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When one billion people can no longer live where they grew up on the coast, or islands, or tropical areas, do you think they will lay down and die in the ocean or try to migrate to habitable parts of the earth? Do you know what our societies will do with one billion refugees? Will they be peacefully resettled or turned away with violence? When crops start dying from overheating, lack of water, dust bowls, and wildfires, will the people who can’t afford to eat lay down and die at their empty dinner tables, or will they take action to find food? Will mass starvation be peaceful or violent?
I think it’s quite possible that human society will collapse due to global warming far sooner than the point at which human life is technically impossible. Human life may become untenable prior to the environment being unable to support human life.
Moreover, the important point here is not whether this is factually true, but what the future feels like for the younger generation. If young people feel like society may collapse when every coast and island on earth becomes uninhabitable, and polar ice cap melting reaches the runway tipping point of melting and greenhouse gas emission, and food scarcity becomes much worse, it will cause them anxiety. My point is that this feeling of foreboding about climate change may have a larger impact on mental health for today’s youth than social media, contrary to the thesis of this article.
https://science.nasa.gov/resource/video-climate-spiral-1880-2022/
https://whyy.org/articles/un-ipcc-climate-change-report-uninhabitable-planet-code-red/
"By 2050, a billion people will face coastal flooding risk from rising seas, the report says. More people will be forced out of their homes from weather disasters, especially flooding, sea level rise and tropical cyclones.
If warming exceeds a few more tenths of a degree, it could lead to some areas becoming uninhabitable, including some small islands, said report co-author Adelle Thomas of the University of Bahamas and Climate Analytics."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/08/world-scientists-climate-failure-survey-global-temperature
Many of the scientists envisage a “semi-dystopian” future, with famines, conflicts and mass migration, driven by heatwaves, wildfires, floods and storms of an intensity and frequency far beyond those that have already struck.
Numerous experts said they had been left feeling hopeless, infuriated and scared by the failure of governments to act despite the clear scientific evidence provided.
“I think we are headed for major societal disruption within the next five years,” said Gretta Pecl, at the University of Tasmania. “[Authorities] will be overwhelmed by extreme event after extreme event, food production will be disrupted. I could not feel greater despair over the future.”