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GenericFatGuy t1_j8icvml wrote

Reply to comment by Extension-Ad-2760 in Fighting Climate Change Was Costly. Now It’s Profitable. by dolphins3

How the fuck does displacing tens of millions of people not sound catastrophic to you?

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Extension-Ad-2760 t1_j8idm5k wrote

It is catastrophic. But that leaves no room for the description of worse outcomes.

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GenericFatGuy t1_j8if12x wrote

Sure it does. It's called even more catastrophic. Calling the displacement of tens of millions of people as "seriously impacting" just gives people wiggle room to downplay the crisis as not as bad as it's being made to seem.

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Extension-Ad-2760 t1_j8ijm9j wrote

If you just continuously describe things as "even more" whatever, you are going to have a very hard time explaining the real situation to the public.

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Jonano1365 t1_j8jtlrk wrote

So use better descriptors.

"Destabilizing to society"

"Cataclysmic"

"Endangering the survival of humanity"

"Extinction level threat"

"A danger to all life on Earth"

There's plenty of room to increase the severity of the language used. The fact that you're opposed to describing the projected effects of climate change as catastrophic is mind boggling to me.

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Extension-Ad-2760 t1_j8jv6ds wrote

I'm not opposed to describing 2.5 degree + as catastrophic, I just think that describing 1.8 degree as catastrophic makes the rest of the scale meaningless.

I'd say 1.8 would cause "serious destabilization of society", 2.2 "massive destabilisation of society", 2.5 "catastrophic", 2.8 "cataclysmic", 3.2 "threatening breakup of society", 3.5 "apocalyptic", 3.8 "threatening extinction", 4.1 "hope that the Svalbard seed vault works after the survivors leave the bunkers", 4.4 "at least antarctica will be nice after we're gone".

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Jonano1365 t1_j8l9x13 wrote

Can I get you to acknowledge that we're looking at an area currently occupied by 20-ish percent of the human population becoming next to uninhabitable without constant and energy intensive airconditioning? To me that fits any definition of catastrophic, regardless of where you live on the planet.

We can't keep on moving the goalpost on climate action, not so many years ago the discourse was that we had to limit the increase to 1.5degrees to avoid the worst effects.

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Extension-Ad-2760 t1_j8m6etg wrote

I'm not advocating for moving the goalposts at all. We should attempt to push it down to 1.5 and then zero.

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Jonano1365 t1_j8mf4we wrote

The only way that has any feasibility of happening is if we're honest about the severity of the consequences we're headed towards. Using soft language around climate change gives politicians and corporations who are dragging their feet plausible deniability. Pointing out that their hesitancy is putting millions and millions of lives at risk is necessary to push them to action.

If you went back to the 90's, the outcomes we're talking about as realistic today were seen as fear mongering, now it's just the cost of doing business. And that slow creep will continue if we don't address it.

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