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> This has already been pretty bad, with unusually many hurricanes, wildfires, and droughts. It’s hard to tell how many people have died of climate-change-relat

> This has already been pretty bad, with unusually many hurricanes, wildfires, and droughts. It’s hard to tell how many people have died of climate-change-related causes. Maybe thousands? Maybe tens of thousands? Probably trillions of dollars have already been lost to disasters and agricultural problems. But tens of thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars lost is completely compatible with the average person in the First World not really noticing much of a change to their daily lives. The next 75 years of global warming are going to be worse than we’ve gotten already, maybe millions of lives lost and tens of trillions of dollars in damage. In aggregate, they’re going to be a giant disaster. But the average person in the First World, probably including your child, still won’t notice much of a change to their daily lives. The author's arguments that the "First World" is somehow largely insulated from climate change are not very convincing. For example: > But so far, the droughts haven’t been bad enough that California stopped golf courses from watering their massive lawns to keep them perfectly green every day. So far, California has continued using 5.3 million acre-feet per year - more than enough water for every residential building in the state - to farm alfalfa. Alfalfa gets used to feed cows, and the beef industry lobby is very powerful, and so far California has preferred to ask citizens to conserve water rather than make the beef industry stop growing water-hungry alfalfa plants. But if anyone was actually dying of thirst, or even having enough trouble getting water that they might be motivated to vote out some politician over it, the government could redirect the alfalfa water, or the golf course water, or any of a thousand other things like this, and everyone would have more than enough. You see this everywhere - lots of resources are being wasted for stupid political reasons. If the political calculus ever changed - as it will, if these problems ever start inconveniencing privileged First World citizens - then we can stop wasting the resources, and use them to address the symptoms of climate change instead. Basically, the author's argument boils down to "it can't be that bad if people in the First World don't feel it, and once they do, somehow the problems will quickly be fixed". If that's the case though, I wonder why my friends and family back in the states keep complaining to me about the empty shelves, Amazon Prime delays, etc. Shouldn't fixing the symptoms of today's strained supply chain have been an easy task compared to climate change?

prepend 5y ago
> largely insulated from climate change I think the point wasn’t that the first world is insulated from climate change, but that the negative impact won’t be apocalyptically bad. And similar to how the first world is already better than being in the developing world. For example, the quality of life of being born in 2200 worst case scenario climate in San Francisco is better than being born in 2200 best case scenario climate change in Lagos. Of course, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t work on improving global health, social justice, and climate change. We should. But if I’m choosing not to have kids because of climate change, that doesn’t seem rational since the likely quality of that child’s life is much better than other people making similar decisions around the world. Regardless of climate change. So the author is saying that climate change will be extremely negative, but that it will be less felt in the first world. But still felt.
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago
  > For example, the quality of life of being born in 2200 worst case scenario climate in San Francisco is better than being born in 2200 best case scenario climate change in Lagos. First, the idea that anyone living today can accurately predict what life is going to be like for anyone anywhere in 2200 is pure hubris. Heck, it's pure hubris to believe that we can do this even 5-10 years out at this point. Second, quality of life can suffer immensely in scenarios well short of "apocalyptically bad". The author's argument appears to be that the First World can fairly easily mitigate the "symptoms" of climate change once they start to impact quality of life for enough people. I think this is hubristic too. Using the pandemic as an example, it's worth pointing out that the US and UK were ranked first and second in pandemic preparedness according to a Global Health Security Index released in 2019[1]. Yet despite their significant resources, both have been abysmal failures. The First World doesn't have nearly the insulation the author of this post thinks it does. And it has a lot farther to fall. [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/11/countries-preparedness-pandemics/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/11/countries-preparednes...
  - prepend 5y ago
    You think it’s pure hubris to predict that the quality of life in New York will exceed Lagos 5-10 years out? Really? I’m no expert predictor, but I’ll bet you any amount of money that New York is better off than Lagos 10 years from now. Of course no one can predict 200 years out perfectly. But you don’t need perfect prediction to say the first world will be better off than the developing worked. Of course, Nigeria could likely be a world power that far out and may be “first world” by then.

prepend 5y ago

> largely insulated from climate change I think the point wasn’t that the first world is insulated from climate change, but that the negative impact won’t be apocalyptically bad. And similar to how the first world is already better than being in the developing world. For example, the quality of life of being born in 2200 worst case scenario climate in San Francisco is better than being born in 2200 best case scenario climate change in Lagos. Of course, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t work on improving global health, social justice, and climate change. We should. But if I’m choosing not to have kids because of climate change, that doesn’t seem rational since the likely quality of that child’s life is much better than other people making similar decisions around the world. Regardless of climate change. So the author is saying that climate change will be extremely negative, but that it will be less felt in the first world. But still felt.

LurkingPenguin 5y ago
> For example, the quality of life of being born in 2200 worst case scenario climate in San Francisco is better than being born in 2200 best case scenario climate change in Lagos. First, the idea that anyone living today can accurately predict what life is going to be like for anyone anywhere in 2200 is pure hubris. Heck, it's pure hubris to believe that we can do this even 5-10 years out at this point. Second, quality of life can suffer immensely in scenarios well short of "apocalyptically bad". The author's argument appears to be that the First World can fairly easily mitigate the "symptoms" of climate change once they start to impact quality of life for enough people. I think this is hubristic too. Using the pandemic as an example, it's worth pointing out that the US and UK were ranked first and second in pandemic preparedness according to a Global Health Security Index released in 2019[1]. Yet despite their significant resources, both have been abysmal failures. The First World doesn't have nearly the insulation the author of this post thinks it does. And it has a lot farther to fall. [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/11/countries-preparedness-pandemics/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/11/countries-preparednes...
- prepend 5y ago
  You think it’s pure hubris to predict that the quality of life in New York will exceed Lagos 5-10 years out? Really? I’m no expert predictor, but I’ll bet you any amount of money that New York is better off than Lagos 10 years from now. Of course no one can predict 200 years out perfectly. But you don’t need perfect prediction to say the first world will be better off than the developing worked. Of course, Nigeria could likely be a world power that far out and may be “first world” by then.