Climate change defeatism

I know we've talked about climate change for years, and of course it's only getting worse. It has been more in my consciousness recently because I had some class projects on it, and it seems to be in my News Feed a lot.

From the little I know, unfortunately I think it's too fucking late. Many of the underlying mechanisms are positive feedback loops, so it makes it even harder to reverse them - even if we had the social consensus and investments. Deforestation, reduced food production, and more and more resources wasted on extreme weather/fire/sea level responses - it will likely be more crippling on humanity than the aging Baby Boomers. 

People in our situations will likely have decent lives in spite of climate change. We have the mobility and resources to avoid a lot of the pains. But billions of others are not so lucky, and many species will die out or be decimated in our lifetimes too. Species that never meant humans any harm. They just want to live and we took that from them.

So even though we may not suffer much directly, we will have to live with the shame that we presided over the biggest environmental calamity since the meteor that wiped out the dinos. Clearly, industrialized humans have been the worse thing for the planet. All because of the pursuit of wealth (or pursuit of happiness/survival). So future humans will look back at us the way we look at the Nazis or Crusaders. That is just pitiful to me.

Of course most of this is on the Boomers instead of the younger generations, but we weren't strong enough to overthrow those fucks and course correct. We want to be like them, that is the problem.

Do you have any thoughts on this stuff? Sorry for being so negative, but it's hard to feel upbeat about anything when you look at the various data. Sure, I do believe humans will find cost-effective ways to get renewable energy, protect coastal cities, grow food with a smaller environmental footprint, and conserve way better. But those things just make our lives more comfortable - they don't do much for the poor or the various species/ecosystems under threat.

PS - maybe you saw this how Gates is telling China's mega rich to help the poor. What do you think about wealth inequality in China vs. the west? Can China's social structure survive more decades of inflation, environmental degradation, construction bubble, and a growing wealth gap?

------

From what I understand, major changes to the global climate are now more or less inevitable. Maybe I'm behind on the science, but I also thought that we can still mitigate the damage somewhat? 

Of course a lot of the damage due to climate change is senseless and was avoidable, but to the extent that it wasn't avoidable, I don't think we can be too hard on ourselves. The best we can do is mitigate it and teach our children to do better. Maybe I've gotten too cynical, but I never really expected humanity to do much about it. If you follow politics closely, it's basically just a series of leaders kicking the can down the road on hard decisions. 

The EU did that with the financial crisis, it's estimated that as a result of the German's need to "teach the Greeks a lesson," (in reality the problems had nothing to do with the average Greek citizen) millions of people have been out of work, had their soul crushed, and been made to feel worthless in Europe  and tens of thousands have committed suicide that otherwise wouldn't have: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/world/europe/increasingly-in-europe-suicides-by-economic-crisis.html?pagewanted=all

In the US, national single payer health care, if instituted any of the earlier junctures in which it was attempted to pass, would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives over the years, and even with Obamacare, lack of a truly comprehensive health care system will kill untold thousands more (http://www.pnhp.org/facts/a-brief-history-universal-health-care-efforts-in-the-us).

Poverty in the US was once thought to be possible to eradicate, and in fact we once came pretty close with the Great Society program. But thanks to Reagan, we do too little to actually fix the problem, and as a result hundreds of thousands go hungry, homeless, and lack adequate health care and social services on a daily basis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States The estimated cost to fix this is a trivial percent of the cost of what we spent on Iraq and only a smallish sliver of our annual defense budget.

I don't bring these up to be overly pessimistic, but I guess I see these problems as much more directly impactful on society than climate change and we can't even remove vested interests from them (or only with a lot of effort, see Obamacare) to make any headway. I think climate change is one of those things where people in society feel that they can "make a difference" more than these other problems above by buying a more fuel-efficient car, recycling, etc. and of course it gets a lot of messaging on lefty blogs/news sources. And it definitely should - it is an important issue.

But at the same time I feel like there are these issues where people are suffering /now/, where society could do something, but because the people are poor or invisible, we don't do anything. And that's what really breaks my heart. 

As for China, I think the Chinese are getting more altruistic, and that's a good thing. I think that one of the ironic things about Communism was that if you wanted to survive, you, by necessity, had to look out for number one - if you cared about anyone else's survival, you might starve or really go without. That carried over after the reform era began but things are changing. A new generation is growing up that has seen the excesses of development and want to do something about it. Still, they're a ways from Western level of altruism and I think there's a lot less trust of NGOs in China than there are in the US (and rightfully so - even supposedly well run US NGOs waste a lot of their money).

------

Re: China - is there a similar tension between the 1% and 99% like we see in places like the US and Brazil? Or do the poor kind of accept that the connected elites in the Party hoard all the money too? I just don't know if there is much culture of sharing in China, as you said. Especially with the rapid transition from Great Leap to #2 economy, now it's all about "me" and conspicuous consumption, etc. Luxury brands now say that China is their key market, right? Also, Beijing gives way less foreign aid relative to its GDP vs. others in the G20. I guess you could call their projects in the 3rd world "aid" - securing resources rights by giving Congo a shitty dam or railway that is shoddy and won't add much value to the host nation (plus it's all built by immigrant Chinese, so it doesn't produce much vocational training, jobs, and economic activity for the locals - hence the resentment by the locals).

Wow, I didn't know about the Greece suicide data, that is really sad. I agree that the social problems you mentioned are more easily and cheaply fixed than climate change, and could save more lives. I also agree that we really had a chance with LBJ and the Great Society to wipe out poverty and have a more fair, humane nation. All the conditions were right, but he got sidetracked with Vietnam and then stagflation-oil embargo-Iran hit us, and the GOP got to take over and dismantle some of the progress. IMO, we'll never get such an opportunity again. It's not just you; we're all more cynical with harder hearts these days I think.

But re: climate change, I would have hoped for more traction/progress, because unlike poverty/inequality issues, it's not about "why should the rich help the needy?" Climate change is both a threat and opportunity for the rich. Do they want their kids to be subjected to superstorms and droughts for perpetuity? And those extreme events wreak havoc on the stability of global markets and their investments. Lastly, climate change is a huge opportunity too (industries to either mitigate or adapt to it). It's a trillion dollar problem with huge profits to be made for the first movers - so why haven't we seen it (apart from the impressive advances in solar, and energy efficiency for some products)? 

I forget which NYT journalist said it, but his comment was along the lines of "lightbulbs aren't going to solve climate change." There is only so much a conscientious consumer can do. Sure we can get a Prius, improve our home's insulation, and change some of our behaviors, but even if millions of us had the money/time to make those changes, it would barely affect the carbon situation. The main drivers are deforestation, agribusiness, and power generation. Huge, politically connected, int'l industries where only coalitions of governments have enough power and reach to move them (if they wanted to). Sure, consumers en masse could give up beef or boycott Indonesia until their economy stops burning rainforest - but we know it won't happen because we are addicted to carbon-intensive products and services.

Bottom line, climate change could eat up 10% or more of global GDP, and reduce crops/fish yields by 20% or more. That is freaking scary. With a growing population and more consumption in Asia, something's gotta give. All the conflicts that could arise due to climate-related problems could also eat up gov't resources, attention, and lives. So overall it's a major deadweight loss for humanity, and likely irreversible at this point.