One time I mentioned to my boss how I think humanity is doomed to destroy life on Earth because we never learn from our mistakes until it’s too late.
My boss said that she is optimistic that we’ll get climate change under control because of her young daughter’s generation. I immediately backpedaled and agreed that we’ll probably figure it out and technology will save us, but I was just lying to both of us feel better.
Of course we need to keep trying to solve these climate issues, but a lot of people are in denial about how bad things already are and underestimate the kind of societal shifts that need to happen right now because of the cognitive dissidence many of us hold, even scientists.
I would have responded with how many gen y/z are in congress right now if someone was that optimistic.
Based on current trends, I’d say 40 more years until gen-z is old enough to get seats in Congress! 👴👵
Echoing the other sentiments - We’re pretty hosed on this.
The forests in Canada aren’t going to un-burn themselves. And even if we could instantly stop emitting any more carbon, or start to decrease our emission levels, methane is being released via melting permafrost and early evidence indicates some self-reinforcement from that.
Our best bet is to do the best we can, try to get our governments to not listen to moneyed interests, and hope that technology breakthroughs and dumb luck slow down the speed of the transition to the point that humanity can safely migrate to climate havens and figure out how to build out infrastructure to cope with climate change, rather than go to war and exterminate ourselves.
But lets be real - fixing/maintaining things has not really been humanity’s strong point. We’re definitely going to mess up managing our mess up.