Is the Human Race on a Suicide Mission?

I know that. But those will be the areas where the human population (not to mention wildlife) will suffer most directly as resources are exploited for food and commodities.

And massive increases in population in the 'third world' will further exacerbate the negative effects of global heating.

Maybe so, maybe not. Nobody knows exactly how specific world regions will be affected. All we know is that certain coastal regions like the Bangladesh lowlands will go under. So the collection with population growth in Bangladesh is just that demographic growth fuels population build-up in low-lying areas.

The point I'm trying to make is that Bangladesh contributed about 0% to GW. They might get affected but the source of the problem is in the 'first world', primarily. And for years, primarily in the US, who lied to the world for several decades about this.

'connection'

That's a good point and shouldn't be overlooked.

What I mean by 'activists' has nothing to do with people who communicate ideas in support of a cause, though that kind of 'activism' is also important.

I am talking about people taking direct action in their own lifestyle activities to effectuate sustainability. E.g. someone who is considering giving up driving for transit/bicycling/etc. might defer their decision because of developments in electric cars, alternative fuels, etc. As long as they think the economy is changing to become sustainable, they figure they can just go on living according to the status quo and govt. regs will cause industrial technology changes that will fix all the problems without them having to do anything on their own.

Realistically, everyone driving electric cars isn't going to solve the problem of overpavement and sprawl, which are the cause of deforestation. Multilane roads and highways require wide corridors cleared of trees. Developers buy up land near those auto-corridors and clear more land to build large buildings and parking lots. Not only do they need to leave that forest ecology intact; they should also be reforming the already-developed areas so that they resume their natural ecological function as a contiguous-canopy forest with all the life and watershed that flourishes within a healthy forest canopy. That is how the naturally-sustainable carbon cycle will be restored and thus anaturally-sustainable planetary climate.

Do you think that politicians and industry leaders somehow control the public demand for their products?

People have the ability to use less electricity by insulating a small zone of their house very well and then only heating or cooling that one zone. If they would do that, the demand for all energy would drastically decrease and renewable sourcing would suffice.

The only thing the industry/media and government do to promote high energy demand is subsidize it so prices are lower and then they can market lifestyles that are energy-intensive as being normal and preferable to lower-energy lifestyles.

If the people would have remained vigilant against these business-propagandistic forces throughout the 20th century, they would have retained very conservative ethics and eschewed unnecessary consumption, which cuts into their ability to save their money.

Business marketed consumerism and job-creation economics to them, they took the bait, and now they have enslaved themselves to their own greed and laziness, while the money they spend goes to business people who are perfectly willing to destroy the planet and future generations to get more of their money in the present.

In a rat race, the rats don't care about the future because they are too driven to compete for whatever they can get in the present.

Even rephrased, your theory still doesn't work. If it did, people in the US wouldn't pump three times more carbon in the atmosphere than people in France. They would be motivated to consume less, and yet they aren't.

Sometimes, these ideas you come up with are just false, period.

You're not looking at the big picture globally. The US government, as a propaganda object, isn't limited to the US. People all over Europe and throughout the world are looking at the Trump administration as supporting climate denial and business resistance to change. So, throughout the world, the Trump administration is generating impetus to resist climate and change and business that supports it.

Now, a great deal of that impetus will get funneled into support for governments that ostensibly are 'doing something' about climate change, e.g. supporting the Paris accord. Those people are just giving away their impetus to act by deferring authority to government. They could personally and professionally choose to make better choices, but they don't want to deviate from cultural/business norms, so they will just continue to behave 'normally' and wait for government to do something, which they expect they will.

Still, unlike with the Obama administration, there will be more pressure on governments globally to make a difference, precisely because they don't expect the Trump administration to be fixing the problems the way they did from the Obama administration. So, in effect, the Obama administration was pacifying the global citizenry and governments more than the Trump administration, which is stimulating them to work harder.

Ultimately the goal of everyone who cares about climate should be getting people and businesses to cut their energy use and geographical footprint. It's just difficult because everyone has a different culture that causes them to ignore certain possibilities and consider certain social-cultural institutions sacred. But the only real question is what is going to motivate them to actually change their ways, reduce energy usage, and replace dead/paved/developed land with restored, healthy, treed, carbon-cycle-supportive land.

If Macron's fuel taxes stimulate more resistance than willpower to reduce fuel use, then what good are they? He may as well have ordered the yellow-vests to demostrate against climate reforms directly. Until the people are motivated to embrace climate reform in their personal and professional activities, governmental efforts will just be thwarted or abused.

. . . and yet that doesn't mean that everyone who wants change is just going to sit around and wait for everyone else to come around. We are just in a bad situation where government doesn't work, yet neither does allowing the popular culture to figure out what's good for the future, because it only supports the narrow view of what people want right now in the conditions that they have to deal with for work, finance, convenience, comfort, social-cultural norms, etc.

Quite the contrary. It is leading people to give up, because they know that nothing can be done as long as America is opposed to it..

If so, it is because they were never really interested in change to begin with. They were only interested in triggering fines as fiscal transfers. Their business people would have continued to use investment to stimulate global commerce, which they would then blame on the countries they invested in, e.g. China and the US. Then, they would want those countries to pay fines, which would transfer money to relocate people on islands to the mainland, which would allow the global business elite to set up more resorts on those islands.

In short, as long as there is money to be made regulating climate change, global investors/business will keep spending money on polluting industries and stimulate them to trigger fines/transfers that further benefit business/investors.

If the French really cared about climate reforms, they would be rallying in favor of Macron's fuel tax raises, not against them.

Politicians and "industry leaders" do not constitute members of a class. Your remarks have nothing to do with what I wrote, which does not surprise me. You seem to inhabit some bizarre, distorted and delusional "libertarian" fantasy world. I strongly suspect that you do not yourself follow the advice you have for others.

No, it's because people are realistic. Without the US on board we can't beat this thing. You know, some of us actually care about reality.

it was actually good for Polands economy on the days of the conference. ALL the US cities that showed up with reps greatly outweighed what would have been merely Trumpy toads. I see how 18 states were represented who ach signed that they would keep up with the accords under their own state constitutions.

Feds wont **** with em unless some industries show their hands as TRUMPs brain trust. I do not think that will happen. Even Duke Power has backed down a lot from its leadership as a denier of GW

Smart, responsible US mayors and governors are of course a welcome development but they won't make up for the lack of national leadersip. It's the whole country that needs to change its attitude.

relax, Trump was an experiment for old white men . In the US, all movements start locally. It our way.

Whenever you're ready.

It would be refreshing is the alleged Frenchman was as stern with India and China. For that matter, the European Union is not far behind the United States. China is, far and away, he largest producer of greenhouse gases, and pumps more than twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere as the United States.

Realistic? Is that a joke? People are destroying the planetary climate with their economic participation and you're calling them realistic?

Do you understand that unsustainability means people are generating their own future demise with their supposedly-realistic actions?

So is what you are saying that Europeans are actually taking sides with Trump-climate-denialism out of realism? Does that mean Europe is going to jettison its sustainability reforms altogether? Will Paris dissolve the Paris climate accord?

It's realistic to assume that we can't beat climate change without the US on board, yes.

China's Emissions are nearly twice ours and are rising much faster.

If your President Macron delivers on his commitment to reduce France's nuclear power output then France will quickly see its emissions rise - a problem in that a significant portion of the population is resisting very strongly his ill-conceived plans to change their behavior.

During the past three years U.S. emissions have declined, while those in the EU have remained relatively constant.