Have they exhausted all other options? They've attacked public spaces, events, and infrastructure, targetted artwork and ancient monuments, but have they actually targetted the causes they are protesting against in any way, or even the politicians that have the power to effect the changes they want to see?

I think sooner or later we will see the arrival of groups like Children of Kali as described in KSR's book Ministry for the future.

It's going to be ugly.

If you haven't read the book, there's a nice review at https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2021/07/15/mins...

it would probably be more effective than mildly frustrating a few commuters though?

Direct action is a French specialty and someone there could elucidate..

They could form a new political party or join an existing one and take part in the democratic process.

People have been trying to do that for several decades with little to show for their efforts.

Time has grown short, and conventional democratic means seem to deliver change at such a glacial pace it seems likely to outlast the glaciers themselves, so it makes sense that people who feel a sense of urgency will look toward direct action.

At what point would you draw the line for direct action?

"Draw the line" in which sense? "Beyond this line it is time to act", "action beyond this line would be unjustifiable", or perhaps something else?

No political party which takes climate change seriously could possibly survive, much less maintain power within a democratic system. People don't want to give up their comforts and luxuries and standard of living, and business interests don't want to do anything to interfere with profits.

If it were possible to address this problem through the democratic process, it would have been done long ago, when it might have been possible to avoid disaster. Now the best we can hope for is damage mitigation, but even that requires sacrifices no government would dare even suggest. Democracy doesn't work when people don't care.

What would you advocate for then in place of the democratic process?

They don't actually want a solution no matter how much they say they do - they simply want a moral cause with which to inflict pain and suffering against the world. They will openly say this in the language of "degrowth", a euphemism hiding the government culling of humans. That is why Just Stop Oil and the like are against nuclear power - they do not want solutions, just to increase suffering.

No, we don't just want to increase suffering, we do actually want a solution.

Unfortunately the world is full of people like yourself only capable of seeing those with whom they disagree as amoral monsters, thus no solution can or will be reached.

There are plenty of people I disagree with that are just that, people I disagree with. Members of the degrowth death cult are uniquely horrible. Your movement will be remembered in the same breath as eugenicists.

Nothing. We need to practice degrowth radically and globally. We need to deconstruct our technological civilization, limit growth, reduce energy usage and consumption, return to a stable, likely pre-industrial, level of existence and remain there indefinitely. That will never happen. Governments will never suggest it. People will never vote for it. Working within a system whose very existence is antithetical to any solution is laughable.

Personally, I'm trying to learn to accept the end of humanity in much the same way I hope to learn to accept my own eventual demise. It has not been easy for me.

Eeh, climate change isn't gonna cause the end of humanity within the foreseeable future.

We might see lots of people getting displaced, more deaths to draughts, heatwaves, more forest fires, decimated ocean wildlife etc... but the end of humanity? No, that's not gonna happen from climate change itself. At least not within the next several hundred years

How long is the future really foreseeable? The current trajectory is already dismal and appears to be accelerating[0]. Certainly humanity's carbon emissions increase inexorably; what can stop them? Human extinction is probably a bit hyperbolic, certainly within this century, but can you imagine what the world will look like to a child born today, turning 75 in the year 2100? I can't claim to have any certainty, but I expect I'll be happy to have departed by then.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl6VhCAeEfQ

> but can you imagine what the world will look like to a child born today, turning 75 in the year 2100? I can't claim to have any certainty, but I expect I'll be happy to have departed by then.

Oh, absolutely. But climate change is going to be a minor issue for them. The social issues like wealth inequality, the continuous descent into a Low Trust Society and similar are most likely going to be way more pressing to them

Social issues certainly matter, but they can be reversed on human timescales. The changes we're making to the atmosphere and ultimately to the Earth cannot be. Calling it a minor issue for the future seems terribly naive at this point, though as I say, I wish I could share in that.

You're misinterpreting what I wrote. It's not a minor issue, it's a minor issue to them because they've got more pressing problems.

Let's say the sun is about to go supernova in... Let's say 30 years. On that theoretical planet we'll imagine a person that's actually enslaved and getting beaten whenever it's master feels like it.

Would you call the coming apocalypse via supernova the biggest issue from the perspective of the slave?

It's a gigantic issue, but on a daily basis... It's negatives are going to be outweighed by various other problems, like how he can survive for another day.

And I expect our societies to get significantly worse within the next 70yrs, which is why I expect the people living in 2100 to consider climate change to be less pressing then the fact they can't provide for themselves, can't get a home/can't afford rent, can't get a job, can't fight against injustice as very little equality will be left by then, etc.

do you honestly think people with problems like that will particularly care about the dying oceans and people getting displaced by rising sea levels, stronger heat waves etc?

And to loop back to my original comment: It's gonna take a very long time for climate change to get to a point for it to wipe out humanity entirely. Way longer then any our predictions have meaning, and other things such as rising tensions and potential wars are more likely to be the cause for such.

I appreciate the clarification and you make some good points. I have two thoughts on the matter. The first is that as heinously complex as the Earth's climate is, it is somewhat amenable to being modeled and we can say that things are bad and will get worse as more CO2 is added to the atmosphere. But I don't think that human society can really be predicted that way, and so the future is just more of a blank as far as I am concerned. You could be right about it though; there is little evidence to me that things have reason to improve.

My other thought is that while climate change is global, the effects are varied and local. I've lived in South Texas my whole life, and so I viscerally feel the heat and see the occasional story of someone dying of heat stroke. And I'd rank that as an even more pressing concern for an enslaved person.

Anyway, probably better to try not to think about any of it.

Certain level of nihilism and simply not caring does help a lot in the process. Life is only downwards from here in health, retirement is uncertain... Soo, why not have the little fun before the inevitable end...