I'm in Japan. It's a pretty nice country. We now have horrendous flooding in western Japan recurring annually. We have red sand blowing in from China. And we have rice shortages and ridiculous prices that are seriously affecting food availability for everyone, but especially the elderly and the poor. In part the shortages are caused by government policies, but also to a great degree by rising temperatures and changes in the seasons. Oh, and fishermen are catching fewer fish. Two points: (i) Don't tell people living here these aren't crises. (ii) Ocean carbon removal is not going to work soon enough to address these problems for people living now.
I still can’t call it a crisis- it is slow moving and the world will adapt. The more people in marginal 3rd world conditions develop the less it will affect them, and that development makes everyone better off.
But I completely agree that the inexpensive carbon control mechanisms are key, because nobody is going to pay for the super fancy stuff unless it can be productized.
Unfortunately, you are eloquently right on target. Where are the great religions that claim to speak for the poor at global scale? While I fully agree with your diagnosis that ocean carbon removal at very low cost is critical, it is a shame that it may be the only answer.
"If you survive by farming ... sorghum and the variety you have ... will shrivel up and die at 43°, then climate change is life and death to you."
--Unless it's feasible to raise another staple crop that can tolerate higher temperature.
I might have more concern re third-world mortality if I hadn't been given to understand that the world's human population has been rising steadily for many decades, mainly because of high birthrates in the third world.
I think this is exactly what Adam Smith was getting at. People far away, who seem like they belong to a wholly different world, people who we don't know and won't meet, well, they seem less than human somehow. We don't think about them in the same kind of way we think about people nearer to us, because we don't feel about them the way we feel about people nearer to us. Somehow, it becomes socially acceptable to talk about them in the kind of brutal, dehumanizing terms you use here, William, precisely of the distance.
It's...regrettable. But also probably inalterable.
I'm in Japan. It's a pretty nice country. We now have horrendous flooding in western Japan recurring annually. We have red sand blowing in from China. And we have rice shortages and ridiculous prices that are seriously affecting food availability for everyone, but especially the elderly and the poor. In part the shortages are caused by government policies, but also to a great degree by rising temperatures and changes in the seasons. Oh, and fishermen are catching fewer fish. Two points: (i) Don't tell people living here these aren't crises. (ii) Ocean carbon removal is not going to work soon enough to address these problems for people living now.
I still can’t call it a crisis- it is slow moving and the world will adapt. The more people in marginal 3rd world conditions develop the less it will affect them, and that development makes everyone better off.
But I completely agree that the inexpensive carbon control mechanisms are key, because nobody is going to pay for the super fancy stuff unless it can be productized.
Unfortunately, you are eloquently right on target. Where are the great religions that claim to speak for the poor at global scale? While I fully agree with your diagnosis that ocean carbon removal at very low cost is critical, it is a shame that it may be the only answer.
"If you survive by farming ... sorghum and the variety you have ... will shrivel up and die at 43°, then climate change is life and death to you."
--Unless it's feasible to raise another staple crop that can tolerate higher temperature.
I might have more concern re third-world mortality if I hadn't been given to understand that the world's human population has been rising steadily for many decades, mainly because of high birthrates in the third world.
I think this is exactly what Adam Smith was getting at. People far away, who seem like they belong to a wholly different world, people who we don't know and won't meet, well, they seem less than human somehow. We don't think about them in the same kind of way we think about people nearer to us, because we don't feel about them the way we feel about people nearer to us. Somehow, it becomes socially acceptable to talk about them in the kind of brutal, dehumanizing terms you use here, William, precisely of the distance.
It's...regrettable. But also probably inalterable.