The taxonomy of human response to climate change. I generally agree with the author's position, except that I think that the currently dominant form of capitalism (neo-liberal free market zeal) is actually incompatible with meaningful action. Until we (i.e. humans) pull our fingers out and actually reduce emissions, I am much more pessimistic. But I am nowhere near the pure doomist definition here, that it's too late, we might as well do nothing because we're fucked. I think we need to fight like hell to make it less terrible.
-Climate deniers. With climate denial, there’s nothing to worry about, nothing to do, because there is no problem. Or, if there is a problem, it’s with these Soros-funded “one world order” pinkos who want us all driving EVs and drinking wheatgrass, gunless and helpless against our Big Government.
-Techno-optimists. Here there’s plenty to worry about, but we should be able to science our way out of the worst of it, provided we get the right people in government, the right people with incentives and funding mechanisms to build the gigafactories, launch the marine cloud brightening ships, drawdown carbon with our cutting edge technology.
-Most liberals. Most liberals I know understand climate change, have read the books, are even willing to discuss it in polite company, nod somberly and agree how bad it is, and then fly off to London or Costa Rica or Fiji like one has nothing to do with the other. Perhaps because, as Britt Wray puts it in her book “Generation Dread,” they’re experiencing “disavowal,” a psychological defense that’s “having one eye open and one eye closed at the same time.”
-Doomers. The doomers tend to say nothing can be done to “fix” climate change. There’s a difference, they say, between a problem (it can be solved) or a predicament (it can’t be solved.) When you explain that “solution” includes “mitigation,” some then claim that even mitigation is impossible. Yet mitigation means “the action of reducing the severity, seriousness, or painfulness of something,” and global warming comes in literal degrees, hurricanes in wind-speed scale, floods and wildfires and everything in between in billions in damage and lives lost. It’s all measurable, and so mitigation never ends.
Non paywall link