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babalulu • yesterday at 8:31 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

While there might be some short-term positive effects for certain areas of the globe, in the long-term it will be negative for everyone. Having watched two very good interviews with climate scientists recently, both were warning about the collapse of current global systems by mid-century. As things get warmer and climate shifts, many places currently important for producing food will get too hot and too dry for consistent agriculture, and we'll start to see food shortages. Drought and heat will also begin to make some parts of the world unlivable, and people will migrate out of necessity, which given the current political climate, you know how that will go. One of the scientists said that, at current warming trends, the world will reach that level of heat in the 2040s, and we'll start to see the breakdown of current social, political and trade systems. Everyone will be negatively affected at that point.


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brendoelfrendo • yesterday at 9:25 PM

> Drought and heat will also begin to make some parts of the world unlivable, and people will migrate out of necessity, which given the current political climate, you know how that will go.

It's worth noting that this is already happening. Outmigration from the Central American "Dry Corridor" is on the rise, and a growing number of migrants apprehended at the US-Mexico border over the past decade have been from countries that overlap the dry corridor (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador). Major droughts in the late 20-teens required millions of people to turn to food aid. The thing is, it's hard to see the connection to climate change because it's surrounded by other factors. The region has millions of rural residents who rely on farming for their income or food, so are they leaving for climate-related reasons, crime-related reasons, or reasons of economic opportunity? The answer of course is that many of these factors are intertwined. I think we imagine that one day we'll wake up in Mad Max world and until then, climate change isn't yet a disaster. And while there probably will be a day when some disaster creates an immediate, horrible refugee crisis, the day-to-day reality is probably more like today: a trickle of people moving from areas that are slowly getting less and less habitable as time goes on, gradually putting stress on the system.