`Some climate experts have told the BBC they are surprised the prime minister was not already familiar with much of the material in the briefing.`
As someone who works in this sphere. It is really common for people to understand what Climate Change is, but be completely oblivious to the actual consequences and nuance. This is almost exclusively down to the real lack of mainstream education and media coverage of exactly what climate change is, and how it will affect *us.*
Most people perfectly understand what CC is, and that its a very bad thing. But media coverage focuses on the **big.** It talks about degrees of warming, sea level rise, weather changes etc. The vast majority of people know that these sound bad, but a lot of it is intangible things. Its like the theoretical asteroid strike: yes it would be very bad. But talking in big, broad threatening terms allows people to compartmentalise things to carry on with their day.
Note: this isn’t a criticism, and we shouldn’t be berating people for doing it. Its a perfectly natural (and instinctual) response to existential threat! It is a response to stop us all becoming non-functional through fear.
The downside is it becomes something for someone else to sort, perhaps even another generations problem to sort. Someone else to blame (China, India, Bill Gates, etc). In fairness to the average person, not only is this a natural response, its perfectly reasonable that Sarah from Bromley shouldn’t worry about the worlds carbon budget when she can’t be sure her universal credit is going to cover her bills.
The key is, for those of us who are enlightened and understand the local and global consequences, is to make sure people are aware of how it will affect *them and their family*. This could be political (climate migrants, resource wars, food shortages etc) but also local changes to the UK (the UK’s CCC have great info of exactly how it will affect the UK directly). The answer is, life in the UK is going to *suck*.
I think its important to point out that while Climate change is an existential threat, the overwhelmingly likely scenario for the world is that Climate Change won’t kill us all off, but it is going to make living here increasingly shit.
This is an important distinction, and I know not being a doomer on Reddit isn’t popular. But its pretty well known that being defeatist on climate is actually ***detrimental*** to solving the problems. People ***want*** to be able to psychologically give up, so we can compartmentalise the issue and carry on living our lives.
Thus, while your personal impact on climate change is negligible. We all have the most powerful tool to preventing disaster:
# Vote!
Note: I’m not going into the whole rabbit hole of how the UK only emits 1% of emissions per year so we can’t have an impact (we are responsible for far more than the direct 1% these isles emit). The UK absolutely can have a massive impact far greater than our direct emissions.
The conservatives are 100% behind climate change until they have to put taxes up. Then they are dead against it. Same with levelling up or old age care or anything else really.
Please do not post articles with this man’s picture on unless they include expletives or news of his demise.
4 comments
[He isn’t *acting* very convinced](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/24/uk-policies-will-not-deliver-emission-cuts-pledge-says-climate-adviser).
These aren’t great slides.
The tipping point analysis on slide 6 uses 2014 data, [when the 2018 analysis is way, WAY worse](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0).
`Some climate experts have told the BBC they are surprised the prime minister was not already familiar with much of the material in the briefing.`
As someone who works in this sphere. It is really common for people to understand what Climate Change is, but be completely oblivious to the actual consequences and nuance. This is almost exclusively down to the real lack of mainstream education and media coverage of exactly what climate change is, and how it will affect *us.*
Most people perfectly understand what CC is, and that its a very bad thing. But media coverage focuses on the **big.** It talks about degrees of warming, sea level rise, weather changes etc. The vast majority of people know that these sound bad, but a lot of it is intangible things. Its like the theoretical asteroid strike: yes it would be very bad. But talking in big, broad threatening terms allows people to compartmentalise things to carry on with their day.
Note: this isn’t a criticism, and we shouldn’t be berating people for doing it. Its a perfectly natural (and instinctual) response to existential threat! It is a response to stop us all becoming non-functional through fear.
The downside is it becomes something for someone else to sort, perhaps even another generations problem to sort. Someone else to blame (China, India, Bill Gates, etc). In fairness to the average person, not only is this a natural response, its perfectly reasonable that Sarah from Bromley shouldn’t worry about the worlds carbon budget when she can’t be sure her universal credit is going to cover her bills.
The key is, for those of us who are enlightened and understand the local and global consequences, is to make sure people are aware of how it will affect *them and their family*. This could be political (climate migrants, resource wars, food shortages etc) but also local changes to the UK (the UK’s CCC have great info of exactly how it will affect the UK directly). The answer is, life in the UK is going to *suck*.
I think its important to point out that while Climate change is an existential threat, the overwhelmingly likely scenario for the world is that Climate Change won’t kill us all off, but it is going to make living here increasingly shit.
This is an important distinction, and I know not being a doomer on Reddit isn’t popular. But its pretty well known that being defeatist on climate is actually ***detrimental*** to solving the problems. People ***want*** to be able to psychologically give up, so we can compartmentalise the issue and carry on living our lives.
Thus, while your personal impact on climate change is negligible. We all have the most powerful tool to preventing disaster:
# Vote!
Note: I’m not going into the whole rabbit hole of how the UK only emits 1% of emissions per year so we can’t have an impact (we are responsible for far more than the direct 1% these isles emit). The UK absolutely can have a massive impact far greater than our direct emissions.
The conservatives are 100% behind climate change until they have to put taxes up. Then they are dead against it. Same with levelling up or old age care or anything else really.
Please do not post articles with this man’s picture on unless they include expletives or news of his demise.