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Fifteen meters is a bit too much, the lowest point is about 22 feet below (6.7m). Quoting Wikipedia: The Netherlands is geographically very low relative to sea

by rapnie 6y ago

Fifteen meters is a bit too much, the lowest point is about 22 feet below (6.7m). Quoting Wikipedia: The Netherlands is geographically very low relative to sea level and is considered a flat country, with about 26% of its area and 21% of its population located below sea level, and only about 50% of its land exceeding one metre above sea level. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands I live below sea level myself. Most Dutch don't feel too worried, and think that with rising sea levels we'll just fix things on our shores and dikes. And good chance we will, by throwing huge amounts of money at infrastructure projects. And here you have the problem with climate change, and destruction of our world in general: the richer you are, the less affected you are. The poor fall from the map first. It is places like Bangladesh and inhabitants of tropical islands that'll fall victim before us rich folks do. For the absolute biggest polluters, the big barons, oligarchs and plutocrats, this problem does not exist. There will always be a tropical paradise island to own, bluefin tuna to eat, and elephants and lions to hunt.

Udik 6y ago
> And here you have the problem with climate change, and destruction of our world in general: the richer you are, the less affected you are. I see it the other way around: climate change is only going to increase by a few percentage points the misery of populations that already live in unacceptable conditions. Of course those few percentage points make huge absolute numbers when projected on the global population. But by focusing on the increase in misery, we lose sight of the baseline misery, which constitutes the bulk of the issue and that has entirely non-climate change dependent origins, and can be entirely solved with much less expensive local actions. Example: years ago a WHO "Global Burden of Disease" report projected 400k excess deaths due to climate change every year. A huge number, right? But reading the report it turns out that the vast majority of those come from a few percentage points increase in the incidence of diarrhea, which already kills almost a million people a year and is preventable by vaccinations and better sanitation. So it turns out that by investing our energies on fighting climate change, we can prevent the excess deaths caused by it, without making a dent in the larger baseline. While by investing in local and specific action, we can raise out of poverty billions, ending also the problem of diarrhea.
- imtringued 6y ago
  Medicine doesn't lift people out of poverty. Government programs that focus on economic activity do. China simply declared certain areas to be economic development zones and then the rest happened automatically. Those areas weren't even anything to write home about before government intervened. They were just some poor fishing villages.
  - Udik 6y ago
    Totally agree. Medicine doesn't lift people out of poverty, and cutting our own emissions doesn't cure diseases. Creating economic development does both, and incidentally economic development means more CO2 emissions, at least on the short term.

by rapnie 6y ago

Udik 6y ago

> And here you have the problem with climate change, and destruction of our world in general: the richer you are, the less affected you are. I see it the other way around: climate change is only going to increase by a few percentage points the misery of populations that already live in unacceptable conditions. Of course those few percentage points make huge absolute numbers when projected on the global population. But by focusing on the increase in misery, we lose sight of the baseline misery, which constitutes the bulk of the issue and that has entirely non-climate change dependent origins, and can be entirely solved with much less expensive local actions. Example: years ago a WHO "Global Burden of Disease" report projected 400k excess deaths due to climate change every year. A huge number, right? But reading the report it turns out that the vast majority of those come from a few percentage points increase in the incidence of diarrhea, which already kills almost a million people a year and is preventable by vaccinations and better sanitation. So it turns out that by investing our energies on fighting climate change, we can prevent the excess deaths caused by it, without making a dent in the larger baseline. While by investing in local and specific action, we can raise out of poverty billions, ending also the problem of diarrhea.

imtringued 6y ago
Medicine doesn't lift people out of poverty. Government programs that focus on economic activity do. China simply declared certain areas to be economic development zones and then the rest happened automatically. Those areas weren't even anything to write home about before government intervened. They were just some poor fishing villages.
- Udik 6y ago
  Totally agree. Medicine doesn't lift people out of poverty, and cutting our own emissions doesn't cure diseases. Creating economic development does both, and incidentally economic development means more CO2 emissions, at least on the short term.