Humans have caused 1.5 °C of long-term global warming according to new estimates

Our response to a global pandemic was a disaster other than getting the vaccines made. The most recent large scale collective effort to defeat an existential threat prior to that was probably WWII. We’ve gotten pretty good at waging war but I fear that’s probably where our evolution in the matter of dealing with existential threats will probably remain.

I would argue that numerous initiative to ban highly dangerous substances such as the Montreal Protocol banning ozone layer damaging refrigerant gasses have been successful in this period. Instead it appears to me that global collaboration actually stalled after the fall the Soviet Union and the end of great power competition.

> Our response to a global pandemic was a disaster other than getting the vaccines made

What would you have liked to have seen?

And out of curiosity, what should be the response to the 700k heart disease, 600k cancer, 227k accidental, 165k stroke, 147k respiratory and 101k diabetes deaths each year in the USA? (N.B. COVID sits at 186k in 2023)

Remember "acid rain"? Remember "the ozone hole"? We have solved, or greatly mitigated, environmental problems before.

Acid rain is still on the table

SO2 emissions are still strongly trending downward globally (e.g. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/so-emissions-by-world-reg... ). The change is especially dramatic in the US, per EPA reports. Conifers in my neighbourhood look remarkably healthier than what I recall from my childhood as a result.