14.8% of Americans do not believe in climate change. Recently, a study mapping a 485-million-year history of Earth’s temperature and CO2 levels has been misinterpreted by some who downplay urgent climate concerns. Their argument suggests that, since the Earth has experienced much higher temperatures and CO2 concentrations in the past, the current rise of a few degrees won’t significantly affect us - and that climate concerns are being over exaggerated
What if climate change was, in fact, a “hoax”? What if all of the climate science developed in recent decades was a fraud? Could we then just generally exhale and continue humanity's current economic trajectory unimpeded?
Exploring these questions in today’s Frankly, I emphasize the limited, ‘narrow boundary’ perspective of downplaying the urgency of climate change. A more nuanced understanding of ecology reveals that the long-term stability of our planet depends on numerous environmental tipping points, with climate change being just one of them. Even if climate change was a “hoax”, we are still causing accelerating harm to the life support systems of Earth , pushing the biosphere beyond its limits in a way which will profoundly impact our future, even our near term future.
In case you missed it…
This week, I was joined by social philosopher Roman Krznaric to discuss ways we might govern or lead during moments of crisis, using the lens of former and current civilizations.
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"part of the problem" is that there are grifters exploiting these crises and are not effective and =misgivings about the whole thing.
Excellent - thank you Nate! You have neatly shown how the "climate crisis" is crowding out other vital issues you remind us of. You and your subscribers may be interested in Tushar Choudhary's book: "The Climate Misinformation Crisis: How to move past the mistruths to a smarter energy future". It's not the best book from the point of view of flow of English, but the author makes a sincere effort to steer a path between misinformation from both climate activists and sceptics.