The article makes the impression, that this security threats caused by climate change are somewhat new to gov bodies. As this is not true, the risks for political and societal stability and security have been very well researched in depth in the respective scientific disciplines since the Club of Rome firstly broad this topic to the larger public attention in 1972. But the contradicting forces are not long-term perspectives but short term gains on the political agenda, which makes it much harder to lobby for solutions against threats, which will happen "only" in 5 to 10 years in the future.
That doesn't mean that efforts to suppress awareness and subsequently action against climate change isn't being done to this very day. Some of it is done by governments (such as mentioned here, or with the EPA dismantling in the US), some by hostile governments (e.g. Russia funding a lot of the Western far-right parties that all run on climate change denial), some by fossil fuel companies (e.g. BP creating the "CO2 footprint" to individualize responsibility), and the rest by utterly braindead clown individuals (we used to call them "village idiots") that, thanks to the Internet, now have a global audience.
In the US I feel we have entered the stage beyond trying to suppress awareness. Not that the government is being honest about it, but they also aren't really trying to hide it. They've just moved to not directly talking about it, and since our mainstream media is fully captured nobody is pushing them to talk about it. We've moved from trying to downplay the impact to just announcing what we plan to do about it as the impacts continue to manifest into reality.
We're going to continue down the path of fossil fuels (we have no intention of trying to lessen the severity at the cost of economic growth, number MUST GO UP) and we're going to attempt to take countries (Greenland, Canada) that "benefit" from the changes (at least in terms of having more livable/arable land). Migrants trying to enter the US to escape the catastrophes in their own countries will be thrown into concentration camps or worse. Large parts of the US will be impacted, of course, but those are sacrifices they're willing to make (and, hey... large scale displacement is good for the GDP!). Better double check your insurance policies.
Almost all of Trump 2.0's actions to date make a sort of sociopathic sense if you assume the various groups pulling his strings have accepted that large impacts from severe climate change are coming soon and have just decided to YOLO it.
The population of the UK or Europe did not explode in the last hundred years. It did not even double.
The population used to be more rural and relatively self sufficient in terms of food. There is actually enough land in Europe to feed everybody, especially considering the great progress we made scientifically.
You can actually sustain yourself on a few hundred square meters of land and you won't get fat and be healthier (in your body and mind).
The great migration of the local population to the city to get a good factory or a bank job is over I believe. But the country side is still empty.
The reason is it is hard to make the jump first and ending up in the middle of nowhere living with a few old people.
Also your politicians hate independent people so they are not gonna encourage it. They would rather keep you in a constant guilty state about their vision of "climate change" while letting you board a 10 GBP Ryanair flight for a week-end city trip or order useless things on Temu.
For Europe and many other places, the solution to a more sustainable future is actually quite straightforward.
Europe’s big problem is the hindered of millions of climate refugees on the doorstep. Even the most open heart liberal will baulk at the population doubling or more in 20 years. The only ones promising a solution will be the neofeudalists
But Europe also have to stop believing they can solve the world problems and act on a global scale. This time is long gone, about at least a hundred year.
Every region, culture will need to find a path to sustainability in their own way. If the path they take is invading another region, it leads to war. Like it has been for thousands of years.
Spaniard there, from rural background. Self-suficient... you wish. Post civil war even oranges were a luxury, something to be give as a present in Christmas. Any autharchic attemp, be left or right, just produced famines and misery.
> The great migration of the local population to the city to get a good factory or a bank job is over I believe. But the country side is still empty.
My major belief/bet is that young professionals that work in front of the computer all day will figure out that living in a very expensive city doesn’t make much sense and there are a ton of cheap rural houses in the beautiful countryside and we’ll have a reverse migration for young, educated white collars. Right now it’s just a trending topic for youtubers, but most people, especially Gen-Z existing in an economic limbo, have not caught on.
At least that’s my plan because it makes so much economic sense, I have had enough of city life and I am too old to care about urban amenities vs quality of life.
I think the fundamental problem is the conflict between climate, family and live-style vs corporate interest and economic growth.
Ideally, we should want populations that are either not growing or slowly shrinking, but we can't have this because multi-national corporations don't want to invest in countries with a declining consumer base. We must therefore sustain population growth indefinitely.
Similar humans would presumably prefer more space – perhaps a home with a few bedrooms and a decent sized garden where they can grow a little food and the kids and play in the summer. But we can't have this because it's more economically productive if we increase population density such that people increasingly live in small flats within high-rise buildings with no gardens and little natural light.
And I get it, money is nice... People will trade a lot of things for more money, but the government ideally should not encourage this.
Ideally the government should be encouraging people to have a home with a garden. To have a couple of kids. To grow some of their own food. To work in their local community, and therefore obtain an education which will help them to be productive members of their community – rather than say taking a punt at studying journalism at university and hoping they'll get a job in some city 200 miles from home and their family.
Just speaking personally, the city I grew up in in the UK has become hell to live in over the last couple of decades. It's almost impossible to drive around today because of densification which has taken place. All of the local fields that I played on as a kid have been turned into cheap flats which has transformed the semi-rural area I used to live into an ugly anti-human concrete jungle. And because of the number of people now living around here no one seems to know anyone anymore – I walk outside my house and it feels like there's random people everywhere, and I've noticed many people around me don't even seem to speak English anymore.
It's such a strange thing we are doing... It really makes no sense for us to want to live like this.
> your politicians hate independent people so they are not gonna encourage it
Your politicians are actually subsidising the rural lifestyle with direct and indirect transfers. Eg in Europe, you can buy land, leave it more or less abandoned and cash in agricultural subsidies.
