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Is It Time to Abandon Climate Change Pessimism and Focus on Adaptation?
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this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
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Yes. Long past time in fact.
People have been focused on political solutions far too much - "too much" not least because in so many cases, the final arbiters of which, if any, political solutions get adopted are a relative handful of fabulously wealthy psychopaths who are going to oppose anything that undermines their privilege, entirely regardless of the long-term consequences.
So understand - because of their control, political solutions for the most part are not going to happen. It doesn't matter how important they might be, because the systems are not rational - they're warped to the service of the privileged few.
So it's going to come down to individual action primarily.
Note though that that doesn't necessarily mean entirely self-serving action. Quite the opposite in fact - individuals will need to focus on what they can do, as individuals, to at least ease the hardship not only for themselves but for their fellow humans.
And at some point, quite likely, we'll even be able to rely on governments to fulfill their responsibilities. For the immediate future though, that's too often not the case, and we as a species need to come to terms with that and act accordingly.
If that's the case, them people are going to have to start resorting to individual political solutions as a matter of self-defense.
Individuals cannot "reduce" their way out of climate change by modifying their own behavior as long as billionaires and corporations continue to emit however much they want with impunity. Their ravenousness to consume the planet cannot be sated except by force. If that force cannot be applied legally, then the only alternative is to apply it extra-legally.
Okay - let's imagine that by this time tomorrow, you successfully eliminate every single billionaire and corporation that's a contributor to climate change.
What happens next? Do you actually think the climate is just going to spring back to what it was? If so, you're in for a rude awakening.
Climate change is a done deal already. It has far too much inertia - even a dramatic change is only going to make a notable difference somewhere far down the line.
So entirely regardless of whether and to how much of an extent we might be able to enact societal or political change, we're going to have to cope with some fairly significant climate change. And that, I believe, is where people should be putting most of their focus.
That's not to say that I disagree with you fundamentally. In fact there are very few solutions to the problem of the outsized influence of a relative few wealthy scumbags of which I wouldn't approve, or even willingly take part. But at this point, that's more just (well deserved) vengeance - it's not going to make a dramatic difference in the climate change that is already in process. It's already too late for that.
No, it's not. It's bad already and that's locked in, but it can and will continue to get even worse without limit unless pretty drastic changes are made now.