Sucks for the people involved. But globally speaking, it may not be so bad.
Imagine tens of millions of climate refugees at the border of many different countries, and the choice is to let them in and take care of them or let them die right there. It's not a good situation to be in.
Realistically speaking, with that many people, good luck keeping them out.
I was only a kid and I remember thinking "I can't imagine that ever happening" then I look at the refugee camps in EU states (Greece particularly) and it doesn't seem so far fetched.
Trump and his wall as well.
The only real winner will be Russia: they can just absorb all the refugees from South Asia and use them to populate then-inhabitable Syberia.
Ethnic Russians are already concerned about plunging birthrates. It is not at all unusual to hear elected Russian officials talk about “the future of the white race”. Furthermore, Russians are aware that a decline in the ethnic Russian population means that the local Muslim minorities gain a correspondingly higher share of the country. Thus, the topic is already a very pressing and sensitive one, and it would be silly to suggest that Russia is open to admitting masses of Muslim (or Hindu) refugees.
I just hope nobody tells Trump these exist.
...and really how hard would it be to build one of these, the level of CV required is already solved off the shelf, the rest is sensors, servos, a gun to strap to it and programming.
I'd expect a none-trivial percentage of the HN could build one with the resources available.
Reliably detecting humans sounds hard though. This is a highly adversarial scenario, they will do anything from carrying cardboard in front of them to disguising as wildlife and vegetation. I'm not sure this is even solvable without shooting down anything that moves and is unidentified.
And that's ultimately what it would take. When you're dying of dehydration or starving to death, you aren't going to care too much about people shooting into the air.
When the alternative is living next to them, that perception might change. Time will tell.
I suggest you travel through India and you'll realize how mistaken you are, sometimes the carbon emission of a village with 100 members is less than a typical American household, specially now when LPG is rolling out even in the remotest and poorest families.
If we refuse to reduce our energy expenditures in the US because [stubborn reasons] ... would it be easier to solve global warming by just having everyone in the US migrate to existing more efficient, low-energy-per-capita economies?
That means whatever nature "does" to kill humans and balance our carbon budget would have to kill 90% of all humans to have enough of an effect. If that's the plan then just nuking the 10% of humanity with the highest carbon emissions would be more efficient and more humane.
The effect also doesn't wear off until you take the CO2 out of the atomsphere and bury/solidify it, which doesn't happen organically within reasonable (for humans) time frames.
Climate change due to population is not a simple numbers reduction game.
Putting the current immigration fiasco to shame.
Would it be a tragedy if humans went extinct?
Also, I would bet long term survival success (very long term) under various environmental changes to organisms such as water bears over humans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade
Unless we figure out cheap space travel and water production in the next few hundred years.
And it really doesn't carry quite as much weight as people apparently think it does.
As another observation, I have yet to meet anyone who uses the phrase 'playing the race card', that has a considered opinion on that subject, or indeed many others. It is indicative of a thought process constructed almost entirely from clichés.
One can have a considered opinion and still think that playing the "race card" is despicable.
Try not to be so single-minded.
And please don't pull that bogus racist card again. Race has got nothing to do with any of my comments.
Now this isn't personal to you specifically, however in regard to your query, Me first what?, I have long thought that people who advocate the benefits of depopulation by mass die-off, should generally lead by example.
Basically, although it is an unpopular vision these days, I suspect that for the amount of effort involved in having a mass die-off, we could stabilise the population somewhat and start building floating cities and space habitats. People regard this kind of thing as unrealistic, but I think it will rapidly become realistic should we even halt population growth temporarily through environmental disaster and it would be preferable to start doing it before that signal to action.
To sit on our hands and hope for our own actions to kill us off in order to save some remainder is the most fatalistic and least imaginative approach going. We might as well be deer.
In my eyes, we very much are.
If we were deer, then Malthus would have been right by now. We are fairly uniquely placed as a species to be able to avoid being this dumb.
Even with Trump as president?
He takes "dumb" to a whole new level!
Except this is a comedy sketch. Considering massive human die-offs as a solution to the climate crisis is not just inhumane it's also very unlikely to work without massive extra consequences from war and other disasters.
[1] https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/ind...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing#Price_Comp...
And it simply makes no sense to just throw away millions of years of evolution. Your nihilistic worldview is very naive.
"And it simply makes no sense to just throw away millions of years of evolution" - Why not?