The New Normal - Beyond Doom

[tom p]

In the UK at least, you've also got the steady transfer of wealth from young to old, through things like student loans, the housing market, pensions policy and of course our new NI increase. This is clearly unsustainable and will have to be rebalanced somehow at some point, but I can't think of a gentle way of doing it.

That's what inflation does. it makes savings (what the old have) and debt (what the young have) worth less.
For a year or two high inflation will be a pain, thereafter it's a boon. Sadly, if the old people have their savings in multiple houses, then that reduces the rebalancing effect

[El Pollo Diablo]

or an analysis of how wonderfully forensic Starmer is at PMQs.

Honestly, so forensic.

[lpm]

A prospering world long failed to help Haiti lift itself out of poverty. Haiti is a failed state. Failed states stay poor regardless of the economic condition of the outside world. WIthout security, there is nothing. Anyone with money will have it extracted from them, one way or another. Hardly anyone makes investments in such conditions, because they know it is so hard to retain the fruits of them.

I agree that there are attempts especially in the US and UK to make politics a matter of identity. It works in the same way as in Northern Ireland - the two sides mostly vote for Sinn Fein and DUP, because those are the parties that represent the identity of the two sides. But neither can be described as centrist. The centre was hollowed out. And actually most people are really centrist, but don't really have anyone to vote for. How was it that the DUP stole the identity from the centrist UUP, and SF stole the identity from the centrist SDLP?

I would argue that the issue of abuse etc here is driven by the hollowing out of the traditional centre right. Places in Europe, which is where we might find the healthy democracies, have centre rights presiding over states with rather more to a lot more redistribution and social service funding than Britain. OK, so the Swedish welfare state isn't quite as generous as it used to be, after some centre right governments replaced the long-standing centre left ones. But it is still chalk to Britain's cheese. The centre rightists in healthy democracies are not small state rightists, arguing to keep the poor deprived.

The question, as in Northern Ireland, is, how have the small state rightists, who destroy inclusive society, stolen the conservative identity from the centre rightists who represented an inclusive state which is necessarily a bigger state? Do all the people voting for the small state rightists really look at the US and think, that's the kind of country I'd like to live in? Or have they somehow been dragged to support something they wouldn't really want if they understood it?

Fair point about Haiti. But there's a strong contrast with Dominican Republic, which was basically a US-imposed right wing government until evolving to a more modern democracy with centre left often beating centre right at elections. This right wing government did nothing for the poor but supported the entrepreneurial rich - leading fifty years later to a prospering country with respectable education and healthcare for the poor. Lifting people out of poverty is often the result of policies that initially don't give a sh.t about poverty.

To channel what small state rightists would say, is the increase in food banks really as a result of aiming to keep the poor deprived? Or is it a side effect of the global economic crash and now the pandemic? It's not obvious what the best path to reducing food bank use in 2030 is - redirect resources to benefits now, or redirect resources to infrastructure investment, or redirect resources to entrepreneurial start ups? Millions of voters are basically believers in Thatcherism and bootstrap pulling, and that's not (usually) because they want to see the poor using food banks. There's a clear message from economies across the world that increasing the prosperity of an economy will also reduce poverty long term.

There's also the issue of ageing populations. I don't think it's a coincidence that social democracies thrived 1945-1970s in the UK and across Europe, with a young population effortlessly supporting the ill and old, but there's been a rolling back of redistribution in 2000-2020. The balance has changed and we are facing far greater redistribution being necessary today in order to achieve the redistribution effects of the past.

But it's far easier to blame Tory scum. I mean I enjoy that as much as anyone. However that doesn't really illuminate why centre right parties are being hollowed out, leaving small state rightists more room to argue that low-tax low-benefits is the path to a nation's economic success. And it stops us from examining the actual reasons why it's so hard to buy a house and why there is student debt and why the elderly have all the houses - because we revert to tribalism instead of recognising the severity of the underlying demographics and economics.

