5 ms·
The irony is that the big winners of fossil fuels, which are all the arabic countries, will be the ones who get hit by the climate change the worse.
by bronzeage 7y ago
The irony is that the big winners of fossil fuels, which are all the arabic countries, will be the ones who get hit by the climate change the worse.
- glitchc 7y agoI think that's called karma.
- papermachete 7y agoInnocent people suffering while the top 1% can just build palaces is karma?
- ceejayoz 7y agoI would not count on those palaces withstanding the collapse of the oil economy. When the money runs out, loyalty to things like the Saudi regime are likely to run out too.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoWouldn't the people that call the shots just move to another country they own income producing assets in?
- dogma1138 7y agoThen the 1% would join the 99% who is suffering, I don't think the average quatari enjoys the oil wealth that much.
- mlevental 7y agooh well good thing they haven't spent decades amassing an arsenal of weapons to protect themselves. man people love to bandy about so blithely on shit like this as if they've been in so many civil wars that it's passe. stop being an internet tough guy and go look at the pictures coming out of Yemen or Syria or Libya. If those regimes to fail as a result of the world moving away from oil they will take many millions of completely innocent people with them.
- ceejayoz 7y ago> If those regimes to fail as a result of the world moving away from oil they will take many millions of completely innocent people with them. I never said that wasn't the case.
- mlevental 7y agoi didn't say you did. i said you were very nonchalant in predicting the deaths of millions of people.
- ceejayoz 7y agoI think you're mixing me up with another poster up-thread.
- mlevental 7y agoWell you can very easily yourself figure out whether I'm responding directly to you or someone else: did you sincerely consider the implications of your comment when you made it? Did you imagine the people that would be affected? If the answer is no then I'm responding directly to you.
- ceejayoz 7y agoYep, and yep... so I'm still fairly sure you've mixed me up with the "karma" person upthread.
- dang 7y agoWe've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- crimsonalucard 7y agoMake no mistake. The collapse of the oil economy is the collapse of the world and the United States.
- newyankee 7y agoThe country hit worst by climate change is India by sheer population which depends on agriculture which is becoming unsustainable due to uncertainty and very high temperatures in summer (as high as 50 C in some places). Uncertainty in Weather + Water problems + Inefficient agriculture + biggest population (in 5 years i think)
- trickstra 7y agoAlso, the richer countries will have ways to mitigate the effects of climate change - such as running air conditioning on the streets, or just staying 99% of their day in offices and houses. While the people in poor countries can only escape. So unfortunately, it will be the poor countries that will get hit the hardest. India, South-east Asia, central and south Africa.
- newyankee 7y agoA country like Qatar is so rich it can easily buy a piece of land in a place like Russia and fly bulk of its population there routinely if needed. Sounds crazy today, but it might actually be an easy way for countries like Russia or Canada with so much surplus land to monetize it.
- Udik 7y agoYou can also put it the other way around: Qatar without fossil fuels (and therefore without the climate change they entail) probably wouldn't exist at all except for few, poor and sparse settlements. If you were a citizen of Qatar, what do you think would be your choice: to be poor in a desertic country with max summer temperatures of 40 degrees, or to be rich in a country so prosperous that can afford outdoor air conditioning in between its skyscrapers?
- ceejayoz 7y agoReminder that the latter option is significantly propped up by modern-day slavery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Qatar#Slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Qatar#Slavery Being sustainably poor might also wind up being better than a collapsing state after oil revenues run out.
- Udik 7y agoI'm not defending Qatar in general. I'm just trying to suggest, with a real example, that there are cases in which climate change might be preferable to climate change mitigation. Qatar is an extreme case, but when we think of the climate change issue we seem to forget just how much wealth we got from fossil fuels and therefore, in some sense, how much we benefited and keep benefiting from climate change. But of course it's easier to just click on the downvote button and forget about it. > Being sustainably poor might also wind up being better than a collapsing state after oil revenues run out. Oil revenues will run out with efforts to move away from fossil fuels. So the collapse of the country is not one of two options, it will be the result of the mitigation efforts.
- nradov 7y agoMuch of Bangladesh will become essentially uninhabitable with a small increase in sea level and summer heat index. I think they're going to end up worse off than Qatar.