Well, yes, obviously

New evidence that poorer countries will suffer the worst effects of climate change

Because, you know, they’re poor.

Poor people and poor places will always bear the brunt of the damage of anything at all. Because, you know, they’re poor.

Where this gets interesting of course is in what we do next? Do we stop economic growth so that poor people aren’t affected or do we go hell for leather for economic growth so there’s no poor to be affected? Our general activity of the past 40 years has been the second: entirely the right reaction in my view.

12 thoughts on “Well, yes, obviously”

  1. The trouble is that these people can never understand trade-offs. I was talking to someone about China and the pollution in their cities and they were moaning about it and I was like “yeah, but we had smog in London. And we didn’t leave London to go back to arable farming”.

  2. If we stop economic growth, the poor will definitely stay poor, have a shit life, die young, and may or may not still suffer some ill effects of climate change. If we grow the economy as fast as possible, the number of people in poverty will fall and life expectancy will rise, and people may or may not suffer some ill effects of climate change.
    It really is a no brainer, do you want certain poverty and an early death or a better, longer life with some possibility of some crap weather?

  3. What is this “evidence” of which they speak? The output of another model, perhaps?

    So, at best, “new predictions”, or even a rationally justifiable estimate. But, more likely, computer assisted guesswork.

  4. This point can’t be made enough.

    People with indoor air pollution could probably use some electricity and gas burners, too. Global warming is not necessarily the biggest problem.

  5. There has never been climate stasis – how did poorer Countries manage in the past?

    There is not a single climate, the Earth has multiple climates and they do not all change together in the same ways.

    There is NO indication that climate systems are changing at a rate or to a degree outside natural variation.

    But lo… satellite images do show regions of the Earth, particularly poorer Countries getting greener thanks to that extra CO2 and warmer temperatures, meaning more food can be grown. So climate change, such as it is, will make poorer Countries richer, if the loonies do not stop them by denying them access to cheap and abundant energy from fossil fuels.

  6. ‘New evidence that poorer countries will suffer the worst effects of climate change’

    Ipso facto, colonialism and imperialism are justified. It’s not about the weather; it’s about conquest.

  7. Bloke in Costa Rica

    It’s only with the idiotic discount rate that Stern used that putative bad things happening to poor people decades from now can be used to argue against the amelioration of demonstrably bad things happening to them right now.

  8. Industrialised countries can better cope with the sort of natural disasters that are supposed to be a result of Climate Change, because they’re industrialised.

    Eco-loons want to stop poorer countries industrialising and therefore growing rich in an attempt to arrest a process that may not even be in our control.

  9. Timmy’s claims for the saintliness of western firms that go abroad (or just into Mexico) to exploit cheap labour rather conflicts with Donald Trump who sees them not a selflessly levelling up the underdeveloped parts of the globe but as traitors to the workers in their own country : so he says he’s going to order the firms back. Should be interesting ( and very Ross Perot).
    Don’t expect Timmy to reconcile the contradiction: he will support Trump and the firms’ right to piss off where there’s cheap labour.

  10. Bloke in Costa Rica

    Yes, Reed, a protectionist demagogue like Trump and a libertarian globalist like Tim make natural bedfellows. Do you ever need someone to remind you to breathe?

  11. So Much For Subtlety

    Gamecock – “Ipso facto, colonialism and imperialism are justified. It’s not about the weather; it’s about conquest.”

    Colonialism and Imperialism by White Northern European countries are justified on their own terms anyway. They made the world a better place. The alternatives have been almost uniformly worse. Whether or not it is getting warmer.

    People don’t suffer because they are poor. They are poor and stupid. Which causes what is an interesting question. But the poverty is not necessarily the driver. When a massive storm hits New York, White middle class New Yorkers go out, clean up, bake each other cookies and everyone is fine. When one hits New Orleans, people start to re-enact Mad Max. The New Orleans population would have been poor if not for welfare.

    Ultimately what makes earthquakes in Haiti and Japan very different is not the wealth. It is that the Japanese are Japanese and the Haitians are Haitians.

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