And when it comes to climate, stop burning oil, coal and gas only works as a campaigning message. Get real and you immediately hit the problem that poorer people like having cars and electricity and heating, and they like having it cheap.

[Orabona]

if we abolished the top 10% globally the climate crisis would be solved: that's how much they emit. (How this could be achieved is left as an exercise to the reader, but large numbers of angry disenfranchised young people may or may not be relevant).

A look at history will show both how it could be achieved and the likely consequences.

Too right, I'd rather have rising sea levels than end up like France.

Be careful of what you wish for. "La République n'a pas besoin de savants ni de chimistes; le cours de la justice ne peut être suspendu." ("The Republic needs neither scholars nor chemists; the course of justice cannot be delayed.)"

[tom p]

A look at history will show both how it could be achieved and the likely consequences.

Too right, I'd rather have rising sea levels than end up like France.

Be careful of what you wish for. "La République n'a pas besoin de savants ni de chimistes; le cours de la justice ne peut être suspendu." ("The Republic needs neither scholars nor chemists; the course of justice cannot be delayed.)"

Pretty sure Tim was referring for France 2022, rather than France 1794

[IvanV]

ut there's a strong contrast with Dominican Republic, which was basically a US-imposed right wing government until evolving to a more modern democracy with centre left often beating centre right at elections. This right wing government did nothing for the poor but supported the entrepreneurial rich - leading fifty years later to a prospering country with respectable education and healthcare for the poor. Lifting people out of poverty is often the result of policies that initially don't give a sh.t about poverty.

If you don't have stablity and security, you have nothing. Like Haiti. No one invests, because their return will be taken from them. A firm dictatorship replacing chaos can enable investment and a degree of growth in wealth, because investors can see a return. First the dictator has to share wealth with that network of people who are helping them maintain control Then people participating in the economic activities that growth the wealth of the rulers will want a share of what they produce, or they won't do it. So you get another trickledown. DR is at that stage.

We can look at Mao's China and see Mao keeping all resources in the centre, and actively preventing any economic activity outside of his control and extraction. So Mao only went through the first stage, keeping nearly everyone very poor. The early decades of the Soviet Union were similar, especially once Stalin moved in. Mao and Stalin felt that loosening up was a threat to their personal dictatorships. They were right, too. Later rulers have carried out the second stage, allowing more wealth creation and hence more trickledown. A lot is extracted to the centre, but it was a much less personal dictatorship. Later in post-Soviet Russia, and modern China, we have seen personal dictatorships re-established above the trickled-down crony capitalism model.

But these economic arrangements are still organised in the interest of rulers, and they still prevent the level of economic freedom that would lead to European/US levels of wealth, because that involves interest groups not controlled by the centre enriching themselves, and thus presenting a possible threat to authoritarian rule.

[Bird on a Fire]

For example there's no such thing as natural disasters, they are always poverty disasters. When a hurricane hits New Orleans it's the poorest who die. A hurricane hitting Haiti makes a million people homeless and with cholera, if it hits Dominican Republic then the damage can be absorbed. Which means it's always a valid argument to say that economic development should be the priority. Make a country richer and you reduce natural disasters, even if climate change is creating more natural disasters. A prospering world can lift Haiti out of poverty faster than a world beset by economic stagnation - as demonstrated by the way economic and technological development in the west has led to the basic elimination of extreme poverty everywhere except Africa.

I'm not sure it's that simple. Recent years have seen hundreds die in fires in California, Australia, Greece and Portugal, and hundreds in floods Germany and Belgium. I've not seen much suggestion that casualties have been limited to people in poverty.

Fires and floods also do immense economic damage, of course. Some of the big ones have been estimated at upwards of $10 billion - which suggests rich people are also affected. These kinds of things will depress the local economy for years, along with the trauma and maiming and death.

