how half of humanity could lose their homes to climate change if we do nothing
With the planet heating up in more obvious ways, new models show that up to six billion people could be stranded in zones too hostile for humans by 2100.
While scientists are warning us about how humanity may want to pick up and move to another planet if we’re still around 250 million years from now to witness a new mass extinction during the formation of the geologic sequel to Pangea, we’re already living through a crisis in which large swaths of Earth could turn uninhabitable. According to models trying to predict what would happen if we let pollution and emissions proceed at their current pace, or completely backtrack on environmental efforts and cleanup, as some reactionary politicians demand, between a third and half of humanity could end up in climate belts too hostile to support their lives by the end of the century.
Wait, hold on, what do we mean by uninhabitable? Surely we can live in deserts, that’s where we evolved 300,000 years ago, right? Hundreds of millions of people live in hot regions right now. Sure, that’s true enough. But we don’t have to routinely cope with highs of 60 °C and monstrous storms constantly trying to destroy our cities while the water reserves we rely on evaporate during lengthy droughts. Rainforests and jungles may become arid and the humidity exceed lethal wet bulb temperatures. We won’t be able to go outside during the day, water will become scarce, crops will fail, disease will spread, and political systems will destabilize in armed conflicts.
To put it simply, we evolved in a cooler, calmer world, and built our cities for that kind of planet. We’re simply not ready for what’s to come. Over half a billion people already struggle with rising temperatures, stronger storms, and weaker harvests. If we keep pumping greenhouse gases and pollution into the atmosphere, that number will rise to three billion. If we listen to the reactionary denialists among us and decide that we should ignore what our own lying eyes tell us, that number may reach six billion. Both will be worldwide humanitarian and economic catastrophes, especially in the Global South, which will bear the brunt of climate change.
In either case, it will mean a lot more migration as refugees surge northward in greater and greater numbers, supercharging far right sentiment which would, in an ironic feat of self-sabotage, push industrialized nations to spitefully roll back their green efforts, and further exacerbate the crisis as they drift towards right wing authoritarianism rife with humanitarian abuses and science denialism. If the global far right had any brains at all, or was animated by anything other than toxic, homicidal paranoia, it would push for ever more intensive controls on fossil fuel and demand we clean up our pollution because this way, there would be far fewer refugees by the 2050s.
But that’s absolutely not the case as EU diplomats like Josep Borrell compare Europe to an “idyllic garden” surrounded by a jungle that could invade this lush paradise, and that its walls may never be big enough to keep the jungle out. Not only is this a racist sentiment no matter what he mewed in an excuse for self-defense after critics had a field day, it’s also rank hypocrisy of the highest order as his “idyllic garden” invaded, colonized, and pillaged “the jungle” for centuries, installing dictators who helped them extract untold trillions worth of resources. To then complain about the Global South’s current state is like a semi-retired arsonist lamenting fire damage to his targets.
In addition, nearly half of worldwide emissions are from industrialized nations, which should also include China at this point in history. While developing nations would love to cut their carbon footprint, they don’t have the infrastructure to do so, and being the majority source of emissions is brand new to them. Between 1850 and 2011, industrial countries were responsible for nearly 80% of the world’s carbon footprint in total. This is why the Global South is pushing back against being shamed for still relying on fossil fuels and requesting help for a green transition from those who forced it to accelerate said transition in the first place, blithely ignoring centuries of warnings.
Here’s the very simple takeaway from all this. Climate change is very real and serious, global warming is driving it, and while our dumbest, most hateful, and most obstinate politicians bicker to appease the denialist braying of the worst of those among us, the planet is becoming more and more hostile to human life in more and more places. We are at a point where we have to make a choice. Do we save ourselves, or do we ignore what’s happening, accept future war, migration crises, and humanitarian disasters to then act if as we’re trying to settle an alien planet in the hothouse of 2100 because we decided to appease the most ignorant, arrogant, and spiteful people on Earth today?
See: Lenton, T.M., Xu, C. et al. (2023) Quantifying the human cost of global warming. Nat Sustain, DOI: 10.1038/s41893-023-01132-6
Yeah, agreed. Well said. It's really disappointing that something as serious as climate change has been politicized and has become an emotional topic, rather than involving common sense and rational thinking.
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https://reformthesystem.substack.com/p/transition-to-organic-farming-to-effectively-tackle-climate-change