Climate change while serious is nowhere near an 'existential threat' on the level of a planet-destroying asteroid. It's also harder to understand, and with a longer time frame so it's not comparable.
That's fair, but it's still an existential threat. The IPCC numbers are halfway between how could organized society exist within such circumstances and how could anyone survive this. We are practically sitting on a bomb. Scientists dealing with this are also cracking, they are becoming less polite and professional to signal urgency.
The developed world can keep up the facade for a while, but the ship is sinking. Humanity is tough, people will go on, but organized society will suffer.
People will either crack under this pressure or become flexible at interpreting and deflecting it. Some will be able to hide in the gaps not knowing, some are already crushed. Developing countries will be crushed faster, but desperation, thirst, hunger and violence will spiral out. People will start to cling to illusions even more. The downturn will create localized upturns, consuming of what's left, but even that will fizzle out.
So yeah, pretty much an existential threat to organized society, the planet will be fine eventually.
It's not as immediate, but a slow, gradual threat slowly getting worse over a period of centuries. And that makes it a lot harder to make politicians care.
We're like a frog in water that's slowly being heated. It's never quite urgent enough to jump out.
The developed world can keep up the facade for a while, but the ship is sinking. Humanity is tough, people will go on, but organized society will suffer.
People will either crack under this pressure or become flexible at interpreting and deflecting it. Some will be able to hide in the gaps not knowing, some are already crushed. Developing countries will be crushed faster, but desperation, thirst, hunger and violence will spiral out. People will start to cling to illusions even more. The downturn will create localized upturns, consuming of what's left, but even that will fizzle out.
So yeah, pretty much an existential threat to organized society, the planet will be fine eventually.