We are still screwed: the coming climate disaster

[Timex]

That’s from last year, yes?

[ineffablebob]

Rivers could generate thousands of nuclear power plants worth of energy,...

Another entry in the long “neat-looking clean energy tech that is just too darn expensive right now” list. The more ideas folks have, the better the chance that one of them will get it to mass usage one day!

[antlers]

Surely nothing could be more environmentally benign than sealing estuaries behind vast sheets of plastic membrane!

[Gordon_Cameron]

I think there will be a lot of Sophie’s Choices coming up in the struggle against climate change.

[Gordon_Cameron]

Opinion | Jane Fonda: We Have to Live Like We’re in a Climate Emergency....

Of course she’s right, but not exactly an ideal messenger to move anyone not already on the right side of this issue.

[KevinC]

Saw this piece in the WaPo that I thought illustrated how difficult action on climate change is going to be.

Fires, floods and free parking: California’s unending fight against climate...

Despite Santa Barbara’s heritage as the birthplace of the modern environmental movement, the county is falling far short of its own anti-pollution goals, which are meant to serve as a model for others to follow. The failure has activists here wondering: If a place with Santa Barbara’s predominantly green electorate and political class is unwilling or unable to change, who will?

This is a tourist town, a weekend resort for the Los Angeles wealthy, a place that has become shorthand for getaway glamour thanks to a once-popular daytime soap opera named for it. Several years ago, the county adopted goals consistent with California’s overall target to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming to zero over the next 25 years.

But the government here has bumped up against local business interests, from downtown retailers and restaurants to the oil industry, that oppose more environmental regulation and even such seemingly minor changes to civic life as a reduction in downtown parking. Those interests are often decisive in determining local elections.

The results, so far, have been dismal. In 2015, the county pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent compared with 2007 levels. Two years later, a progress report found that, rather than reducing those emissions, Santa Barbara was actually exceeding its 2007 levels by 14 percent.

I bolded a sentence in the second to last paragraph that stood out to me. Even in a city that (according to the article) votes predominantly pro-environment, just giving up some downtown parking can be difficult for voters to swallow. If people who profess to care about these issues struggle to give up conveniences such as downtown parking, how hard is it going to be to get the country to accept real sacrifices that are required? Especially when very wealthy and powerful industries are going to continue to oppose it and flood people with propaganda.

I’ve been wondering how the US can deal with this. We have interests to that don’t care if the world burns as long as their bottom line is protected. Many people seem unwilling to vote for inconveniences for themselves, let alone major sacrifices. How are we going to be able to address this issue until it’s far too late and we’re dealing with famine and starvation here? I’m just struggling to see a path forward for us.

[Gordon_Cameron]

The only time people are willing to sacrifice in that way is in wartime. At least, old-style wartime, WWII style wartime. Modern war seems to be a different matter, at least in the U.S…

This is a bigger peril than WWII but our psychology is not wired to meet it.

I’m not optimistic. I think our species will muddle through (meaning, I think a total ecosystem collapse can probably be avoided) but at a much higher human cost than we might pay if our psychological and political shortcomings could be circumvented.

[CLWheeljack]

Consequences are for poor people.

[scottagibson]

I’m not optimistic. I think our species will muddle through (meaning, I think a total ecosystem collapse can probably be avoided) but at a much higher human cost than we might pay if our psychological and political shortcomings could be circumvented.

I think this is right, and that the real cost will be paid by poor and working-class people, while the wealthy and powerful will largely be insulated. Which is another reason why little will be done — why should the powerful suffer inconvenience or discomfort for the chance of saving a few million (or billion) poors?.

[Oghier]

There are plenty of wealthy and powerful people in Miami, Palm Beach, NYC and other coastal areas. I don’t think this is primarily a rich-poor issue. It’s just the usual problem of people weighing future risks against current costs, combined with a political system incapable of addressing that kind of problem.

I’m firmly in the “either new tech saves us or we’re doomed” camp. It’s not a happy place.

[scottagibson]

There are plenty of wealthy and powerful people in Miami, Palm Beach, NYC and other coastal areas.

…who all have the means to relocate to drier pastures. And on a scale of decades, it’s hardly going to be their first concern.

[Oghier]

…who all have the means to relocate to drier pastures

What, they’re giving up their $10m mansion on the beach to move to an underground bunker in Kansas or something? You think they’re fine with that?

I guarantee you that they care deeply, deeply about the idea that their property values might be diminished, much less losing the land altogether. They’re not shrugging and thinking “Fuck it, we’ll just move into that bomb shelter in New Zealand.”

Not every problem is due to rich people.

[KevinC]

What, they’re giving up their $10m mansion on the beach to move to an underground bunker in Kansas or something? You think they’re fine with that?

No, especially with Kansas being turned into a dust bowl. they’ll just displace indigenous people in the new sexy beaches of New Brunswick or Nova Scotia or wherever. Wherever the new Miami Beach is, they have the means to get there so the issue isn’t a life or death kind of concern to them. To the farmers in the new Kansas desert? It’s going to be a problem for them.

[Gordon_Cameron]

I figure all the rich people will end up buying up the prime real estate in northern Canada or Siberia or Antarctica or wherever else becomes a congenial climate.

Note: This is based on a profound ignorance of what those regions will actually look like in a +3C world.

[Oghier]

Virtually everyone on this board can afford to move to someplace that won’t be flooded. The very rich, the rich, the middle class, the lower middle class can all afford a place somewhere in Wisconsin or Michigan or whatever.

This isn’t about billionaires laughing off the end of the world because they already have an underground lair set up somewhere else.

[KevinC]

Virtually everyone on this board can afford to move to someplace that won’t be flooded. The very rich, the rich, the middle class, the lower middle class can all afford a place somewhere in Wisconsin or Michigan or whatever.

There’s a stark difference between someone in the working or middle class losing their home versus a wealthy person losing one of their houses.

[Oghier]

There’s a stark difference between someone in the working or middle class losing their home versus a wealthy person losing one of their houses.

Not to the wealthy person. (And this is not sarcasm).

And that doesn’t mean the wealthy person is pro-flooding. If we were to break down the demographics of climate-change voters, who do you think we’d see as the “greenest” voters?

[Gordon_Cameron]

I mean, the real horror is probably going to happen in the third world regions where relocation is difficult. Anticipate floods of refugees that make Syria look like the trickle of a trickle, and all the destabilization that comes with that.

It is probably true that not many Americans are going to, like, drown or something when Florida’s coast goes under. Maybe death tolls in the thousands (from hurricanes and such, which is already happening of course) and lots of Grapes of Wrath-style misery?

[scottagibson]

This isn’t about billionaires laughing off the end of the world because they already have an underground lair set up somewhere else.

Nobody says it is. The point is that the urgency for them is dramatically less, because climate change isn’t going to impoverish them or immiserate them or kill them. They’ll be fine, especially if they don’t do anything to fuck up their portfolio, like e.g. kill fossil fuel stocks.

[Oghier]

I mean, the real horror is probably going to happen in the third world regions where relocation is difficult.

Yep. Some whole countries will be wiped out. It’ll be a horror show. I’m just saying, the reason we can’t stop it isn’t because “billionaires are fine with climate change.”