Northern India seems to be the area of the map most affected by the combined factors specifically heat and water shortage. It's also, by my unscientific estimation home to hundreds of millions of people.
What...are we going to do about this? This seems like it could shape up to be a humanitarian crisis of completely incomparable proportions. Could a million people die from one heatwave at some point this century?
Whatever is in your power to do. As drastic as you can possibly handle.
Your personal impact is relevant - i.e. find a way to drive less or not at all (move closer to work, buy an e-bike), divest any investments you have in fossil fuel companies (index funds are a particularly hard one), switch your banking to a credit union (major banks fund many fossil fuel ventures).
But more important than you personal impact, is the group-impact you can have. Anything that impacts your communities choices, or economies of scale. I.e. don't just move closer to work and buy an e-bike - tell your friends about it, convince them to do it to. Then go to city council meetings and demand better cycling infrastructure. Vote and donate to political candidates who are committed to climate action - ignore the presidential race and do this at a local level where you can have a much bigger impact. Switch your home off fracked methane and onto electric, every customer the gas company loses, the worse the economies of scale are.
If you have influence or power over stuff at work, look for opportunities there - a good and simple one is pushing back against efforts to return to the office.
For everybody the actions are going to be different, maybe none of the things I listed are things you can do, that's ok as long as you figure out what the things you can do are and do them. Some people will be able to shoulder more than others. The only wrong move here is to do nothing because of despair or because it's someone else's problem to work out.
Well, any changes in sea level and habitability will be a mix of very gradual shift in tidal patterns and acute high-impact flooding events. Areas will not suddenly go from habitable to inhabitable all at once.
In the US, it is very expensive and sometimes impossible to procure insurance for areas at extreme risk of wildfire or flooding. This is essentially the private market's assessment of risk based on location. Most people will leave if they are unable to reasonably insure their homes and property. Cities at very high risk will build seawalls and flood defenses in order to protect their taxpaying base. These are acute solutions to acute impacts.
To preempt some replies, I am not denying the extreme scale of the challenge ahead and the broad impact, especially in less developed and highly dense nations. I believe it is an inevitable adjustment that societies will need to make.
What we're going to do about this is what we've done about it so far - nothing. The real question is what they're going to do about it. What would you do if the place your family lived became uninhabitable? What would stop you from moving to a more hospitable climate?
For starters we can raise awareness about the potential ecological calamity, education and awareness goes a long way. Influencing key policymakers and stakeholders is the only sustainable way to ensure change...
> What...are we going to do about this? This seems like it could shape up to be a humanitarian crisis of completely incomparable proportions
There are a lot of empty places on earth. Without looking far, just look at the midwest, Canada, Russia... There's even a whole continent that's currently frozen - Antarctica.
If temperatures rise to the point of say making Antarctica livable, it would just be fair compensation to open it for settlement to every ecological migrant.
> You can't just dump a million people somewhere after collecting them from off the street and hope for the best.
Indeed. But look at the time it takes to create new infrastructure (large building, hospitals...) in China when it's needed right now.
I believe we have the technology to make large metropolis in a matter of a few semesters. Even assuming a total lack of improvements, a few years is all it should take to tackle the emergency even if we are barely prepared and organized.
And if there's only one thing to trust, when push come to shove, humanity always accomplish miracles. Crisis unites: people forget about old feuds to care about each other.
> humanity always accomplish miracles. Crisis unites: people forget about old feuds to care about each other.
I'm not intentionally Malthusian, typically Ricardian. However, I feel there are two things being ignored
1. The pandemic response shows that individual humans don't seem to care much for humanity
2. It's within our capacity to start acting now, rather than waiting for a threshold to be crossed where most, if not all, of humanity dies off due to +6C average temps with wild swings and the wild weather, infrastructure destruction, and more that brings.
> Indeed. But look at the time it takes to create new infrastructure (large building, hospitals...) in China when it's needed right now.
These large projects definitely seems astounding if you think they started the day the first brick was laid. In reality there is a huge supply chain supporting those accomplishments, pre-determined architecture, and more. So, establishing a base on Ceres for mining? We got that in the bag. Coordinating even more than the pandemic would have required to stem the tide of accelerating temperature increases? I admit pessimism.
Your point about having pre-determined plan is very valid - although, given China experience building major infrastructure for the road and belt initiative, I think that'd be easily covered.
I think the core disagreement is on the empathy levels, and the need to act sooner rather than later.
At <1% mortality, I think the pandemic response showed we care quite a lot, enough to do many things, but not to the point of sacrificing everything we need normal just for such little lives to save. If it had been 10% or 30%, I think the conclusion would have been very different.
As for the need to start acting now, things take time! The pandemic got us a wonderful vaccine manufacturing and distribution infrastructure, based on brand new technology that drastically cut the time to production. We're lucky we got such a low mortality disease first!
I don't see why global warming would happen as a +6C overnight. If Antartica melt, change the gulf stream, it'll be bad - but not "most, if not all, of humanity dies off". Maybe 1%. Maybe 5%? In any case, enough to create a big fright and get us to prepare an adequate response for the next time!
What...are we going to do about this? This seems like it could shape up to be a humanitarian crisis of completely incomparable proportions. Could a million people die from one heatwave at some point this century?