A Realistic Pessimistic Outlook
- Climate change is irreversible; even if all emissions stopped today, feedback mechanisms would continue warming the earth.
- Mass species extinction will accelerate in our lifetimes, and we should be mentally and materially prepared for it.
- With few exceptions, governments will fail to address these challenges due to regulatory capture and corruption.
- Attempted policy changes and panic responses will often make things worse, wasting resources on misguided mitigation.
- Wars will intensify and consume more fossil fuels, and no technological fix will materialize in time.
- Plan for every easily extractable drop of oil to be consumed, and for "successful" mitigations and efficiency gains to be undone or absorbed.
- Well-meaning climate-concerned groups waste energy on weak actions like awareness-raising protests and small personal gestures.
- Individual choices, such as metal straws or going vegan, are worthwhile but woefully inadequate against centuries of industrial destruction.
- Reversing emissions at scale would require dismantling every existing oil and gas facility and replacing it with carbon-removal capacity.
It is important to champion electrification and large-scale mitigation efforts, but also, assume global mitigation will not be achieved in any meaningful way.
The only realistic tool available is local adaptation, prioritizing survivability over sustainability; sustainability emerges naturally from a posture of resilient survivalism.