Will we make it?

Reading the LRB (A review of Lovelock's new book Novacene) I was struck by the phrase "continued human survival". The words of the reviewer, not Lovelock, though Lovelock appears to believe that climate change will lead to human extinction. 

The idea that climate change will lead to human extinction is one that I find quite odd, and suggests a misunderstanding of both humans, and the earth's climate. We aren't going to turn into Venus in the short-term. 'Short-term' in geological time, i.e. a long, long time so far as humans are concerned.

So, the surface of the earth will support the growth of plants. And while there is a lot of sea-level rise bound up in the ice caps, which will melt, perhaps entirely, due to anthropogenic climate change, this melting will happen on fast geological time-scales, but relatively slowly on human timescales. 1000s of years. And while very high levels of sea-level rise are clearly bad for countries with a coastline -- you can look at estimates of what 60m of sea-level rise means, for example -- they aren't going to obliterate the land-surface, Old Testament style. No Ark required.

There will be land. There will be rain. The land surface temperature in much of Eurasia, most of which will still be above sea-level, will support human, plant and animal life. I've no idea if there will be fish, but there will be mung beans. Humans existed in warm, and cold, climates before the industrial revolution, and everything we know about human adaptability tells us they will be able to procreate in the future.  

The interesting questions about climate change are around how many of us will survive, and whether we will kill ourselves entirely through other means (nuclear war, I guess. I don't think all humans are going to kill all other humans using small arms and conventional artillery, though a species that can elect Trump can do anything, I suppose).

The moral question around the former is rather dull, I think. "Should I carry out actions today that will lead to the death of billions in a century or so?", is, morally, a completely uninteresting question. We obscure it by arguments around agency ("Well, everyone else does so my actions won't change anything"), ignorance ("I don't know what to do"), wilful blindness ("The science is uncertain") or just plain denial (of the problem, not the science). Inaction now is particularly morally indefensible, given the ready availability of zero-carbon technologies across electricity, heating and industry. And cost is a nonsense. Everything is unaffordable, until done. Zero-sulphur fuel was considered an unaffordable nonsense only a few decades ago. Wind power is now cheaper than gas power. etc.

So, I think there is nothing interesting to say about the moral question of climate change mitigation. Even questions about "Who should pay?" are not particularly interesting or complex (the burden should obviously fall on those with the highest emissions, with some re-balancing for wealth inequality in society). The moral question about what we should do on adaptation and who should pay for that are, perhaps, far more interesting.

So, skimming over the question of how many humans will survive (which is more accurately described as "how many humans can the planet earth support as the global mean surface temperature rapidly increases, driving rapid changes in weather and climate?" to which the answer is "We don't know, and science is not even close to being able to tell us") we come to the question "Will humanity survive, or kill itself on the grounds that if 80% of us (say) are to go, we might as well take the remaining 20% with us)?"

No answers available. (Well, 2 answers available, "yes" and "no". Take your pick.) I'd just observe that survival is clearly not given. We look, as always, to the Zombie genre -- comics and films -- for answers. And the answers are bleak. In both the films of Romero, and The Walking Dead comics, humans are at least, if not more, a threat to each other than zombies. The insanity -- and inanity -- of the present day anti-mask movement does not suggest that humanity, when truly threatened by rapid climate change impinging upon food production and/or access to potable water, will pull together to survive.

And on that happy note, I shall stop.