“What everyone is missing about climate change is that it’s not about saving the planet or about science: it’s about people. Earth will survive – it’ll be different, but it will carry on. Humans are the ones at risk.”
Do you get this uneasy feeling that people know? Like they know they aren’t in that 2/3 and that they are kind of racist enough that they sort of want that 2/3 gone? Like people call it “complacency” among the 1% nations but I just got this feeling sometimes.
100%. I often hear the argument “we’re not where it will happen first” when people don’t want to take any action. Implicitly they know and even welcome climate change mowing down the global south. When asked if billions of climate refugees fit in their plan they handwave it away.
Yeah, I think they know that basically the refugees are going to be met with a military (maybe that’s why the fear of refugees is brewing), but I think the thing they don’t really understand is that those billions actually make all the things they / we use. At some point the 1% societies get to “peak buying power” and nothing will ever cause it to go up, wages be damned.
Also, we need those wages / taxes for the military they’re counting on.
Earth will survive – it’ll be different, but it will carry on.
I hate how glib some people are handling an extinction of not only human life. Countless species, ecosystems and individual animals will die.
But yes, life will continue. You’re technically correct. The best kind of correct. /s
“Another species will die” does not spur action quite like “you and everyone you love will die”. To be entirely fair, this behaviour is not uniquely human. We aren’t that special.
I think the fatalism comes from a place of helplessness. Who is going to survive? The rich. How does a normal person survive or help stave off the worst? They can’t. They’re busy trying to figure out rent and food for next week, while trying to ignore the chronic condition their healthcare system won’t let them fix.
Now, if we all rise up and eat the rich, we might have something. Not sure how one inspires such a necessary movement these days. Especially planet-wide. Plus, it would likely lead to violence, which many are not a fan of, I’d prefer not, myself.
Humans, sure, and millions of other species. Think penguins will survive? Nope. Jellyfish? Nope.
Humans are cancer.
“Humans are a cancer…” is a statement of fact. It is the solution that determines if someone is an ecofascist:
… so we should kill off humans and cure the world
is an ecofascist statement and is a problem.
… and we are going to kill our host
is still in the declarative form. Is is apparently defeatist/fatalist and may or may not be a problem depending on the other views of the person
… so we should stop being cancerous.
is more optimistic of human determinism. I think it is the most hopeful and helpful to our situation, but it is not inherently good, and not coming to this conclusion is not inherently bad.
A cancer can’t just stop being cancerous. Calling humans a cancer inherently implies that they should be exterminated, saying “humans are a cancer so maybe they should stop doing cancer stuff” is just incoherent.
Humans aren’t a cancer and saying that is ecofascist bullshit. Capitalism is a cancer and it should be exterminated.
I’m not fond of this unusual-views-of-single-scientist kind of article. You can always find, for example, a gravity-denying physicist.
It takes more than that to be definitive.