Originally published at: The wealthiest countries spend twice as much on border security as climate change | Boing Boing
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we are so fucked.
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So they’re using the Noah defense: pull up the ladders when the water gets high.
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Was Noah on trial? What did I miss? 
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The pandemic has provided these wealthy nation-states with the opportunity to implement systems in real-time to deal with the inevitable outcome of their taking insufficient action to address the climate emergency. A lot of it has been testing the limits of what people will accept.
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What will be grimly humorous is what will happen when the coal-rolling nativists who cheer on the closing of borders discover that the same guard labour keeping out brown furriners will also be deployed against domestic climate and economic refugees, likely including themselves.
I liken it to the larger game of political-economic musical chairs that’s been developing in the U.S. for the last 40 years – our own “Squid game”. The guards will soon be shooting anyone (not just PoC) who dares to try and grab one of the few remaining seats from someone already occupying one.
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Future phrase: Denial is a river in Egypt that dried up because, well, climate change.
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Seven countries in particular – responsible for 48% of the world’s historic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
Those seven top emitters, by the way, are the United States, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada, France and Australia.
What kind of filtering are we doing here? Ever report I can google shows China producing almost twice as much CO2 as the US - currently. Not saying any of this is good, but it’s like we are ignoring the elephant in the room because we can’t get him out.
Ever wonder what would have happened if the Joad family reached the California border to find a roadblock manned by CHiPs armed with high-tech weaponry? Let’s just say that the future version of “The Grapes of Wrath” will be a lot shorter (even if the modern-day Pa Joad is a militiaman stroking his AR-15).
Debt is debt, as the capitalists who call the shots in the historically top-emitting countries are fond of reminding us. No-one is ignoring China, but that country only started to go into hock in the last 20 years or so (admittedly at an alarmingly accelerated rate).
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The seven countries in question can’t credibly tell China to stop burning the planet for its economic well-being after they spent almost two centuries doing just that when their own attempt to pay off their existing debt for all that high living amounts to “moar guardz and gunz”.
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We keep saying this is but covid ACTUALLY OVER? Or we have all decided to pretend like it’s not and let people die?
As such, we still have a chance to build back better.
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Because border security something one can physically see and encounter. Climate Change is a big nebulous thing that could be causing everything or nothing (it’s just the weather!). Humans are HORRIBLE at thinking about the future.
Plus being a bunch of xenophobic bigots doesn’t hurt.
IIRC China is actually investing in greener energy power. They sort of have to with the levels of smog they experience in some parts.
But the whole “wut about China?” I hear people complains about reminds me of kids blaming “other kids were doing it” when they get in trouble.
If politicians were good at marketing, they would make it a competition or race. “We are going to dominate China in the race to greener energy!”
“But the cost?”
“We can afford it, we aren’t some 2nd tier country who can’t afford it.”
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The wealthiest countries spend twice as much on border security as climate change
Well, of course - you’ve got to keep out all the people displaced by climate change! (And thus, this will only get worse.)
The US still has them beat in multiple ways. China only really started emitting in the last 20 years, whereas the US has historical emissions that more than make up the difference even without going back too far. And per-capita, the US is still more than twice China’s numbers. So looking just at the current numbers, and numbers per country, isn’t remotely fair.
This is crazy to me, especially looking at places that are seeing their highest covid death numbers (some US locales and the UK) while also talking about the pandemic being over (though this seems to be worse in the UK than the US).
I’m wondering if it’ll ever be over, or it’ll be a warning parallel to climate change - we’ll never “build back” because we’ll actually just be in constant decline, spending all our resources and effort (not) dealing with that.
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And even if that’s not inherently true, it’s certainly the “philosophy” of human nature that these sociopaths are relying on (perhaps based on their own internal “intuition” about human nature, which I imagine skews…capitalist, to put it kindly).
And at the end of the day, if the “people aren’t capable of effecting collective positive change, because we are all at our cores selfish and violent” isn’t as true as they needed it to be to justify their actions, they can always make sure the plebs are continually socially and politically “nudged” into paranoia and infighting to prove themselves right.
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I’m really glad like I’m not the only one, because I’m still being fairly cautious about going out, wearing a mask, etc, and so many people just seem to act like this shit is over and done with… Why are we still not talking about people who are still dying? Or people getting sick? Or possible variants on the horizion? Even talk about the ongoing right wing resistance to masking and vaccines in schools are falling off the news cycle!
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I’m still not ready to join the rest of the world with filthy animals. At least not with out a mask. Even then, I skipped the local Comiccon this year because I decided it wasn’t worth the risk. 
I skipped the Ren Fair, even though it was outside. I still can’t see my kid unless it is masked outside on the deck (if I am at a 7 or 8, her mom is at an 11 still). At least I get hugs.
But I do know vaccinated and un-vaccinated people not really letting it get in their way of doing things. I think people are getting numb to it. Those vaccinated are counting on not getting a break through infection, and to be fair, hospitalization and death rates are much lower for those vaccinated. Those un-vaccinated are setting themselves up to be victims of their own hubris. And continue exacerbate the pandemic for much longer than it needs to be.
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It’s like the existence of the vaccine was this thing that made people suddenly decide the pandemic was over,* despite the fact that it requires people to actually get it to have any effect, and everyone knows there are hold-outs. It’s crazier in the UK, where I frequently see news stories/people talking about the pandemic being over, despite them hitting their highest death tolls now, and the fact that the vaccines that most people got aren’t the most efficacious against the variants, to the point where even if literally 100% of the population got vaccinated, apparently that still wouldn’t provide herd immunity.
*Although there’s also this strain of thinking that’s been around since the start of the pandemic, that at some point, the virus would fade into the background and we’d just “live with it” (in some presumably less-dangerous form), with people pointing to the 1918 flu pandemic as a model. Except a) that’s not exactly what happened in 1918 (seems like things were pretty ugly for years after), and b) that’s really not what’s happening with covid, which appears to be significantly worse in many ways than the '18 flu.
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For what I thought was an unrelated thing at the time, I recently was looking at the relative number of nuclear vessels in the world and who owns them. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but for say, nuclear powered aircraft carriers, it was something like 12 total in the world (including one that’s only planned, if I recall correctly), of which, the USA owns 10. The picture’s the same with every other category of such ships, of course.
To think some people reject the suggestion that we’re in the planet’s sixth extension level event. sigh
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someone on the bbs recently recommended the water knife
in it most texans have become refugees ( when fresh water gets tight, being near the mouth of the rivers means you get the least ) and arizona and nevada are basically at war with each other via private security firms
the us government doesn’t much care, too overwhelmed by disasters and gutted by the people who want to pretend climate change isn’t our fault
depressing because it does seem exactly the sort of scenario we’ll get if we continue to do nothing about climate change, and just pretend that everything’s fine
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I read it too and second (third?) the recommendation.
One way or another domestic climate refugees are going to happen. The question is now the degree (so to speak) of awfulness. It’s going to my nastier than the Dust bowl migrations for sure but if we see a 2-degree-plus rise it’ll take us into Water Knife territory.
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How much could it possibly cost to fight climate change? 10 dollars? /s
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