Moving from the current situation to the situation you describe is impossible, because the UK has far too much debt and far too small an annual government income to pay for even the popular kinds of infrastructure spending, let alone the degrowth proposition you articulate. The millionaires really do take their assets and leave if taxes are raised and a Mossad-style international program to repatriate them in duffel bags would see the government that initiated it both out of power permanently and in cells themselves.
The UK is consistently amongst the lowest household expenditure on food in the entire world. Only 3 countries in the world are self sufficient in food. If this "reasonable worst-case" scenario happens, surely the UK is one of the better placed to deal with it?
"The climate", not decades of political mismanagement, has led the UK to its current predicament... In the specific case of immigration the article touches, inexistent border controls and welfare programs and incentives for "refugees" who cross several safe countries to get to England have a lot more impact then the days getting hotter.
> If collapse happens, it notes the UK does not have the ability to absorb global shocks through higher domestic output. It lacks enough land to feed its population or rear livestock to maintain current consumption patterns and price levels.
Yet they're pushing to use farmland for solar farms and social housing.
There's a real hatred of farmers among the UK Leftist/Green crowd.
59 comments
> or with the EPA dismantling in the US
In the US I feel we have entered the stage beyond trying to suppress awareness. Not that the government is being honest about it, but they also aren't really trying to hide it. They've just moved to not directly talking about it, and since our mainstream media is fully captured nobody is pushing them to talk about it. We've moved from trying to downplay the impact to just announcing what we plan to do about it as the impacts continue to manifest into reality.
We're going to continue down the path of fossil fuels (we have no intention of trying to lessen the severity at the cost of economic growth, number MUST GO UP) and we're going to attempt to take countries (Greenland, Canada) that "benefit" from the changes (at least in terms of having more livable/arable land). Migrants trying to enter the US to escape the catastrophes in their own countries will be thrown into concentration camps or worse. Large parts of the US will be impacted, of course, but those are sacrifices they're willing to make (and, hey... large scale displacement is good for the GDP!). Better double check your insurance policies.
Almost all of Trump 2.0's actions to date make a sort of sociopathic sense if you assume the various groups pulling his strings have accepted that large impacts from severe climate change are coming soon and have just decided to YOLO it.
The population of the UK or Europe did not explode in the last hundred years. It did not even double.
The population used to be more rural and relatively self sufficient in terms of food. There is actually enough land in Europe to feed everybody, especially considering the great progress we made scientifically. You can actually sustain yourself on a few hundred square meters of land and you won't get fat and be healthier (in your body and mind).
The great migration of the local population to the city to get a good factory or a bank job is over I believe. But the country side is still empty.
The reason is it is hard to make the jump first and ending up in the middle of nowhere living with a few old people. Also your politicians hate independent people so they are not gonna encourage it. They would rather keep you in a constant guilty state about their vision of "climate change" while letting you board a 10 GBP Ryanair flight for a week-end city trip or order useless things on Temu.
For Europe and many other places, the solution to a more sustainable future is actually quite straightforward.
Every region, culture will need to find a path to sustainability in their own way. If the path they take is invading another region, it leads to war. Like it has been for thousands of years.
> Disconnect, splinter and prepare for war?
But this is what we are doing anyway...
I am just trying to articulate a path where can have better food security and sustainability.
No liberal would want millions of people coming from Afghanistan, for example.
But when it’s the best part of a billion people - at a rate of 4:1, that’s a different question.
> The great migration of the local population to the city to get a good factory or a bank job is over I believe. But the country side is still empty.
My major belief/bet is that young professionals that work in front of the computer all day will figure out that living in a very expensive city doesn’t make much sense and there are a ton of cheap rural houses in the beautiful countryside and we’ll have a reverse migration for young, educated white collars. Right now it’s just a trending topic for youtubers, but most people, especially Gen-Z existing in an economic limbo, have not caught on.
At least that’s my plan because it makes so much economic sense, I have had enough of city life and I am too old to care about urban amenities vs quality of life.
Ideally, we should want populations that are either not growing or slowly shrinking, but we can't have this because multi-national corporations don't want to invest in countries with a declining consumer base. We must therefore sustain population growth indefinitely.
Similar humans would presumably prefer more space – perhaps a home with a few bedrooms and a decent sized garden where they can grow a little food and the kids and play in the summer. But we can't have this because it's more economically productive if we increase population density such that people increasingly live in small flats within high-rise buildings with no gardens and little natural light.
And I get it, money is nice... People will trade a lot of things for more money, but the government ideally should not encourage this.
Ideally the government should be encouraging people to have a home with a garden. To have a couple of kids. To grow some of their own food. To work in their local community, and therefore obtain an education which will help them to be productive members of their community – rather than say taking a punt at studying journalism at university and hoping they'll get a job in some city 200 miles from home and their family.
Just speaking personally, the city I grew up in in the UK has become hell to live in over the last couple of decades. It's almost impossible to drive around today because of densification which has taken place. All of the local fields that I played on as a kid have been turned into cheap flats which has transformed the semi-rural area I used to live into an ugly anti-human concrete jungle. And because of the number of people now living around here no one seems to know anyone anymore – I walk outside my house and it feels like there's random people everywhere, and I've noticed many people around me don't even seem to speak English anymore.
It's such a strange thing we are doing... It really makes no sense for us to want to live like this.
> your politicians hate independent people so they are not gonna encourage it
Your politicians are actually subsidising the rural lifestyle with direct and indirect transfers. Eg in Europe, you can buy land, leave it more or less abandoned and cash in agricultural subsidies.
> If collapse happens, it notes the UK does not have the ability to absorb global shocks through higher domestic output. It lacks enough land to feed its population or rear livestock to maintain current consumption patterns and price levels.
Yet they're pushing to use farmland for solar farms and social housing.
There's a real hatred of farmers among the UK Leftist/Green crowd.