Social issues certainly matter, but they can be reversed on human timescales. The changes we're making to the atmosphere and ultimately to the Earth cannot be. Calling it a minor issue for the future seems terribly naive at this point, though as I say, I wish I could share in that.
You're misinterpreting what I wrote. It's not a minor issue, it's a minor issue to them because they've got more pressing problems.
Let's say the sun is about to go supernova in... Let's say 30 years. On that theoretical planet we'll imagine a person that's actually enslaved and getting beaten whenever it's master feels like it.
Would you call the coming apocalypse via supernova the biggest issue from the perspective of the slave?
It's a gigantic issue, but on a daily basis... It's negatives are going to be outweighed by various other problems, like how he can survive for another day.
And I expect our societies to get significantly worse within the next 70yrs, which is why I expect the people living in 2100 to consider climate change to be less pressing then the fact they can't provide for themselves, can't get a home/can't afford rent, can't get a job, can't fight against injustice as very little equality will be left by then, etc.
do you honestly think people with problems like that will particularly care about the dying oceans and people getting displaced by rising sea levels, stronger heat waves etc?
And to loop back to my original comment: It's gonna take a very long time for climate change to get to a point for it to wipe out humanity entirely. Way longer then any our predictions have meaning, and other things such as rising tensions and potential wars are more likely to be the cause for such.
I appreciate the clarification and you make some good points. I have two thoughts on the matter. The first is that as heinously complex as the Earth's climate is, it is somewhat amenable to being modeled and we can say that things are bad and will get worse as more CO2 is added to the atmosphere. But I don't think that human society can really be predicted that way, and so the future is just more of a blank as far as I am concerned. You could be right about it though; there is little evidence to me that things have reason to improve.
My other thought is that while climate change is global, the effects are varied and local. I've lived in South Texas my whole life, and so I viscerally feel the heat and see the occasional story of someone dying of heat stroke. And I'd rank that as an even more pressing concern for an enslaved person.
Anyway, probably better to try not to think about any of it.
