I do however worry about the accidental introduction of invasive species and diseases, which seems to be accelerating (see: citrus greening disease).
That's funny! I was going to start my post with the exact same sentence!
But for a totally different reason: I'm now convinced that there is no stopping the massive destruction of the natural environemnt. A much MUCH bigger problem than that of the climate alone.
I'm not a "doomer", I'm a "realist". It's clear at this point that the world's ownership class is NOT going to allow any significant mitigation of petroleum use.
The situation will continue unabated until all of the worst predictions, and many more not foreseen, come to bear.
So, I've learned to take this in stride, like with gun ownership: most gun deaths in the US are suicide. As more and more gun owners shoot themselves, this is the only mitigation to this crisis.
This will be the same for industrial distruction of our environment, including the climate. The only way it's going to mitigate is when the natural consequences come to bear and destroy a good part of the world population.
Of course, there's always "citrus greening disease" to worry about 8-)
The excuses people are willing to tell themselves will prevent any meaningful responce to the crisis... Thus, the natural consequences will occur...
edit: its funny to see the only people making sense getting downvoted because reasons.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263979/global-cattle-pop...
The problem is not use, the problem is extraction. If it comes out of the ground, it gets used, and mostly ends up in the atmosphere. The volume of extracted fossil fuels is carefully managed so that prices remain low enough to prevent green alternatives from winning in the market, and high enough to maximize long term revenue. If extraction would decline, fossil fuel prices would rise, and the market would automatically rebalance into a green transition.
Really the only thing politicians need to do is put in place a global and declining cap on fossil fuel extraction. Wells need to be capped even when they’re not empty. There should be zero new drilling. You can tell the honest intentions of a politician on climate change by their policies on fossil fuel extraction.
And this means ultimately it is a political problem, not an individual problem, and can be fixed through the voting booth. But that requires people to consider this the most important problem, and they don’t. So ultimately, the reason things don’t change is not some cabal, but just plain people not prioritizing it in the voting booth.
I’m sure you’re being facetious, but don’t the suicidal people buy guns? It’s not that gun owners are suicidal
You'll worry about something else, then you'll stop worrying about that too.
Do your part of avoiding disaster.
Which might mean the end of complex life forms like humans.
The world does not equal civilisation.
"We" - the Western voting public broadly, but also much of East Asia too - are the owning class. If you actually removed everything in our lives that depend on petroleum products, it would be a riot before the end of the month. I don't think people quite realize how much of our lives are propped up by the downstream products of oil. It's not just moving people in cars and most of electricity generation and wrapping our food in plastics; it's most of our food production (from fertilizer to mechanization), most of our biochem stuff (so much starts as natural gas), most of our infrastructure.
Without oil, the West is shivering in the cold, the shelves are empty, there's nothing to do, nowhere to go (or really, way to get there anyway) and practically no healthcare.
You square that circle, you let the rest of us know. But we won't (and should not) accept any future like that.
Do you include everyone who owns a car in this "ownership class"? I guess I share your disposition to some degree, resignation mixed with a feeling that things are going to be bad but not as bad as some have claimed, and that eventually the situation will improve, but this practice of blanket blaming "the rich" for the problem is a/the major reason we got here in the first place.
I worked in the energy sector for over a decade. It was a very conservative industry, yet everyone who worked there had their home insulation well above code and installed the most efficient appliances they could find, many had solar panels on their roofs (long before these were as available as they are today) and were first in line for plug-in electric hybrids when they first became available. Our parking lot was kind of a dangerous place to walk because there were so many electric cars you couldn't hear them coming, our director had a hydrogen powered car.
We'd get protestors all the time showing up in front of our building. Looking down from the office windows I could see them arrive and depart. They always drove there in ICE vehicles. We sold fossil fuel, but kept our operations as efficient as possible, going to great lengths to squeeze out every joule of energy we could manage and were constantly re-evaluating our processes looking for improvements, meeting with vendors to find new technology, and spent probably more time and money than was prudent experimenting with low-carbon alternatives to majors components of the company's infrastructure.
The average person in the US who is "concerned about climate change" does none of these things, is doing absolutely nothing to change the situation, but sits on their phone complaining on Reddit while consuming as much energy as is convenient for them. The amount of energy Americans use for trivial everyday tasks is staggering. The standard suburban model of living that makes up 99% of US cities and towns is a climate disaster. Although all these things are provided by large companies, this is not the result of a conspiracy, this is what people want, what people demand. When energy prices go up a few precent, people scream bloody murder and call their elected officials demanding something be done about it. When fuel efficiency standards are proposed people complain. Given a choice between a larger home and a smaller but more efficient one, people consistently choose large houses with insulation that meets only the minimum standards. At most any choice towards efficiency is motivated entirely by either financial considerations or social signaling. (note the enormous popularity of the Toyota Prius, which is distinctly a hybrid, over better cars which looked nearly identical to their ICE counterparts)
Voters and consumers over and over again have decided to keep the system they have in place decade after decade, while blaming the people who supply them what they demand for the situation.