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One aspect of climate change that I found/find difficult is being forced to think about mortality of myself & mortality of "civilisation". But on another hand: this isn't specific to climate change: personally, I was always going to die at some point, of something. At a larger scale, historically, all civilisations eventually collapse. When civilisations collapse, this does not mean that all individuals involved perish, although some may. Other individuals involved switch to new patterns of living, when the costs of being involved in the civilisation exceed the benefits offered. So from one perspective, as individuals & as societies we are all living on borrowed time anyway. > Life is probably over in 50 years I suggest that this is an exaggeration. Personally, I find it very frustrating to deal with things that I have little control over -- when I focus more of my time & energy on things I can largely control, I can see results from my efforts relatively quickly & directly. I don't personally feel responsible for "saving civilisation". This isn't a particularly moral or ethical position to take. But, enough philosophising, what actions to take? The problem is caused by environmental impact of a very large number of people multiplied by the environmental impact per person. Someone with a high energy high pollution lifestyle in a developed country may have the same environmental impact as 20-30 people with much lower energy or lower impact lifestyles. Anything you personally do to change your behaviour or reduce your impact is essentially negligible. Taking actions that influence and reduce the impact of large numbers of other people seems more helpful. E.g. activism, or any helping roll out policies that reduce population growth, particularly in countries with higher per-capita environmental impact. You may also wish to consider hedging: suppose the global economy & global human population keeps roughly doing its thing, business as usual, and not changing sufficiently quickly to limit climate change, how do you want to live your life? "Adaption" rather than "mitigation". |