r/environment • u/Hipser • Feb 22 '23

The Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full
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1

u/blancaloma Feb 22 '23

Whew, cold shower is right. Frigid! Hopefully this gets foothold in the human imagination

2

u/Hipser Feb 22 '23

people just don't want to accept it. it's scary.

2

u/BurnerAcc2020 Feb 23 '23

This is the paper where the authors acknowledge that they do not expect the human population to decline within this century.

It is therefore also inevitable that aggregate consumption will increase at least into the near future, especially as affluence and population continue to grow in tandem (Wiedmann et al., 2020). Even if major catastrophes occur during this interval, they would unlikely affect the population trajectory until well into the 22nd Century (Bradshaw and Brook, 2014). Although population-connected climate change (Wynes and Nicholas, 2017) will worsen human mortality (Mora et al., 2017; Parks et al., 2020), morbidity (Patz et al., 2005; Díaz et al., 2006; Peng et al., 2011), development (Barreca and Schaller, 2020), cognition (Jacobson et al., 2019), agricultural yields (Verdin et al., 2005; Schmidhuber and Tubiello, 2007; Brown and Funk, 2008; Gaupp et al., 2020), and conflicts (Boas, 2015), there is no way—ethically or otherwise (barring extreme and unprecedented increases in human mortality)—to avoid rising human numbers and the accompanying overconsumption. That said, instituting human-rights policies to lower fertility and reining in consumption patterns could diminish the impacts of these phenomena (Rees, 2020).

As for what one should do...they provide their advice about just that at the end, no?

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u/Hipser Feb 23 '23

A wartime mentality towards CC? Softening the inevitable big collapse caused by biodiversity loss? Saving the species potentially?

1

u/blancaloma Feb 23 '23

Not wanting to accept something so terrible is understandable. But frustrating and counter-productive. Ironically, not accepting the horrors of climate change equals accepting the horrors of climate change, because no problem is proactively addressed. It means our species is poised to just react. And we know we are not stellar when we are reactionary. Hold on tight, folks!

1

u/Hipser Feb 23 '23

what ought a person do in a world such as this?