There’s hope for mankind in mitigating the climate crisis — if we act right away, the media reports in the wake of the damning Code Red report released this week.

In other words, there’s no hope because policymakers won’t be acting right away.

And a top climate scientist says she may stop contributing to future UN assessment reports because of those policymakers, who she says have all the information they need to take action, the CBC is reporting. Sonia Seneviratne has spent hundreds of hours volunteering her time on climate assessment for the UN, and she doesn’t want to waste any more time on incompetent policymakers.

Increasingly, as temperature records are being set around the world amidst fires and floods, we’re being warned to expect more and more of the same — and to prepare to adapt.

We are caught like lobsters in the proverbial pot.

They’re no longer talking generations now — as they were only a few weeks ago. With the Code Red report, we’re talking major grief from here on in, intensifying over the next decade. So even the fat-cat baby boomers who didn’t do much to save the world at all will have to face the consequences.

Of course, there are the climate-change deniers, just as there are those denying COVID until their final gasp in an ICU. And there are those who just don’t want to hear about it. “Eat, drink and be merry . . .” You know how that sentence ends.

As Fred and others have pointed out here, the Earth will survive mankind, after it purges most of us. The humans who do survive the fall of civilization may wish they hadn’t made it through, as foretold by some Biblical writer: “The living shall envy the dead.”

I write these snapshot posts for future generations, but even if humans do survive, there won’t be any infrastructure that will allow them to be read.

Except for in the bunkers created by wealthy people who have been buying up land in New Zealand in preparation for the fall of civilization. That news should be a wakeup call to everyone: some billionaires are preparing for the end. They are not spending their money on mitigating the climate crisis.

Because it’s hopeless, and they know it. It’s every billionaire for himself now — because soon their money will be worthless.

But that aforementioned Biblical writer also wrote there would be no place on Earth to hide or take refuge from the calamities of the end days. Except, perhaps, for their own spaceships. Yes, their ultimate refuge may be a tin can circling the planet. For however long that lasts.

Meanwhile, those who can are carrying on as usual. They have no choice. The policymakers aren’t helping them, and the rich industry owners and CEOs will make the working-class heroes slave for them until the end.

Unless, of course, those working-class slaves revolt. If that happens, it will get ugly for the capitalist pigs and policymakers — unless they are bunkered down in New Zealand.

But we’ve all seen post-apocalypse movies. We know how violent the starving masses can get.

We may be about to see it in real time — unless the policymakers take action now, of course.

I’m not feeling confident. Are you?

Click, click.

— Jillian