[vjsc]

In my opinion, the large corporations behind fossil fuels have too much of an economic clout. The governments around the world are dependent on them for a considerable amount of their respective national economy. So yes you are right about government not doing much about this.

Ultimately, unless there is a relatively quick mass extinction event, no government is going to be bothered into action. Climate change and the devastation it's going to cause, is going to play out slowly over the years. The most affected would be the poorest of the world. They are going to die first. The rich will have enough resources to be able to not only survive, but also thrive on these events as new business opportunities are going to be created.

Ultimately, Earth maybe a very different place 100 years from now, but the rich of today are surely going to have their descendants living quite comfortably.

The only thing an individual can do is to strive to get as rich as possible, because that is the only security that's going to save you and your family in the bleak future that lies ahead of us.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Large corporations have too much economic clout because our economic and political thinking is pre-rational and not fit for purpose.

You can't do rational planning on a planetary scale when your political frameworks are explicitly tailored to maximise short-term resource accumulation without limit for a micro-minority.

We're not going to win this one without a revolution - not just the usual violent class swap that lops off one aristocracy to make room for another, but a moral and cultural revolution in how we plan for the future as a species.

I'm not optimistic, because IMO it's too big a challenge, and we literally don't have the brains or the culture for it.

But I'm open to being surprised.

[simonh]

In democracies we can't all just throw up our hands and blame it on the political class and big business. If the ordinary people of the developed world really wanted something done about it, as a higher priority than anything else, there is no gun held to their heads preventing them from voting for that. We are all benefiting hugely from the cheap energy reaped from fossil fuels, whether we like it or not, and in the main the fact is we like it.

Imagining that 'large corporations' are reaping all the benefits and could bear all the cost of weaning the global economy off fossil fuels is jaw droppingly naive. The massive costs of weaning ourselves off fossil fuels would bear down heavily on all of us, and especially the poor and the third world. Can we imagine China elevating hundreds of millions of people out of poverty over the last 30 years without fossil fuels?

I'm no climate change denier, far from it. You're quite right that the costs will be severe, even catastrophic, but there is no easy answer to this.

[gjm11]

Indeed, there's no gun to our heads preventing us voting for taking serious action on climate change. There doesn't need to be.

Imagine I'm a voter in, say, the US or the UK. There is no major party I can vote for that will, if elected, take serious action on climate change. In both nations there is a Green Party which probably would, but it has a firmly established track record of getting approximately zero votes; the only way in which voting Green has ever had any visible impact on US or UK policy is that a bunch of people voting for Ralph Nader in the 2000 US presidential election is part of why we had President Bush instead of President Gore, which is probably not an encouraging precedent to most potential Green voters.

And, of course, voting Green also means voting for all their other policies. Which doesn't matter if you regard climate change as the only important issue, but since you probably don't, you might find them unacceptable on other grounds; and since lots of other voters definitely don't, lots of them are going to be voting not-Green even if they care a lot about climate change ... which means that, once again, the Greens are not actually going to win, and the only real effect of voting for them is to give you less influence on which actually-electable candidate wins instead.

So no, in practice we don't have the option of voting for taking serious action on climate change. We have the option of voting for a big package of things, one of which happens to be serious action on climate change, in the knowledge that (even if a sizeable majority of voters wants serious action on climate change) voting for that package won't actually result in a government that will try to implement it.

It may be that those of us who care about climate change should be voting Green even though it predictably won't help in the near future, in order to "send a message" that might change the political landscape in future elections. Or that we should be putting pressure on the actually-electable parties to change their policies, or starting new parties, or something. But none of that means that we have a realistic way of getting action on climate change just by voting for it.

[lucozade]

This isn't how policy making works though.

An excellent example is Brexit. The Brexit referendum existed solely because of UKIP and UKIP have only ever won 2 parliamentary seats. And those were both for sitting MPs that had defected.

However, UKIP did get 4-odd million votes, plenty of local councillors, MEPs etc. In other words, they clearly had a lot of support for their flagship policies and that caused the main parties, that had UKIP voters in their constituencies, to take notice. Unfortunately.

This has also, to a lesser extent, been the case with green issues. The Greens increased their vote from the 80's onwards and the main parties started to adopt green policies accordingly.

So, in the UK at least, there are well worn paths to get policies, like climate change action, to the top of the heap.

I'd argue that there are a few reasons why they're not top of the heap today:

1) Other things are deemed more important. Clearly Brexit is one. Whether you agree that it should be more important, or not, it's fairly undeniable that it's true.

2) The folk that have expressed most interest in green issues have tended to not be very engaged in formal politics. <30s predominantly. That changed somewhat in the 2017 election primarily because of Corbyn (though Greens did particularly badly). So it may be that green issues become more important as a byproduct of other changes.

3) There's a strong argument that UKIP's popularity was, in large part, due to Nigel Farage. He may well be a cock but he's a cock that was on TV a lot reinforcing his message. I mean, I like Sian Berry (no idea who the other bloke is) but she's no Nigel Farage.

