The world is inherently unequal and unfair. We’re all born in different bodies with varying abilities and in different circumstances. The world we’re born into is one with scarce resources that cannot ever match our infinite desires. What this means is that there is no end state to social progress. There will always be inequality in the world. A world without inequality is a utopia, and utopias will never exist because they’re just fantasies.
But perhaps that’s not a bad thing. One of the hallmarks that define civilization is inequality. Inequality creates hierarchies, and hierarchies create order. It is through this order that we have been able to organize and mobilize to build the world we live in today. It is because people aren’t entirely equal that we have different people specializing in different things to give us our complex modern economies.
In a way, inequality could be seen as a law of nature just like death. It will be something that we can never defeat, but it will always be an issue that we try to solve, or at least avoid making worse. Our disdain for inequality could be an evolutionary trait that helps keeps our primate societies healthier and stronger. If this is the case then inequality is a never ending problem, and social progress will never cease to be. Sometime it’ll advance, sometimes it’ll regress, but the issue will never be resolved.
If you were to go a time machine and travel another 1000 years into the future. You won’t be stepping into a utopia, instead, you’ll be stepping into a much more complex and advanced society that will still be facing the same types of challenges we face now. These are also the same challenges that we have faced for thousands of years, throughout all of human history. Perhaps this struggle is just a part of human nature.
If you were to go a time machine and travel another 1000 years into the future. You won’t be stepping into a utopia, instead, you’ll be stepping into a much more complex and advanced society that will still be facing the same types of challenges we face now.
We are on track for +2.7C by the end of the century. I think society 1000 years from now will still be trying to scrape its way back up to Renaissance Europe levels of tech and complexity.
Your nation will either be a source of mass climate refugees or a destination for them. And in the scenarios we’re looking at, it’s not going to be a few people showing up at borders asking nicely to be let in. Nation states do not lie down and die. It will be nuclear-armed countries such as India and Pakistan demanding habitable space for their people to settle.
We’re looking at vast swaths of the planet being rendered uninhabitable to human life. We’re looking at countries armed with hydrogen bombs being rendered uninhabitable. The complete annihilation of your people at the hands of lethal wet bulb temps is one of the few cases where fighting a nuclear war can actually be a rational thing. If your entire nation is being rendered unable to support human life, you have nothing to lose by launching a war, however violent, to conquer new territory for your people to survive in.
I don’t think any of that disproves my assertion that global warming won’t affect every country equally. It’s demonstably true that places like Australia and Indonesia are going to feel the effects worse.
I’m not saying some countries will be unaffected, just that the impact will initially be concentrated in certain places.
You’re making a premise that is justifiable, but one that necessarily implies the real point you’re trying to make.
Obviously global warming will not affect every place equally. But why would you even bother making such an obvious statement? You might as well be pointing out that the sky is blue. No, you didn’t really feel the need to point out such a childishly obvious fact. You pointed out that fact to imply that global warming will be fine for plenty of regions.
You made the point that not all countries would be affected equally because you wanted to imply that some regions would be fine. You didn’t state that, but that was the real point you were trying to make. Otherwise, there’s no reason to bother bringing up such a trivially obvious point. Obviously nothing in the climate is uniform.
You’re doing the absolutely classic mott-and-bailey tactic. You make a true, but trivial and irrelevant premise that no one can refute, but you make it in such a way to imply an argument you really can’t justify. Then when it’s pointed out that you can’t support what your argument is implying, you retreat behind your true but trivial premise.
I wanted to imply that some places wouldn’t be reduced to Renaissance levels of technological advancement. There’s a middle ground between things being fine and a year zero event.
Edit: Like the examples I gave earlier of Australia and Indonesia will be literally uninhabitable by humans. I don’t see how places that are still habitable lose all their progress and become like Mad Max. Or at least I don’t think that necessarily follows as a logical conclusion from the fact that global warming is happening.
Edit 2: A global year zero event is one of the possible outcomes but I don’t think it’s the most likely one. There’s always a temptation for people to want to imagine that they are “the last generation”, you see it throughout history. This temptation seems to come from people having a hard time conceiving of society progressing after they have died. It’s like an egotistical impulse to believe that the world can’t continue after you die.
