Melting glaciers may produce thousands of kilometers of new salmon habitat

leaving the caves was an individual- or tribal-level decision. in fact, many groups did not leave the caves, only some did. it’s a poor metaphor for climate change because we don’t have the option of exploring both paths simultaneously as a species in the same way our ancestors did with those caves.

cost/benefit analysis, i do agree with though. or maybe a “risk-adjusted” cost/benefit. the biggest disagreement i have is with people who think climate change is inherently bad, rather than believing specific outcomes/effects of climate change are bad. when you unpack climate change often the bad things are common across catastrophes caused by other disruptions, e.g. food/water insecurity is something we could see both from climate change or large-scale war. certain ways of thinking about the situation might lead a person to believe that addressing these effects is the way to make humanity more bulletproof, rather than trying to prevent the several distinct causes (CO2 emissions being one of them) that lead to the real problems. though it’s never an all-or-nothing, more like “reduce the causes to the point that you’re not reducing our ability to respond to the effects”. cost/benefit analysis, like you say.

This is why compartmentalizing things as "good" or "bad" is unhelpful. It's rarely so simple. Sure, there are aspects of polluting behaviours that ostensibly raise the quality of life for many people, but that doesn't mean you should ignore the long term impact of that behavior, especially if it has a provably negative impact on the planet. You have to look at the whole issue, not just the short term positives.

While I agree there seems to be a positive correlation, the argument reminds me of this classic video from the Onion:

[0] https://youtu.be/nJ4K0hHin9s "China Celebrates Status as Number One Polluter"

"The labor of the people has made the sky black with the smoke of progress... We are overjoyed."

"Cancer is a very modern disease"

"If pollution ruins a river, we will build a new river"

> There is a high correlation and probably causal relationship between increasing global pollution and improved living standards.

That would be if pollution was a global phenomenon. Climate is global and chaotic, and we only have one planet so we can't compare, but pollution levels are local are different between heavily industrialised places and times and less so places and times. I'm sure there is extensive and conclusive research that pollution is bad for your health, which is an important part of living standards.

There are two kind of things that are often lumped together:

Visible local pollution: This includes things like particulate matter in air, river pollution, dirty streets, toxic water etc. This is clearly inversely correlated with development and health and developed countries generally sorted it out better.

Global level: This mostly includes greenhouse gases etc. This is very correlated with development and health among countries. The countries with highest emission has best quality of life and they are sharing the burden with undeveloped countries.

Environmentalist solutions that would lower carbon would have no negative impact on our standards of living, and would in fact raise it.

For example we know from studies that long car commutes are terrible for your health and even dramatically rise divorce rates. With that in mind, jurisdictions with good public rapid transportation networks have higher quality of life than SF, and at the same time have less CO2 emissions due to the more efficient transportation system.

The reason for friction against environmentalism is because the low carbon solutions have been politicized into being part of the left/right culture war.

The result is inexplicable push back against dull public works that benefit everyone on top of also lowering CO2.

> There is a high correlation and probably causal relationship between increasing global pollution and improved living standards.

There is a high correlation and probably causal relationship between consuming heroin and pleasure yet you don't want to do that every day because short term positive effects don't cancel long term negative ones.

Everyone knows pollution is a long term catastrophe, us being addicted to it doesn't make it a good thing....

I don't think car smog is good for you and I don't think you need a study to prove that.

> And that an immediate action is for cities like Venice, New Orleans, and Miami to ready themselves for that.

If you really believe in what you say, now is the time to go short on housing in these (mega-expensive) cities and re-invest your incredible profits into clean energy.

Alas, nobody is actually serious about what they say, on both sides of the so-called "debate".

They already are - at least fish for consumption. About 50 percent of seafood is harvested through aquaculture: https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-aquaculture

We are using record amounts of coal globally.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/global-coal-power-expected-to-h...

The vast majority of the dams being torn down are from old mills, not hydro dams. They serve no economic purpose and are highly dangerous, in addition to preventing millions of fish from living in the rivers.

0. But it would require giving up some creature comforts.

Not as much energy as you think. The main obstacle to removing dams is getting funding. One dam locally is finally being removed 20 years after literally everyone local agreed it should be removed. 90% silted up as it is. But you have to pay for the unsafe bridge downstream before you cut open the dam. It sure would be nice to have had 20 years more sand on the beach to fight erosion.

Anyway, there are lots of little dams like this everywhere that have negative economic value, but no one wants to pay the cost to remove them.

There are 84,000 dams in the United States. More than one a day since we became a country. Most of them don't generate any meaningful electricity, but they do disrupt habitat for many native fish species.

I would like to see them all destroyed. We can find electricity elsewhere.

I think you're imagining Hoover dam getting torn down, when really it is a 6' dam built 150 years ago with no hydroelectric that is causing problems for certain habitats.

Aside from the point that most dams don't produce a ton of power, salmonid spawning in the ecosystem also adds nitrogen to banks that encourages vegetation growth, which is beneficial in many ways for both our water supply (e.g. shade helps prevent evaporative losses, trees provide beavers opportunity to build habitat to increase net groundwater storage) and for carbon sequestration via plant growth. The American west has a drought resilience problem and restoring salmon/trout/beaver habitat can be an effective way to attack the problem on several levels. Dams are particularly damaging to Salmonids, both by acting as spawning barriers AND by warming the water to a level that can make survival difficult (salmonids need cold water).

Look at dams like Oroville and Hoover now -- despite producing a lot of electricity, they are not resilient to drought, and river systems lose a lot of drought resistance when you add dams. When you dam a river, you slow and warm the water -- this threatens entire ecosystems adapted to survival where the river runs.

Particularly in salmonid / coldwater fish habitats, dams are pretty damaging. If you want to learn more about the subject, there are a lot of books & documentaries about the Eel river that are worth reading and watching -- the Eel is a good case study in what happens when you dam a river, and what happens when you un-dam it.

Some hydroelectric power plants actually have greater emissions than even coal power plants, and that's ignoring that dams are much worse for the extended local ecosystems.

The dams in the Pacific Northwest have decimated the wild salmon population. Salmon are big, meat eating fish that sustain several other animals, such as the Southern Resident orcas. This population of orcas is literally being starved by us destroying the salmon population., amongst the other challenges they face due to humans, such as poisoning and toxicity.

Most dams do not have a fish ladder from what I have seen.

I have fished every dam on the river I live on (in IL) for about a 60 mile stretch. There is 1 fish ladder I can think of. Every dam removal project gets fought tooth and nail by locals who like how they look, or fishermen who like how fish bunch up under them.

For the sake of a return.