Please consider this is not a problem that we either solve or not solve. We are at 423.70 ppm CO2 today*, which is 2.43 ppm more than last year. It is not that every increment above 0 ppm means we failed to solve the problem.
Let's say we reduce that 2.43 ppm increment to 1 ppm at some point. Or even to 2.41 ppm. Does that mean we failed? In a way, yes. But was the effort meaningless? No, the 1.43 ppm we didn't put out in the atmosphere really had an impact, and in a similar way, the 0.02 ppm we reduced also had a real impact on actual people. Both would translate to less sealevel rise, less floods, droughts, storms, heatwaves, biodiversity loss, etc. Which means a reduction of death, migration, hunger, suffering, extinction, chaos, economic loss, etc.
I know your question is about adaptation and not mitigation, but we need to get out of the either/or mindset. Every single action we take to reduce our emissions matters. I mean that in a very matter of fact way, not as a call to action. It is just technically incorrect to think it does not matter (though by no means I am implying you specifically think so).
This is why you fail. If you are relying on the team for success then you will not be motivated to personal success. You must decide what you do counts and you must do it. If you don't your team will fail. Because in the end success requires each team member to own the problem or failure is always the result.
Why?
1+1=2
2+2=4
3+3=6
And
0.5+0.25=0.75
When two people don't give it 100% you can't get the results you are looking for. Just ask anyone who has been divorced...
Because if large-scale nuclear or biological war is reasonable likely then climate change really doesn't matter anyway. End of the world scenarios are always an easy "sell" but they are usually not helpful for constructive progress.
Before nuclear war, lots of constructive things like geoengineering could happen.
You're looking at it from the wrong end. Nuclear war seems unlikely now, but it might become reasonable once half of the world's population is banging on the borders of the other half.
Do you think if e.g. India or Pakistan start experiencing lethal wet-bulb temperatures and people there decide to mass-migrate to survivable lands, only to be stopped at the border and denied entry, will those people and these countries just throw their hands up in the air, seeing there's nothing they could do, and accept imminent death? Or maybe they'll try to threaten or force to be let in, using any means available, up to and including nuclear weapons?
(This applies to all nuclear-armed countries - I mentioned these two, because AFAIK they'll be the first nuclear powers likely to experience lethal wet-bulb temperatures - but that's not the only way climate change could make a country mass-evacuate, and such other factors could hit other nuclear powers first.)
New Zealand is always the obvious "lifeboat". It's a long way from populated area so difficult to get there, and it's fairly easy to sink any ships that try. It's in the southern hemisphere so will be protected from the majority of nuclear war which would be in the northern hemisphere.
Unless someone with nukes decides to threaten NZ to open up the borders for their people, or else.
With global changes this big, we can't expect the usual MAD Mexican Standoff a couple big powers to keep everyone safe. It may be that all nuclear powers (or all that remained after a brief nuclear war) will decide together to politely ask NZ to open up or else.
> Let's assume that the world is incapable of solving this problem.
Incapable not, but unwilling most certainly - just look at the state of politics across all Western countries and that doesn't even include China and India who're hell-bent on growth.
> What can an individual do to not suffer?
Move to somewhere high up north, these places are going to be those where climate change will at least not cause them to get uninhabitable.
> Incapable not, but unwilling most certainly - just look at the state of politics across all Western countries and that doesn't even include China and India who're hell-bent on growth.
Unwilling and incapable are sort of two sides of the same coin. Our political and economical systems are set up as a greedy (in the CS sense) optimization process.
This makes solving long term global scale problems all but impossible in any case that would entail any sort of short-term inconvenience, and anyone seeking to solve such problems by such means are (by definition) politically and economically irrelevant.
I think in general there's a somewhat unfounded notion that someone is actually in control that's getting harder to defend in the light of what's been several decades of fairly public failures to address obvious problems in society. You to look very hard to find examples of public policy successfully addressing any sort of problem, and even in that case it's questionable whether the problem was actually solved or whether it's just a case of regression to the mean.
> I think in general there's a somewhat unfounded notion that someone is actually in control that's getting harder to defend in the light of what's been several decades of fairly public failures to address obvious problems in society. You to look very hard to find examples of public policy successfully addressing any sort of problem, and even in that case it's questionable whether the problem was actually solved or whether it's just a case of regression to the mean.
I think it's obvious by now when all that began: with the collapse of the USSR and Yugoslavia in the early 90s. With the corrective against capitalism lost, everything defaulted to greed in the following decades.
Before that, humanity showed many times over that it could cooperate on critical crises and to ban dangerous stuff: sulphur in fuel was banned after "acid rain", lead and asbestos were banned, CFCs were banned after the ozone hole, nuclear weapon tests were all but abolished, biological and chemical weapon developments as well. Even the right to wage wars of aggression was under pretty solid control.
You will be ok based on the fact that you are asking about it on HN. Tech workers in the US move their entire lives just to do something like snowboard more.
I watched a documentary about bread bakers in Afghanistan and there was a whole ecosystem of wheat growers, millers and bakers who were all centered around a river and had been doing the same work for many generations. They are screwed.
Does "suffer" take into account "transitive suffering" from children? (from future generations, our offspring)
i.e. if I'm physically fine but my child is suffering, I suffer too.
Now, for what one can do, there are always two ways:
one is, as suggested, to find a better spot for oneself and let the others go to hell for all I care. But what about the children?
other is to become millitant, and force action. Worse outcome for oneself, but potentially a better outcome for the children.
Be independent in all your supplies as much as possible (food, water, basic necessities). Cyclical gardens, Biosphere-2 like systems, etc. Then scale up and do the same with a small community. The bigger the community, more chances to repel an attack of cannibals.
There is only one way to be free. Believe in the truth. Acts 16:16-40
Beyond that you are supposing based upon bad data and conjecture which results in a scenario where worry will kill you.
But let's say the worst happens and you can't live in a city anymore. Can you grow your own food? Can you grow all of it? How many resources does that take near where you live? How about in the mountains near where you live? Now go learn how to do it.
Let's say we reduce that 2.43 ppm increment to 1 ppm at some point. Or even to 2.41 ppm. Does that mean we failed? In a way, yes. But was the effort meaningless? No, the 1.43 ppm we didn't put out in the atmosphere really had an impact, and in a similar way, the 0.02 ppm we reduced also had a real impact on actual people. Both would translate to less sealevel rise, less floods, droughts, storms, heatwaves, biodiversity loss, etc. Which means a reduction of death, migration, hunger, suffering, extinction, chaos, economic loss, etc.
I know your question is about adaptation and not mitigation, but we need to get out of the either/or mindset. Every single action we take to reduce our emissions matters. I mean that in a very matter of fact way, not as a call to action. It is just technically incorrect to think it does not matter (though by no means I am implying you specifically think so).
* https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2