[samwillis]

Trouble is most politicians are incentivised to think in the short term and are increasing just in a perpetual campaigning mode. They are thinking about their careers and re-election. They cannot except and talk about bad news, and a 3-5degC increase is bad news.

On top of that you have had climate activists pushing for very large change to happen incredibly quickly (arguably needed). But it’s an incredibly hard sell to the public who won’t except a negative impact on their quality of life.

Basically:

1. People are unwilling to make changes that they perceive as being a net negative to their quality of life.

2. Businesses are unwilling to make changes that they expect to have a net negative to their bottom line.

3. Politicians are unwilling to ask for either of the above to happen because they want to be re-elected.

[dav_Oz]

Update after 2 years of 'crisis management':

The social fabric of the western societies had been severely damaged.

Trust in science is at an all time low. The absurdly rich are absurdly richer. Not few people are now flirting openly with the idea to simply abandon those bulky civil liberties of the 20th century (2nd half) in order to save the world in the long run. So, in order to satisfy 2. ("green washing") and 3. ("emergency state") 1. (civil liberties) is the obvious pawn "sacrifice".

[thatguy0900]

I don't know how fair it is to bring the last two years up. Our society was no closer in 2018 to solving climate change.

[ngokevin]

I think the point is, we are even further. In terms of progress, time, support, and aptitude. We've witnessed that even in a more immediate and clearer emergency (i.e., millions of people dying), large swaths of society rejects facts or are not willing/capable to think long-term or at a global level

[throwaway3b03]

> 1. People are unwilling to make changes that they perceive as being a net negative to their quality of life.

I don't think that's the case. It's a coordination problem. People don't want to reduce their quality of life if they don't know for sure that others won't do that as well. Most things in life and in human psychology are relative, in constant comparison to our peers.

[samwillis]

Possibly, but it's true even on a group rather than an individual scale.

I think it also helps to give people multiple reasons for making a change. So for example as a household we changed our diet by only have meat once a week now, combination of health and environmental benefits pushed us to make the change (Could never go fully vegetarian though).

Pushing people to walk/cycle works because you have both environmental/health arguments.

The difficult one is encouraging people to not excessively heat their houses (we should all be turning our thermostats down a couple of degrees), but maybe cost is a factor there.

[roenxi]

I'm going out on a limb and say that people are more worried about the quality of their own life than the quality of other people's life. Even if I was confident that the entire globe would impoverish themselves with me, I would still not want to be impoverished.

Besides, we don't have to scupper our quality of life. Nuclear remains on the table, for example. And it turns out thumb-twiddling for long enough has made wind & solar competitive and they're getting better. The biggest win would be cutting down population sizes and that seems to be happening naturally because it enables people to live more comfortable lives.

[jessaustin]

The biggest win would be cutting down population sizes and that seems to be happening naturally because it enables people to live more comfortable lives.

The cloud of massive inequality and diminished opportunities for people of childbearing age has a silver lining after all...

[White_Wolf]

Quality of life is one thing but what happens with the bottom 20%-30% earners? Would they be able to afford living after a sudden change like this? Everyone pushed for a change but I've never seen one(so far) that talk about those that can barely survive as it is.

[adriand]

> But it’s an incredibly hard sell to the public who won’t except a negative impact on their quality of life.

The idea that solving the climate crisis would have a negative impact on people's quality of life is one that has been successfully promoted by the fossil fuel industry. But it's not true. We could get to a net zero economy AND deliver improvements to (most) people's quality of life.

A few quick thoughts:

* I read that the richest 1% of Americans are responsible for 30% of American carbon emissions, although I'm struggling to find the source of that. It was easy, however, to find stats that indicate the richest 1% of people across the globe are responsible for 15% of global carbon emissions, which is nearly twice as much as the poorest 50%. The vast majority of us can keep on living our lives as normal. The 1% need to stop jet-setting and ripping around in lambos. That's not going to harm my quality of life. [1]

* Investments in green energy and related technologies are creating a job boom and plenty of wealth for the people participating in the green revolution. There are lots of direct economic benefits. [2]

* Air pollution from burning fossil fuels is responsible for ~1 in 5 deaths worldwide. Imagine the increase in quality of life for everyone with far cleaner air. [3]

* Millions of people, myself included, suffer from (entirely rational) feelings of anxiety, worry and depression related to climate change. The knowledge that we are destroying the planet, killing off animal and plant species by the thousands, and ruining the future of my children and grandchildren is a daily drag on my happiness and sense of well-being. I would feel so much better knowing that we were actually doing what we needed to do to solve this crisis. That would be a huge benefit to my quality of life! [4]

1: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211025-climate-how-to-m...

2: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/renewable-energy-jo...

3: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-air-p...

4: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/06/health/climate-anxiety-th...