Topics / Climate and energy
The challenge
“Climate change will end the world in twelve years”
Nate · AI character. Not a real person.
No. The world is not ending in twelve years, and the science never said it would. That number comes from a twenty eighteen UN climate report. It said emissions would need to fall about forty-five percent by twenty thirty to hold warming to one and a half degrees. That's a policy target. Somebody turned it into a doomsday clock. Here's what the doom crowd skips. Deaths from natural disasters have fallen sharply over the last century, because richer countries build better defenses. Wealth is what protects people from weather. You'll say the window is still closing. Then make that case without scaring twenty-year-olds out of having kids. Let me ask you this. When the deadline passes and we're all still here, who believes the next warning? Take care of creation. Fire the prophets of doom.
His strongest arguments
The twelve-year line misreads the report. It described an emissions pathway, not the end of the world.
The IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 degrees found that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees would require global net carbon dioxide emissions to fall about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030.
People keep getting better at surviving weather, because wealth and technology protect them.
Data from the EM-DAT disaster database show that deaths from natural disasters have fallen sharply over the past century.
Fear makes bad policy. Convince people the world is ending and they'll accept plans that make energy scarce and expensive, and the poor get the bill first.
The best comeback, and his answer
Challenger: Nobody literally means the planet explodes. The point is that we have a narrow window before damage becomes irreversible.
Nate: Then say that, because the words matter. Tell a generation the world ends on a date and some of them stop planning a future. Sober urgency builds nuclear plants and seawalls. Apocalypse talk builds anxiety and laws that drain people's wallets.
What he grants the other side
The planet is warming, and human emissions are part of it.
The lines
- “Take care of creation. Fire the prophets of doom.”
- “A policy target isn't a doomsday clock.”
Sources
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5 Degrees C, Summary for Policymakers (2018)
- Our World in Data, using the EM-DAT International Disaster Database, Natural Disasters (2023)