[pseudobry]

An enlightening book I read on this topic is "False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet" by Bjorn Lomborg.

The book explores the cost of: doing nothing to fight climate change vs doing everything to fight climate change vs doing something in the middle that optimizes global GDP (the book uses GDP as a "human welfare" metric).

My biggest take away from the book is that regardless of global temperature increases through the end of the century, global GDP is still projected to grow A TON. But because of the temperature increase, global GCP will grow _slightly_ less (like a few % less) that it otherwise would have. The wrong policies could cost GDP growth more than the temperature increase will.

[klyrs]

If we wipe out the poorest 50% of the population, they hold less than 1% of the wealth. Is GDP right metric?

[pseudobry]

Annual GDP of a country != the current sum total net worth of its population. Deleting the poorest half of the US population would destroy the annual GDP, which is built on the labor of said population. Theoretically, as the GDP of a nation grows, so does the quality of life of its population through better access to everything money can buy. It kinda doesn't matter how many billionaires there are if the rest of the population is still able to buy air conditioners, health care, sturdier houses, pay taxes, and generally afford the things that make the climate the least of their worries, as there are super diminishing returns on quality of life past a certain income level (all other arguments against billionaires are outside the scope of this comment).

Developed countries are quite well equipped (as in they're rich enough) to be able to adapt to the changing climate as needed. They can buy air conditioners, build dikes, choose not to build houses in areas prone to climate disaster, etc., all if which is insanely cheaper than attempting to reduce global temperature (though that's not an argument against any attempt to reduce global temperature). Making under-developed countries richer allows them to stop doing the "worser" things that aggravate climate change and make their populations unhealthy (like burning wood for a lot of their energy needs).

(This comment is just an elaboration on the arguments in the book I mentioned—not me being an expert.)

[bArray]

As @pseudobry mentions: 'the book uses GDP as a "human welfare" metric'.

I don't think anybody here (even the author of the book presumably) is suggesting that they are cause and effect, but they do appear to be correlated.

Also just because 50% have 1% of the wealth, doesn't mean they don't contribute towards the wealth of the other 50% of people holding 99% of the wealth. For example, your boss gets the majority of the profit, but they couldn't run the company by themselves.

[Desti314]

We already know that climate change will apparently not affect rich people alot.

Probably somehow very few on hn.

Sooo we should probably even stop talking about it I assume?

Anyway you are aware of people/scientist saying things like 'much earlier than expected '?

We still don't know if the current scenarios will hold.

There should be a general sense that sustainability should benefit all of us.

Investing in long term topics should benefit us all as well.

[rdtwo]

So honest question of Rich people are 90% of the economy and climate change won’t impact them much then is a huge climate change cost really a possibility?

[pstuart]

An interesting review of your enlightening book: https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/a-closer-examin....

He's a political scientist, not a climate scientist but he seems to be working backwards from the agenda of "climate change is a liberal hoax" vs "we have a serious problem and need serious solutions to it".

I'd read it if I felt like there's valid knowledge to glean (i.e., ok, so what are the best thing to do) but not to put money in a denier's pocket.

[pseudobry]

I mostly found the book enlightening because it was a calm, rational voice amidst the constant stream of the-world-is-ending-by-fire/water/drought/heat/cold news that my tech bubble sends my way.

I didn't find anything in the book about liberal hoaxes. Rather I found the author to be diligently addressing a topic they find to be quite serious. Their argument is not against climate change (they very much acknowledge we have to address it), but against what they view to be ineffective (i.e. very costly, not gonna do much to affect temperature rise) policies.

A good portion of the book is dedicated to the author's ideas for more effective ways to deal with climate change in the long run, like pumping a lot more money into R&D, looking into nuclear more, helping developing nations shed climate-aggravating technologies faster, drafting local "adapt to the climate" policies, etc. The author is in favor of a carbon tax. Another idea explored is how making the right growth-promoting improvements in developing countries during the next 20 years could enable them to deal with climate change better over the subsequent 50 years (vs short-term growth-slowing policies that might look great during elections, but don't do much to move the needle by 2100).

I read the article you linked and found it hard to interpret it as anything other than a hit piece with an almost hysterical focus on painting the book and its author in the most negative light possible. It was quite a contrast from the book where the author makes their criticisms in the vein of "I think we can do better".

[pseudobry]

Question for the crowd: I read HN often but rarely comment, so I'm curious what I did wrong in my comment to merit the downvotes.

I was initially excited to see someone asking a question about a topic that I had _just_ read a book on (I also discussed the book for a few hours in a book group). It seemed like sharing that was a goodwill thing to do.