Mann’s bottom line advice? Elect better Politicians – I believe that is useless advice, It’s a huge Cop Out
Other classic comments by the public listening to Michael Mann on ‘Is Climate Change On a Crash Course?’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVa8eDqu3Pc (only as an example of the effects happening today) went like this:
Mann’s walking towards a cliff so stop before the edge – is a very poor analogy. A walker can stop walking.. but we are more like in a Canoe on a River heading downstream towards a massive waterfall … we are now at a point at which No Power on Earth can get you to the shore and safety … you waited too long … bye bye….the current will carry on to your doom….there’s no way out.
Soon Micheal Mann will be taking interviews from his underground bunker. I can hear him now, “We can still avoid the worst to come……”
My despair is over the lack of political will to do what needs to be done. Some of us have been screaming with our hair on fire for half a century.
… there is no hope until that system changes.
I’ve disengaged simply because I believe (the poor et al are going to suffer most, while) … the people whose greed allowed the situation to get to this point will continue living comfortably off of the profits they earned.
Some of the despair is driven by a realistic assessment of how (un)likely change (is) to occur even with our best efforts.
Did the fossil fuel executives get their bonuses, they did oh thank god, because that is all the powers that be care about
Well, sure, it’s not too late, (in theory), to do everything we can to avert the worst case scenarios, but we won’t do those things, because they would require a massive, IMMEDIATE, undertaking, which would mean gargantuan sacrifice on the part of nearly 8 billion people, on a permanent basis.
We’re like the dinosaurs, just before the asteroid hit.
Prof Mann is a soft touch for the fossil fuel industry. He is good at theorizing, pontificating & wringing his hands, but no good at using his brain or voice to inspire the rapid shrinkage in global economic growth necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He is as much use as a chocolate hockey stick.
What does a world with “no new fossil fuel projects” look like ? If our politicians even started down that path, we would vote them out. Kind of leaves us dangling off a cliff, huh?
Too many are simply trapped in survival mode, living check to check, or those with a paying job are finding demanding hours and at home work. This has to change or yes, not much will get done.
It’s already too late. As a species, we will do far too little to stop or reverse the mess we have made. There are too many people and we are collectively too stupid.
I thought I was alone in this life decision too. We decided not to have kids because we didn’t want them to witness the death of the planet. People thought we were crazy at the time. We were right in our decision.
Mann needs to get outside, half a day of direct sunlight now makes (a) much stronger argument than he does.
I have to admit that I don’t see despair around me concerning global climate disruption. What I see is that few people care about the issue and certainly are not going to make any sacrifices to change the trajectory of where we are going. This will not end well.
Michael Mann is good talking about his knowledge of climate, but will never come across the solution.
False hope. Petroleum runs the economy. We are already locked in
Politically, we get less done than ever before. Why should anyone have hope while the establishment won’t/ can’t take any action at all?
Come on folks, we all know that we have reached the point of no return…. This horrendous debacle has been two centuries in the making…. Global warming passed the tipping point about two decades ago…. Hell, we passed the tipping points in 2020…. the tipping point was in the 70s, now sit back and enjoy the ride!!!
[end quotes]
Why does this matter, to me, so much? Because I see it relating to other important issues that are being neglected in my opinion. OK, well if I can repeat part of recent Ref above :-
James G. Dyke: extracts of Q&A – The autonomous Earth: How humans created a planetary civilisation that is beyond their control
A: – I’ll give you a contemporary example: at the
moment there’s a lot of discussion about trying to
limit warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius
right, you know. Don’t tell anyone but that’s not
going to happen, right. It’s not going to happen.
Now I’m not allowed to say we will not limit
warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
I scandalize people when I say that.
What I should say is that there are no physical
reasons why we cannot limit warming to no
more than 1.5 degrees Celsius but there needs
to be sufficient political will in order to produce
the changes required, right?
Now if we just look at the Cultural or the
Socio-Economic-Political aspects then it seems
like political will is kind of mythical substance
that we just need to produce more of in order
for us to get to do the De-Carbonization.
So we seem to scrabble around for not really
having an understanding how those cultural
dynamics seem to be working or failing.
And of course a really important component
for our explanation of why it’s proving so hard is
because the tremendous amount of energy
that fossil fuels currently produce (being 80%).
I mean that’s the major challenge. So just to
ask for political will is to ask for nothing!!!!
https://youtu.be/UiyXI6pVzk8?t=2949
REF whole comment here –
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/09/forced-responses-sep-2021/#comment-795701
Voluntary Simplicity or Involuntary Collapse.
Of course there is another way – Mandated Involuntary Simplicity – that might come to pass too.
The same as Taxation works. It’s Mandated and Enforced by Governments on behalf of the People of a State as a whole. Little different than Slavery, Murder, Theft, Fraud and Environmental damage is Illegal because it is seen as Immoral and therefore it’s Socially Unacceptable.
Then there is this thing called Political Will? If anything is certain, it is that change is certain. The world we are planning for today will not exist in this form tomorrow.
“For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.” – John F. Kennedy
