The problem is that just saying that, allows policy makers and public to sit back and wait for the problem to be saved - without funding the science to do, or take other necessary policy steps.

In a sense you can argue that science has saved us - we have solar and wind, nuclear and excellent battery tech.

So why aren't we "saved"?

I wanted to put this in contrast to the "stop growth and consume less" mindset, which I believe will be massively insufficient in solving climate change. When we switch to alternative means of energy, at least in the beginning they will be more expensive than fossil, and you need to be able to afford this. Asia must be able to afford this! And they will not give up cars and go back to riding bicycles, this is a pipe dream.

Those mitigations won't necessarily include carbon reduction - they'll be increased levee construction, abandonment of low-lying cities and building codes adjusted so that '1 in a century' storms are encountered every couple of years.

What we are trying to do at this point, ius avoid such grim consequences, now and the market can't help us unless we promote panic, which isn't a great strategy.

No, that's just the most currently newsworthy of literally hundreds of causes of the global ecological collapse. Ecologists have been mapping many of these causes for decades. The overarching cause of all the component causelets (eg. emissions, habitat destruction, soil & water degradation, etc) has been the expansion of a crude global civilisation based on selective ignorance of science. We pretend to respect science when it produces stuff we like ("technology"), but ignore the inconvenient understandings revealed by science as it relates to the complex living systems that sustain us.

https://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_populati...

“Growth” as the politicians and the lobbyists push it is simply not sustainable.

But both “the left” and “the right” have their agendas not to let you discuss or act on that.

"Bacteria grow by doubling. One bacterium divides to become two, the two divide to become 4, the 4 become 8, 16 and so on. Suppose we had bacteria that doubled in number this way every minute. Suppose we put one of these bacteria into an empty bottle at 11:00 in the morning, and then observe that the bottle is full at 12:00 noon. There's our case of just ordinary steady growth: it has a doubling time of one minute, it’s in the finite environment of one bottle.

I want to ask you three questions. Number one: at what time was the bottle half full? Well, would you believe 11:59, one minute before 12:00? Because they double in number every minute.

And the second question: if you were an average bacterium in that bottle, at what time would you first realise you were running of space? Well, let’s just look at the last minutes in the bottle. At 12:00 noon, it’s full; one minute before, it’s half full; 2 minutes before, it’s a quarter full; then an 1?8th; then a 1?16th. Let me ask you, at 5 minutes before 12:00, when the bottle is only 3% full and is 97% open space just yearning for development, how many of you would realise there’s a problem?"

Note that the before that point in the talk he explains that for any "steady growth" you can find the period in which what you observe doubles, i.e. any "steady growth" has its "doubling time."

The problem is that many people (who express that conviction) treat "Science" just like the God in the famous anecdote: http://epistle.us/inspiration/godwillsaveme.html

It is important to understand the limits of science. It won't save you universally from everything, no matter what you do. Your own action (or inaction, in case of waste) determines what can be done.

[0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

If you mean "science" as in existing science and technology, then, sure, technological approaches are part of the solution.

Often, though, in these discussions, "science" is used to mean some sort of magical advancement that is just around the corner that will solve all our problems. That would be nice, but probably isn't the case. We'll probably see incremental advances in things like solar panels but we're up against some hard limits of physics. Reducing consumption and making efficiency savings are significantly easier.

> Only excess wealth creates the spare capacity to care for the environment.

I think this is view is harmful. First, it looks very clear that mitigating climate change is cheaper than dealing the consequences, so this "excess wealth" is mythical.

Second, we shouldn't be treating our environment as a luxury. We need to make sure the planet is liveable first, then see what other toys we can afford.

Tech will certainly play a role, but I'm convinced that without a cultural, political and economical change we're doomed. Saying "tech will save us" make people believe that they have no part to play, no responsibility.

We know what to do, the fact is that we're not acting fast enough.

"At the heart of capitalism is a vast and scarcely examined assumption: you are entitled to as great a share of the world’s resources as your money can buy. You can purchase as much land, as much atmospheric space, as many minerals, as much meat and fish as you can afford, regardless of who might be deprived. If you can pay for them, you can own entire mountain ranges and fertile plains. You can burn as much fuel as you like. Every pound or dollar secures a certain right over the world’s natural wealth."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/15/capita...

the pie will keep getting bigger. more resources. more energy. more people. more goods. more kinds of goods. more movement of goods.

thats a direct consequence of your point in that we structurally assume an infinite number of fish, amount of land...and more importantly that the oceans and sky are so vast and unknowable that we throw as much into them as we want without anything ever coming back.

maybe we're living out the last aftershock of the end of the age of exploration. and we're so completely unprepared to manage any kind of economic contraction the only response is fear. growth is the seductive poison thats killing us.

> Why won't it?

Because science doesn't run the world, politicians do.