[gideonparanoid]

This is a good analysis of the situation.

>(no idea who the other bloke is) Jonathan Bartley [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Bartley

[jsingleton]

Depressingly pragmatic. While building resilience is certainly worthwhile, we can still fix this and should try.

I think individual actions can add up, particularly when we use the magnifying power of tech. I wrote a lot on this recently and I can't fit it all in a comment so I'll just link to it.

https://unop.uk/how-to-help-with-a-big-global-problem-as-a-t...

It boils down to a three step process:

- Understand

- Organise

- Amplify

There's a post for each and more to come.

[Chris_Jay]

When you say 'fix' do you mean 'prevent a two-degree shift' or 'transition to an zero-net-emissions economy'? Or do you mean we can avoid some survivable threshold higher than two degrees?

I agree that useful action is possible and important, but I'm starting to feel that our last chance to avoid catastrophic climate change was sometime last decade or the one before.

[jsingleton]

I mean both, first 'prevent a two-degree shift' then 'transition to an zero-net-emissions economy' and finally even negative emissions. This was almost solved in the 1980s and wasn't but that's a sunk-cost fallacy. The chips are down and we are where we are, so let's roll forward and get this solved.

[raquo]

Well, as comfortable as you will be able get with global wars, refugees, food shortages, etc. going on.

Governments and countries are not very stable under these conditions. Probably shouldn't expect your wealth to crisis proof your life in this scenario. Won't hurt but we'll all be much better off organizing to avoid this future.

[doon123]

>> Well, as comfortable as you will be able get with global wars, refugees, food shortages, etc. going on.

I think the crisis will be contained to the poorest parts of the world. Especially the tropics. This area is going to be the first to bear the brunt of climate change related problems.

I dont foresee Global wars happening. The politicians are too smart for that. They will try to contain the damage to the extant that the richer countries ( US, Europe, Australia ) are not affected much. Ofcourse there will be shortages as global supply routes are going to be disrupted.

The most thought provoking scenario here is going to be what will happen with China. Maybe not being a democracy will prove to be a blessing in disguise for it. Having a pragmatic group of men leading the country is the best option in the face of upcoming doom. China may shed a lot of weight ( population), but it may just survive, because of its largely monoculture and more or less obedient population.

I see much of Africa, SouthEast Asia to completely gone by the next 100 years. They will be left alone by the rest of the world to fight the battle of survival, and the odds wont be great.

MiddleEast is already ravaged, but they may continue to survive because they have oil.

Most rich countries ( the leaders I mean ), may not be very displeased with the fate of the poorer nations. Because as far as they are concerned mass deaths in poorer nations is only going to reduce the carbon emission load on our planet.

[raquo]

Somehow I doubt that people in these countries will sit on their hands while dying off.

Mass migration will definitely happen, and might even be supported by their governments and armies. India, Pakistan and China have nuclear weapons to wave around.

US will likely be better off than Europe thanks to the oceans and a big army / navy. But it will not be a good time for anyone if it comes to this.

[onyeka]

> Because as far as they are concerned mass deaths in poorer nations is only going to reduce the carbon emission load on our planet.

But the wealthier nations are the ones producing majority of the carbon emissions.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/02/worlds-r...

Seems like you're counting on poorer countries to die off so you in the the richer nations can survive when it's the richer folks causing the problem. Like the resource loss from these continents wasting away won't affect them.

[TeMPOraL]

A part of the climate change calculation is that the poorer countries are actively improving their standards of living, and that means rapidly increasing their energy demands.

[Sharlin]

People in regions bearing the brunt of the change aren't just going to stay there. There will be mass migrations of possibly hundreds of millions, and no wall is going to stop them.

[PeterisP]

It's somewhat plausible that some of the potential targets of migration will choose to prevent this with military force, including nuclear weapons.

[Comevius]

"The politicians are too smart for that"

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/09/austr...

Good luck with that.

[dubya123]

Mass Migration blows up your entire scenario.

[growlist]

Or migrate northwards, or upwards in elevation (latter might not work as well due to decreased precipitation). UK's latitude and natural moat are looking like pretty useful attributes, at the expense of losing considerable amounts of low lying coastline.

[daralthus]

Sorry for painting a negative picture, but when poor countries are destabilised they create conflict for otherwise stable western countries too. Simply because it creates an opportunity for bad actors to gain strategic power.

For example, without becoming too political, it seems a plausible strategy for Russia to try and control migration from the east to gain influence over the EU.

Depending on the hyperbole, similar conflicts could become war scenarios where your wealth would not be enough to protect you.

Considering this, getting rich is certainly a good advice, but might not be enough. We need to work on de escalating the situation even without any altruistic reasons, if you want to maximise your personal survival chances.

[blablabla123]

> In my opinion, the large corporations behind fossil fuels have too much of an economic clout.

It's easy to blame the big corporations. It's also about the governments facilitating alternatives and about eventually, literally every person buying into that.