Aotearoa / New Zealand

it’s important that we don’t give in to defeatism.

Do you not mean realism ? perhaps you didn't see the recent election results?

Even if people had voted Labour nothing substantive would have been done, Greta T calling Jacinta out for her bullshit should have been a heads-up there if nothing else. Even the Greens, the only party taking it a little seriously don't have the radical policies necessary because they'd be pariahed if they did BUT a majority vote for them would likely have seen the Overton Window move and a rise in the radical policies needed eg closing airports, cutting back on dairy and forestry, reducing meat consumption, working towards banning personal cars (including ecars, as the IPCC suggests we must), banning meat eating pets after your current one has passed etc

Emissions globally went up last year, as did the use of fossil fuels and everything we do and how we live is base on entitlement, we long ago mistook needs for wants.

The range of potential sea level rise is wide and difficult to predict accurately:

Of course but getting it wrong and assuming it will be low and it turns out to be high is catastrophic, so adopting the precautionary principal is the only sensible choice to make.

Being a fantasist and hoping or praying the emissions away isn't helping, (the current strategy) I am not suggesting people go YOLO and using that as a cover to be an arsehole to keep their emissions high so moving away from the ocean, off a flood plain etc, keeping your emissions low so you're not one of the arseholes making it worse and voting Green are all doing the right thing but planning for the worst and hoping for the best is a sensible strategy to ensure you're not at the front of the destruction queue.

Here's an interesting take from a physicists, Tom Muprhy

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/04/distilled-disintegration/