Climate change has a good chance of doing that by rendering the cacao plant extinct.
Which is part of the issue; the question isn’t whether people will sacrifice and suffer, it’s whether people will make small sacrifices now, or much bigger ones later. The world consensus has been “later”, probably not coincidentally because most of the people making the decisions will be dead before the worst of it comes. What does some CEO care if civilization collapses after he’s dead, as long as he makes more money now?
And here we see the effects of not knowing or agreeing on how much needs to be done and how much of an impact it’ll have on everyday life. As I said in my OP, I fear that the changes needed will have major consequences on quality of life, but plenty of people, including in this very thread, don’t think the sacrifices required are a big deal. And being wrong would have major consequences of its own. It’s a hard thing.
It really depends on which question you’re asking.
“How do we fundamentally change human nature so we’re no longer short-sighted and selfish and it becomes possible to collectively pull together on these global problems?” is a waste-of-time non-starter. Ask it if you want, but don’t expect a useful discussion.
“Why are we like this, though?” is perhaps a bit more productive. You can delve into the relative influences of nature and nurture, i.e. how much of our tribalized self-interest and poor sense of relative risk and reflexive materialism is baked into our genes versus how much is cultural, implanted and nurtured by malicious powers for their own enrichment, and thereby, perhaps, start to achieve some clarity on how much impact it might be more practically possible to achieve by taking on cultural change instead of attacking our hard-wired instincts. I suspect this would be less satisfying, because there’s no magic bullet, no single solution that makes everything better; it would almost certainly result in a trudgingly frustrating project on a thousand different initiatives, resulting, at best, in a small and ultimately insufficient nudge on the needle.
“What should I do to protect only myself and my loved ones in the coming chaos?” is probably the most practical-minded question, because it leads to achievable action on the small scale. Of course, it also comes with a side order of Ethical Quandary, as you may feel guilty about abandoning any wider efforts in order to focus on selfish survival, and there will be a debate about where the line is drawn between mere baseline personal endurance and protection of unnecessary individual luxuries which have been part of the problem all along.
But “how do we get humanity to sacrifice for the greater good?” without any other context or qualifiers is, yeah, not really worth thinking about or working toward.
Having a massive industrial and agricultural base that largely obviated the need for the kind of serious rationing that was required in the UK, with the exception of imported goods that the government could control just by dint of not being able to get them at all.
Baking “collective sacrifice” into the overall mythmaking of the war, so that subsequent generations would grow up inculcated with the idea of victory gardens and scrap drives, instead of widespread kvetching about empty store shelves.
In other words, mostly by not doing so. Recall that Americans were so unwilling to accept the tourism and recreation impact of nightly blackouts that it was a significant contributor to u-boat predation on the Eastern Seaboard after the start of the war. The attempt to ration coffee—filling up precious hold space in those cargo ships that hadn’t been sunk in front of a glittering boardwalk—lasted all of seven months.
But broadly—and what is relevant for climate change or any modern existential threat—Americans resented rationing (and the required government oversight) and fought it every step of the way. Contemporary papers are full of complaints that are essentially timeless about—
OPA’s stupid ban on pleasure driving. Representative Edwin A. Hall of New York was right in saying the OPA is “bluffing its way along” in enforcing that order and that OPA has no legal right to tell a ration book holder for what purposes he could use his car. [January, 1943]
or “the federal squeeze put on the farmer”:
Some little tyrant has said that the farmer cannot kill his own pig […] well, I am a farmer, and I’m going to kill my pig, and I’d like to see the color of the so and so’s eyes that can stop me […] I reckon if a bureaucrat got his head between the end of the gun barrel and the pig at the instant I pulled the trigger, he might keep me from killing that pig, at least with the first bullet. [October, 1943]
When the OPA tried to ban sliced bread, which surely must be one of the most pointless and symbolic sacrifices imaginable, they were so viciously and immediately ridiculed that they gave up at once and slunk off with their tail between their legs. Paul Fussell (Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War) describes a desultory ban on horse-racing in January, 1945 as being motivated mostly “to remind stay-at-homes of the sacrifices being undergone at the moment in the Battle of the Bulge and the recapture of the Philippines”—what an op-ed in October, 1942 already described as:
The useless rationing of products of which there is a comfortable surplus, evidently just to keep us reminded that we are at war.
So if WWII is a benchmark, it probably bears keeping in mind that the chief way Americans—left to their own devices—sacrificed during the war was through the useful expedient of simply telling each other that they’d done so from 1946 onward.
Humans in general are bad at risk assessment. We’re good about responding to acute events like a storm, or a fire, or a blizzard. But when it comes to more gradual events like sea level rise, average temperature rise, or more esoteric things like buildup of CO2 and ozone, most people sort of shut down risk assessment. If they are not feeling the problem in the moment, then it either doesn’t really exist or it’s not that bad or is far away and is someone else’s problem. That’s why people defiantly exclaim they’re going to rebuild their home destroyed by a hurricane or wildfire or flood.
And that’s how it’s gonna go. Climate change is already happening and is already having consequences. It’s not like a sudden meteor strike - it’s too gradual for people to care much, and by not being impacted every day, they (we) assume the risk isn’t there or is less than what the government and science eggheads are saying. OTOH the gradual nature of creeping disasters is that people have a chance to adapt, and adapting will be painful, but less painful than doing what’s necessary to avert the disaster altogether. But changes are afoot right now, and adapt is what people will do.
