Climate change has also been billed by some as a near-term extinction event. That isn’t true. When the public catches on they throw out the baby with the bathwater.
To get the risk back in perspective, it’s necessary to first disabuse ourselves of the hyperbolic harm.
Does this include, say, accelerating climate change? This isn't an idle hypothetical, nuclear reactor technology is similar enough to nuclear weapons technology that any country with a reactor can produce crude nuclear weapons in a matter of months.
Hard decisions exist and must be made. At some point we must quantify risks.
But they won't be made unless someone is ready to bear the consequences. Those are decisions which have no all-positive outcome.
Just a single point: climate change will devastate many of our coastal areas and that's where a huge portion of our economy, culture and populations are based.
Displacement (migration) and economic collapse are inevitable here since the next 150 years will see nearly all sea trade ports in big trouble. And shipping is absolutely at the backbone of our economy - most stuff you use comes from another continent.
Sure, you can leave New York City or Hamburg and setup shop farther inland but... it's not like this will happen overnight and then we have new coastal lines ready for new ports and sea trade and everyone can send iPhones around the planet again.
Don't even try to move the shipping volume of sea trade to air freight btw.
Yeah, I phrased that poorly. I meant to say that the the destructive power of nuclear weapons and the likelihood of full out nuclear war causing the total collapse of civilization is considered hyperbole now..?
According to the post, yes. To state that such event may lead to total collapse wouldn't be a new idea at all. It's the mainstream hypothesis since the cold war.
To challenge those ideas by articulating the opposite (that it may not lead to total collapse) it's new (to me at least) and good food for thought.
Can't cite anything, but I'm pretty sure that the nimble investment in nuclear energy that society has made as a whole in the past decades were fueled by fear of total collapse as if it's impossible for humans to play with fire without completely obliterating ourselves. And considering the new(ish) challenges we have (climate and others) I find it helpful to think that past demons/fears can be managed in a constructive way.
Counter hyperbole.
Climate change has also been billed by some as a near-term extinction event. That isn’t true. When the public catches on they throw out the baby with the bathwater.
To get the risk back in perspective, it’s necessary to first disabuse ourselves of the hyperbolic harm.