Don't overstate 1.5 degrees C threat, new IPCC head says – DW – 07/30/2023
www.dw.com
Jim Skea, the new head of the UN's IPCC climate panel, said it was not helpful to imply that temperature increases of 1.5 degrees Celsius posed an existential threat to humanity.

In short, we aren’t on track to an apocalyptic extinction, and the new head is concerned that rhetoric that we are is making people apathetic and paralyzes them from making beneficial actions.

He makes it clear too that this doesn’t mean things are perfectly fine. The world is becoming and will be more dangerous with respect to climate. We’re going to still have serious problems to deal with. The problems just aren’t insurmountable and extinction level.

  • @eweEnglish
    0•1 year ago

    That’s a good and healthy way to approach this. Nicely put.

    Bettering the world’s situation is a legislative/political issue. Bettering you and your immediate community is something you can help with, even if it’s only at the margins.

    The problem with all this, however, is that there are a lot of the things that you can do to help your personal situation that are definitely not helping the overall situation. For example installing air conditioning, watering your lawn, etc. They might make things more comfortable for you, but they’re by no means better for the world. We still need to incentivize the right things through the right tax breaks and financial/industry incentives, which lead us back to politics being the actual thing that we need to make meaningful personal and global change possible.

    • @HWK_290English
      2•1 year ago

      I don’t know lemmy’s demographics, but I imagine it skews overwhelmingly north American, white, and with a reasonable and stable income. I.e., The people who are most capable to “adapt”

      We must also focus on unreserved communities, those without the means to make life comfortable, or to repair their homes or to move to avoid sea level rise or hurricanes or other damaging impacts of climate change.

      • @AA5BEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        Excuse my trickling down, but I’ll respond the same way as with EVs. The best way to make it affordable is to put more of it in the hands of people who can afford it now. As manufacturing scales Up, it gets less expensive. As more is bought new, more is available for the used market.

        This does work with manufactured goods where scale matters and there is both a market for new sales and pre-owned sales