> ... you may be cancelling out the value you've created in more material ways ...
When considering whether to engage in this kind of conversation, what you've said here is my deepest concern.
For a long time, many years, I felt that sharing my thoughts and opinions on these matters honestly would cause more harm than good. So I didn't, which was fine with me. Less time consumed, less stress, etc.
Over the past year, though, overall awareness of the potential for climate change driven collapse of civilization has greatly expanded. It's now in the common discourse. That has led me to engage in these conversations.
My goal is to help people accept the strong possibility of collapse, and also embrace the reality of uncertainty. Acknowledge that things look bad; acknowledge that the odds are against us. Each person can then figures out how to draw strength and resolve from both of those.
> ... I prefer to simply call this honest optimism.
Your belief lays quite nicely in my personal uncertainty about the future. I think you're wrong about the balance of probabilities, but I hope you're right and I'm wrong!
> ... do not want to have children ...
Before my wife and I had our son in the early 2000s, we decided that we were going to have at most one biological child, and adopt one or more others if it made sense.
> Meanwhile, in other nations where nobody cares about climate, the birth rate dwarfs our own; what does that mean for the future?
A future where there are a lot more of 'them' than 'us'? Fine with me. Is that fine with you?
As I noted elsewhere, it looks likely that the total population will top out at around 10 billion, about 20% higher than now.
> ... being sold a story at every angle that they have no future, no reason to hope, no salvation.
That's bad for national morale, and I agree with you that national morale is extremely important.
What's worse for morale is people seeing and experiencing what used to be 100 year, 500 year and 1000 year weather events, every year, while being told that those events aren't really a threat to our civilization.
Morale is best preserved when people are aware of the truth, the facts, without hyperbole, and fully taught and trained in understanding of the science of statistical uncertainty.
National morale in the United Kingdom during the blitz in 1941 was preserved not by saying that what was happening around them wasn't an existential threat. It was preserved by understanding and embracing the reality of that threat, and moving forward from there.
> A future where there are a lot more of 'them' than 'us'? Fine with me. Is that fine with you?
Not in the slightest, no. I prefer the average IQ of the world to not drop by a standard deviation - you think we'll get out of climate trouble when most people are functionally illiterate?
Well, we might, in the sense that we might lose the ability to manufacture things that produce significant carbon.....
When considering whether to engage in this kind of conversation, what you've said here is my deepest concern.
For a long time, many years, I felt that sharing my thoughts and opinions on these matters honestly would cause more harm than good. So I didn't, which was fine with me. Less time consumed, less stress, etc.
Over the past year, though, overall awareness of the potential for climate change driven collapse of civilization has greatly expanded. It's now in the common discourse. That has led me to engage in these conversations.
My goal is to help people accept the strong possibility of collapse, and also embrace the reality of uncertainty. Acknowledge that things look bad; acknowledge that the odds are against us. Each person can then figures out how to draw strength and resolve from both of those.
> ... I prefer to simply call this honest optimism.
Your belief lays quite nicely in my personal uncertainty about the future. I think you're wrong about the balance of probabilities, but I hope you're right and I'm wrong!
> ... do not want to have children ...
Before my wife and I had our son in the early 2000s, we decided that we were going to have at most one biological child, and adopt one or more others if it made sense.
> Meanwhile, in other nations where nobody cares about climate, the birth rate dwarfs our own; what does that mean for the future?
A future where there are a lot more of 'them' than 'us'? Fine with me. Is that fine with you?
As I noted elsewhere, it looks likely that the total population will top out at around 10 billion, about 20% higher than now.
> ... being sold a story at every angle that they have no future, no reason to hope, no salvation.
That's bad for national morale, and I agree with you that national morale is extremely important.
What's worse for morale is people seeing and experiencing what used to be 100 year, 500 year and 1000 year weather events, every year, while being told that those events aren't really a threat to our civilization.
Morale is best preserved when people are aware of the truth, the facts, without hyperbole, and fully taught and trained in understanding of the science of statistical uncertainty.
National morale in the United Kingdom during the blitz in 1941 was preserved not by saying that what was happening around them wasn't an existential threat. It was preserved by understanding and embracing the reality of that threat, and moving forward from there.