We often say “climate change is here. We have no time to lose.” This is very true, in the sense that we have to act now. In the sense that we cannot afford to lose or waste more time. But it is also not true, in the sense that - with climate change - we have so much to lose, including, not in the least, time.

Imagine what we could have done with all the time that we (and future generations) will have to spend on repairing, adjusting, relocating, rebuilding.

And of course, time has already been lost. Entire lives have been lost.

Figure 1: Global warming melting away time ("The persistence of memory" by Salvador Dali, 1931)

“There is no time to waste”, yes. But at the same time we are forced to waste our time in dedicating entire university programs to a problem that could and should have already been dealt with.

Relativists might say something: “if climate change would have been adequately dealt with in 80s and 90s, we would have found another problem to worry about” and “you would have written this same cute little blog post about something else”.

They can say that because they have the luxury, the privilege and the time to take a step back and “theorize away” other people’s misery and time stress.