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Comment by throwaway599281 | Hacker News Reader

>What would 1.2 billion refugees do? Stay in their countries and improve them just like Westerners do?

Humans are not fish, and cannot remain in place when farmland becomes shallow salt water ocean.

Sea level rises are merely one of the things that can cause mass displacement, no matter how much other people moan about it.

I’m fairly optimistic about the future — I see this warning from the UN and think “this degree of reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is achievable in this timeframe” — but even so I’m still expecting New Orleans and a significant depth of the Italian coast from roughly San Marino to Trieste to disappear.

You do realise that it's Westerners causing climate change, not starving villagers in Sub-saharan africa?

Some of the first refugees will be from California. The reservoids that are not at record-low took 20 years to fill, they are never coming back.

California has enough clean energy to desal for human consumption [1] [2]. Ag is another story, but no one needs to flee California due to water needs [3] (human consumption is ~10-20% of total use). Also, the regulation story of water for Ag in California is improving, albeit slowly [4].

[1] https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/US-CAL-CISO?wind=false&s... (Scroll to "Origin of electricity in the last 24 hours" in left nav; during daylight hours, 75%-90% of total generation are low carbon sources; and I expect that to hit 100% in the next 2-3 years based on CAISO's generator interconnect queue)

[2] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c... (refer to California solar [yellow] and batteries [gray] coming online this year)

[3] https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/

[4] https://www.npr.org/2021/10/07/1037369959/new-protections-fo...

But human consumption includes Agriculture, if a country is dependant on the food it grows and there is no water, you will have a famine. If they are just cash crops that you trade for food, you will also have a famine.

All the argicultural land in california is about to become a lot less valuable. It's destruction of wealth and nature on a collosal scale. The idea that allowing climate change to continue is good for buinesss is idiotic, and could result in violence unseen since 1940's

Climate change is not good, but neither is stripping aquifers for cash crop export. California has not managed its Ag wealth very well (water, soil, similar farming inputs); low water use crops that provide high nutritional value are superior to "luxury" water intensive crops exporting California's water to other markets for the benefit of those farmers.

Same way you wouldn't want to support economic policy farming corn in the Arizona desert. Put solar panels there instead (or other crops that are low water intensity). Higher level, there is a lot of inefficiency in US Ag policy causing suboptimal outcomes. Systems get addicted to subsides or resources where costs are not properly allocated.

Human consumption includes some agriculture. You'd be surprised to learn what counts as agriculture for purposes of water in places like California. One example: Golf courses. Others; horse race tracks, horse farms, cemeteries. All kinds of places that produce ZERO crops for human consumption.

80% of California's water goes to agriculture. In a water crisis - which is pretty likely - the first step is to stop growing avocados and almonds. This should free up more than enough water to keep the urban areas going, as long as residents conserve water and don't waste it watering lawns and such.

Water isn't really fungible in that way. You could cut down every orchard in the state and that isn't going to change the water situation of places like Santa Barbara. There really is a huge amount of infrastructure and energy involved in delivering water to cities and most of it is wholly unrelated to ag water systems.

The Delta specifically is largely fungible:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Water_in...

Santa Barbara probably would be fine, along with the Bay Area and some of the LA suburbs. Divert less irrigation water from the Sacramento/San Joaquin system, pump more into the California Aqueduct, central coast has water. Alternatively, pump more into Bethany Reservoir, divert to the South Bay Aqueduct, and Silicon Valley has water.

Santa Barbara also has a desalination plant, for what it’s worth.

The irony! Aren’t the industrial countries the biggest contributors to climate change?

And are also the leading countries promoting cleaner alternatives to all human activites.

What you're missing is that if underdeveloped countries were even capable of reaching the same stage of development we and East Asian countries enjoy, they would contribute as much, and that is actually their goal.

No matter how you try to warp the logic or the reality of the situation and regardless of the country or culture, the responsibility of dealing with the effects of climate change (or anything else) should be proportional to the contribution that each nation makes.

Sure if any country starts to contribute more, they should also take more responsibility.

You cannot for example tax someone on the amount of money that they hypothetically can have or want to have which you even claim they are not even capable of having.

> And are also the leading countries promoting cleaner alternatives to all human activites.

So are they going to give all those away for free to poor countries? And also pay for massive programs to recapture the carbon they've already emitted? And mitigate already-locked-in effects of climate change, such as drought and extreme weather? Those are the only conditions under which your "why don't they improve their own countries" suggestion is fair.

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