Can Humans Adapt To Climate Change?
The dangers of #climatechange are “no longer over the horizon.” #Humanity may soon pass the “point of no return.” These are the phrases U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres used to describe what he called an “utterly inadequate” global response to rising temperatures. In fact, world leaders and environmental advocates have long demanded structural overhauls to the way we consume and produce. Standing in the way, Guterres noted, is a sheer lack of will. But if we were to decisively act, and restructure our global economy with the climate in mind, who would shoulder the burden? Is it actually feasible? Assuming finite resources, where does climate change rank in the pecking order of #global problems? Or should our collective focus orient more toward humans’ capacity for adaptation? In this timely #debate, Intelligence Squared and the Richmond Forum convene four leading global thinkers on #climate science, #geopolitics, and international #economics to take on this question: Can Humans Adapt To Climate Change?
For The Motion:
Bjorn Lomborg
Author of the Bestsellers Cool It and The Skeptical Environmentalist
Matthew Kahn
Provost Professor of Economics and Spatial Sciences, University of Southern California
Against The Motion:
Michele Wucker
Economic Policy Expert & Founder, Gray Rhino & Company
Kaveh Madani
Environmental Scientist, & Former Vice President of the United Nations Environment Assembly Bureau, & Former Deputy Head of Iran’s Department of Environment
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yes, since man lit his first BBQ fire pit climate change has been in effect on this world. we will survive as the world changes around us, problem is people are afraid of change, and fear is the path to the dark side…
The whole premise of this debate is flawed because anthropogenic climate change is a non-issue. The issue is a lack of access to cheap energy, which the US is leading the way to destroy access and raise prices, massively impoverishing the already poor developing world. This is inhumane and evil.
Microbes have been a bigger part of our history… we've survived them … along with surviving thousands of years in an ice age… The climate has been changing since the day the earth was first formed….you have to be a complete brain washed moron to think the climate will stay how you think it should be…
I definitely vote for No, as Prof. Kave Madani enlightened how it is necessary to make the decision when you need to consider people all around the world, secondly, Prof. Kave well-noted that climate change is one by-product of sustainable development that we suppose to Adaptatively
Finally, in-person debates. Glad to see these coming back.
As usual, the white boomers on the Yes side are lecturing me that I need to move to New Delhi and have air conditioning, when my livelihood is elsewhere, and there is no electrical grid on earth that can support air conditioning for every household in New Delhi.
As usual, the white boomers on the Yes are lecturing me that I need to farm shrimp instead of rice, and it will apparently need to be done at the snap of their fingers. Have these people even been to India and seen what Indians are really like.
The debate moderator did not do his job on this debate. The word "our" was liberally used in this debate. But it was pretty clear that the work "our" clearly only referred to white people in the first world. It was interesting though that the Yes side used the word "them" when they referred to the Indians. Speaks volumes about whose interests are being represented.
Hey, Stupid! Our remote ancestors adapted to the coming and going of ICE AGES with PALEOLITHIC technology.
GET IT???
52:00 please explain to me why it's scary to say we should use nuclear energy. Fossil fuels have killed or shortened the lives of many more people than nuclear power.
1:00:00 "We aren't making poor people richer" says a woman who 200 years ago would have been illiterate. She's using a wireless microphone, wearing prescription eye glasses and has enough education and media to be aware of global conditions, and enough free time on her hands that she can attend something as practically useless as this debate. Whoever you are, lady, you're richer then any Roman senator, you are richer then Queen Victoria was.
I vote no. The economist appears to believe Capitalism can solve climate change.
We're Dead
Lake mead is about dry. The Mekong delta is drying out. Fires and floods everywhere. What we won't survive are the wars we will have as systems break down.
Some people think we're going somewhere as a species. I think this is the pinnacle of human achievements and the end of the story. We're dead
Climate change! The control narrative of anyone who can’t merit an actual political or economic gain in the free world.
Can't really take a economist serious who still talks about the 'invisible hand' when the creator of that concept backed down on it. But I'm really biased, cause I grew up building snowmen in winter and don't see them anymore 🤷♂ (greets from germany)
Adaption only makes sense when the planet hasn’t reached the tipping point yet and resilience ( not hitting the tipping point) is only possible with the mitigation!
You're seriously going to have economists debate climate change with scientists… seriously?
These pro-status quo capitalists are going to adapt humanity directly into extinction.
Economics. The only degree that is even more useless than an English degree.
Well humans have been building shelters, building fires, wearing coats and migrating since the beginning of time so, umm, yeah I think humans can adapt to climate change.
Ain't gonna happen.
Anyone that thinks that the militaries around the world will go green is snorting chemically infused kitty litter.
Anyone that thinks that Russia, a country that is essentially a gas tank, will go green is likely abusing bath salts.
