Indeed. The "10 years" has always been "we have ten years to stave off a collapse that will then play out over the next hundred or so years."
Shellenberger's new book Apocalypse Never has been a comforting read in this regard. Despite the provocative title, he's a serious environmentalist and does not argue for "no action" but rather that many of the actions being pursued by NGOs and groups like XR are very short term oriented and not thinking about the big picture of second order effects. In particular, he argues that the key to saving the environment lies in doing things like deploying natural gas and nuclear power into Africa and South America to develop those economies as quickly as possible— that this is the route to stemming coal usage and hitting the world population cap sooner rather than later, and those are the two most important factors when it comes to ultimately controlling emissions.
This is a pretty interesting take. Sort of an, "accelerate every country through their inevitable industrialization and all that comes with it so we can help them get past it faster."
I wonder how much of the US defense budget could be deployed to providing nuclear power to newly industrializing countries and what the long-term ROI would be re; staving off future climate refugee issues.
Shellenberger's new book Apocalypse Never has been a comforting read in this regard. Despite the provocative title, he's a serious environmentalist and does not argue for "no action" but rather that many of the actions being pursued by NGOs and groups like XR are very short term oriented and not thinking about the big picture of second order effects. In particular, he argues that the key to saving the environment lies in doing things like deploying natural gas and nuclear power into Africa and South America to develop those economies as quickly as possible— that this is the route to stemming coal usage and hitting the world population cap sooner rather than later, and those are the two most important factors when it comes to ultimately controlling emissions.