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This Lonesome Crowded Dystopia

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The Climate Change Flip

I’ve always felt that climate science denial wasn’t really about denying science. It’s really just about maintaining the status quo and not requiring any changes to a way of living. An acknowledgement that the actions of humans are drastically changing the planet would require some sort of change in how you live, work, travel, and recreate. Or you could just deny it’s happening. Say the science isn’t settled. Continue to say there are arguments on both sides.

Eventually though, I’ve always thought that a point will be reached where just denial is impossible.

This week the IPCC Working Group 3 released a report stating that emissions from current & planned fossil energy infrastructure are already set to push us past 1.5 degrees Celsius of global heating. There are those who are already speculating that below 2 degrees Celsius of rise would still be enough to threaten civilization.

So what is a climate denier to do?

I’ve always had this idea that their next step would be the “flip”. The flip goes like this - keep denying climate change until things are so bad scientists say that the harms are catastrophic and nearly inevitable. Then comes the “flip”, at that point you acknowledge that human-caused climate change exists, but it’s now too late to do anything and any attempts will just be needlessly harming humanity (be sure to use the phrase, “our most vulnerable” to make it sound like you really care) with nearly zero hope of success.

This solves the problem, the denier is now back in the exact same position of advocating for no life changes or alterations in behavior, but now they are using the science to justify the position.

I had sort of assumed this was just my own crackpot idea until I saw it pop up somewhere else recently.

In Neal Stephenson’s new book Termination Shock I found this quote:

“Oh, I’ve got another question,” Willem said, “What did you mean by snaparound?”

“Sorry to be enigmatic. It’s a thing Greens have been fretting about for years. They have always harbored a suspicion that one day their opponents - oil companies, basically - would suddenly reverse their position on climate change.”

I must say it was both nice to see someone else didn’t think the idea was too crazy to write down, but coming from Neal felt like a nice validation. Not saying it hasn’t existed in any other minds, but this is the first bit of external validation for the idea.

Regardless of if it is the “flip” or the “snaparound” I do feel like we need to assume that just as inevitable as the planet warming will be the deniers suddenly beginning to use the science to further their own position.