| What, exactly, do you want to do about it? What, exactly, do you want to do about it, that's politically viable? Should we tell a billion people in China, and another billion in India to shut down their coal-fired plants? Back to the farms and rural poverty? Do you want to convince rich westerners to stop eating meat in such large quantities? Tell them to stop driving so much? Both sets of suggestions are politically unpopular positions and forcing them on their respective populations would lead to strife and lives lost far beyond what we'll see with climate change. We push for incremental changes in the US, but even their proponents admit they won't make much of a difference in a global context. The Earth is warming. Almost everyone is on board with that now. Absent a global totalitarian government that can constrain carbon emissions by fiat, what can we do that will make a difference? It seems like the answer is "not much," so the revealed preference of most of the world's citizens seems to be rolling the dice that the change won't be catastrophic, hope for a tech breakthrough that obviates the problem, and assume that we'll deal with the disruptions as they come. It's not an inspiring message, but it's where we're at. |