The best protection against global warming is global prosperity. Wealthier, healthier people are better able to deal with higher food prices, or invest in new farming techniques, or move to another city or country, than poor ones are. Richer economies rely less on agriculture, which is vulnerable to climatic change, and more on industry and services, which by and large are not. Richer people tend to work in air-conditioned buildings. Poor ones tend not to.
Richer people eat more ice cream. They drink more lemonade. Both strategies have been shown to be effective in countering the adverse effects of global warming.
14 comments:
Sure but what of obesity?
Starting my ice cream and lemonade diet tomorrow, will update.
yea seriously. why grow stuff to eat in weather-beaten conditions when you can read blogs on your ipad in an air-conditioned room instead?
if only everyone would do that, we wouldnt have so much pain and suffering...
Hell, if that's the case, why not just have all the billionaires spread their wealth around a bit, make all those poor shlubs millionaires. Bye-bye global warming!
Yes, but for different reasons.
Prosperity produces better education and, hence, better understanding of the perils of warming. Also, prosperity means more investment in the sorts of technologies it's going to take to combat industrial waste and energy source depletion, and it allows us to master more sustainable sources of energy and deal productively/recyclably with the vast amount of waste our species throws off.
The Economist rationale is ridiculous, as you so capably and pithily point out.
I think the final paragraph of the article was edited out--
7 billion people eating 2,000 calories a day, on average. Richer people eat more. Poorer ones eat less. Some experts say it is time to eat the rich to protect against global warming.
drip
"Richer economies rely less on agriculture, which is vulnerable to climatic change."
This is so true. Poor people have to grow their stupid food in the dirt; rich people, on the other hand, just crack open a passing unicorn and magical candy tumbles right out!
Prosperity, as we understand it, produces global warming. Then it produces the awareness of it and then the inevitably and necessarily ineffectual technologies and practices devised to arrest it.
Richard for the win.
@Jack - the cannibal in me thinks drip may be on to something...
One balks at human flesh eating, ai. If only drip had suggested something about the "class war fire of liberation and the flammable estates of the rich."
Holy Moses. I knew the neolibs over at The Economist were insane, but because I usually try to avoid their rag, I didn't realize just how far gone they were.
"A farmer has a crappier life than the CEO of General Electric. Ergo, the world's problems will be solved once nobody is a farmer and everybody is the CEO of General Electric. QED."
The religion of neo-liberal economics has finally reached the "Jesus Riding on a Dinosaur" point of mind-blowing absurdity.
@Richard: Pints? (i.e., re ineffectual)
Best,
Jim H.
"A farmer has a crappier life than the CEO of General Electric. Ergo, the world's problems will be solved once nobody is a farmer and everybody* is the CEO of General Electric. QED.
___
* A recent survey of influential literature confirms the planet will be better off if we decrease the surplus population, and that Christmas is a humbug."
And here I was so worried. Silly me.
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