| > It's really not a priority above money, though. Money isn't some magical evil thing. Money is the unit of account that we use to measure goods and services. Money is not magical but they may conceal the truth as the rabbit in a hat. Money is numbers and with numbers you can do math, its easy to grasp. But money doesn't in itself explain the factors around. A product or service may have a certain cost because of the quality or because it's subsidized or because its valued different or because of another unaccounted factor.
And what if its something that is invaluable? No money in the world can be fixed to it.
The risk of letting money be the priority is that we may see the number but not the damage to the nature behind it.
As climate change probably will take lives or even humanity in the future and life has one of the highest value, or at least the life of oneself, therefore it is a priority above money. > Something "costing money" means that it reduces the amount of goods and services we can create. Climate change "costs money" in the sense that it reduces global output. Reducing global output has a human cost, especially for low income nations. And if it's so then what says the cost needs to be distributed evenly?
Around 5% of the world population hold 70% of the world wealth(at least 2012). > To you and I perhaps it is 'just money' because your standard of living is sufficiently high that a 10%, 20% or even 50% reduction is a sacrifice of comfort, and not existential. But contracting the growth prospects for India by 25% over the next decade means consigning millions of people to crippling poverty.
> This idea that money is some morally lesser concern just fundamentally misunderstands what money is. Aggregate wealth is just all the stuff we have. Less money means less stuff. Less stuff means more poverty. That may be worth while, if we think climate change is severe. But it's always extremely important to keep this in perspective.
> Climate change is primarily going to hurt the world's poor, and so are the cuts we'll have to make to combat it. But if you don't keep that in perspective, the cure may end up worse than the disease. If we would divide the aggregated wealth equally between all people then the standard of living would probably be pretty decent and economical growth wouldn't be necessary.
Thou I find it hard to imagine that ever happening.
The difficulty for people to work without incentives.
The difficulty for people to realise it's just not their hard work but mostly luck that brought their wealth. Climate change hopefully will change peoples views and values.
If we won't find a cure we may at least embrace the disease. |