@breadandcircuses
Well, in fairness (not that fairness is really a thing in this dire picture), the new US ship captain will be passing out blinders to all of his crew. So the other captains might be waiting to see how that goes.
And the change at the helm will bring new flexibilty--admittedly, not in physics, but in how to ignore physics with real flare...not that there will be other ships around capable of responding to such flares.
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In all seriousness, though, while people already sold on the urgency of climate change can see cartoons like this and understand them, I actually think that this presentation promotes a misunderstanding of a serious nature.
Climate change is not a big event that suddenly happens in one particular moment, like the impact with an iceberg, or an asteroid strike in Don't Look Up. But metaphors like this, well meaning as they are in their intent that you focus on different aspects of the analogy, support the particular kind of denial that the new crew will be using a lot of: pointing to the absence of some singular cataclysm like that is proof none is coming.
And the picture also makes it look like at any time we could just change course and all would be well. It also supports the metaphor that any single person could be the superhero that swoops in to save us by making that singular, smart course correction in any moment before the cataclysm. Neither the problem nor its possible solutions, if any remain at this point, are as crisp and neat and simple as that.
Climate change, at this point, is more like an endless array of ever-more-densely packed icebergs with a lot of small boats each having the creeping realization that this was not the path we should be on and that there isn't any easy way out of the maze. We watch as our fellow ships, one by one, crash into less dramatic-looking, yet equally deadly, smaller bergs and tell ourselves that this is not what's coming for us, that icebergs of that size are normal, that historically many boats do not get sunk by icebergs, that we'll be fine.
![Au cœur d’une forêt vierge luxuriante, des entrepreneurs s’activent. Les bulldozers ne tardent par à arriver, et les voilà qui rasent la végétation et commencent à bétonner toute la zone. Les grues se dressent, les cheminées fument, un nouvel édifice est en cours de construction. Le progrès est en marche, vous préférez retourner à la bougie ? Ça y est, le bâtiment est terminé : c’est un centre de conférences accessible en vélo qui affiche fièrement « Éco-salon solidaire et responsable. » Au dessus, un soleil brûle dans un ciel orange. L’avenir s’annonce chaud… mais responsable. [fin]](https://media.oisaur.com/media_attachments/files/113/627/696/539/457/342/original/8ba34f14471eeaff.png "Au cœur d’une forêt vierge luxuriante, des entrepreneurs s’activent. Les bulldozers ne tardent par à arriver, et les voilà qui rasent la végétation et commencent à bétonner toute la zone. Les grues se dressent, les cheminées fument, un nouvel édifice est en cours de construction. Le progrès est en marche, vous préférez retourner à la bougie ? Ça y est, le bâtiment est terminé : c’est un centre de conférences accessible en vélo qui affiche fièrement « Éco-salon solidaire et responsable. » Au dessus, un soleil brûle dans un ciel orange. L’avenir s’annonce chaud… mais responsable. [fin]")
