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In my opinion the issue with the balance here is that no matter where you fall on the "climate scale belief" (except probably the most extreme of deniers), peop

In my opinion the issue with the balance here is that no matter where you fall on the "climate scale belief" (except probably the most extreme of deniers), people consider anyone that thinks a better future than you is coming will be labelled a denier, while anyone who thinks a worse future than you think is coming is given a soft pass as just having stronger convictions. That unfortunately leaves the vast majority of people being labelled as deniers from people with stronger beliefs, no matter where you fall. I think the vast majority of people today do know that climate change is coming, that we are changing the weather at a global scale, etc. Actual true deniers that say human have no effect in global climate, IMHO, are so few that they are not even worth mentioning besides anecdote (at a similar level to flat-earth believers). The issue then becomes, what level of climate change vs what level of sacrifice are we willing to accept? It seems clear that even with this question there are extremes that are likely unwanted, and there's probably another distribution going from two extremes: do absolutely nothing now and people will die later due to climate change, and the other extreme is sacrificing the prosperity of developed and developing countries now (which means people will continue dying at a rate too high) and have a minimal climate change effect later. Both extremes are too extreme and seem wrong, and somewhere in the middle seems like the obvious, correct solution, but where exactly in the middle is the important question that not many people seem to be talking about and baffles me.

ehnto 4y ago
The choice isn't even starting from the middle of the spectrum. We already have the foot on the accelerator, and it's unlikely we'll let up with our current generation of leaders. I think we'll continue to pollute at a rate far too great for the planet to handle, and we're going to have to get very good at remediation to continue living here. It will only be once the next generation of leaders comes into power, maybe even the generation after that, as they will be living the climate reality enough to want to fix it (whichever level of severity it ends up being). At which point we'll be needing to focus on remediation still, before finally, hopefully, creating some kind of sustainable version of our current societies.
- psychoslave 4y ago
  >I think we'll continue to pollute at a rate far too great for the planet to handle, and we're going to have to get very good at remediation to continue living here. The planet will do fine, but even stating such a thing is still commit anthropomorphism. The planet will continue to exist for a long time, no matter what the fate of mankind will be. Even life is most likely to continue prospering in a way or in an other. We, the human species, are not the planet. Let’s stop to use formulation like "the planet is in danger". No it’s not. The biosphere already went through five major extinction, and life is still there.
  - rebuilder 4y ago
    When people worry about nuclear war, do you also console them that the cockroaches will likely live on?
  - larsnystrom 4y ago
    You're absolutely right, the planet is in no danger. It's us humans that are in danger. We are polluting at a rate far too great for us humans to handle, and if we want to survive as a species we must do something about that.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      Even that is gross hyperbole. Humans as species could survive even the most disastrous predictions, rendering entire continents uninhabited. The top level post is correct. It is a matter of minimizing suffering.
      - ehnto 4y ago
        Which will have to be through remediation... I never said the world was coming to an end. I said we aren't likely to stop polluting, so we should get really good at remediating what we will have wrought.
        4y ago
whoooooo123 4y ago
> Actual true deniers that say human have no effect in global climate, IMHO, are so few that they are not even worth mentioning. I'm not sure this is true, but even if it is, I think it's only become true recently. It's getting harder to deny climate change lately because it's more obvious every year that the climate is changing. It's noticeably hotter and drier in the UK every year than it used to be. Hell, I'm standing at a bus stop as I write this at 9am and I'm only wearing a light jacket. I'm pretty sure that would be unusually warm for a September morning ten years ago, but the whole month has been like this in 2022. I don't hear people saying "climate change isn't happening" much anymore - the more common sentiment now seems to be a shrug. "It can't be that bad, can it? Or at least the really bad stuff won't happen until at least a few decades after I'm dead? I'm sure we'll figure something out - technology keeps getting better so humans will probably solve this problem. And anyway there's not like I can do anything about it personally so I might as well just enjoy the weather." That's the prevailing attitude now, I think.
- franciscop 4y ago
  Yes, I believe it's a fairly recent change! I would think there were many more actual deniers 10-20 years ago, but today it seems we label people as deniers much easier (as you say "it can't be that bad" would be labelled as a denier today).
adrianN 4y ago
The problem is that _any_ action is criticized as sacrificing prosperity, even though it often just sacrifices the prosperity of a small number of people.
- bhb916 4y ago
  That doesn't seem like a problem - that seems like a feature. Maybe "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" just stuck with me, but a just society doesn't sacrifice the prosperity of a few for the "greater good".
  - antifa 4y ago
    > but a just society doesn't sacrifice the prosperity of a few for the "greater good". We fought a war to end slavery. A small number of prosperous people were severely inconvenienced by society enacting that greater good.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    "Justice" is difficult enough to define that many books have been written about the topic. Personally I don't find it just to let a small number of individuals transfer wealth from future generations to their current self.
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  That small group of people is in fact connected to the rest of the world's population by a chain of progress that eventually leads everyone through the same level of prosperity. By turning the head and thus the direction of progress downwards you are committing the rest of the population to at the very least never achieving any level of prosperity greater than that. In the middle you're dooming them to stagnation at their current level and at the worst you're causing all of us to regress to a lower level of prosperity AND an increase in our impact on the climate due to the inefficiencies that come along with that.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    Suppose we were in 1890 discussing how we need to get rid of horse manure in our cities and there were a hot debate on how this "horseless carriage" thing is highly experimental and threatens the livelihood of a whole supply chain around horses. As it turns out, you can get rid of manure and it does in fact make a lot of people poorer, but in the end it enables a lot more prosperity for future generations.
darkerside 4y ago
There's a big overlap here with COVID thinking. At the end of the day, people are OK with other people dying. And really, how could we not be? It happens every day. Particularly when the hardest hit people will be in other (poorer) countries, it just feels less meaningful to those who will likely fare better.
- franciscop 4y ago
  Yes, unfortunately for as harsh as it sounds for anything at human-scale that inherently has some live-threatening risk, the ideal design is pretty much never 0-deaths. Anything I can think of: driving cars, sports, almost any job, etc. would need massive restrictions, to the point of those actions not making sense anymore, to reduce death risk to 0. So while sure, trying to reduce unnecessary risk, there's always a minimal amount of risk we are okay with.

