You say mass relocation like it's a vacation to the French Riviera.
Within developed countries, climate change will be costly but not particularly deadly. A few more heat exhaustion deaths, a few fewer cold-related deaths, and it all balances it. If anything, climate change will be good for mortality in developed countries, because cold kills a whole lot more people than heat now. Remediating the effects of climate change will be very expensive, on the other hand, and I buy the equation that throwing away money is throwing away lives, but let's leave that aside for now.
The big issue is in developing countries. All of them are exceptionally vulnerable to climate change, since they're nearer the equator; all of them have severely resource-constrained economies; all of them have less stable political cultures and are more likely to go to war with nearby neighbors; most of them have megalopolises built in areas susceptible to climate change. Mass relocation just simply isn't in the cards for them.
Dhaka is a couple meters above sea level on average: what happens when the sea level rises by a meter? I remind you that it's a city of around 20 million people, and the rich tend to live in higher elevations than the poorest, densest areas. Where do they go? Does Bangladesh go through a massive infrastructure project to build Netherlands-scale dikes? Who pays for it? Donald Trump? Or maybe the USA and Europe open their doors to millions of Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh alone?
Dhaka is an extreme case, but this story replays itself all over. And there are other factors to account for: increase malaria prevalence by 10% and you've killed 50k/year. These things add up. And of course you can say, "well, sure, but you can use money to save these lives!" But if we're utterly unwilling to bear any costs of our pollution now, why would we be willing to in 2100? Our grandchildren might fairly say, well, it was our asshole grandparents who selfishly shat all over the world, why should we have to suffer exceptionally for it?
>Our grandchildren might fairly say, well, it was our asshole grandparents who selfishly shat all over the world, why should we have to suffer exceptionally for it?
You know, we young folks are right here. We are already suffering and already angry. We already want the maximum preventative and ameliorative efforts taken.
Within developed countries, climate change will be costly but not particularly deadly. A few more heat exhaustion deaths, a few fewer cold-related deaths, and it all balances it. If anything, climate change will be good for mortality in developed countries, because cold kills a whole lot more people than heat now. Remediating the effects of climate change will be very expensive, on the other hand, and I buy the equation that throwing away money is throwing away lives, but let's leave that aside for now.
The big issue is in developing countries. All of them are exceptionally vulnerable to climate change, since they're nearer the equator; all of them have severely resource-constrained economies; all of them have less stable political cultures and are more likely to go to war with nearby neighbors; most of them have megalopolises built in areas susceptible to climate change. Mass relocation just simply isn't in the cards for them.
Dhaka is a couple meters above sea level on average: what happens when the sea level rises by a meter? I remind you that it's a city of around 20 million people, and the rich tend to live in higher elevations than the poorest, densest areas. Where do they go? Does Bangladesh go through a massive infrastructure project to build Netherlands-scale dikes? Who pays for it? Donald Trump? Or maybe the USA and Europe open their doors to millions of Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh alone?
Dhaka is an extreme case, but this story replays itself all over. And there are other factors to account for: increase malaria prevalence by 10% and you've killed 50k/year. These things add up. And of course you can say, "well, sure, but you can use money to save these lives!" But if we're utterly unwilling to bear any costs of our pollution now, why would we be willing to in 2100? Our grandchildren might fairly say, well, it was our asshole grandparents who selfishly shat all over the world, why should we have to suffer exceptionally for it?