This rhymes with https://www.gatesnotes.com/three-tough-truths-about-climate.
In fact I suspect that Gates would be dismissed as too woke for making this one of his main points:
> But we can’t cut funding for health and development—programs that help people stay resilient in the face of climate change—to do it.
> It’s time to put human welfare at the center of our climate strategies, which includes reducing the Green Premium to zero and improving agriculture and health in poor countries.
This is just rehashed Green New Deal language for the global stage. (Something I fully support!!)
Nordhous: "The amount of warming that is conceivable … is not remotely consistent with the sorts of catastrophic outcomes … where tens or hundreds of million, perhaps even billions of lives were at stake."
Gates: "Although climate change will have serious consequences — particularly for people in the poorest countries — it will not lead to humanity’s demise."my favorite was getting told we "deserved it" for being in Texas during the ice apocalypse, because Texas is a red state.
I hope that people exhibiting that kind of behavior are finally starting to question whether or not it's helpful. The article suggests that is perhaps beginning to happen.
If you want people to make sacrifices to improve the future, just maybe messaging that it's hopeless and anyone who doesn't see that is stupid isn't the best strategy for effecting real change
> for being in Texas
News flash: climate change by and large isn't about the US, and US will be one of the least impacted nations of first hand climate change effects.
Which is a small deal compared to a billion foreign migrants, which is also a possibility, but still a massive deal. You are completely correct that the first world will escape most of the direct and dire pain resulting from our irresponsible burning of the future.
I also think trying to suss out “who is going to suffer more” is basically pointless when so much of our economy is based worldwide trade and so much of our society is expecting relatively stable populations, two things that will change rapidly with a few climate shifts.
*this entire thread is getting at one thing: yes, humanity and the general summary of human knowledge will almost certainly survive the extreme chaos we are heading for. That should not be much consolation to you, because the chaos will set back the human experience 150 years for generations that include you and your children.
Especially when the chaos involves incredible strife for many nations with nuclear armament.
The bullying and name calling were intolerable. Even suggesting that the earths demise was not immediate would label you a denier and ignorant about the undeniable science behind the alarms.
It seems the tide is turning and some of the leading voices in the earth-is-cooking camp are now walking things back.
Don’t wait for an apology, though.
We've known for almost a decade now that the RCP8.5 scenarios are no longer on the table, and even that worst case scenario wasn't civilization ending.
I read Bill Gates' note as not an evolution on his view at all, it seems 100% consistent with everything he has worked for, but rather trying to place climate change in a more humanity-focused context for evaluating tradeoffs of where to put money. That's very important for governments and for wealthy philanthropists like him, and for the COP 3 audience he's talking to.
And yet, sentence from current top comment: " We're in a mass extinction."
Can you explain why you think these contradict each other?
At the rate that temperature is increasing, assuming it is not stopped, it's not a matter of will there be an extinction event within the next few hundred years, but how bad will it be.
Did you see what happened in Europe with a rather small mass migration 10/15 years ago due to Arab Spring ? People have short memories.
Can you imagine what will happen when 100 of thousands start migrating north when they can no longer feed themselves and maybe even work outside ? Italy was close to sinking boats coming across the the sea. Other countries in the EU started building walls. And even Germany took a slight right turn. Once these large migrations start, I expect bombs will be dropped. Same applies to North America.