this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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Spoiler alert: The civilization disrupting aspects of climate change are still decades out and the rich countries will probably be fine.
They'll be fine because they can afford the infrastructure projects and increased costs of energy and food.
Now Africa, South America, the poorer Asian countries, tiny Pacific Island nations... Oh boy. I would not want to be a citizen there in 20 or 30 years.
Eventually sea level rise will become a really big fucking problem, like for every single coastal city in the world, even the rich ones. Luckily none of us will be around to see that unless some sort of miraculous life extension technology becomes available.
On the one hand I don't like mentioning this because it gives the right wing ammunition to ignore climate change. But on the other hand some people have such existential dread about it that it's damaging their mental health, they are really overestimating how damaging it will be in their lifetime in their rich country they live in.
Rule 1 of life: be skeptical when someone presents their opinion as facts.
Looking at Western European countries like Germany, the Netherlands and the UK to an extent, the road to net-zero is disrupting. Probably because necessary steps have been delayed until the last moment. Large numbers of refugees have a destabilising effect on democracy as well.
Some steps that are necessary for net-zero are expensive investments (like heat pumps) that are causing conflicts in society. Going ahead with it as well as delaying is sure to be met with very loud resistance. Don't think that Germany can miss it's climate goals without some serious protests, perhaps worse than they've ever seen.
At the same time, I wonder how well UK households are going to deal with even higher food prices as the percentage of failed harvests increases. There isn't a lot of buffer space here.
It's not so much whether rich countries have enough money to deal with climate change, but rather how well democracy will fare when it's under duress.
If we're going to electrify everything we need nuclear power plants.
The federal government should be dumping tens of billions of dollars into modular nuclear plants that can be built in a factory and then shipped places.