If you want me to make significant sacrifices that will make my life worse, I have to believe that it’s worth it.
That means I don’t want to sacrifice something if it’s the kind of thing that, even if you could get all of humanity to do it, would make enough of a difference to matter. And it also means that I don’t want to sacrifice something if my one sacrifice would be rendered irrelevant by all the other people who aren’t making that sacrifice (like, say, giving up one trip a year to visit family when others continue to take dozens of flights a year).
If there’s a solution, I think science and technology are going to have to be a big part of it—both in making it clear what we can and should do that will make a difference, and in helping us do those things (e.g. by inventing less harmful/wasteful ways of doing the things we need or want to do, and by inventing technology that will do something toward repairing the damage).
Until we can re-engineer human nature, AND not have that process hijacked by the same selfish instincts now hijacking our societies, we are stuck.
Our nature limits us to being good only to people we care about. Which means to a first approximation those people whose name we know & whose home we have visited. Beyond that small circle, everyone else is simply the faceless seemingly useless “them” that get in our way.
Certainly there are individual people who care far more about much larger circles of people. And will sacrifice at least some for that larger circle. But in bulk, those high altruists are drops in our collective human bucket.
I used to hope that spreading education about the realities and the real, albeit not immediate, benefits of altruistic Progressive behavior would result in more and more converts to the faith. Instead I see the opposite result.
I recall back in the late 1970s there was a popular mantra / T-shirt meme along the lines of “I’m much happier since I abandoned all hope.”
It makes lots more sense to me now than it did back then.
Funny I was just thinking about the 1970’s and how hopeful we were. We were going to get justice, organic brown rice, and the ever-expanding unfolding of the flower of consciousness. I want my tee shirt.
This might come across as an attack on the poster rather than the post, but I don’t mean it to be — because, as far as I can tell, I’m either merely repeating your point or giving you an opening to explain that you’re terrific — because my question is: what about you?
You say you’d had hope about educating folks about the reality of benefits of altruistic behavior. You express a desire for better humans: noting what it’d look like if someone engineered the effort with selfish instincts in mind, and adding that you have the opposite in mind. You relay the attitude that some people have about others, about “the faceless seemingly useless “them” that get in our way”, but your whole point is that you don’t seem to see them that way.
I suppose my nature is as human as everyone else’s; I’m certainly not holding myself out as any paragon. Where I am these days, and I suspect I’m not alone among the naturally Progressive set, is that I have a wistful longing for those better days we might be able to achieve.
But inherent in accomplishing any of that is believing we can in fact move forward at least some.
A parable …
If I’m faced with moving a 50# rock from my front yard to the back, I can do that by myself over an hour or two with a bunch of grunting and straining in short hops of about 10 feet. Not easy, won’t get there in one jump, but improvement is palpable with each iteration of effort.
If I’m faced with moving a 400# rock double that distance I can enlist a few friends, borrow or rent a front-loader, etc. We’ll git’r’done eventually.
But when it seems I’m facing something about the size of Ayer’s Rock needing to be moved to another continent, while somewhere around 1/3rd of the populace is dead set against me and nearly all the entities who have serious power tools (IOW political power and big money) are also arrayed against me, well, I now see it’s time to accept leaving the rock exactly as it is where it is and instead devote my remaining short time on Earth to something other than rock-moving efforts.
Which may in fact be the most selfish thing I’ve ever done. But at least it accords with the zeitgeist.
I disagree- By nation is the only valid comparison. The gross amount is what affects the climate change. 100 people emitting 10 tons each is a tenth of the problem than 10000 people emitting one ton each.
I’m wondering that too. Maybe because laws and policies would presumably be enacted on a national level, so you’d get the most bang for your buck by enacting them in nations that are the greatest overall contributors? That’s the only way @DrDeth’s claim makes sense to me, but I admit I don’t understand his thinking.
We have to change or discard the dominant systems and their associated ideologies that cause and exacerbate the problems of civilization. I doubt we’ll do this before it’s too late though. I fully expect society to collapse before 2100.
True, It is the sheer amount generated. China generates a lot due to a lot of people, and poor controls. The USA generates a lot also, due to more cars and stuff. But what nation makes no difference if it how much greenhouse gases are generated.
But in any case, the fact that Communist China is #1 does disprove the idea that capitalism is the enemy -
You can emit plenty of greenhouse gases without capitalism. Mind you, pretty much every nation on earth except China, North Korea and Cuba is capitalistic. So, you’d have to change human nature.
Yes, the USA needs to cut back- but that won’t happen much for a while, altho some Blue states are making an attempt. And the USA is only #10 by capita-
Qatar is the “worst”. But it has a population of only 2 million or so.
I’m going to go with “Yep.” Forget moving communities in this direction, you can’t get individuals to do this consistently. Cigarettes, alcohol, seat belt laws, common sense gun laws, pandemic policies, birth control, STD prevention. There’s a reason science fiction has a trope about AI/robots enslaving humanity for its own good, why every zombie apocalypse winds up with uninfected humans as the real monsters. We’re not the smartest animals on the planet, we’re the least-dumbest animals on the planet by a tiny margin.