Why do we continue to completely fail on climate-heating mitigation?
- People who actively think it is a malicious hoax and actively oppose measures.
- People who just don’t believe it is really happening, so no measures are warranted.
- People who misunderstand “climate change,” do not understand the unprecedented time scale, believe it is natural and inevitable and not a problem, certainly not one caused by us, or that can or should be mitigated by us.
- People who may believe that it is a problem but do not care.
- People who believe it is not their problem.
- People who know it is a problem but have some vested interest that they perceive to be threatened by mitigation. So actively oppose mitigation.
- People who know it is a problem, but think some absurd religious mumbo jumbo. Perhaps it is God’s will.
- People who understand that there is a problem, but expect a deus ex machina tech solution that requires no risk, compromise, sacrifice or effort on their parts.
- People who know and understand that the consequences of doing nothing are dire but are emotionally invested in particular developing technologies that cannot have a meaningful impact on crucial timescales. They insist that just another ten years, and another ten, and another will see their preferred technology Superman that climate emergency.
- People who urgently want mitigation, but not if it involves anything they fear, or anything they misunderstand, or anything they hate. (☠️nuclear power☠️)
- People who despair of 1–10 and are resigned to an eventually uninhabitable world because people are almost universally unpersuaded by data and facts.