My 'system' is talking about incremental risks, whether they are across time or across individuals. The point is that these incremental risks are not great in themselves, but when accumulated, they become substantial. If climate change contributes to increasing disease, as is projected, the cumulation of diseases over time become a substantial risk even to the individual, even if they aren't directly affected by flood, fire or drought. And of course even a low direct individual risk can cascade into a societal risk that circles back to affect the individual. Take the chief risk of COVID-19, which is that the local medical system is overwhelmed. When this becomes acute, as it did in Italy, it affects even those who were at little risk of COVID itself, by denying them access to health care in the event of an accident or other illness.
Which is still an extremely low risk, affecting a relatively small part of the population. The infectious diseases they talk about are from expansion of the disease carrier range (mosquitoes and ticks). These have mitigating factors to avoid the infections. There's very little cumulative risk and it's still largely location based.
So this is a far cry from your example of cigarettes and ending up in a PSA. The risk is much higher with cigarettes. As stated by the previous commenter - they are not something to be afraid of.
> Which is still an extremely low risk, affecting a relatively small part of the population.
You're looking at it through the individual lens again. The chances of an individual winning the lottery in any year are near zero, but the chances of there being some lottery winner in any year are near 100%. The chance of any one car trip resulting in an accident are extremely low, yet we still wear a seat belt consistently because the long term chances of an accident are high even if we are careful drivers---we rightly fear the consequences of an accident without a restraint. And the cigarette example, which is only a "far cry" if you grossly underestimate all the cumulative risks associated with climate change.
Simply handwaving away the death toll from insect-borne infection because they don't affect you personally doesn't make them any less real. And of course those aren't the only climate related risks. Drought, wildfires, floods, hurricanes, tornados and blizzards are all correlated with increasing thermal energy in Earth's atmosphere. Something we should rationally fear and actively work to mitigate.
"You're looking at it through the individual lens again."
The entire point of this thread - that individuals shouldn't fear these things. Fear is at the individual level.
"we rightly fear the consequences of an accident without a restraint."
Why would we be afraid of a moot scenario? If you have and use a seat belt, then this isn't a scenario to fear. Even then, the occurrence of an accident when being careful is low enough that there is not fear when driving down the road. If there was substantial fear, then we wouldn't drive (like people I know who have a panic attack when driving).
"if you grossly underestimate all the cumulative risks associated with climate change."
They have yet to be fully disclosed/known and materialize. It's reasonable to not be afraid of something that does not yet exist.
"Simply handwaving away the death toll from insect-borne infection because they don't affect you personally doesn't make them any less real."
It's not hand waving. There are mitigating steps to be taken. It's certainly nothing to be afraid of for many people. Again, the component of the comment we are discussing.
"Drought, wildfires, floods, hurricanes, tornados and blizzards are all correlated with increasing thermal energy in Earth's atmosphere. Something we should rationally fear and actively work to mitigate."
It's not rational to fear something that doesn't affect you. These things do not affect all areas. You can work to mitigate things without being afraid of them. I'm not afraid of those events as they largely don't affect my area, and I take steps to mitigate any damage from the ones rest do occur.
I think the basic problem here is that you attach strong negative connotations to the word "fear". But fear is useful to us, as in the seatbelt example:
> Why would we be afraid of a moot scenario? If you have and use a seat belt, then this isn't a scenario to fear.
My point was that we wear the seat belt because we fear having an accident without it. Just as we take mitigating actions against disease because we fear facing the disease without them.
> It's not rational to fear something that doesn't affect you.
Sure, if it truly does not and could not affect you. But global warming can affect every person on the planet. There is virtually nowhere that is immune to all of the direct and indirect effects. And even if there were such a place, human beings are interconnected economically and socially, so that if something negatively impacts people in one place, it can indirectly and negatively affect people elsewhere.
> You can work to mitigate things without being afraid of them.
Why would you work to mitigate something that was completely benign? You do it because you fear the possible consequences of not mitigating, the same reason you wear a seat belt. It is exactly this entirely rational fear that public officials use to justify mitigating global warming, the well-founded fear that if we don't, it will potentially cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars.
Fear is an emotional motivation, and can be a cause for taking on the seatbelt. There are also logical motivations, such as the realization that I will be less injured if I have a seatbelt and an accident happens.
It’s not that the action of using a seatbelt is different, but my reason for doing that can be very different. This can also apply to Covid and other risk mitigation. And emotional motivations usually affects us humans more strongly than logical ones, so using them is good when you want to motivate more drastic actions. So most overreaches are motivated by emotional arguments, such as fear. Because of that it’s good to be skeptical about such arguments.
People don't wear seat belts because they've thought to themselves, "I could be injured and therefore less capable if I don't wear a seat belt." They wear a seat belt because they (very rationally) fear death or serious injury. It's interesting that some folks have such a stigma about admitting fear, though. It's like the people who insist that advertising has no effect on them, just all those other weaklings.
