Good news: only the poor will really suffer from global warming
Assuming that global warming really is happening, and really is caused by man, the rich will get off nearly scot free, as usual.
Ain't that great!
The reason that it truly is good news for all humanity is that, whereas we have scarcely an inkling as to how to stop global warming, and our efforts to change human behaviour so as to mitigate it show an unbroken record of failure in all aspects save that of making new pretexts for tyranny, we do now know how to end poverty.
Hell, we've done it, in the rich world. Clue's in the name.
If you are poor in the rich world, and are annoyed at me for saying this, do feel free to write in and complain. Email in, I mean, on your computer using your broadband connection or the one provided for free in a public library.
Hell, we've got halfway to doing it in great swathes of what was once the poor world. Last month I read about some Parisian hotel developer who caused outrage when he said his exclusive new hotel wouldn't be open to Chinese tourists. Then he backtracked in a hurry and said "he was referring to 'mass tourism' when he used the phrase 'Chinese tourists'." Yes, I know hundreds of millions of Chinese are still poor, but think of how far we have come when a snob thinks of the Chinese when he denigrates 'mass tourism'. Think of how far we have come when the outrage is expressed by Chinese internet users.
Hell, but hell on earth is getting less hellish by the day. There is harder evidence for this than my little anecdote above. Look up worldwide life expectancy statistics. This despite the mad folly of the economic policy of practically every government in the world. We have got so stonkingly, gobsmackingly, tingle-down-your-leggingly good at poverty reduction over the last few decades that we can even do it with socialism round our necks. Just think what we could achieve without that millstone.
We could exterminate the poor as a class. Would that not be agreeable? Quote me on that, you global warming activists who divide your time between Copenhagen and New York; I find the poor tiresome and would rather not have them around any more. I'd rather have all the Chinese, and all the Indians, and all the Africans getting rich and flying to London to take pictures of each other in front of London landmarks, in rotation if need be. It might cause a bit of global warming. Never mind, we rich folk can live with that.
posted by Natalie at 1:09 PM
