I’m sure that’s heart warming consolation to Asian and African people dying of thirst in outta control heat, as their crops fail, and energy prices soar due to wars and Gods whims. But hey, economic figures have improved and GDP is up, and gosh, even if we can’t get it where it’s needed, we can grow the heck outta corn.
As we discussed back on AF, global poverty - especially in the developing world - has also fallen markedly over the last few decades as Asia and Africa have continued developing. Rising GDP in these nations has overwhelmingly led to fewer and fewer people living in extreme poverty, as the economy has moved people from subsistence farming.
The ironic thing is that the factors that give rise to rising carbon emissions are also the things that alleviate poverty and reduce population growth in developing nations. Which is why decarbonizing is such a thorny problem, because significantly impeding economic growth has such a negative consequence not just (or not even primarily) for the world’s wealthy, but for the world’s poorest. And the world just doesn’t have a lot of institutional mechanisms available to remedy that through transfers - the only thing that has been shown to make a dent in global poverty rates is letting the poorest nations have access to the globalized economy and develop.
CherrypickinDB2 is at it again. That light ain’t the end of the tunnel; it’s a train headed right at the worlds overpopulated hungry people.
Global food inflation to worsen further as India weighs wheat export curbs
To safeguard domestic supplies amid a heatwave-fuelled shortage, the government is considering limiting wheat exports Wheat-importing nations have looked to India for supplies after the Ukraine war upended trade flows out of the key breadbasket region
Beware of cherrypicking misdirection.
ByPratik Parija and Shruti Srivastava May 4, 2022, 4:13 AM PDTUpdated onMay 4, 2022, 11:22 AM PDT
India is considering restricting wheat exports as severe heat waves have damaged crops, exacerbating tight global supplies after the war in Ukraine sent food inflation soaring.
The South Asian nation experienced its hottest March on record, shriveling the wheat crop that the world was relying on to alleviate a global shortage. To safeguard domestic supplies, the government is considering limiting wheat exports, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
The ironic thing is that the factors that give rise to rising carbon emissions are also the things that alleviate poverty and reduce population growth in developing nations. Which is why decarbonizing is such a thorny problem,
factors? Ironic? Thorny? We had to destroy the village to try to save it?
factors? Ironic? Thorny? We had to destroy the village to try to save it?
It’s a difficult question because the positive results that come from industrialization and economic development are so enormous, even for the very poorest of society. It’s not at all like destroying a village to try to save it - it’s like giving desperately poor people a job and an income that’s higher than absolute poverty, which not only saves them from a lifetime of absolute misery but also reduces population growth - but at the cost of having carbon emissions go up.
The “right” answer to fighting population growth and climate change and poverty is to allow the large, poor countries of the world (notably India and China) to continue to have access to the globalized economy so they can engage in economic development, and to let them have access to cheap sources of energy. But to make the western developed economies pay for that cheaper source of energy so that it can be cleaner - either directly by transfers of wealth to subsidize cleaner energy sources, or indirectly by forcing our domestic industries to have even higher levels of carbon reduction than the developing ones. Because most of the carbon emissions we have to stop aren’t present emissions from the wealthy countries, but future emissions from the poor ones.
The reason we can’t implement that “right” answer (well, one of many reasons) is that there is no mechanism at all to make those transfer payments. In theory, it’s easy - just go to all the wealthy voters of the developed world and tell them they have to pay money so that kids in India and China will be better off than their parents were. In practice, that is never going to happen.
So we have to choose between perpetuating the immiseration of the global poor, or letting carbon emissions continue to rise. The folks running those poorer nations know full well what the right choice is for them - and that the best way to fight population growth is to get people off subsistence farms (where having more children is economically advantageous) and get them into schools and working in urban settings in non-ag jobs (where having more children is often economically disadvantageous).
That’s why it’s a ‘thorny’ problem with difficult ‘factors’ - and nothing like burning a village to save it.
which not only saves them from a lifetime of absolute misery but also reduces population growth - but at the cost of having carbon emissions go up…So we have to choose between perpetuating the immiseration of the global poor, or letting carbon emissions continue to rise.
