I think we’re probably doomed. Obviously it won’t be the end of the world or our species, but I think it’s going to be a miserable century for a lot of people and various other species, with the exception of insects.
The economic system pretty much necessitates compound growth and treats resources as if they were infinitely abundant. It’s not sustainable, but our political institutions are embedded in this economic paradigm and work in its interests. Not only is there no political will to change much of anything, but there’s little popular pressure to change anything either.
Most people generally support the status quo; they accept the norms, values and the assumptions of liberal democracy and capitalism, they take traditions, culture and our institutions for granted—almost as if they were timeless entities that are definitive of our nature.
Ideally we’d all be working toward a sustainable system that doesn’t just satisfy all our material needs, but also our psychological needs—which the present system doesn’t do well at all. Our nature is that of hunter-gatherers, but there’s very little in modern civilisation that reflects this and I think that our natural instincts and desires have been sublimated toward irrational and potentially destructive ends, such as rampant consumerism and defining ourselves by what we own rather than who we are.
It seems to me that we, or at least those in power who could do something, do not have the intellectual and theoretical tools to do anything about climate change because it would also necessitate a radical political and economic shift that simply doesn’t suit their interests.
So it is my pessimistic conclusion that our governments will blunder on slowly and impotently, caring more about how to get reelected. Most people will concern themselves more with their immediate material gain than the maintenance of civilisation. Climate change will have huge destabilising effects on society and will force changes whether anyone likes them or not. I’m also pessimistic about any geoengineering and carbon dioxide removal technology being developed and implemented fast enough and on a large enough scale to lessen or prevent the effects of climate change.