Notice how neither example takes years to reverse course or mitigate?

Let's just rattle a few more off, across the successfully-mitigated and not-yet-mitigated or failed-to-mitigate categories:

- Hormuz oil shortage (likely to materialize within months if unaddressed now)

- Related LNG → fertilizer shortage → food price shocks (significant shocks over the next few years are already baked in)

- Ozone depletion (successfully mitigated in time)

- Dust bowl (materialized after more than a decade of warnings)

- Military buildup and political entanglements across Europe materializing into WW1 and WW2 after years of warnings

- Bengal famine (materialized after more than a decade of warnings)

- Flint water crisis (materialized after several decades of warnings)

Which of these were not emergencies well before they materialized into direct negative outcomes?

The idea that there's any absolute definition of "problem happening soon" is flatly ridiculous. Obviously the definition of soon is relative to how long does it take to avoid the problem.

A car stopped 100 feet ahead of another car is not an emergency.

A car stopped 1,000 feet from a train is an emergency.

A car stopped 5 miles from a landing 737 is definitely an emergency.

Even if each of these takes the same 2-3 minutes to actually result in a collision.

Very much appreciate you driving this home. I had penned a lengthy response about relative timescales, but you summed it up nicely.