[jacobolus]

There’s a team of guys with flamethrowers running around the house lighting everything on fire, and some of the inhabitants are saying “well you can’t discount the possibility that the fires started themselves, and having a house on fire isn’t really so bad, and we probably can’t do anything to fix it anyway.”

And now you are standing up for them.

Our problems cannot be summarized as “higher waters”. We are talking about not just sea-level rise displacing hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people, but also lethal heat waves every summer in many parts of the world, permanent severe drought in some places, raging wildfires, severe storms, collapse of many ecosystems, collapse of agriculture in many places, etc.

[chiefalchemist]

"And now you are standing up for them."

Um. That's not what I said. Not at all. Please re-read the Note: at the end and my (lack of) faith in human nature. I'm not defending anyone. But by the time we get done running around in circles and settle on what punched a whole on the bottom of the boat, we're going to be water-above-head. Is that not what we're seeing? Still?

As for "higher waters", the original article was about water levels and Amtrak. I stuck to that. If you want you make the problem bigger and even more overwhelming, sure, we can go your route. But from what I've seen that kitchen-sink approach - again see the Note: - isn't working out well. At some point we have to come to terms with what isn't working, and try another approach.

I agree with you (sans the "standing up for them" bit). But I'm far less naive, far less trusting of human nature.

[mirimir]

Funny :)

But we're all running around with flamethrowers. And we can't imagine life without them. That's the hard part.

[ahje]

Not just that: The rest of the world are running around with matches and lighters, are watching us, thinking "Damn, I want one of those" and have started building their own flamethrowers.

Now we're telling them to stop building flamethrowers while we keep insisting that we keep our own.

[mirimir]

Just so.

[magduf]

The problem is that we really can't do anything to fix it; it's much too late. And there's zero possibility we're going to convince enough people and leaders to change things to alleviate the problem, so we might as well just sit back and watch it burn. The wise course of action is to get yourself out of the house and let the rest of the inhabitants suffer the consequences of their own making.