is already running down the hill, and we need to engineer a way to catch it. We cannot stop it anymore.
At this point I’m not sure what to do about it. I already live a low-ish carbon life. I barely ever fly. Only drive when I need to. Try and use items that are non-plastic where feasible. I don’t buy extra clothes.
It’s at the point where I wish it were solvable, but I don’t believe it is, so I can’t afford to think about it. Maybe people better than me can, and good luck to them.
Okay great. We’re out of time. Fine, we get it. But the problem with this article, and many other similar articles, is it seems like it’s just designed to scare the shit out of us.
No call to action, no recommendations in what to do about it. It’s basically insinuating that we, the regular people, are the responsible.
As there in-lies the problem, and it makes me furious. The onus to engineer our way out of a climate catastrophe is not on the regular people. The onus is on the people who engineered is into this problem. Government, industry, politicians, scientists, literal engineers.
If this is really as urgent they say it is, then why aren’t they acting faster to retool our infrastructure? Joe Schmoe doesn’t have the ability to build more electric cars. He can’t go out and build more nuclear power plants, or build solar farms.
The problem here is every time you read an article like this you’re left feeling guilty. We’re told we’re the problem. Joe Rogan (and others) are the problem. Not the people who actually got us into this situation. The energy here is so misguided. It’s infuriating.
I love you Adam McKay and your art, but us normal folks are just living life, with the tools & systems that were engineered for us by other people. Stop telling us we’re the problem.
This is a tough read. I'm not sure who it's aimed at, since the article mentions only 14% of Americans (surely one of the most climate denying countries) don't believe climate change is real. It's alarmist in a way that is whistlecalling but not in a useful way.
It also lies with graphs in a way that I just hate -- we have surface temperature charts that show growth trends going all the way back to ... 2024. Please. This page from wikipedia shows a much longer range with a lot more context: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature..., and reasonable qualifiers on the methods used to go back.
Useful proposals always welcomed, ideally ones that in a game theoretic sense do not reward defection and are realistic about the economics of releasing more CO2 as part of power production, but this essay isn't it.
> Before that [Holocene], for hundreds of thousands of years in the Pleistocene era, humans (and our hominid ancestors) spent most of their time running from drought, fires, floods, extreme cold and heat, predators, and each other. The population was likely no more than a few million people spread across the whole planet. At one point we may have almost gone extinct, with just 10,000 Homo sapiens clinging to life. But after the advent of the Holocene and its remarkably stable climate, in only 100 centuries the world population has risen to 8 billion.
This is extremely misleading. The "remarkably stable" climate didn't bring the world's population up to 8 billion, it was abundant energy from fossil fuels (7 out of 8 of all of the humans that have ever lived have done so in the industrial era). The Holocene isn't some serene stable climate period - there are still natural disasters at about the same rate they have been occurring throughout the past 11k years - but the difference is that we're much less likely to be killed by them due to abundant energy and technology. The transition from the Pleistocene into the Holocene definitely made life easier, mostly because of the natural warming.
Collapsing human-optimum climate, a temporary state Earth entered about 15 thousand years ago and made modern civilization possible.
The truly sad thing about it all is not the damage to some abstract "environment". The fact remains that we had an Eden-like planet for a few thousand years and completely and utterly wrecked it to maximize the "wealth" of a few generations of elites.
The people who deny climate change have won, and accepted the [now] inevitable downfall of humanity as we know it. They are enriching themselves to have the financial power to give them the personal power to adapt to climate change. The rest can rot in hell. In essence, they're able to build their own Arc of Noah, and you and 99,999999% of everyone else (nevermind all the animals) aren't on the guest list.
In order to not cause chaos, they lie (by denying climate change, sowing FUD) or ensure the issue isn't mentioned/covered (by owning media, self-censorship). "Keep calm, everything is going extremely well."
I believe Earth isn't badly off with a lot less humans, I just don't like the distribution of survivorship isn't going to be random. Survivorship bias is going to contain heroic stories, but in the end a lot of people without power/money are going to take the shortest straw. And, that wasn't necessary.
The track Extrawelt - Phoebe has an excellent quote on the matter. Paraphrased:
> "We would be the first lifeform that wipe itself out. But what is unique is we did it knowingly. Why didn't we save ourselves from [...]? Is the answer, we weren’t sure if we were worth saving?"
I've always thought it's pretty obvious how all this climate change stuff will play out:
- Yeah some govts reduce carbon emissions, but others don't care (china) or can't afford to focus on that (developing economies).
- Climate activists will continue to act like we're to literally ruin the world (this is stupid). Climate change deniers will say temperature changes are just cyclical (also stupid).
- On a global macro scale, fossil fuels continue to be consumed as long as it makes sense economically
- Solar eventually gets cheap enough to begin to truly displace fossil fuels. EVs also go mainstream. Both happening now.
- In the end... life will just go on as we just naturally move up the tech tree and fossil fuels become an ever smaller part of the energy mix
I hate when such (great) articles end with "we have a lot to do". Please give at least a couple of examples of a constructive action. "Write to your government", "Support this NGO". Do not loose the moment of attention you have just won.
> This particular sub-genus of grifts, half-truths and strategic omissions ... “Manifest Destiny.” “Aryan superiority.” “The divine right of kings.” “The domino theory.” “Israel has a right to defend itself.”
