The ability to invent ideologies and beliefs, a cognitive function unique to humans, can also override the self-preservation instinct. For example, libertarians who refuse proven life saving vaccines "I will not be told what to do." Then there are anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers who believe that a deity will intervene to protect them--a belief that has proven disappointing.
The widespread retreat from self-preservation warrants a radical shift in the strategy to defeat climate change
We should urge the continuation of present efforts and commitments. At the same time, rational world leaders must embrace more dramatic planet-saving measures. They must make a total commitment to a Climate Manhattan Project similar to the WWII Manhattan Project, which created the first nuclear weapons, beating out Japan and Germany and thus ending World War II. In less than 3 years, from the authorization of the Manhattan Project on December 28, 1942, to the detonation of the first bomb on July 16, 1945, the "impossible " goal was achieved.
A Climate Manhattan Project could develop breakthrough technologies, including safe atomic energy, to stop climate change on a timetable short of nature's timetable for an apocalypse.
Current technologies like carbon capture are helpful but are far from turning the table on climate change. More promising, on February 7, 2022, the UK-based Jet Laboratory announced the good news of a breakthrough in the development of nuclear fusion, which has the potential for producing "unlimited supplies" of clean energy with no greenhouse gases. The bad news is that the process is not expected to be ready for commercialization for at least 20 years. Worse: "Then fusion would need to scale up, which would mean a delay of perhaps another few decades." This absurd timeline in the context of a dire crisis screams the urgency of a Climate Manhattan Project.
When in 1961 President John F. Kennedy set the goal of a moon landing within a decade it seemed like a science fiction fantasy. So little was known about space travel. But Kennedy's radical promise was brilliantly realized. Since then scientists have broken through other space travel barriers proving that if you set the goal, provide the structure, and assemble the talent, scientists will turn improbable science fiction into functional facts.
In a faceoff with climate change science holds not only the best prospect but perhaps the only prospect for accomplishing self-preservation, an instinct that humans have recklessly abandoned.
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