AIBU to feel people are far too complacent about climate change?

[Quibble123]

I should probably say up front that I work in this field, so this isn't based on a few headlines or a panic after a hot week. My job has involved working with scientists, policymakers and communities for years, I have a PhD in social policy (focused on social action and social change), so I'm fairly well immersed in the evidence. If anything, it's made me less alarmist, not more.
But I honestly feel like I'm watching two different realities.
The impacts we've been warned about for decades are now happening with increasing regularity, yet most people seem remarkably unbothered. We have a hot spell, floods somewhere else, another wildfire, another record broken... and everyone just seems to shrug and move on.
I'm not expecting people to spend every day worrying about it. Life is busy enough. But I genuinely don't understand why there isn't far more public outcry and pressure on politicians to treat this as the priority it surely has to be. People do talk about the consequences (such as wildfires etc) but the discussion on the causes (fossil fuels, over consumption etc) remain largely untouched - when we should be absolutely raging!
Maybe people feel powerless. Maybe we've just adapted to each new "once in a generation" event until it becomes normal.
I don't know. I just find the lack of urgency really hard to get my head around. This is the single biggest threat to our current and our children's futures - it could literally kill them - and we seem to be walking blindfolded....

You really think that's going to happen? Anyway, it would only last until we messed them up just as badly.

yes based on musks views

I do wonder if we really have the capability.

Climate change used
to terrify me. Then the last 6
years happened. I’m much more worried about the imminent death of democracy than the death of the planet.

im guessing with darpa, and skunkworks etc id not be surprised

I suspect that may happen first. The current economic system is no longer viable, IMO. I think a big shift economically and maybe politically will come before anything climate related.

to be honest why do we truly bow at the feet of democracy whats so great about it when people rather study football or their soaps rather than politics etc

Given that 97% of climate scientists think climate change is being caused by human activity, please can you let me know what you're basing this on?

The earth has always gone through heating and cooling cycles. What we are doing is making it worse through human activity.

I wouldn't put much stock in what Elon Musk says.

He has a long track record of bad predictions on the topic, and a massive personal financial interest in selling the idea of humanity colonizing other planets.

He's more a salesman than a scientist.

I think because people feel that it’s not under their control. We’re a tiny country and we’ve already been through the Industrial Revolution. The big polluters now are countries like India.

I think it’s also the cost. Making homes energy efficient is very expensive, and that cost falls on the individual homeowner, at a time when mortgage rates are up, and people are struggling with day to day costs.

People are generally in favour of things up until the point that it inconveniences them. In the same way that people want good public services, but nobody thinks that they should be the ones paying extra tax for them.

Erm... please explain to me why you think we could succeed in colonising a planet which will be completely hostile to us and will require massive adaptations... when we utterly failed to live in the paradise Earth used to be before we screwed it up.

That will be no relief to you while you're dying and seeing yours suffer, while they hide in their massive bunkers

Yup, and the natural heating and cooling patterns took tens of thousands of years. Not 200.

Not disagreeing with that, just that it's not all human made. Industrialisation has a lot to do with it. Are you prepared to give up all the comforts and advances it gave us though? I don't think that's likely.

Yes. I believe that ours is the last generation that gets to opt in or out of things like recycling/reusing, taking flights whenever we want and any other domestic things that contribute to climate change.

I think my DC's generation will be the transitional one, as we were with digital technology. Of course, small domestic efforts will not do a bloody thing compared with global industries, but there we are.

No, I'm not. Even when I have the knowledge of what we're doing and where we're heading. That's how I know we're fucked. Because if not even I can give up my comforts, when I know where we're heading, how can I expect billions of underprivileged people around the world to do it, let alone the super-rich?

Mass immigration will put a big, fat stop to the all-in-this-together British sensibility.
The "Donate your railings to support War effort" campaign would not have the same success today as it did then. My own front garden, as do most in the street, still display York stone boulders peppered with black iron stumps - the remnants of said railings.
I live in a community that has been changed beyond all recognition - neighbours don't share common language, don't have common culture, don't share the same priorities. You could walk a mile before you find someone with the vaguest idea of what 'recycling' means or what their bins are for. They wouldn't know what a hosepipe is nor why it is banned. Fossil fuels? Micro plastics? Renewable energy? Nope, ain't going to happen.

Wide scale engagement from society, from general public - that's goals of the times gone by. That general public does not exist anymore. Make choices that you yourself can live with, that's all there is.

I'm not sure it's complacency; I think it's powerlessness. It's so huge, so overwhelming that beyond the small local acts, people are frozen in the headlights and the effects of climate change become unavoidable.

What this country does is too much and bankrupting us to be ‘green’ especially when the majority of offending countries do zero. Our 1% contribution will make no difference.

But climate changes feeds into it! Extreme heat means poorer harvests, cattle having to be given hay in the summer! This in turn leads to increased costs of basics like bread and milk farmers have to either transport hay from other parts of the country or import it! Poor harvests increase the cost of things like bread, gone are the days when we had grain mountains! So maybe a little research on the impact of global warming and the cost of living might help you understand better, that the two are linked!

Blimey, that’s the attitude. A lot of Europe is already fucked, there’ll be draughts and fires here from now on, but you go and enjoy. Guessing you don’t have children/grandchildren to worry about either.

If everybody is waiting for others to make changes, nothing will change.

Its not complacency though. It's because it can't be fixed. And if you think it can you're delusional.
You can recycle as much as you like, stop using fossil fuels and cycle everywhere for the rest of your life and it won't make a damn bit of difference. All the stupid government policies on it just punish people while China Russia and USA carry on regardless.

I'm sick of folk going on about it. Anc it's usually folk driving suv's and always flying all over the world to their everybody must stop flying conferences. And unless all countries are on board the whole thing is a waste of time imho.

I couldn’t agree more. With one addition: it’s not ‘will’ but ‘has’. I see it in my area.