So at some point, the cost of climate change will outweigh whatever economic gains can be made in the shorter term. A few metres of sea level rise would do it. In individual countries' calculations they need to be considering the risk of damage to major metropoles. It'll be an interesting test of the resilience wealth affords us when tropical storms start making landfall in Europe. Lisbon had a near miss with Alpha a couple of years ago.

But long-term economic growth doesn't matter much if you need to eat today, or your house burned down yesterday.

Climate policy doesn't happen in a vacuum away from all other policies. There has to be a balance between investing resources in heat pumps and investing in fibre broadband, or between building high speed rail and building social housing. We all accept these trade offs in reality, no matter our rhetoric - I've not seen anyone hear argue that we should rip out all gas central heating boilers by 2025, instead there's an acceptance that we go for more economically efficient wins in the short term and allow ourselves a longer timeframe for more costly switch overs. "I was intending to keep discussion to environmental matters and ignore poverty" simply doesn't work as a way to discuss doom.

I know it doesn't happen in a vacuum, as the many many threads on climate policy I've started over the years will attest. I'm not really sure what you're talking about. Are you seriously advocating for "ignore emissions, focus on long-term economic growth and hope that enough wealth trickles down to mitigate the impacts of global heating" as a policy?

Doom comes before policy. Doom is the certainty that humans have made the climate and natural environment more hostile, in ways that will be disruptive and unpleasant. If we choose to do anything about it, and what that might be, are separate questions. Faith that adequate policy responses were underway would obviously ameliorate that sense of doom, as might the knowledge that gains in reducing poverty can continue.

But we don't really have a long time-frame left. We are burning through the carbon budget for 1.5°C very, very fast. In terms of "fair shares", that's 3 years' worth for the UK, or 9 for an average country. To get to zero.

Even on the couple of pages of this thread we've got claims that "the right"/capitalists/the enemy are "degenerate c.nts" who are actively working for climate destruction, plus basically an expectation that a bl..dy civil war is going to be needed to sort all this out. Come back to reason for god's sake.

You've conflated various claims, there. We've been discussing hard evidence that the fossil fuel industry are actively working for climate destruction, by suppressing evidence, lying about it, and lobbying for increased emissions despite knowing the consequences. Decades of successive governments have, in the round, let them get away with it. If the term "degenerate c.nts" is too spicy for you, feel free to substitute "naughty boys" or "nice but sadly misguided individuals" or something.

You are the only person who's mentioned the right. Climate failure is very much a bipartisan problem. And I've tried also been pretty specific about referring to fossil capitalists specifically.

You've kind of gone off on one here, I fear.

It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future. In the past month alone we've all got our predictions about Omicron significantly wrong and that should make us pause for thought. One minute we're calling people we disagree with us on pandemic policy Nazi murderers, the next minute their policy is proved OK (even if more by luck than judgement). But does that make us add a grain of caution to our predictions? No, because that would be surrendering to our evil tribal enemies. We're not all that different from people so committed to Trumpism that they'll risk Covid unvaccinated rather than give an inch to the enemy side.

I'm not making any predictions myself - I'm relying on those of academic experts in the climate. They've been pretty well on the money so far (slightly underestimating the responses in certain systems, but not bad). The earth system is much better understood than a novel strain of a novel zoonosis so that shouldn't be too surprising.

I don't really know what you mean by "giving an inch to the other side". Where exactly are people wanting tougher action on climate change not compromising? From where I'm sitting it looks like they've compromised so much they haven't actually achieved anything yet.

Real advances come from patient political compromises, involving lengthy negotiations and genuine listening to opposing viewpoints, eventually muddling through to an imperfect step forward. That's not happening in the current political landscape. The "you can f.ck right off" approach works nicely if you want attention on twitter or social reinforcement from the tribe on a forum; it works really badly in addressing genuine problems that require a bit of nuance.

The first IPCC meeting was in 1988, before I was born. They've been trying everything you say for a lifetime, and emissions have increased year on year throughout that time except for a minor dip during a global pandemic.