ehnto 4y ago

The choice isn't even starting from the middle of the spectrum. We already have the foot on the accelerator, and it's unlikely we'll let up with our current generation of leaders. I think we'll continue to pollute at a rate far too great for the planet to handle, and we're going to have to get very good at remediation to continue living here. It will only be once the next generation of leaders comes into power, maybe even the generation after that, as they will be living the climate reality enough to want to fix it (whichever level of severity it ends up being). At which point we'll be needing to focus on remediation still, before finally, hopefully, creating some kind of sustainable version of our current societies.

psychoslave 4y ago
>I think we'll continue to pollute at a rate far too great for the planet to handle, and we're going to have to get very good at remediation to continue living here. The planet will do fine, but even stating such a thing is still commit anthropomorphism. The planet will continue to exist for a long time, no matter what the fate of mankind will be. Even life is most likely to continue prospering in a way or in an other. We, the human species, are not the planet. Let’s stop to use formulation like "the planet is in danger". No it’s not. The biosphere already went through five major extinction, and life is still there.
- rebuilder 4y ago
  When people worry about nuclear war, do you also console them that the cockroaches will likely live on?
- larsnystrom 4y ago
  You're absolutely right, the planet is in no danger. It's us humans that are in danger. We are polluting at a rate far too great for us humans to handle, and if we want to survive as a species we must do something about that.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    Even that is gross hyperbole. Humans as species could survive even the most disastrous predictions, rendering entire continents uninhabited. The top level post is correct. It is a matter of minimizing suffering.
    - ehnto 4y ago
      Which will have to be through remediation... I never said the world was coming to an end. I said we aren't likely to stop polluting, so we should get really good at remediating what we will have wrought.
      - 4y ago

whoooooo123 4y ago

> Actual true deniers that say human have no effect in global climate, IMHO, are so few that they are not even worth mentioning. I'm not sure this is true, but even if it is, I think it's only become true recently. It's getting harder to deny climate change lately because it's more obvious every year that the climate is changing. It's noticeably hotter and drier in the UK every year than it used to be. Hell, I'm standing at a bus stop as I write this at 9am and I'm only wearing a light jacket. I'm pretty sure that would be unusually warm for a September morning ten years ago, but the whole month has been like this in 2022. I don't hear people saying "climate change isn't happening" much anymore - the more common sentiment now seems to be a shrug. "It can't be that bad, can it? Or at least the really bad stuff won't happen until at least a few decades after I'm dead? I'm sure we'll figure something out - technology keeps getting better so humans will probably solve this problem. And anyway there's not like I can do anything about it personally so I might as well just enjoy the weather." That's the prevailing attitude now, I think.

franciscop 4y ago
Yes, I believe it's a fairly recent change! I would think there were many more actual deniers 10-20 years ago, but today it seems we label people as deniers much easier (as you say "it can't be that bad" would be labelled as a denier today).

adrianN 4y ago

The problem is that _any_ action is criticized as sacrificing prosperity, even though it often just sacrifices the prosperity of a small number of people.

bhb916 4y ago
That doesn't seem like a problem - that seems like a feature. Maybe "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" just stuck with me, but a just society doesn't sacrifice the prosperity of a few for the "greater good".
- antifa 4y ago
  > but a just society doesn't sacrifice the prosperity of a few for the "greater good". We fought a war to end slavery. A small number of prosperous people were severely inconvenienced by society enacting that greater good.
- adrianN 4y ago
  "Justice" is difficult enough to define that many books have been written about the topic. Personally I don't find it just to let a small number of individuals transfer wealth from future generations to their current self.
throwaway4aday 4y ago
That small group of people is in fact connected to the rest of the world's population by a chain of progress that eventually leads everyone through the same level of prosperity. By turning the head and thus the direction of progress downwards you are committing the rest of the population to at the very least never achieving any level of prosperity greater than that. In the middle you're dooming them to stagnation at their current level and at the worst you're causing all of us to regress to a lower level of prosperity AND an increase in our impact on the climate due to the inefficiencies that come along with that.
- adrianN 4y ago
  Suppose we were in 1890 discussing how we need to get rid of horse manure in our cities and there were a hot debate on how this "horseless carriage" thing is highly experimental and threatens the livelihood of a whole supply chain around horses. As it turns out, you can get rid of manure and it does in fact make a lot of people poorer, but in the end it enables a lot more prosperity for future generations.

darkerside 4y ago

There's a big overlap here with COVID thinking. At the end of the day, people are OK with other people dying. And really, how could we not be? It happens every day. Particularly when the hardest hit people will be in other (poorer) countries, it just feels less meaningful to those who will likely fare better.

franciscop 4y ago
Yes, unfortunately for as harsh as it sounds for anything at human-scale that inherently has some live-threatening risk, the ideal design is pretty much never 0-deaths. Anything I can think of: driving cars, sports, almost any job, etc. would need massive restrictions, to the point of those actions not making sense anymore, to reduce death risk to 0. So while sure, trying to reduce unnecessary risk, there's always a minimal amount of risk we are okay with.