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Then, actually, the risk is the root cause: climate change, not nuclear war. The global war could be conventional, too. Or chemical, or biological, or genetical

Then, actually, the risk is the root cause: climate change, not nuclear war. The global war could be conventional, too. Or chemical, or biological, or genetically engineered. No matter the tool used, the risk is why they would use it vs. not using it now. In any case, besides addressing the root cause vs. proximal cause, you couldn't even address the proximal cause anyways: it's more likely that the world could do something about climate change than about war in general.

toth 3y ago
Well, it's a matter of opinion which one is the root cause. My take is that if you remove nuclear/biological war out of the picture somehow, climate change is not an existential risk. If you remove the latter then the former is still an existential risk (and there are unfortunately a lot of other possible sources of geopolitical instability). So the fundamental source of risk if the former. But it's a matter of opinion. Conventional or chemical warfare, even on a global scale, are definitely not existential risks though. And like I said, probably not even nuclear. Biological... that I could see leading to extinction.