Given the 9 years of 1.5°C's budget left, how many of them should we spend waiting for a big breakthrough in these negotiations? We've seen over the last couple of years that an acute crisis won't focus minds either. From where, exactly, am I supposed to be drawing faith in this process?

[Fishnut]

I've mentioned it briefly before but there's a book called Dull Disasters which is well worth reading. Its central thesis is that there's a difference between 'extreme natural events' and 'natural disasters'. Extreme natural events are the floods and droughts and fires and volcanoes and earthquakes and so on that we may be able to predict to a greater or lesser extent but cannot prevent. But it says they only turn into natural disasters when they are allowed to though poor infrastructure and lack of planning. The authors note that politicians get far more political capital from responding to a disaster than they ever do from preventative work. Likewise, charities get far more donations in the wake of a disaster than they do for work designed to prevent or mitigate their effects. This is despite the fact that, as is so common, prevention is better than cure and far more cost effective.

The book ends with the following summary:

1. Discretionary begging-bowl financing does not work well for disasters. It is too slow, leads to a fragmented response, and encourages underinvestment in risk reduction and preparedness.

2. To get around this problem, generous people and their political leaders should own up to and clarify who or what they will protect and against what and how much others will have to pay. They should be willing to think as if they are an insurance company.

3. This means making trade-offs over who or what to protect before disasters. This process is not easy, but it is necessary for a system with good incentives.

4. Leaders should focus on providing protection, not relief, and using financial incentives to encourage others to own up to and finance their share up front.

5. The international humanitarian system is still needed, but it should act as a back-up when plans fail. It should not be the first line of defence for floods, earthquakes, droughts, storms, or pandemics.

[lpm]

BoaF, come on, you know you can't be so binary about this.

It's not 100% focus on emissions. It's not 100% "ignore emissions, focus on long-term economic growth and hope that enough wealth trickles down to mitigate the impacts of global heating". It somewhere on the spectrum.

We've got to be prepared to sit down with the people who think it should be 40% emissions and 60% protection of the economy, and listen and talk and compromise them up to 60% emissions and 40% protection of the economy. You'll come away disappointed but that's the mess that human beings always land up in. And you try again tomorrow.

Over excited tribalism and abuse and demanding 100% otherwise it's violent civil war just isn't going to get us anywhere.

[Bird on a Fire]

You start off demanding 100% because you're prepared to compromise. If you start off asking for what you need you'll never get it.

As for abuse, I profoundly apologise to any fossil fuel execs, lobbyists, financiers or corrupt politicians reading this thread for any slight on your character. It's only your actions I disagree with, and I'm of course willing to compromise with you instead of all these huge victories the environmental movement keeps getting at your expense.

[lpm]

I don't think we should put you in charge of negotiations.

It's not considered good negotiating strategy to start off demanding 100%, unless you are a pantomime character on The Apprentice who crashes and burns to the amusement of us all.

To quote a great genius in the opening post of this thread:

It's no longer pass-fail (save the world or not), it's clawing back points after ending a scrappy first half in danger of relegation. There's no big goal, so every small victory is important.

Keep with this approach - claw back a point today, try for another tomorrow, because expecting the magic wins is going to leave you depressed.

[Millennie Al]

So at some point, the cost of climate change will outweigh whatever economic gains can be made in the shorter term. A few metres of sea level rise would do it.

Except worrying about that is foolish. According to the IPCC, "a rise of more than 1 metre over the next century is unlikely". By the time a few metres has occurred, technology and society will have changed so much that any planning we do now would be totally useless. Imagine people in 1920 worrying about what would happen today. Their idea of what effects would occur and what we could do would be wildly unrealistic. To give you a perspective, horses were widely used in World War I, and zeppelins were seen as a major form of future transport. A bit earlier, but not hugely, there was the Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894 in which the Times warned "In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.".

