HACKER Q&A
📣 ghoshbishakh

Is climate change already irreversible?


After watching David Attenborough's A Life on Our Planet, I gave a long thought about the possibilities. What I feel being in a developing country is that, it is very tough for the government to make significant changes for slowing climate change here. People are focused about food, jobs, better living first.


  👤 jfengel Accepted Answer ✓
Yes, it's irreversible. Has been for a very long time.

But reversing it isn't really anybody's goal. The goal is to limit it to something like 2°C, ideally 1.5°C, at least over the rest of the 21st century. The slower climate change is, the better we (and the rest of the ecosphere) can adapt.

There are worst-case scenarios even with that much change, but they don't form the main part of the discussion. In a game-theoretic sense (low probability times high cost) they are probably worth discussing further, but it's hard enough to get people on board for much lower cost solutions. It's generally felt that the 2°C target makes the apocalyptic scenarios unlikely enough that we focus instead on the merely-wildly-unpleasant consequences.

You, in a developing country, are most likely to feel those wildly-unpleasant consequences. But as you observe, you also have the least input to them. As unfortunate as it is, it's fact that fixing the problem will rely on developed nations to fix a problem that they will feel less than you do.

Above 2°C, even those developed countries will feel significant pain. The question is, is that inevitable?

The answer is somewhere between "yes, it already is" and "yes, unless we do something drastic before the end of the decade, which looks increasingly unlikely".