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Don’t worry, climate change only really affects poor people. You are safe in your affluence and your social capital.
Oh wait
To clarify, based on replies:
Look, I love, say, The Princess Bride. The people who made it made something good, and I wish them good things. Instead, at least two of them just lost their homes. My heart goes out to them — along with the many, many others I don't know at all who just suffered the same.
The post above is •not• about who deserves sympathy, and whose suffering we can sneer at.
The post is about who should feel safe in the face of climate change. (The answer is “no one.”)
I get the feeling that a lot of folks (and not just billionaires) think they can ride out climate change, that their affluence will keep them relatively safe, that it’s a distant concern that will come for Those Other People first.
To that I say: You really think you’re more protected than Billy Crystal? Carry Elwes? Eugene Levy? Paris Hilton? John Goodman? They all just lost their homes, despite all the fame and fortune a person could wish for. What's keeping •you• safe? The answer, I’m afraid, is “nothing but luck.”
Those folk can afford the insurance that will let them rebuild lickety-split. The average person can't.
@PeterLG
I’m sure their position in life affords them all kinds of advantages.
You want to bet that means they’re all doing fine now? Feeling safe? Not shaken, not hurt?
Of course, they'll be upset, shaken, scared, frightened, and even traumatised. But tomorrow, they'll have somewhere to sleep, somewhere to recoup, somewhere to live.
Too many others don't have that luxury.
@inthehands
Well, maybe we'll get some action on climate change now.
@inthehands My heart bleeds for multi-millionaires and billionaires at this devastating time...
@inthehands On the one hand, I hope they use their platforms, their popularity, to talk about what they just went through and help with the base issue. That's something they could do, after they get through the trauma. On the other, I'm not in the position to demand anything from them (or indeed, from most anybody).
@inthehands yeah I had a thought earlier, "maybe now that a lot of rich people have been hurt by it, there will be more effort to respond to climate change"
However I'm not enthusiastic about the probability. I wish I could muster more hope but I can't.
@http_error_418 @inthehands The far right thinks everybody even remotely associated with Hollywood and to the left of Clint Eastwood is a child-sacrificing demon worshipper.
In fact, many of them are actively expressing schadenfreude as we speak _because_ they’re too dumb to realize that most of the impacted people aren’t famous Hollywood types.
They won’t care, and will do everything they can to continue not caring. Because they hate us.
@http_error_418 @inthehands Where I find hope, to the extent I am able, is that even they won’t be able to ignore or pretend forever.
Expecting empathy is a lost cause, but maybe self-interest will do the trick. Assuming they smarten up.
I just hope that happens sooner rather than later, before it’s too late.
@http_error_418 @inthehands The Woolsey fire in Nov 2018 took many celebrity & wealthy homes, and not much action, I’d expect the same again.
@http_error_418 Elon Musk is blaming the DEI efforts of the LA fire department, so I wouldn't hold my breath @inthehands
/∞
∫ Yeah there's the affluent rich and the powerful rich, and the powerful rich don't really give a shit about the affluent rich any more than they do about you.
So no, sadly, the game will go on until all the board is ashes.
@http_error_418 @inthehands not when even richer people pretend it isn't an issue...
@inthehands I certainly feel I could be worse off (my state has some sensible policies, I didn't trust default flood zone maps when I bought my house, the area is not completely idiotic about its water supply, etc...) but at the same time this past summer was the first time the area has had serious wildfire risk and I think you're right that people confuse "relatively less at risk" vs. "safe".
I also don't want to be on an island of relative safely while other people get wrecked!
@inthehands Well, one of their homes, but yeah…
@jlundell @inthehands Yes, it seems likely that Paris Hilton has at least one more residence in another location.
@inthehands reminds me that Asheville, NC was featured as a climate change safe haven.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/10/02/climate/asheville-flooding-history-helene
@inthehands What actually keeps us safe is the only thing that has ever kept anyone safe: mutual care shared with *other f***ing people*. Isolationist and segregationist fantasies guarantee danger for all.
@sakhavi @inthehands well, that plus fire codes
@stevenbodzin @sakhavi @inthehands fire codes are one way that mutual care manifests
@inthehands Mother Nature is the great equalizer!
@inthehands A lot of progressive messaging on this has been "the poorest will lose everything from climate change". Which is true, but leaves out that a lot of the global "middle class" will lose everything too and yes some rich people will, at least, lose some stuff and need to move.
@tomw @inthehands the main difference is that wealthy can hire lawyers to fight insurance company denials & replace the replacables. They won’t become homeless & discarded, like average people.
@inthehands This applies to the middle and upper classes of course who continue to drive, leave in big houses in the suburbs, eat meat, and fly at every opportunity...
️ @inthehands @SuperMoosie This is a good take on it. Bravo.
Exactly!
It's why all the proper wealthy people are building secret underground bunkers.
In NZ apparently.
@inthehands In my homestate of Connecticut, the birds used to return from down south in mid-March. Now they come back in mid-January.
Furthermore, I encounter flies and skunks all winter. That never used to be the case.
Climate change is not only real, it exists in my own back yard!
@inthehands I do live in Chicago, which seems to be well insulated from the disaster aspects of climate change. But other things will impact us for sure, like food shortages and disease.
@inthehands
So, while I don't dispute the thesis, there are things that we know are dangerous, and that we have known were dangerous for a long time. The California hills burning is not new, even if the scale and intensity have changed dramatically. I have family in Topanga who (I haven't been able to reach them yet) have almost certainly just lost their home. They've also known for entire 50 years that they've been living there that the valley would absolutely burn eventually, because that's what they landscape *does*.
I do not feel safe from climate change, because that would be dumb. I do feel relatively safe from wildfire, because I live in a brick building next to the water with 5km of concrete between me and the nearest thing you could call a forest. We have always known — if we bothered to think about it, that building in the dry hills was risky, in exactly the same way that we know that building on the beach in a hurricane zone is risky — even without climate change, that bet was always going to get called.