Scientists are not saying we'll all die in 12 years. What they are saying is that if we're not rapidly reducing emissions by then, we're unlikely to avoid a tip

Scientists are not saying we'll all die in 12 years. What they are saying is that if we're not rapidly reducing emissions by then, we're unlikely to avoid a tipping point where the planet is emitting its own greenhouse gases, and will take things several degrees further with no more help from us. A great book on the effects of climate change is Six Degrees by Mark Lynas, who read 3000 peer-reviewed papers on climate change and summarized them, with extensive references. It was published in 2007 but from what I've seen it's holding up well. Four degrees is grim; it won't make us go extinct but it's a horrible mess nonetheless. One claim in the article was that food production will be fine. In fact, there are agricultural areas feeding hundreds of millions of people which are dependent on glacier melt during dry seasons. Those glaciers are going away. Another issue is that prime areas for growing grain are moving towards the poles; the new "best" areas are smaller and have poorer soil. We're also losing topsoil, from a combination of droughts with occasional torrential rainfalls. I can't think of any other problem that people think is fine because it's not bad enough to make us go extinct. "Bad healthcare system? Well, it won't wipe us all out, we're fine." And we're experiencing effects of climate change already, e.g. with the forest fires in California.