The world is inherently unequal and unfair. We’re all born in different bodies with varying abilities and in different circumstances. The world we’re born into is one with scarce resources that cannot ever match our infinite desires. What this means is that there is no end state to social progress. There will always be inequality in the world. A world without inequality is a utopia, and utopias will never exist because they’re just fantasies.
But perhaps that’s not a bad thing. One of the hallmarks that define civilization is inequality. Inequality creates hierarchies, and hierarchies create order. It is through this order that we have been able to organize and mobilize to build the world we live in today. It is because people aren’t entirely equal that we have different people specializing in different things to give us our complex modern economies.
In a way, inequality could be seen as a law of nature just like death. It will be something that we can never defeat, but it will always be an issue that we try to solve, or at least avoid making worse. Our disdain for inequality could be an evolutionary trait that helps keeps our primate societies healthier and stronger. If this is the case then inequality is a never ending problem, and social progress will never cease to be. Sometime it’ll advance, sometimes it’ll regress, but the issue will never be resolved.
If you were to go a time machine and travel another 1000 years into the future. You won’t be stepping into a utopia, instead, you’ll be stepping into a much more complex and advanced society that will still be facing the same types of challenges we face now. These are also the same challenges that we have faced for thousands of years, throughout all of human history. Perhaps this struggle is just a part of human nature.
We are on track for +2.7C by the end of the century. I think society 1000 years from now will still be trying to scrape its way back up to Renaissance Europe levels of tech and complexity.
The effects of global warming will be catastrophic but it won’t affect all countries equally.
You’re living in a dream world.
Your nation will either be a source of mass climate refugees or a destination for them. And in the scenarios we’re looking at, it’s not going to be a few people showing up at borders asking nicely to be let in. Nation states do not lie down and die. It will be nuclear-armed countries such as India and Pakistan demanding habitable space for their people to settle.
We’re looking at vast swaths of the planet being rendered uninhabitable to human life. We’re looking at countries armed with hydrogen bombs being rendered uninhabitable. The complete annihilation of your people at the hands of lethal wet bulb temps is one of the few cases where fighting a nuclear war can actually be a rational thing. If your entire nation is being rendered unable to support human life, you have nothing to lose by launching a war, however violent, to conquer new territory for your people to survive in.
You have no idea what is coming.
I don’t think any of that disproves my assertion that global warming won’t affect every country equally. It’s demonstably true that places like Australia and Indonesia are going to feel the effects worse.
I’m not saying some countries will be unaffected, just that the impact will initially be concentrated in certain places.
You’re using a classic mott-and-bailey fallacy.
You’re making a premise that is justifiable, but one that necessarily implies the real point you’re trying to make.
Obviously global warming will not affect every place equally. But why would you even bother making such an obvious statement? You might as well be pointing out that the sky is blue. No, you didn’t really feel the need to point out such a childishly obvious fact. You pointed out that fact to imply that global warming will be fine for plenty of regions.
You made the point that not all countries would be affected equally because you wanted to imply that some regions would be fine. You didn’t state that, but that was the real point you were trying to make. Otherwise, there’s no reason to bother bringing up such a trivially obvious point. Obviously nothing in the climate is uniform.
You’re doing the absolutely classic mott-and-bailey tactic. You make a true, but trivial and irrelevant premise that no one can refute, but you make it in such a way to imply an argument you really can’t justify. Then when it’s pointed out that you can’t support what your argument is implying, you retreat behind your true but trivial premise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
I wanted to imply that some places wouldn’t be reduced to Renaissance levels of technological advancement. There’s a middle ground between things being fine and a year zero event.
Edit: Like the examples I gave earlier of Australia and Indonesia will be literally uninhabitable by humans. I don’t see how places that are still habitable lose all their progress and become like Mad Max. Or at least I don’t think that necessarily follows as a logical conclusion from the fact that global warming is happening.
Edit 2: A global year zero event is one of the possible outcomes but I don’t think it’s the most likely one. There’s always a temptation for people to want to imagine that they are “the last generation”, you see it throughout history. This temptation seems to come from people having a hard time conceiving of society progressing after they have died. It’s like an egotistical impulse to believe that the world can’t continue after you die.