Stop Blaming the Climate for Disasters
nature.comPacific Palisades, for instance, had literal decades, if not centuries, of forewarning. It chose dereliction of duty. It should reap the consequences.
“proactive, equitable and ultimately successful”
Can anyone name a large scale human project that achieved all three of those?
To prevent some bikeshedding pedantry I’m assuming these are the generalizable definitions of these:
Proactive: Explicitly planning for known unknowns to prevent measurable harm, or create something meaningfully and measurably beneficial that isn’t a current need
Equitable: All people who are impacted by the project, over future periods where the resultant outcome is in place, are compensated at the level appropriate for their level of impact on or from the project
Successful: There were mutually agreed upon deliverables and the project realized these deliverables within the allocated time and resources.
I fail to come up with any examples of actual projects that meet ALL three criteria.
Almost all projects meet two.
Ozone hole? We recognized the ozone layer had developed a hole which was growing. We identified the cause. Globally agreed to ban CFCs and implement replacements. Hole is mostly gone today.
The different between the two is the size of the CFC lobby (a single product category for diversified chemical companies) vs. the oil lobby (a sprawling industry): the oil lobby has corrupted many governments and politicians around the world to deny, delay, and prevent action because money. With ethical leadership, it is achievable, but this is rare and not enough action will ever be taken until it is far too late. Humanity has chosen to allow the greedy rich to risk omnicide and ecosystem collapse.
Such a misleading, black-and-white thinking headline. Lack of preparedness meets the enhanced effects due to anthropogenic CC... seems like it requires a share of the blame rather than either-or.