Given the 9 years of 1.5°C's budget left, how many of them should we spend waiting for a big breakthrough in these negotiations? We've seen over the last couple of years that an acute crisis won't focus minds either. From where, exactly, am I supposed to be drawing faith in this process?

None of them. It is absurd to think that the world is going to meet that target - especially with places like China burning large quantities of coal. We should plan for change rather than seek to avoid it, because it's inevitable.

[Millennie Al]

As for being childless, it's worth pointing out that climate anxiety is putting off about 40% of young people from having kids https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ate-crisis (plus it keeps your carbon footprint finite)

That story is about a poll conducted by Avaaz which is an organisation dedicated to campaigning on issues such as climate change. Even with the most scrupulously unbiased researchers, data obtained by asking people for their opinion is mostly worthless. Surveys done by or for those with a cause to support are completely worthless.

[Woodchopper]

As for being childless, it's worth pointing out that climate anxiety is putting off about 40% of young people from having kids https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ate-crisis (plus it keeps your carbon footprint finite)

That story is about a poll conducted by Avaaz which is an organisation dedicated to campaigning on issues such as climate change.

The survey was funded by Avaaz but carried out by academics. You can read about it here: https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.p ... INDEX=TRUE

Even with the most scrupulously unbiased researchers, data obtained by asking people for their opinion is mostly worthless. Surveys done by or for those with a cause to support are completely worthless.

I disagree in general.

But the methods of the survey show that it’s a self-selected sample (you can read them on page 3 & 4, for some reason copy and paste isn’t working on my phone). Basically young people who had signed up to be members of panels run by Kantar (a marketing consultancy) were invited to take part in the survey, about 15000 did so but about a third didn’t complete it.

This means that one cannot simply assume that the survey respondents resemble a normalised sample of the population. A limitation which is acknowledged in the paper. Or to put it another way, the people who completed the survey may have had different views to their peers.

[Bird on a Fire]

I don't think we should put you in charge of negotiations.

It's not considered good negotiating strategy to start off demanding 100%, unless you are a pantomime character on The Apprentice who crashes and burns to the amusement of us all.

To quote a great genius in the opening post of this thread:

It's no longer pass-fail (save the world or not), it's clawing back points after ending a scrappy first half in danger of relegation. There's no big goal, so every small victory is important.

Keep with this approach - claw back a point today, try for another tomorrow, because expecting the magic wins is going to leave you depressed.

I guess. Sometimes I find it hard to care about small wins if we've basically lost anyway. Pissing in the wind.

I've been doing environment stuff for 12 years and all the optimism I started with has been ground out of me. There's a big part of me that would much rather just work in a rum shack on a beach or something.

[Woodchopper]

For example there's no such thing as natural disasters, they are always poverty disasters. When a hurricane hits New Orleans it's the poorest who die. A hurricane hitting Haiti makes a million people homeless and with cholera, if it hits Dominican Republic then the damage can be absorbed. Which means it's always a valid argument to say that economic development should be the priority. Make a country richer and you reduce natural disasters, even if climate change is creating more natural disasters. A prospering world can lift Haiti out of poverty faster than a world beset by economic stagnation - as demonstrated by the way economic and technological development in the west has led to the basic elimination of extreme poverty everywhere except Africa.

I'm not sure it's that simple. Recent years have seen hundreds die in fires in California, Australia, Greece and Portugal, and hundreds in floods Germany and Belgium. I've not seen much suggestion that casualties have been limited to people in poverty.

Fires and floods also do immense economic damage, of course. Some of the big ones have been estimated at upwards of $10 billion - which suggests rich people are also affected. These kinds of things will depress the local economy for years, along with the trauma and maiming and death.

So at some point, the cost of climate change will outweigh whatever economic gains can be made in the shorter term. A few metres of sea level rise would do it. In individual countries' calculations they need to be considering the risk of damage to major metropoles. It'll be an interesting test of the resilience wealth affords us when tropical storms start making landfall in Europe. Lisbon had a near miss with Alpha a couple of years ago.

