"We're doomed"

Everyone who is responding to the IPCC Special Report of Global Warming of 1.5 °C by saying "we're all doomed" should stop being so defeatist. This problem will get solved, it'll just be no thanks to them.

They're no better than Trump's administration, which has resigned itself to a rise in global temperatures of 7 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, and then cites the inevitability of that catastrophic warming to justify its own inaction, its utter dereliction in duty, and indulgence in irresponsible, short-sighted policies.

I don't care if their own personal favourite area of policy has been historically neglected, and I don't care if they "told us so". If there was ever anything bigger than you, it's this. So let's have no Private Fraser "we're doomed" histrionics and start getting better informed, modifying our own behaviour, looking out for each other, and supporting initiatives that are part of the solution.

And we shouldn't expect too much of politicians. We're dealing with an epochal shift in social values and a transformation of the economy, not snapshot elections and bear-pit parliaments. This is about global mega-trends, technological disruption, and emergent phenomena. Personal priorities of compassion and not being "ignorant" (in both the sense of being well-informed and in the good old Scottish sense of being considerate towards others) are now more important now than what box you tick on a ballot paper.

You have to think bigger than the "politics" whose limitations have been illustrated the outcome of recent elections and plebiscites. Climate change means you cannot avoid your democratic responsibilities until election day. It means you have to make informed decisions that impact us all every day. So this is bigger than politics.

Our mutual obligations and common endeavours are in sharper focus than ever before, and this is appropriate if we are to be passengers on Spaceship Earth rather than refugees in an ark of the damned.