Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Might as well fall faster.

Pessimistic grouchiness? Alright then.

(Rolls up sleeves, cracks knuckles, begins to type.)

What these idiots throw out with their dismissal of science is the understanding of the nuance and complexity of what is happening. One might normally expect “nuance and and complexity” to be about subtle, unlikely edge effects, or rare cases, but the complications of climate change (and the destruction of Earth’s biodiversity) are likely to be sudden, extreme, and mutually reinforcing. Our entire planet has become an edge effect.

We have pushed the Earth system beyond the envelope of conditions that allowed the origin and evolution of human civilization itself. These are the conditions upon which civilization depends. Correction: upon which civilization depended. Those conditions no longer obtain. Growing seasons; weather patterns; water tables; vegetation zones; biomes. These are all now disconnected from each other, and that more-or-less stable pattern of interconnectedness, which allowed human numbers to grow eightfold in just over two centuries*, is gone. These basic parameters will not be re-established in any way until some sort of new equalibrium arises, and any such new constellation of biogeographic relationships may not be as useful to humans as the one we’ve just destroyed. But that is still (centuries? millenia??) in the future. In order for any such stable pattern to crystalize, we have to stop our continuing interference and disruption. With things in flux, expecting any kind of reliable stability is like trying to find a parking spot on top of an avalanche. Until then, we’re going to be rapidly approaching the point at which we will have eight billion people who don’t know where there next meal is coming from.

For other parts of this picture, the future is now, or at least a lot sooner than the parasitic money grubbers who are demolishing the few, thin protections that the United States has managed to throw together in the two generations they had to do so expected. Fires and floods are happening now, as are droughts and deglaciation. Fisheries are depleted. Climate refugees are on the move now, and with large areas of the tropics becoming unihabitable as temperatures rise, that mass migration, mostly northward, will only grow.

The hyper-rich are all living on the same planet as the rest of us, dependent upon the same ecological systems and infrastructure. They have to eat too. They are as vulnerably human as the rest of us, and if it comes down to the crunch, can they depend upon the mercenary loyalty of their guards and retainers? Money doesn’t grow on trees, but food does, and in extremes, people will have to choose which is more important.

The current, grotesque wealth inequality is as temporary and unstable as our current civilization. Such a corruption and exploitation of the social contract cannot last. It requires everyone else’s awe, fear, and obedience to continue. These too are contingent, finite, ephemeral resources. Values change; so do fears. If everyone stops imagining that they can become billionaires, or worse, realizes that they can never become billionaires, how will they feel about actual billionaires when they themselves can’t afford to eat, or there is no food to buy? What happens to all that cryptocurrency when the lights go out? Who will still accept money when they’re nowhere to spend it? Who will respect (or indeed protect) their “property rights” when desperate people arec faced with starvation and death? And in their mansions, on their estates, up in their penthouses, just how much security can the wealthy buy? Every wall can be breached, every fence can be pushed over. Now and then the yachts have to come into port. If they don’t like “socialist wealth redstribution” wait ’til they see the alternative.

*All by itself, the presence of eight billion humans, along with their collective agricultural/technological footprint, is an environmental disaster. Any such global civilization of eight billion of us, based on our current patterns of production, consumption, and destruction was only ever going to be a flash in the pan. Something truly sustainable wouldn’t have ballooned to such population figures, and would not be on the verge of committing omnicide.