Did someone say they were? Or was it that people in a position to exercise power or influence the outcome aren’t that motivated to sacrifice?
I don’t know, the Kochs (or, the Koch, I guess) don’t seem that bothered about it. I’m sure Bill Gates is.
KevinC
6300
Pro-flooding is one way to look at it. Another is: How does a wealthy person owning significant stake in say Exxon weigh losing value in one property versus losing tens of millions in their portfolio? How does that differ between a middle class person living in an area which will become untenable, when the sole piece of equity they have is invested in their house?
It’s loosing value in one property decades from now.
That’s actually an interesting point – if your real estate goes underwater, its value becomes essentially zero, right? So in addition to the potential for deaths and disease and all that fun stuff, you also just have billions and billions of dollars in real estate going poof, with whatever financial shock/ripples that will cause.
Oghier
6303
Which voters support serious work on climate change? Is it those most likely to be affected by it? If you polled the poorer areas of New Orleans, for example, do you suppose climate change is their number one issue when they vote?
If not, why not? My answer: People suck at weighing current costs against future risks. That’s not a rich-poor issue, but a glitch in human cognition.
There will certainly be some point at which it is impossible to secure flood / windstorm insurance in Florida, where even the federal underwriter of windstorm insurance has to say sorry you can rebuild but we won’t reinsure you against the next loss. Then housing prices will take a huge hit, since you can’t get a mortgage on a house without windstorm insurance in big parts of Florida.
I don’t think that’s it. Poor or middle-class people are worried about tomorrow, not 50 years from now. It isn’t that they don’t care about their children, it’s that their children need food today and braces tomorrow and college funding in 10 years, so that’s their focus. Rich and powerful people don’t have those concerns, but still don’t force action on climate change. Their reason is different.
It’s partly that, and IMO also partly that the Democrats and media still aren’t messaging it hard enough, but I have harped on that point sufficiently in the 2020 Election thread.
Also, I mean, the context for all of this, the elephant in the room, is that one of the major political parties in our country (backed by one of the major media outlets) still doesn’t even acknowledge the problem and is incapable of discussing it in good faith. That cannot merely be a glitch in human psychology (because as many people are unafflicted by that particular glitch), but the result of focused misinformation campaigns, political gamesmanship, and other things.
Oghier
6307
Yep. Like everything else, it’s become a tribal issue. It should be science, but it ends up mere politics. Facts have little chance in that environment.
Which is in my opinion the greatest madness in a time where madness seems plentiful.
Oghier
6309
I agree. I don’t focus on it as much as you, because I don’t think it’s fixable. In my wildest dreams, I cannot imagine the political systems of the US, China, India and other large emitters tackling this effectively and for the long term. I think that’s impossible.
Enidigm
6310
Climate change isn’t going to really matter to people until we all start suffocating from declining oxygen levels.
The only other way is Napoleon conquer the entire world and bring it under one government that can implement worldwide climate measures regardless of local concerns.
Even if you James Bond villain sat above the earth with nukes and threatened the world or else, the world would spend all their resources trying to just stop you rather than change.
There is a huge problem with population control here - basically there is no way to keep the population growing and the standard of living rising without new sources of energy. Flat out, that’s the issue. And we’re hopeless right now with population control. Because population growth is one of the most obvious forms of “selfish” or self interested behavior - note all those quotes about 30,000,000 people descended from Genghis Khan - it’s nearly impossible to convince people to restrict their self interest. It’s basically got to be coercion.
Or, y’know, the five or six most-polluting countries could send diplomats to a round table, work out an agreement, and then internally enforce it.*
Hey, a guy can dream.
*This is basically what Paris is, of course, except to its eternal shame the U.S. hasn’t participated, and enforcement has thusfar lagged.
By the way, to all offering the most pessimistic take on climate change, I don’t necessarily disagree, but I do think that pessimism can affect behavior, and there is simply not much room for it now. Even a relatively minor change in what we do today could mean the difference to tens of millions in the decades ahead.
I’m reminded of my brother who used to say he was just going to ‘enjoy the train wreck,’ borrowing a line from George Carlin apparently. Maybe having a kid makes it harder to take that attitude; one day I’ll have to confront my daughter when she asks me what I did, and I know that unless I do a lot more, my answer won’t cut it.
antlers
6313
No need to be quite so pessimistic-- population growth is not inevitable; it will level out once standards of living get high enough, as they have for all western countries. The problem is that global warming will tend to retard or even reverse the growth in standard of living for the poorer countries.
Here’s an interesting little browser game about saving a town from rising sea levels due to climate change. With link to an article about same.
Personally, I just played it in my usual SimCity style…ignore your popularity and keep proposing the logical thing over and over until it works. Which is a great game tactic but never works in real life!
Tim_N
6315
The fires on the east coast of Australia continues to burn huge amounts of NSW (up to 2.7 million hectares of total land burnt), and Sydney is continually blanketed with dangerous bushfire smoke.
It’s like a localised dress rehearsal of the real environmental apocalypse that will find each of us sometime this century. I have lived here my whole life and can only recall half a dozen or so days of bad smoke pollution which disappears the next day, I have never seen weeks of on-off hazardous air quality. Summer has only barely started as well, it’s incredible.
The rich will get all kinds of disaster tax breaks to shelter them from the cost of losing expensive real estate. They may be hurt, but not like the middle class will be hurt.
As more evidence of rising seas becomes evident, coastal properties will be in less demand and will inevitably sell for less. I’m not talking about in the next 5-10 years, but 40-50 years. I won’t be around to see it but I wouldn’t want to buy a coastal property now and live in it for the next 20 years and then will it to my heirs.
I also think the heat will play a part. I already talk to some Floridians who complain about summer heat, saying it’s nigh unbearable and they stay inside as much as possible. Is that really where you want your year round home?