The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate
(currentaffairs.org)146 points by Anon84 20 hours ago | 168 comments
Comments
In particular, they rate ≥50% mortality as Extreme and also rate warming by 3°C or more by 2050 as Extreme (this is relevant for the colorful severity/likelihood grids that are the focus of the paper) and somebody appears to have made the incorrect connection that an Extreme climate would cause Extreme mortality, and also by the time the Extreme climate is reached and not afterwards. Elsewhere, the paper mentions that "We have not shown an assessment for mortality in this illustration, as very limited research has been carried out on the potential for large-scale loss of life in relation to these interconnected risks on which to base an assessment."
Unfortunately, that makes the article title highly ironic.
What's more we are living through an actual green revolution. Solar power and batteries have never been so cheap - and still promising to get cheaper and better with sodium ion batteries.
It is very hopeful that renewables are being pursued and developed by China at least to some degree and have become economically attractive. That's the only feasible way to minimize the damage that's already been done.
Sure, the US cut spending since early '25, but even before those cuts, the US was less than 8% of global spending on climate intervention. But it's destructive: though we're based in the US, there is no commercial interest in the states and all our pipeline is outside the country.
Climate denialism is extremely destructive, but it's pretty much entirely a phenomenon of USA, Russia, Germany, Netherlands, France, UK, Canada, and Australia (crudely ranked by % of population), plus of course some gulf states. One of our three founders is an anthropologist and her field work has found that hardly anyone outside the top of the OECD has any doubt that the climate is changing and affecting them directly.
There's not enough happening but the derivative feels strongly positive.
In my view there is no credible future in which the world will become carbon neutral in 1 or even 10 years. It just ain't happening. This is one of those problems where the train is already running down the hill, and we need to engineer a way to catch it. We cannot stop it anymore.
It’s at the point where I wish it were solvable, but I don’t believe it is, so I can’t afford to think about it. Maybe people better than me can, and good luck to them.
This time we have no more time but 25 years ago when we had no more time it was true?
Or we've never had more time?
No call to action, no recommendations in what to do about it. It’s basically insinuating that we, the regular people, are the responsible.
As there in-lies the problem, and it makes me furious. The onus to engineer our way out of a climate catastrophe is not on the regular people. The onus is on the people who engineered is into this problem. Government, industry, politicians, scientists, literal engineers.
If this is really as urgent they say it is, then why aren’t they acting faster to retool our infrastructure? Joe Schmoe doesn’t have the ability to build more electric cars. He can’t go out and build more nuclear power plants, or build solar farms.
The problem here is every time you read an article like this you’re left feeling guilty. We’re told we’re the problem. Joe Rogan (and others) are the problem. Not the people who actually got us into this situation. The energy here is so misguided. It’s infuriating.
I love you Adam McKay and your art, but us normal folks are just living life, with the tools & systems that were engineered for us by other people. Stop telling us we’re the problem.
It also lies with graphs in a way that I just hate -- we have surface temperature charts that show growth trends going all the way back to ... 2024. Please. This page from wikipedia shows a much longer range with a lot more context: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature..., and reasonable qualifiers on the methods used to go back.
Useful proposals always welcomed, ideally ones that in a game theoretic sense do not reward defection and are realistic about the economics of releasing more CO2 as part of power production, but this essay isn't it.
This is extremely misleading. The "remarkably stable" climate didn't bring the world's population up to 8 billion, it was abundant energy from fossil fuels (7 out of 8 of all of the humans that have ever lived have done so in the industrial era). The Holocene isn't some serene stable climate period - there are still natural disasters at about the same rate they have been occurring throughout the past 11k years - but the difference is that we're much less likely to be killed by them due to abundant energy and technology. The transition from the Pleistocene into the Holocene definitely made life easier, mostly because of the natural warming.
Collapsing human-optimum climate, a temporary state Earth entered about 15 thousand years ago and made modern civilization possible.
The truly sad thing about it all is not the damage to some abstract "environment". The fact remains that we had an Eden-like planet for a few thousand years and completely and utterly wrecked it to maximize the "wealth" of a few generations of elites.
In order to not cause chaos, they lie (by denying climate change, sowing FUD) or ensure the issue isn't mentioned/covered (by owning media, self-censorship). "Keep calm, everything is going extremely well."
I believe Earth isn't badly off with a lot less humans, I just don't like the distribution of survivorship isn't going to be random. Survivorship bias is going to contain heroic stories, but in the end a lot of people without power/money are going to take the shortest straw. And, that wasn't necessary.
The track Extrawelt - Phoebe has an excellent quote on the matter. Paraphrased:
> "We would be the first lifeform that wipe itself out. But what is unique is we did it knowingly. Why didn't we save ourselves from [...]? Is the answer, we weren’t sure if we were worth saving?"
- Yeah some govts reduce carbon emissions, but others don't care (china) or can't afford to focus on that (developing economies).
- Climate activists will continue to act like we're to literally ruin the world (this is stupid). Climate change deniers will say temperature changes are just cyclical (also stupid).
- On a global macro scale, fossil fuels continue to be consumed as long as it makes sense economically
- Solar eventually gets cheap enough to begin to truly displace fossil fuels. EVs also go mainstream. Both happening now.
- In the end... life will just go on as we just naturally move up the tech tree and fossil fuels become an ever smaller part of the energy mix
aaaand, you lost me.