Depending on the nature of the actions, the wealthier countries might cease to be wealthy enough.
You really think that drastic actions on consumption would only be unpopular in the United States? I suppose it depends on the nature of the actions and what you consider “drastic.”
Plus, the connection between denial and neofascism isn’t very strong in other countries, especially those that don’t have a large fossil fuel extraction industry. So I think the easier explanation is that there isn’t a necessary link between neofascism and climate denial, let alone a link caused by climate change itself.
Of course not. But Americans are the people I am most familiar with, and I do believe Americans rank awfully high on most measures of consumption.
Not a necessary one, but a natural one because authoritarians of all sorts are prone to try to “solve” problems by either declaring they don’t exist or blaming them on someone they want to target. You saw right wing COVID denialism all over the world, for example.
The aerosols were masking the heating temporarily, but it was still there in a latent sense. The big issue with using more aerosols to dim the sky is it only impacts temperature. It does nothing for the altered weather cycles, ocean acidity, etc.
Also, you will have to scale up the amount you are injecting as our emissions continue to increase the amount of co2e in the atmosphere. So it’s at best an emergency stop gap to give us a slightly longer window to tame emissions.
That said, I think we’ll likely try it in some form or other once people get desperate enough. Despite it being a terrible idea.
I think this goes for lots of high tech solutions. there are way too many variables to safely make these things happen but as a species that’s where we’ll go. wait until desperate and deliberately screw around with our entire biosphere, like we’ve been unintentionally doing for as long as we’ve been around.
Interesting Times, though, we got that going for us.
PBS terra makes much shorter ones people are more likely to watch. They have a fantastic youtube channel this winter was the hottest…and the coldest
Returning to this point from a few days back: this isn’t really an accurate representation of the book. The mass death in India doesn’t serve as a wake-up call; the world still does nothing. So India takes it upon themselves to test the aerosol approach. This is what spurs some change, when the rest of the world realizes they need to do something or “rogue” countries like India will go their own way and possibly mess it up for everyone. They form the Ministry for the Future, with the goal of taking into account the impact of things on five (I think?) generations ahead.
And even that doesn’t really change much. No one does much more than pay lip service to the change, until the ecoterrorism starts. Planes are brought down by drones until no one is willing to fly, and all jet travel halts. Power plants are attacked, mad cow disease is introduced into the meat supply. It’s really only this, combined with the climate getting worse worldwide, that spurs actual political change. And even that is very difficult; there’s no kumbaya moment for the world at large.
I fully agree with you that it portrays a fantasy world given the current world leadership. But it’s not too fantastical. I don’t think the actions in the novel are at all likely, but they are more plausible than your description.