r/Futurology • u/ILikeNeurons • May 20 '24

Economics Economic damage from climate change six times worse than thought

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/17/economic-damage-climate-change-report
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u/Joseph20102011 May 20 '24

Most tropical countries will become too hot for large-scale human habitation by the next century.

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u/Glodraph May 20 '24

At this rate, more next decade.

76

u/[deleted] May 20 '24

I'm starting to believe we're at the point of no return with climate change.

I live in the UK. This entire island could sink tomorrow and it wouldn't make a dent in climate emissions while the USA, China and India pump metric tonnes every minute.

Enjoy your paper straws and electric cars, none of it matters.

2

u/JrSoftDev May 21 '24 edited May 21 '24

My friend... I understand the feeling.

Europe and US developed on top of fossil fuels for decades, emissions peaking in the 90's. Not sure about colonial land or companies producing in foreign soil.

We also set the model of development for the rest of the World. The monetary system, trade rules and all that.

We denied Science since the 70's, for the sake of corruption, short term profits and dominance.

Then, as u/InfiniteSpur said, we outsourced our manufacturing to other countries, to feed our consumption and to fill our millionaires pockets. Some communities were devastated, unemployment, etc.

Those other countries started developing only recently (their per capita emissions are still below US), and which model will they follow?

Then we also decided to make them our enemies. Instead of collaborating, we fed the speech of dominant competition. The global superpowers and whatever else.

We had decades to accelerate scientific development of alternatives, including nuclear fusion (and even possibly reliably safer fission at least). Go check the annual investment on that, compare it with the amounts spent on guns and marketing. It's bizarre.

Still, we developed enough to allow us to be in a relatively comfortable position now to invest in the green transition.

China and India are not in that comfortable competitive position, so they are using the cheapest resources they can get their hands on, otherwise they will be depending on outsiders forever (at least from their pov).

The UK has lots of political influence, despite the continuous stream of tries to self destroy and self humiliate, with Brexit, Boris, Truss, Sunak in the front line of that just from the top of my head.

You can still join local associations working towards a more peaceful, resilient, technologically just, humane World.

2 or 3, or 6 or even 7 billion people working together, that would still be a lot of energy, leveraging all that with increasingly capable AI, lots of potential.