this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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I don't think this kind of catastrophizing helps. Climate change certainly doesn't "threaten the fundamental existence of organized human society". Sure, we should do more about it and future generations would be better off if we were to lessen the impact, but it is not an existential threat.
It isn’t catastrophizing when it is about a literal catastrophe which climate change is.
It absolutely does represent an existential threat to the current and future lives of billions of humans.
There is also a CATASTROPHIC loss of biodiversity and habitat occurring on earth, there is literally no other word for it and the consequences are so gargantuan it is difficult to wrap your head around. We are living in a mass extinction, which may yet include ourselves.
I agree with your point on biodiversity and yes, climate change poses an existential threat to individual people, but not to civilization as a whole.
facepalm no, I don’t think you understand the magnitude of what is occurring here. I am not going to sit here and argue semantics but suffice to say there is absolutely zero evidence that we won’t wipe ourselves out through habitat loss, collapse of the biosphere and climate change (that themselves cause a litany of other quick and slow moving disasters).
To think civilization will inevitably make it through this is to understand the human organism as just a single species of ape, not a dizzying constellation of bacteria, viruses, plants, fungus and animals that sustains what we think of as “human”. We destroy that and there is no “us”. We can’t just take the human species and transplant it to mars and expect it to survive without the diversity of all those other species. You might as well pluck out a single ant from a colony expecting it to be able to survive alone.
Complete ecological collapse by the end of the century isn't an existential threat?
No, I'm certain that human civilization would survive.
Not if you loosely define "organized human society". Imagine a bright future where you just live in your pod and be a happy meatbag that powers the Matrix. Hell, even corporations are "organized human society".
Those ghouls are saying we should dim the sun instead of disinvestment in oil.