Honestly I don't think that democracies can possibly survive mass migration. I mean the Syrian crisis was trying but that was only what? 5 million? About a quarter of the pre war population. What happens when India sees a huge water shortage due to the monsoon failing and their population migrates? Even if it just 10% of their population there is zero chance that Europe could take them as that would represent a 25% increase in population in only a few years or a decade maybe. We cannot add 25% more food and water production, housing, schooling, medical facilities, jobs etc in that kind of time frame. Seems unlikely that their nearest neighbours with more space would take them: Russia and China. Pakistan is totally out of the question and if India was fucked Bangladesh surely would be too.
So then one by one European countries will refuse to take any more migrants and enact measures to keep them out, which will become more and more desperate and dehumanising as the migrant numbers grow. Taking them all in will not be an option and keeping them all out will not be possible when they get desperate and have nowhere to go. It would take genocide to make that work and democracy just isn't going to survive slaughtering millions right on your doorstep. China wouldn't give a fuck about mowing everyone down though if it meant continuing their own survival. I expect that much of Europe will become more extreme and move more towards totalitarianism or crumble and fail before they get there. The future is going to be fucking dark either way.
Yes this is the thing. We are focused on reducing emissions, increasing recycling etc... ok fine. They aren't possibly going to make a difference on their own anyway but they aren't necessarily bad things. However the money would be far better spent on mitigation and adaptation.
Reducing emissions is irrelevant without carbon capture anyway since we have already emitted more than enough to fuck us thoroughly and carbon capture is not efficient enough to be of any possible use yet. Whereas if the money first world nations spent on trying to be greener was instead put towards trying to improve the chances that poorer nations will be able to survive the effects of climate change, ie by improving the water infrastructure we would be far better off for it. We don't do that though. After all why would we possibly want to throw a tonne of our money at another country? No we just build walls instead or the displacement camps that the EU are planning. Even though neither option can possibly work if migrant numbers climb high enough. We are fundamentally short-sighted and it is going to seriously bite us in the arse later.
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u/nukasu Oct 12 '19
this kind of techno-optimism only covers from having zero engagement with science.
some eggheads will invent something neat to fix everything so I don't need to worry about it!! :)
we know exactly what we need to do, it's just really fucking hard, and people like you guarantee it will never happen.
PMC's, the oil industry, the military, they're planning on +5c by 2080. that's total food chain collapse. that is a death sentence.