But long-term economic growth doesn't matter much if you need to eat today, or your house burned down yesterday.

Climate policy doesn't happen in a vacuum away from all other policies. There has to be a balance between investing resources in heat pumps and investing in fibre broadband, or between building high speed rail and building social housing. We all accept these trade offs in reality, no matter our rhetoric - I've not seen anyone hear argue that we should rip out all gas central heating boilers by 2025, instead there's an acceptance that we go for more economically efficient wins in the short term and allow ourselves a longer timeframe for more costly switch overs. "I was intending to keep discussion to environmental matters and ignore poverty" simply doesn't work as a way to discuss doom.

I know it doesn't happen in a vacuum, as the many many threads on climate policy I've started over the years will attest. I'm not really sure what you're talking about. Are you seriously advocating for "ignore emissions, focus on long-term economic growth and hope that enough wealth trickles down to mitigate the impacts of global heating" as a policy?

Doom comes before policy. Doom is the certainty that humans have made the climate and natural environment more hostile, in ways that will be disruptive and unpleasant. If we choose to do anything about it, and what that might be, are separate questions. Faith that adequate policy responses were underway would obviously ameliorate that sense of doom, as might the knowledge that gains in reducing poverty can continue.

But we don't really have a long time-frame left. We are burning through the carbon budget for 1.5°C very, very fast. In terms of "fair shares", that's 3 years' worth for the UK, or 9 for an average country. To get to zero.

Even on the couple of pages of this thread we've got claims that "the right"/capitalists/the enemy are "degenerate c.nts" who are actively working for climate destruction, plus basically an expectation that a bl..dy civil war is going to be needed to sort all this out. Come back to reason for god's sake.

You've conflated various claims, there. We've been discussing hard evidence that the fossil fuel industry are actively working for climate destruction, by suppressing evidence, lying about it, and lobbying for increased emissions despite knowing the consequences. Decades of successive governments have, in the round, let them get away with it. If the term "degenerate c.nts" is too spicy for you, feel free to substitute "naughty boys" or "nice but sadly misguided individuals" or something.

You are the only person who's mentioned the right. Climate failure is very much a bipartisan problem. And I've tried also been pretty specific about referring to fossil capitalists specifically.

You've kind of gone off on one here, I fear.

It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future. In the past month alone we've all got our predictions about Omicron significantly wrong and that should make us pause for thought. One minute we're calling people we disagree with us on pandemic policy Nazi murderers, the next minute their policy is proved OK (even if more by luck than judgement). But does that make us add a grain of caution to our predictions? No, because that would be surrendering to our evil tribal enemies. We're not all that different from people so committed to Trumpism that they'll risk Covid unvaccinated rather than give an inch to the enemy side.

I'm not making any predictions myself - I'm relying on those of academic experts in the climate. They've been pretty well on the money so far (slightly underestimating the responses in certain systems, but not bad). The earth system is much better understood than a novel strain of a novel zoonosis so that shouldn't be too surprising.

I don't really know what you mean by "giving an inch to the other side". Where exactly are people wanting tougher action on climate change not compromising? From where I'm sitting it looks like they've compromised so much they haven't actually achieved anything yet.

Real advances come from patient political compromises, involving lengthy negotiations and genuine listening to opposing viewpoints, eventually muddling through to an imperfect step forward. That's not happening in the current political landscape. The "you can f.ck right off" approach works nicely if you want attention on twitter or social reinforcement from the tribe on a forum; it works really badly in addressing genuine problems that require a bit of nuance.

The first IPCC meeting was in 1988, before I was born. They've been trying everything you say for a lifetime, and emissions have increased year on year throughout that time except for a minor dip during a global pandemic.

Given the 9 years of 1.5°C's budget left, how many of them should we spend waiting for a big breakthrough in these negotiations? We've seen over the last couple of years that an acute crisis won't focus minds either. From where, exactly, am I supposed to be drawing faith in this process?

