My point is that while it's trivially true that poors are more exposed to natural disasters, it's also true that the increased risk due to climate change is only a very marginal increase in their baseline misery. Their misery is not caused by climate change, climate change is only slightly aggravating a situation that is already terrible. When you insist on the fact that "the poors are paying the price" you give the impression that our pollution (let's use the term) and their misery balance- but this is false- most of their misery is indipendent from our polluting.
Now, the idea that we should be fine with marginally increasing the misery of third world countries is morally wrong. But at the same time it is absurd that we insist on that as a reason to reduce or stop climate change in a timeframe of decades, when much smaller efforts could be made to cancel that baseline misery, with much higher improvement in the life conditions than that we'd obtain by tackling climate change. Even more so when the interventions that would cancel that baseline misery are major infrastructural works (building of dams, canals, roads, hospitals) improvement in agriculture (mechanisation, chemical fertilisers) and societal changes (industrialisation) that would imply an increase in emissions of co2 in the environment.
> Unless you are a CEO of a major fossil fuel company you are not the problem.
I totally disagree with this. Fossil fuel companies just provide us with what we need to live as we do. At the moment we don't really have a choice if we want to keep our standards of living. You might be thinking of a parallel with tobacco companies, but that case is quite different as tobacco doesn't bring any additional benefits to smokers. While everything around you, including everything that makes your life safe and comfortable- from the giant infrastructural work that shielded you from natural disasters, to the hospitals, machines and medicines that save your life if you're ill, to the food you eat and the cultural and entertainment products you buy, has been built and maintained by burning fossil fuels. You cannot keep all this for granted and blame the CEOs of the companies that extract that fuel for all the damage it causes.
> you can’t just point to silly clickbaity articles to prove your point. First of all, their point may be valid...
My point is that there is an uncanny overlapping with traditional, pre-climate change narratives of the left, and many of our major concerns with the consequences of climate change. There is also a curious blind spot in the proposed solutions, that again matches the pre-existing aversions of the left: no nuclear energy, no major infrastructural works, no mechanisation or industrialisation. The only proposed solutions seem to be proposals that long pre-existed the climate change issue: our own rejection of capitalism and our de-industrialisation. Have a look at the lede of this Wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_politics
and check how the description of the ideology of a political party born in Germany in the late 70s perfectly fits all our current concerns and solutions to the scientific and technical issue of an increase in global average temperatures due to CO2 emissions.
It’s funny, I totally agree with you there, and the following paragraph. The poor should not be paying the price of the climate crisis. Many on the left—including me—are of the believe that economic disparity of the poor is part of the same problem that is causing the climate crisis. We want the rich to pay the price. I am very much for poorer areas of the world getting the infrastructure they so desperately need to make all of our lives better (and the rich should pay for it).
Note though that I don’t say that poorer countries are paying the price, but the poor in general are affected to a greater degree. I consider my self very much a victim of the climate crisis even though I live in one of the wealthiest city in the world, but I acknowledge that the effects of the climate disaster will affect the homeless population in my city to a greater degree.
Let’s talk about the scale of the climate crisis. I think you realize how dire the situation is, it is not a matter of saving the economy any more and keeping our lifestyles, we literally can’t afford it. There is already so much carbon in the atmosphere that our climate is changing into a more inhospitable one. We are already loosing massive amount of species to extinction. We can’t afford to wait for a technical solution, we must act now. And the only solution that we know of—which has been proven to work before (apart from nuclear energy which we are too late to convert to)—is laws and regulation. And who do we regulate? We regulate the producers. It is on the polluters to stop producing stuff that does so much harm to our shared lives.
Aside: Now Lets talk about the word “polluters”. I’m using the word “polluters” in the context of climate change. You know fair well which pollution I’m talking about, there is no need to spin the debate. I use the word polluters because it has a just strong negative connotation. “Greenhouse gas emitters” doesn’t cut it the same way. Polluters deserve to be called on what kind of people they are and the harm they are doing.
Aside 2: When I say “polluters” and “means of pollution” I’m specifically talking about major polluters and industrial level means of pollution respectively (that one is on me, I wasn’t clear enough). Unless you are a CEO of a major fossil fuel company you are not the problem. You might even drive those giant pickup trucks on city streets, take 15 air trips a year and eat a meal of meat 14 times a week. You are still not the problem, the people who sold you the truck, persuaded you to take these air trips, and subsidized you meat are.
Now to the problem of climate justice being out of touch with reality—which is now the main point of this debate–you can’t just point to silly clickbaity articles to prove your point. First of all, their point may be valid even though their headlines look silly, just because a rhetoric is cliché, it doesn’t make it wrong. Secondly, even if all or most of them are wrong, that still doesn’t disprove the point that ethical issues are closely tight to the climate disaster. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
The reality is that the climate disaster is being caused by a handful of criminally negligent people, and the harm they are causing affects people other then them self. Mentioning this fact does in no way shy away from the reality of the situation, hiding it does.