I must be the only one in the world who thinks that climate change, despite being a big issue, will be resolved if it ever harms (rich) humans in any meaningful way.
I think once the rubber meets the road we'll resolve and completely reverse climate change. That being said I might be too confident in our species' engineering ability.
Rich humans will be the ones for whom it'll be most easy to avoid the consequences of climate change for a long time. By the time rich people really start suffering we'll probably be way past the point of no return.
Actually it's poor people who suffer both short and long term consequences the most. To tell you the truth I wouldn't even notice if my electricity bill went up by 20% because of switching to renewables, as I don't know how much it is usually.
Seems like this relies on tons of big assumptions. Like that climate change will negatively impact rich people in power in a reasonable timeline.
Rich people may even benefit from climate change in the short term, since during an economic downturn they can move their assets around, take risks, buy cheaper labor, etc, while everyone else is scrambling.
No chance. Once the most cloistered people in our world are materially impacted, it will be far too late to mount any kind of response. It might already be too late.
Rich people will mainly be impacted by the forced migration of climate refugees from impacted countries. Will they be allowed to emigrate from regions beset by flooding (coastal areas), drought (inland areas), and the resulting crop failures?
We could engineer out global warming, but that's just one part of climate change. It might need to be an all-of-the-above type response, including decarbonization, negative emissions, geoengineering and adaptation.
Well, I think there already some geoengineering solutions that —- if worst comes to worst —- look like they might be effective in combating climate change albeit at the cost of unknown and potentially serious side effects.
I definitely think the US will pull the trigger on stratosphere aerosol injection and other geoengineering technologies before letting Miami go underwater.
You could compare with how rich countries handled the pandemic, and then consider that the pandemic was relatively easy with new vaccine candidates almost immediately ready for testing.
Also compare with how we handle various natural disasters. What is California doing about wildfires? The rich people in Malibu still lose their homes.
How about preparing for drought? What is Houston doing about hurricanes? Is Texas ready for the next winter storm?
Rich people will handle this with their own disaster preparation (sometimes) and moving if necessary.
While encouraging to think that some people will have the power to reverse climate change, it will be too late.
We can't wait for the negative effects to reach rich people.
I think once the rubber meets the road we'll resolve and completely reverse climate change. That being said I might be too confident in our species' engineering ability.