I don't have time to do a fisk on your post, but as far as I recall any prediction that in my lifetime climate change will result in economic collapse or mass starvation are way beyond what I recall reading in the IPCC reports and other modelling produced by scientists.

For example, you mention "a few meters of sea level rise", but as far as I remember that isn't predicted to happen for a couple of centuries. Likewise, a 10 billion cost of a natural disaster is minute compared to US or EU GDP ( circa $24 000 billion and €17 000 billion respectively). Projections of agricultural production are complex, with some areas and crops having decreased production and others improving.

I'm entirely in favour of limiting carbon emissions as IMHO global warming will cause irreparable damage and the costs of dealing with it will be far greater then preventing it in the first place.

But predictions of doom really need a few links to reputable sources.

[monkey]

The 2018 California wildfires (a busy year, IRC) cost the economy $148 billion, or about 1.5% of California's GDP, according to this study - clicky The figure of $10 bllion seems to come only from physical damages.

[Woodchopper]

The 2018 California wildfires (a busy year, IRC) cost the economy $148 billion, or about 1.5% of California's GDP, according to this study - clicky The figure of $10 bllion seems to come only from physical damages.

Thanks, that's a significant figure. That said, California's GDP grew by 4% in the year of the fires and 3.5% the year after, so they don't appear to have had much effect upon overall economic performance in the state.

[Bird on a Fire]

I don't have time to do a fisk on your post, but as far as I recall any prediction that in my lifetime climate change will result in economic collapse or mass starvation are way beyond what I recall reading in the IPCC reports and other modelling produced by scientists.

For example, you mention "a few meters of sea level rise", but as far as I remember that isn't predicted to happen for a couple of centuries. Likewise, a 10 billion cost of a natural disaster is minute compared to US or EU GDP ( circa $24 000 billion and €17 000 billion respectively). Projections of agricultural production are complex, with some areas and crops having decreased production and others improving.

I'm entirely in favour of limiting carbon emissions as IMHO global warming will cause irreparable damage and the costs of dealing with it will be far greater then preventing it in the first place.

But predictions of doom really need a few links to reputable sources.

2m by 2100 is well within the 95% CIs of the high-emissions scenario of AR6. That's within the lifespan of infrastructure being built and kids being born today, so I don't think it's too far off to be worth thinking about. See e.g. https://www.carbonbrief.org/in-depth-qa ... te-science

I agree it's not the likeliest outcome, but then my point was to illustrate an extreme-but-plausible scenario wherein the costs of emissions would outweight shorter-term economic growth. Which I think most of us agree on.

Even 30cm, which is plausible by mid-century, means c.1m people displaced in Bangladesh alone. The biggest challenge in adaptation will be getting used to resettling people in their millions, because people at the moment really don't like refugees.

[Bird on a Fire]

As for economic impacts, WG2's part of AR6 isn't out yet - but hopefully in a few weeks. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assess ... -group-ii/

They've got a lot more data to go on now. It'll be an important read.

[discovolante]

I don't have time to do a fisk on your post, but as far as I recall any prediction that in my lifetime climate change will result in economic collapse or mass starvation are way beyond what I recall reading in the IPCC reports and other modelling produced by scientists.

For example, you mention "a few meters of sea level rise", but as far as I remember that isn't predicted to happen for a couple of centuries. Likewise, a 10 billion cost of a natural disaster is minute compared to US or EU GDP ( circa $24 000 billion and €17 000 billion respectively). Projections of agricultural production are complex, with some areas and crops having decreased production and others improving.

I'm entirely in favour of limiting carbon emissions as IMHO global warming will cause irreparable damage and the costs of dealing with it will be far greater then preventing it in the first place.

But predictions of doom really need a few links to reputable sources.

