To me, it's our inability to solve climate change that makes me so pessimistic. Not because of the climate itself, but because of the ability of a smallish set of people completely insulated from reality to thoroughly prevent our ability to do anything about it.
Climate change is a relatively straightforward problem with a somewhat-less-straightforward set of solutions. Whatever solution we choose, it will involve a group effort. Few people want to take on the costs of it while everyone else benefits. And it just so happens that one set of people, among the very largest polluters, deny that it's even happening -- in a variety of mutually contradictory ways. Their failure is obvious and overwhelming, and they are a minority of the world, but it's sufficient to derail progress worldwide.
That's why I'm pessimistic. I used to believe that anybody that far out of touch with reality must surely be booted out of power sooner or later. I've been proven wrong: they gain more power by the day. And that one belief comes with a constellation of similar false beliefs, mutually reinforced, and each participant goading the other to proclaim the falsehoods more loudly.
I'm sorry that means I'm contributing to the problem you're citing, but I've only seen it get worse in my lifetime. The upward progress of the world had so much momentum that it took a long time to turn around, but the exponential increase in insanity means I just can't see any way that it doesn't do so.
I try, nonetheless, to behave as if I were optimistic. I do make my own small contributions to progress. But I expect to see them all wiped away or made irrelevant.
I think we're doing really well at moving toward a solution to CO2 buildup. The cost of renewables has fallen remarkably, and will almost certainly continue to fall. Once fossil fuels become uneconomical the air will go out of their balloon, and they will not be able to bribe politicians to keep the burning going.
I think you're going to be amazed at the changes that are coming, and how relatively painless they will be.
Global warming is a thread the needle problem: people need to be worried enough to act, but not to give up. Collective action is the ONLY way through this.
Last year ABC news gave more air time to the new royal baby in a single week than they gave to climate collapse in a year. You may feel inundated with pessimism, but that is far from universal. (Source: https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/05/21/ABC-News-spent-...)
I think optimism/pessimism is the wrong axis for this. It should be complacency/activism. I think MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail is more apt than ever.
Did you mean to reply to me? I said people weren't pessimistic enough.
But I think you're right that complacency/activism is a good lense to view things through. The people that accept climate change is happening remain fairly complacent. Whether this is due to insufficient pessimism or complacency, the result is the same.
We've been lured into being overly cautious about the science, in order not to feed any snippet of false information to the idiot hordes that would seize on it and use it to discredit/distort what's actually happening.
Net result - the hordes are still being idiots, and the rest of the world is blundering on thinking things ain't that bad/action isn't that urgent.
I know Canadian opinion polls best. Here, less than 20% of people identify climate change/environment as a top priority, and support for a carbon tax is about 45%, with a bit less than that opposed.
Granted, the polls don’t measure apathy, but this doesn’t strike me as a society that is convinced climate change is a pressing problem. We’re more mildly concerned, and mildly supportive of policies aimed addressing it, even in a very limited way.
It's just not possible for a civilization to make progress if everyone believes that the future will be worse and it's not possible to avoid it.