#5b - Consequences of Effective Climate Change Action?

 (This is the seventh of a nine-part installment, offering a fresh new perspective on Climate Change.  For the big picture summary, see Turning Climate Change on its Head.)

Either effective action to halt or mitigate climate change is possible, or it’s not.  We've already considered the second option - the impossibility of effective climate change action.  Now let’s consider the first.

It’s even more interesting when we explore what happens if halting or mitigating climate change IS possible - and we do it.  Yes, the effort would be huge beyond belief, but imagine we could actually do it.  So what about the other complex crises currently looming over us?  Even if effective action on Climate Change were possible, we are still subject to all the other crises.  Indeed, while solving Climate Change would probably help with some of them (e.g. the Sixth mass extinction and food insecurity), it would merely allow every other complex crisis - the ones without the present stature and focus of Climate Change - to worsen.  We'd be putting society back on track to its own destruction!

We already touched on this dilemma in part 5 (The Complex Crises of Current Reality).  Let's say we managed to get the entire world on board with reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, using some solution that did not require a massive spike in manufacturing for energy alternatives.  We further convinced everyone to reduce energy usage and resource consumption.  We re-structured our societies to use guaranteed basic income models as an alternative to full employment as the general survival imperative.  We took more drastic measures to bring down the birth rate globally.  Yes, all of this is theoretically possible.

What does all of that do for the current rise in viral epidemics (or even another pandemic)?  Will we set aside our growing reliance on artificial intelligence?  Will social media no longer be used to spread misinformation or divide people into oppositional camps of thought?  Will the threat of global conflict (perhaps involving nuclear arms) go away?  Once rampant consumption is brought under control, will such lifestyle changes be applied equally or equitably?

Given the massive effort and focus required to make even a dent in climate change, would we still have the energy and resolve to address all of the other crises tugging at the fabric of civilization?  OR would removing the threat of climate change actually make the other situations worse?

I suggest that if we could remove the climate-related floods, fires, mega-storms, sea-rise, heatwaves, crop failures, etc. then there is a danger that we are simply removing the alarm from the alarm clock, and the other global challenges will catch us totally unawares.  Or worse...

Consider what is now happening as the threat of CoViD-19 decimating whole populations fades away from our collective radar screens.  The greatest push is for our economies to come roaring back to make up for all of the losses.  Economic growth is the only measure of success that we know.  If we were to somehow discover a technological solution for the mitigation of climate change, would our economy not go surging forward again, even less restrained than before?  Such a reaction would spell doom for civilization even more assuredly than climate change.  Why?  Because we would be removing yet another component of nature's negative feedback.

Every species needs some kind of negative feedback, and humans are no exception.

So, if I'm right, does that mean we are damned if we DO take climate change action and damned if we DON'T?

No.

I don't consider myself a doomsayer.  Indeed, I see all of this as a source of great optimism and hope.  In order to understand that, you have to understand the conclusion that all of this has been leading up to.

(Continue to part 8 of 9)