2m by 2100 is well within the 95% CIs of the high-emissions scenario of AR6. That's within the lifespan of infrastructure being built and kids being born today, so I don't think it's too far off to be worth thinking about. See e.g. https://www.carbonbrief.org/in-depth-qa ... te-science

I agree it's not the likeliest outcome, but then my point was to illustrate an extreme-but-plausible scenario wherein the costs of emissions would outweight shorter-term economic growth. Which I think most of us agree on.

Even 30cm, which is plausible by mid-century, means c.1m people displaced in Bangladesh alone. The biggest challenge in adaptation will be getting used to resettling people in their millions, because people at the moment really don't like refugees.

Don't have a lot to add at the moment but maybe also worth noting that at the moment there isn't any internationally recognized legal definition of a climate refugee, in the sense of legal obligations; the UN definition doesn't really cover that scenario. Obviously that isn't particularly relevant for internal displacement but still. The UNHCR doesn't endorse the term 'climate refugee' - link here with a bit of commentary at the bottom https://www.unhcr.org/uk/climate-change ... sters.html

[Bird on a Fire]

Don't have a lot to add at the moment but maybe also worth noting that at the moment there isn't any internationally recognized legal definition of a climate refugee, in the sense of legal obligations; the UN definition doesn't really cover that scenario. Obviously that isn't particularly relevant for internal displacement but still. The UNHCR doesn't endorse the term 'climate refugee' - link here with a bit of commentary at the bottom https://www.unhcr.org/uk/climate-change ... sters.html

Thanks. That was my vague understanding, that a "refugee" is specifically someone displaced by ±political factors.

Do people displaced by natural disasters have any special rights under current laws, or are they expected to go back eventually? Because that expectation may not be realistic in cases of desertification, erosion etc.

[WFJ]

Don't have a lot to add at the moment but maybe also worth noting that at the moment there isn't any internationally recognized legal definition of a climate refugee, in the sense of legal obligations; the UN definition doesn't really cover that scenario. Obviously that isn't particularly relevant for internal displacement but still. The UNHCR doesn't endorse the term 'climate refugee' - link here with a bit of commentary at the bottom https://www.unhcr.org/uk/climate-change ... sters.html

Thanks. That was my vague understanding, that a "refugee" is specifically someone displaced by ±political factors.

Do people displaced by natural disasters have any special rights under current laws, or are they expected to go back eventually? Because that expectation may not be realistic in cases of desertification, erosion etc.

Isn't the distinction that refugees have to cross a border. Rightly or wrongly it's currently the responsibility of states to deal with people whose homes are uninhabitable within their own borders.

[Bird on a Fire]

That makes sense, yes.

[Woodchopper]

Don't have a lot to add at the moment but maybe also worth noting that at the moment there isn't any internationally recognized legal definition of a climate refugee, in the sense of legal obligations; the UN definition doesn't really cover that scenario. Obviously that isn't particularly relevant for internal displacement but still. The UNHCR doesn't endorse the term 'climate refugee' - link here with a bit of commentary at the bottom https://www.unhcr.org/uk/climate-change ... sters.html

Thanks. That was my vague understanding, that a "refugee" is specifically someone displaced by ±political factors.

Do people displaced by natural disasters have any special rights under current laws, or are they expected to go back eventually? Because that expectation may not be realistic in cases of desertification, erosion etc.

Isn't the distinction that refugees have to cross a border. Rightly or wrongly it's currently the responsibility of states to deal with people whose homes are uninhabitable within their own borders.

I don’t think that’s correct. International law (eg the 1951 Refugee Convention) defines a refugee as someone who is fleeing persecution.

People who are fleeing natural disasters are known as ‘displaced persons’. There isn’t a legal obligation to help them, though many states do for humanitarian motives. One reason for the lack of international law is that it has hitherto been very rare for people to be forced to travel abroad to escape a natural disaster. The volcano that destroyed much of Montserrat is one example, but I can’t think of others. As mentioned upthread, modern famines are best understood as cases of persecution rather than solely being natural disasters.