The last ice age occurred gradually over the span of millennia. Anthropic climate change is occurring in an instant by comparison. Not to mention, humanity survived by mass migration, something that's a lot harder for integrated global economies to do. Few believe humanity is going to go extinct. But extinction of industrialized civilization is a more real concern. And the collapse of industrialized civilization will undoubtedly entail the death of over 90% of the human population.
I doubt that because technology is so powerful and adaptable. Dikes can protect lowlands. Air conditioning can make hot summers tolerable. Food can be grown in more northern climes.
But coral can’t adapt to warmer more acidic waters overnight. Polar bears can’t darken their fur in a couple generations to hunt in perpetual summer tundra.
Dikes can also lead to the destruction of swamps or coastal habitat reducing natural ways of capturing the carbon. In some places they can also lead to further land corrosion which counterproductively will only increase flooding. So dikes are no way a silver bullet to protect lowlands from the effects of the climate disaster.
Air conditioning does not protect workers that need to work outdoors, or people that live in areas with limited access to electricity.
And this says nothing of the other effects we still have no way of combating, including forest fires, stronger hurricanes, prolonged droughts, increased pesting of climate tolerant species, mass migration of climate refugees from the worst affected areas, and—eventually—conflicts and even wars arising from this mass migration. There is no technology that can save us from these effects.
Yes the effects of the natural world is indeed devastating. But there is no way the society as we know it can survive these changes. At best I see humanity regressing to another imperial age with constant wars around the planet, massive exploitation of the majority of the human kind, technology only serving to increase this exploitation, frequent famines, no relief after natural disasters (except for the wealthy few). And even this can’t last forever as at some point the mass of humanity will not bear it any longer and we can expect a societal collapse at a scale not seen since the Bronze age collapse of the 12th century BC.
It is very disingenuous of you to call me a Malthusian. The Malthusian theory sets a cap at population growth and predicts an inevitable scarcity driven famines and conflicts after a certain period of unhindered growth. It says nothing about the effects of real outside changes in the environment.
In fact these worries—and the fact that we are calling for drastic changes to prevent this disaster—is in fact counter to any Malthusian theory. A true Malthusian would state this collapse is inevitable. We state they are certain if we allow the climate disaster to progress unhindered.
The technology you talked about is only available in developed countries.
What about the people in parts in Africa who already have problem in terms of food insecurities?
As their economies grow, they will continue to get more tools to solve the problems, unless they are stopped by a massive pandemic of socialist dictators.
An instant in geological time not a literal instant. Death of modern civilization is always a risk, but not directly from climate change.
The global food surplus is projected to continue even in the worst case. Energy and raw material production is similarly not a major concern. People continue to live in Dubai which demonstrate how extreme local conditions can get without forcing exodus. Further, few places are expected to get even that bad.
Yes, changes to weather patterns, sea levels, invasive species, even diseases are likely. But, collapse of civilization is only really a risk if WWIII kicks off.
What specifically is going to cause mass migrations in your mind, and on what time scale? Sea level rise on the order of 5 feet in 80 years is hardly going to make most countries uninhabitable. Over longer time scales will see much larger increases, but the yearly change is never projected to be that rapid.
Water availability is a concern for farming and industry, but not really people. Desalination is cheap enough for personal use even in India. Every 10 gallons a day is an extra ~4$ per year. Projecting US use age on global poor is unaffordable, but the global poor don’t use nearly that much water.
As armchair academic I kind of understand you. People live in all sort of horrible conditions today - famine, malaria, diseases. As living person I ask myself what if my home was destroyed by flood? What if there is no water to grow food? What if person from the country which caused most of CO2 emissions [1] expects me to be contempt? Shouldn't I blow them up? Maybe all I need to commit is a good preacher.
Last mass migration caused by ISIS. COVID caused reduced oil consumption is enough to make a trouble for oil exporters. Global warming is worse - drought, flood, fires. World is extremely fragile, resources supplied from another part of the world, even today cobalt mining is horrible, what would be then? I've heard of another civilization and broken supply chains [2].
Supply disruptions occur with every war or crisis yet modern economies are extremely resilient. The trap is thinking the economy needs exactly what it’s getting rather than it being the result of a giant optimization problem on available resources. Just look at the US GDP drop from Covid vs the percentage of people staying home.
I also think that you are assigning agency to the general public in ways that are unlikely to hold up. Clearly groups could whip up hatred over global warming, but they can do that over just about anything. The root cause is almost never as important as the people guiding things and the goals being pushed.
As to [1] what’s interesting to me is the US emissions are currently about 1/2 of China’s and dropping fairly quickly while China’s are still expanding rapidly. Dropping US emissions will continue to help, but it’s currently less important than slowing how fast China’s increase. And thus someone aims the mob at a slightly different target.
