Climate Change Won't End the World — Just Certain Real Estate Markets

[n2doc]

By Zach Gottlieb


Everyone thinks that global warming will kill us all. But according to Climatopolis, a new book by UCLA economist Matthew Kahn, climate change won’t destroy Earth—just fundamentally change it.

“City growth has caused climate change,” Kahn says. “But that growth is also what’s going to get us out of it.” That is, as the weather heats up, people will migrate and change their behavior—affecting city landscapes, architecture, quality of life, cost of living, infrastructure, and more. Here’s how some key US cities might look in our hot, crowded, flooded future.

LOS ANGELES Between raging wildfires, thickening smog, and suffocating inland temps, only a fraction of LA will remain habitable, increasing the population density along the coast. Sprawl will give way to high-rises, and the inevitable carbon tax will decimate what’s left of the city’s car culture.

SAN DIEGO The Road meets The Golden Girls! Once temperatures soar, potable water becomes scarce, and 24/7 air-conditioning ratchets up demand for electricity, the able-bodied will migrate away, leaving the elderly and infirm to duke it out for whatever limited resources remain.


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http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/09/pl_print_kahn/

[Radical Activist]

1. Fucking moronic and offensive.

No one claims it will destroy the entire planet. The earth will be just fine with or without us.

The question is how many people will die if we fail to act. It's disgusting to gloss over the loss of homes and lives by saying people will "relocate."

It's also completely ignorant to pretend only cities in hot or coastal areas will be impacted. Did the writer not notice the flooding of Nashville? Or along the Mississippi in the last several years? Does he think Great Lakes cities like Detroit are immune to flooding? And how will we feed the people who "migrate away" when the planting and harvesting seasons are disrupted by heavy rains and the growing season is shortened?

Just incredibly stupid.

[GliderGuider]

3. "The question is how many people will die if we fail to act."

The simple answer is "All of us". It's the same answer to the question, "How many people will die if we act?"

That may seem facile, but I don't think it is. The question is not the number of people dying. We have always died, every last one of us, most of us in horribly suboptimal circumstances from the modern, middle-class western point of view.

The more important question to me is how we want to live.

[Radical Activist]

4. I want to live

in a world where people don't die early, needless deaths because we refused to take action on climate change.

[kristopher]

2. The rising ph of the ocean is discussed on what page? nt

[hatrack]

5. What do you expect? He's an economist . . .

Oh, sorry, I forgot - the Invisible Hand will increase marine Ph - silly me!

:silly:

[kristopher]

6. You shouldn't generalize that way about economists.

I've worked with many, many economists who specialized in natural resource and environmental economics and none of them are unaware of or ignoring the climate problem.

I know that many of the more business oriented ones are jerks, but it is just good sense to avoid painting with too broad a brush.