Maybe I went a bit overboard with my post above, I do have some optimism but I wanted to explain why there is a big tendency to be pessimistic.

I see, thanks, your comments are interesting also because they are representative of what many people feel, it is what I see in social media as well as in "real" life. Plenty of people take the pessimism far enough to stop planning for future generations. That is, some people might choose not to procreate for other reasons, but widely spread pessimism is indeed systemic I find, and I think you point it out as well. I guess my main point that I think it's a pity people do not find a way to be inspired for constructing better future while there are conditions for doing so. I work in science and technology, natural sciences, and I saw progress in my lifetime which to me is amazing and inspiring confidence in what people can do if they want. This also not only potential for transformational technological progress, but also societal change.

Frankly even the fact that people as a specie are successful enough to change the planet as a whole (some species managed this in the past, but not quite so fast) is kind if inspiring in a strange way. It's like for an young individual getting strong enough to lift a large weight, it's impressive, but also a cause to think maybe where we want this weight to be where it will not fall and break someone's leg or worse.

Oh I am definitely not at the doomer stage. I do think that we will be able to limit the heating of the climate to something of the effect of 2,x Kelvin. That’s pretty shitty though and will still cause a lot of global change. I do agree, we likely will have even better ways in the future. What annoys me is that we have technology right now that would be way better than oil/gas based systems for heating houses and driving vehicles.

Although I grew up in eastern Europe, I spent much of my life in rather wealthier parts of western Europe, especially Switzerland, and I see better technologies really establishing: heat pumps, extensive solar panels, high-performance energy storage etc. In recent years even rather selfish and skeptical people realized these technologies are actually a very good investment, in part driven by the energy crisis, in part by accelerating progress in renewable technologies. I think in so much as these privileged spaces are morally acceptable at this time, they can at least be at the cutting edge of sustainable development by concentrating effort, and I think recently this possibility has really started to materialize.

Yes, but very very slowly. That’s because there are two blocks left unconvinced: People that just flat out deny climate changes is human based, or claim that it will not affect us germans in a meaningful way. These are relatively few but still substantial. Somewhere between 10 and 20% in Germany.

Here I see a challenge of knowledge industry, even philosophy of science. Internet started with a promise of actual knowledge for everybody, but shaped as free-for-all anarchistic space, leading soon for all kinds of fantasy for everybody. Then, just as with free market, turns out it does not on it's own, automatically, lead to more fair and clear knowledge. Instead, it lead to a form of digital feudalism with no regard even for fairly universal values, favoring instead basic tribal reactions. Just recently, regulations are emerging which are creating institutions necessary for actually positively free and fair space in the web. EU and Germany in particular are making key contribution to this process. Will this be enough I am not sure. But I guess we can all see some at least impact general digital space (even GDPR), and academia (the source of the authoritative knowledge on practical questions) has made a lot more progress than it might be visible from outside. And it is ongoing. Fediverse is somehow related to this process too.

People who prioritize in a shorter timeframe. A lot of people have to think about today and tomorrow just to get by. They hear that the changes needed to protect the climate will make some things even more expensive, or just more inconvenient and do not want that because they think they won’t be able to handle the additional burden. These are a lot more than the first group.

There is no doubt there is a downturn in many concrete aspects of development, as you listed. This makes it harder to plan ahead, and people make worse choices, accelerating the downturn. Even if these people could actually sustain work for the future since they are not so disadvantaged. How to reverse this trend? I think at least it really helps to also remember what positive progress was made more and less recently. Really, literally, learn, teach, and communicate about technologies, history.

We also see that while a lot of people (around 65%) claim that they support the climate protection movement in general acceptance of specific laws is always way lower. Meaning that they have not fully realized that to protect the climate we need to actually change some things, and sometimes dramatically so.

For me this probably falls into the veracity of knowledge industry category. Knowing as much as we can what action makes which effect helps to prevent false sense of security that ritual of sorting garbage on it's own is enough to reverse antropogenic climate change.

For that to be a cause for optimism would require me believing that we as a people will want to and be able to seize that potential for action. Which I seriously doubt at least for germany.

Germany produced some remarkable technology, and is on forefront of some sustainable developments. And my own experience with Germans shows reasonably optimistic attitude - although my sample is very biased, and I do really know enough. Do you think there is something which could inspire Germans? It's not like the majority are living in poverty, so they must have goals beyond survival, right?

The reason driving a lot people towards conservatives and even the fascist parties in germany is their promise of “getting back to the good old days” which the conservatives are actually currently failing to communicate well because they have a elected a leadership that is pretty market liberal which makes the party currently a weird economically liberal and socially conservative amalgam which do not always go well together. Compared to that the AfD is publicly still putting up the charade of keeping and upholding the “good old values” while getting more and more obviously racist and fascist. Both these developments additionally to a lot of people who, out of protest against the last and the current government, vote for them to make a statement, have made them poll at more than 20% with no tendency of stopping.

So no, I don’t think people turn to fascism for change, at least not here. They turn to fascism because of the promis of keeping everything as it is or even go back a few steps.

So I had some German friends who voted to AfD, surprisingly, for a reason I could not really quite understand, since they seemed like fairly reasonable people, although a bit angry. Or maybe more than just a bit angry, quite unhappy and angry about the way things are going, and angry for being ignored by the mainstream, and finding return to "good old days" to be the answer, since "obviously" the problem is all the new progressive stuff. So my guess is that this reactionary position is a response to lack of future vision.

But maybe some people just inherently fascist, but I do not find most people to be like that.

Anyway it is a problem that even those who focused on reactionary "solution" proving them wrong is hard since the very origin of their position makes it hard to accept a mistake. I do not know what to do about that, especially in Germany, since I am not really in touch. Maybe creating new inclusive narrative for future could help here too. I'd say it's good to talk to them, but it may border on compromising with fascists which is hard to accept. But if I may suggest, as external observer, very cautiously, I think German can not continue ignoring the`right wing problem, and it can not just arrest them all too, so something resembling dialog might be needed, not speaking to their solution, but to the root of their concern which might be elsewhere. Not sure, dangerous road.