It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault. We’re all out here living our lives with the hands we’ve been dealt. I’m only pushing back on the feel good take of “80 companies responsible for most emissions” or whatever the stat is. It’s a blatant attempt to deflect feeling any kind of responsibility or agency or having played a part at all. We all do what we do, and we’ll feel the consequences collectively.
And who exactly did oil companies sell their oil to? That’s right. We. The stuff we buy the miles we travel the lives we live collectively are what creates greenhouse gas emissions. Can’t blame an oil company for wanting to heat your home in winter or cool it in summer.
If our only problem was climate change I might have some sympathy for your argument. As you learn more about the total human predicament, you’ll come to see that there is no escape from the predicament of overshoot of permanent carrying capacity. This moment in time is uniquely anomalous in the human experience, and no amount of technology will get us out of it.
If you haven’t, I encourage you to read William Catton and really digest what he’s saying. Then read the limits to growth, some Jared Diamond, and learn about all the other times civilizations have risen and then fell back into dust. Take your time, this is a lot to take in, but don’t plug your ears and eyes to the reality we live in. You’ve got a lot of drive, if only it was focused on what might actually make a meaningful difference.
It’s becoming more and more obvious that certain decisions have already been made which we can’t walk back from. Those with decision making power continue to make decisions that lead us further down the climate change path. The problem with anti doomer rhetoric is that it fails to recognize that things are already very bad. Climate, ecosystems, societies are all complex systems, and complex systems have feedbacks and lag times. Things are out of our control. Those who don’t recognize this are doing harm by working for things which in the end will be fruitless. Doomers aren’t saying they have the answers, they’re saying that everyone else definitely doesn’t either.
Mitigating ongoing emissions is cheaper than removing well mixed past emissions.
I can’t imagine that birth rate keeping up much longer.