Like the boiled frog, perhaps we have not even realized that we are already cooked/doomed.
1. Even in the worst case I haven't seen any level-headed scientists argue that the Earth will be uninhabitable a la Venus. We'll get a hotter planner, sea levels will rise considerably inundating coastal areas, the current anthropocene extinction event will accelerate, storms will be a lot more intense, etc. Obviously a major set of problems, but I think it's important to be specific about what those problems will be as opposed to "we'll all be dead".
2. Whenever someone even remotely argues that we'll be able to stick to some reasonable emissions targets I like to show this graph, https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions#global-co2-emission.... That is, it's good news that global emissions have largely stabilized over the past decade, but we're still pumping out over 35 billion tons of carbon every year. We need to find a way, somehow, to bring that to near 0, and while tech may get us there eventually I don't see that happening in my lifetime (I'm middle aged).
This seems like a pretty bold statement.
Let’s assume the only constraints on population are energy, water, and space. If you do a back of the napkin calculation on much Uranium exists on Earth, how much power we could produce by fissioning it, then how much water is in the oceans, and then assume everything else is an engineering problem?
I think the number wouldn’t be 8 Billion, but much more. That’s not even getting into mining asteroids, space-based energy, vertical hydroponics, living underground or in the oceans. I think the limits could be extraordinarily high
Its still a political problem at the end of the day if you cannot convince a large section of the people with decision making power that its worth their time to deal with, regardless of how much money youve thrown at the issue yourself
Places will become uninhabitable, but what's the argument for "a lot of people will die?" These are gradual changes we're talking about. People will move.
The vast majority of immigration occurs without incident and there is no compelling evidence that this will change in the future.
No compelling evidence like the increase in global population, global temperatures, sea level rise, extreme weather events that cause greater amounts of people to be permanently displaced, political sectarianism, authoritarianism, extremism, and violence; and the concordant decreases in democracy, due process, habitable land, resources, and the ability of institutitions public OR private to handle the uncertainties. Because there's an "absence of evidence"? Because it would be a "black swan event"? Because it would be... unprecedented, perhaps? Have I made my point or do I need to keep going?
But sure, people are going to migrate slowly and not die in great numbers as receiving nations pull up the drawbridges and rain arrows on the intruders.
Propaganda of collective guilt is indeed strong last decade. Just not let them divide society. We have enough experience with that from history.
If I'm reading correctly, between 2011 and 2021 (the last year in the graph) there was an increase of 5 billion tons, and that was certainly helped by the big drop during the pandemic...
1. I don't doubt disruption in global food production will likely cause some famines, but again, plenty of places will still be able to grow food, and in fact many places will open up to food production.
2. I don't see how any increase in communicable disease spread leads to anything close to "we'll all be dead".
Yes, lots of people will die due to the impacts of global warming, but nothing I've seen says there is any reason to think it will be a species ending effect.
The human species will survive and will simply go back to the Stone Age and stay there another million years, this time without the risk of stumbling onto vast amounts of easy, free, dangerous carbon-based energy.
It is too bad it was not allowed to continue, but how the main star was written I think it doomed it. To me, if born outside the privileged caste, you would have no hope.
Reminds me of Dutch Jews in WW2 who tried to live a normal life until the police came to collect them.
[1] https://www.bu.edu/history/files/2011/10/11.Fear-of-an-Apoca...