China, India and the Arab nations getting on board?
Not a chance in hell.
We blew it, folks.
Smell the roses and live in the moment.
It's a nice day outside today.
Think I'll go for a walk.
Economists are the reason we are in this mess to begin with. They should sit themselves down and shut up.
Teslas are free? That guy is hallucinating! The 10K rebate he is referring to doesn't even apply to Teslas and even if it did it certainly doesn't cover the cost of a 60K+ Tesla!
I'm thoroughly disappointed by the lack of quality in this debate.
One guy says false models were a net good because they caused urgency with no consideration to the fact that mask guidelines, Lockdowns, and the authoritarian rule that we saw during the period could be a net loss.. We now know that more people died due to the Lockdowns and more people may have been infected due to the false sense of security from masks that never had any scientific evidence of working.
So much is left out of the conversation… Waste of time.
Not a chance.
Talking about GDP loss by 2100 is a joke. The planet has tipped. We are in an emergency and the use of GDP and 2100 are irrelevant. Humans might be able to adapt but our growth-based economy can not adapt. The need for growth caused the problem and will ultimately kill most of the life on the planet.
I think we need to adapt to not listening to economists. They are trying to get unwilling people into an endless pyramid scheme of having MORE and more kids when we are already experiencing horrifying effects of climate change and facing major existential threats
Bjorn Lomborg is a known liar and economists are famously political rather than scientific or responsible.
Only economists can chronically reject simple scientific facts and insights from physics, chemistry and biology.
The yes position, the economists, are basically arguing we can afford monetarily to let people die. Money is their only measure. That bias is severely clouding their judgement, and unwittingly proving the NO positions point that bias in examining complex systems is a serious issue.
At roughly 59 minutes Bjorne’s answer to making poor people rich applies to developing countries becoming developed. It gives no consideration for the poor people currently existing in developed countries despite “free markets “.
This is the wrong question.
Why should humans HAVE to adapt to Climate Destruction ?
Here's the biggest factor in climate change:
World population
1804 : 1,000,000,000
1927: 2,000,000,000
1974: 4,003,794,172
1999: 6,064,239,055
2020 : 7,794,798,739
Think of the impact that 8 times the number of resource consumers has had on the planet. The latest, and by no means definitive study I have seen states the Earth can reliably sustain a population of around 3 to 4 billion people. That's 1970. In a little more than 50 years we have doubled that number. We talk about "Human Rights to housing and food" like claiming a "right" makes it a necessity for Earth to provide the resources. It is clear that the Earth is pointing out that perpetual population growth is unsustainable.
Around 70% of this planet is water. We already understand monkeying around with water, one of the 3 prime necessities for human existence along with air and sustenance, has led to dramatic failures. Fresh potable water is a miniscule portion of that 70%. It is estimated by the US government that 92% of the water used by Americans is "clean" water. What is not said is that the vast majority of that water has to be chemically treated in order to make it clean, and that almost 100% of the water being used is polluted with micro particles of plastic. Little to no studies have been done to see the medium to short term effects of these particles which, by the way are not eliminated by our digestive systems. They are in us forever.
The air pollution globally is toxic.
Land use, particularly in areas of high urban populations has been "reclaiming landfills which is a "nice" term for garbage dumps. Housing and industrial "parks" are being built on unstable, polluted ground and that pollution is poisoning the water table which has to be treated with toxic chemicals in order to make it "safe" to drink.
That old meme "Guns don't kill people, people kill people with guns" might be looked at from a behavioral scientific viewpoint when evaluating Climate Change and proposals to mitigate it. Humans are the cause of ALL Climate Change
Stop breeding consumers.
The Malthusians in power (and the scientists who work for them) want to lower the global population to 500 million or less.
Three ways to influence people. Charism, as per Bjorney boy, ha ha ha. Otherwise, you can control information. Otherwise you can control fear. Three ways … what a mouth for a science debate, Bjorney. Boy, oh boy.
So, the Netherlands will dike off 9m sea level rise. As per the Thwaites Glacier threat. Happy times stories, make naught but distractions to truth, and science. True, maybe the Dutch can do it. Let's play !!!!
Bjorney turns the whole thing into a play play play political chit chat.
Bjorn can't respond to what's said. So, charismatically the faces out the audience. What a waste of talking space.
Solution is, when we collectively had reduced our impact on our planet, our biosphere to one planet. We for decades have overshot our one planet marker. That I would present at solution, by whatever tactic.
after watching this discussion for 40 years, it goes like this let's do something. We start to do something then the fossil fuel industry under minds those actions by bribing politicians and creating an economic crisis We are incapable of even adapting to moving away from using fossil fuels The invisible hand of the market keeps pushing us back to oil
beyond that, we are moving our business and large parts of our populations into the worst areas