We aren’t doomed by climate change. Right now we are choosing to be doomed.
We could prevent New York Magazine’s climate change doomsday scenario, but keep voting not to.
Credit: KC Green
New York Magazine has stirred up a firestorm of debate by publishing a worst-case scenario for climate change this week, “The Uninhabitable Earth” by David Wallace-Wells.
Responses range from Mashable’s “Do not accept New York Mag’s climate change doomsday scenario,” to climatologist Michael Mann’s critical Facebook post, to Slate’s “New York Magazine’s global-warming horror story isn’t too scary. It’s not scary enough.”
The debate hinges on whether the piece goes too far in scaring people about the worst possible effects of climate change, or is justified considering the stakes. Since Wallace-Wells quotes my recent primer Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know — and since I have long maintained that plausible worst-case climate scenarios deserve vastly more attention than they receive — I will share my thoughts.
Read more at ThinkProgress.