<story><title>Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/climate/tokyo-floods.html?ribbon-ad-idx=4&amp;rref=climate</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>acabal</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s so crazy to me that everyone in vulnerable places--Tokyo and Houston in the article for example--are happy to spend hundreds of millions, even billions, to put a bandaid on their local climate change problems.&lt;p&gt;It seems like they all acknowledge the reality and danger of climate change and are willing to spend money on it.&lt;p&gt;In TFA Houston wants $400 million to build a reservoir. They seem to acknowledge that things are only going to get worse for them as the years go on. And yet everyone there still drives everywhere spewing carbon into their own air with every trip, public transit is in a poor state, and oil exploitation continues apace. Everyone&amp;#x27;s OK with spending money and manpower on huge public works projects, but they&amp;#x27;re not OK with addressing habits and addictions that make the projects necessary in the first place.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s as if our eyes can see the oncoming train just a mile away, but instead of stepping out of the way we want to build a mechanized winch that will temporarily lift us over the train, and hopefully we&amp;#x27;ll be done building it before the train hits us, and oh yeah, never mind how we&amp;#x27;re supposed to get down, or the taller train after that one.&lt;p&gt;Why can&amp;#x27;t we put that money, effort, manpower, and will into actually &lt;i&gt;addressing climate change&lt;/i&gt; and make crazy projects like vast man-made Mines-of-Moria-style underground tunnels and huge artificial reservoirs unnecessary?&lt;p&gt;Yes it&amp;#x27;s a global problem, but solutions to global problems start at home. Throwing our hands up and saying it&amp;#x27;s pointless until the other guy does something too can&amp;#x27;t be the way to progress on this issue.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nostrademons</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s very likely that local band-aids are the most effective way to deal with this.&lt;p&gt;Your train example is a pretty good one, but you&amp;#x27;ve mixed up the metaphor.  Here, &amp;quot;stepping out of the way&amp;quot; = mass migrations out of coastal cities.  &amp;quot;A mechanized winch that temporarily lifts us over the train&amp;quot; = flood control projects like in Tokyo, Houston, Venice, or the Netherlands.  &amp;quot;Calling the train company and asking them to stop running trains&amp;quot; = stopping global warming by addressing carbon emissions.&lt;p&gt;If you had a train barreling down on you, which one would you choose?  I&amp;#x27;d bet it wouldn&amp;#x27;t be calling the train company and asking them to stop running trains, because a.) they are unlikely to anyway and b.) even if they were willing, by the time you got through to someone with the power to stop the trains you&amp;#x27;ll probably be dead anyway.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d argue that the actual solution to global warming will be more akin to &amp;quot;stepping out of the way&amp;quot;: people will evacuate from major cities, major cities will be destroyed, and people will pick up the pieces of their lives elsewhere.  If they&amp;#x27;re proactive, they might evacuate before the city is actually destroyed, and we&amp;#x27;ll see mass migrations of people (as have been happening for the last several hundred years anyway) away from areas that will face greater climate risks and toward areas that benefit from global warming.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s what humans do: we adapt to our environment.  Only in particularly hubristic times (like now) have we expected to adapt our environment to us.</text></comment>
<story><title>Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/climate/tokyo-floods.html?ribbon-ad-idx=4&amp;rref=climate</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>acabal</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s so crazy to me that everyone in vulnerable places--Tokyo and Houston in the article for example--are happy to spend hundreds of millions, even billions, to put a bandaid on their local climate change problems.&lt;p&gt;It seems like they all acknowledge the reality and danger of climate change and are willing to spend money on it.&lt;p&gt;In TFA Houston wants $400 million to build a reservoir. They seem to acknowledge that things are only going to get worse for them as the years go on. And yet everyone there still drives everywhere spewing carbon into their own air with every trip, public transit is in a poor state, and oil exploitation continues apace. Everyone&amp;#x27;s OK with spending money and manpower on huge public works projects, but they&amp;#x27;re not OK with addressing habits and addictions that make the projects necessary in the first place.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s as if our eyes can see the oncoming train just a mile away, but instead of stepping out of the way we want to build a mechanized winch that will temporarily lift us over the train, and hopefully we&amp;#x27;ll be done building it before the train hits us, and oh yeah, never mind how we&amp;#x27;re supposed to get down, or the taller train after that one.&lt;p&gt;Why can&amp;#x27;t we put that money, effort, manpower, and will into actually &lt;i&gt;addressing climate change&lt;/i&gt; and make crazy projects like vast man-made Mines-of-Moria-style underground tunnels and huge artificial reservoirs unnecessary?&lt;p&gt;Yes it&amp;#x27;s a global problem, but solutions to global problems start at home. Throwing our hands up and saying it&amp;#x27;s pointless until the other guy does something too can&amp;#x27;t be the way to progress on this issue.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bdamm</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s clear that our contemporary social structures are not well equipped to deal with climate change. This is unlikely to change in the next 10-50 years. So local governments that are able to act must do so.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Solutions to global problems start at home.&amp;quot; --&amp;gt; If everyone in Houston switched up their SUVs for Prius&amp;#x27;, nothing globally would change at all, except that the people of Houston would have smaller cars. Why does this make sense for them?</text></comment>