Rising carbon emissions/pollution/global warming exacerbates the plight of the poor…not so much the wealthy.
It’s a catch-22. Rising carbon emissions reduces the plight of some poor regions, but continues to contribute to pollution and global warming, which disproportionately harms the poor.
The only way to stop the catch 22 is to reduce carbon emissions, and mount a full court press of birth control programs and education.
Anything less is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
albaby: " the only thing that has been shown to make a dent in global poverty rates is letting the poorest nations have access to the globalized economy and develop."
You keep missing or ignoring the big picture.
If providing food and goods to an overpopulated planet is destroying the environment, everybody loses; poor, middle and rich.
Earth's oceans are feeling the wrath of human-induced climate change. Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising and reefs are dying – and now, according to a new study published in Science Advances, the sea is losing its memory altogether
If providing food and goods to an overpopulated planet is destroying the environment, everybody loses; poor, middle and rich.
I’m neither missing nor ignoring it. I just think you’re wrong about it in two key ways.
The first is the ironic part: providing food and goods to an overpopulated planet has terrible negative consequences, but doing so reduces population growth. We’re not like bacteria in a petri dish - we respond to abundance by having fewer offspring, not more. The richer a society, the fewer kids it has - once it gets rich enough, fertility rates drop below replacement. So as ironic as it may be, the long-term solution to overpopulation appears to be economic development, not austerity.
The second is that your conclusion about everyone losing is simply wrong. The environment isn’t being destroyed. It’s certainly being damaged, and by quite a lot - but even under the most extreme projections, the environment remains quite capable of sustaining human life and society. As I mentioned in our thread on the other board, even under the hottest scenario under the IPCC report, human welfare increases as time goes by. Poverty is lower, and hunger is lower - humans are going to be, on average, in a better place in 2100 than they are today, even in a hotter world. The people of China and India are vastly better off because their nations have undergone massive economic development, even though the world is warmer because of it. That is almost certainly going to remain true - they will be vastly better off if their nations continue economic development, even though their economic development will be the deciding factor in pushing us into a still even warmer world.
India is considering restricting wheat exports as severe heat waves have damaged crops, exacerbating tight global supplies after the war in Ukraine sent food inflation soaring.
India will still have a surplus for export next year, less than this year but more than the year before.
www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest…
India emerged as a key supplier of wheat in February-March after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stalled most of the supplies from the Black Sea region. The Indian government in February also projected wheat output at a record 111.3 million mt for MY 2022-23 (April-March). Banking on likely record production, markets were expecting Indian wheat exports to reach an all-time high of 11 million-12 million mt in MY 2022-23…
Wheat output in MY 2022-23 is now seen at around 105 million-106 million mt…India typically consumes around 98 million-100 million mt/year of wheat…India exported around 7.85 million mt wheat in MY 2021-22, almost tripling from 2.1 million mt the year before.
The second is that your conclusion about everyone losing is simply wrong. The environment isn’t being destroyed. It’s certainly being damaged, and by quite a lot - but even under the most extreme projections, the environment remains quite capable of sustaining human life and society.
Your optimism is just optimism, Casey Jones.
With each ecological disaster you can respond, "but we grew more corn…we just need to produce more energy to process sewage water to grow more corn.’
There is no way to prove you wrong until you are proven wrong.
“the environment remains quite capable of sustaining human life and society”
Nah… not if you destroy it, and mankind is certainly destroying it. Go ahead and point to Malthus’ error again if that comforts you, but it doesn’t change the reality that economic success that results from growth is also increasing the pace of environmental destruction.
As I mentioned in our thread on the other board, even under the hottest scenario under the IPCC report, human welfare increases as time goes by
Human welfare continues to be your default justification for accelerating environmental degradation.
Canaries in the coalmine, Albaby. Canaries in the coalmine.
The problem is not global climate change, it is global human population infestation. As India, Sub-Saharan Africa, China, and Central Asia (notably Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) add another 2 billion people to the planet in the next twenty years