Or rather, they ignore the predictions made by scientists:
Strange. It’s like we privately agree that when these scientists say the end of the world is nigh, they don’t mean it, not literally, but are just scaring us for our own good. Or that they do mean it, but are frankly batty.
After all, it’s not as if even Dark Greens have resolved never to breed, to thus spare their child the horror of spending their shortened life in terror at the doom to come.
Yet we’re still meant to treat everything else these scientists say as the gospel truth. As in: sure, they’re way out there about the end of human life, but on the small stuff they are bang on.
The important thing to remember about scientific predictions is that they are reliably wrong. It’s rather like contrarian investing. The correct thing to do is figure out what they are saying today, then bet on the opposite. More than half the time, much more than half the time, that is the correct thing to do. What science fetishists almost always forget is that scientists are human, not golems animated by the spirit of the scientific method. And because scientists are human, those who are skilled at understanding and anticipating human behavior can correctly ascertain the truth or untruth of a scientific matter without knowing anything whatsoever about the science involved.
I will leave my theoretical explanation for why scientific predictions are so reliably wrong for another day.