One of the biggest things that bugs me about the talk from the public about climate change is that it is all focused around what politicians say. Last week I heard graduate students talking about the major effects of plastic straws. My dad (a Fox news watcher) constantly talks about Al Gore. As a scientists I don't care about those things and those things aren't talked about in the scientific community. We're all confused at the right for not believing in it and we're confused by the left because we have prominent politicians (like Bernie and Warren) saying that nuclear and sequestration are false solutions (but these technologies are highly encouraged by the IPCC and every single climate scientist I know. Only Yang and Booker are pro nuclear?! AFAICT only Yang is pro sequestration?! This is ridiculous. All of them should be! They're all claiming to be listening to the scientists!). So I get your sentiment. Personally I just don't understand why this is happening and what we can do about it.

> The same people telling me the world will spiral out of control in just 12 years

If it makes you feel better, the scientists are talking about decades. And different events in different time spans. Some of the predictions have already come true, such as more intense storms, more fires, and more droughts. This will only get worse. But the spiral out of control is much further off and is more related to food/water scarcity. That's where the 1.5C-2C warming is a huge danger.

As to the racial and economical aspects to climate, there is truth there. But I think the conversation has gotten out of control. Countries like India are already being hit really hard by climate change (a lot more of their land is vulnerable to floods compared to 20 years ago). But the talk here should be really focused about how we can't just ask/expect other countries to not grow their economy for using the same tactics we did (i.e. coal, oil, and natural gas). The US is only 15% of the problem (Europe 10%) and all of us going to 0% isn't solving the problem. We have to go negative and/or ensure that there are cheap enough technologies that developing countries can use that don't pollute. At least I see this as a more humane alternative than shutting down other countries growing economies. IDK about you.