Sabine Hossenfelder on Climate Change [opportunity cost]

She's got a thread on X, aka The Site Formerly Known as Twitter. Here's her first Xcerpt:

I really feel like there are a lot of people who cannot grasp why climate change is such a big problem, people who are like "ah, cmon, we'll just all buy air conditioning". You must have seen them here on twitter before: It's the "climate's always been changing" type who thinks everyone who is even mildly concerned is an "alarmist".

If you're one of them, here's what you do not understand: There's only so much work that one human can do in one day. The more time we need to spend to fix climate related problems, the less time we will have for other things. Consequently, climate change is going to cause a huge societal and technological stagnation if not regress.

We will be forced to pour an increasingly huge fraction of our economic output into fixing climate problems. Increasingly more people will have to work on mitigation and adaption. Building higher dams, building more air conditioning, moving people out of coastal areas that'll be flooded. Building higher walls at the borders of rich countries so the migrants from now unlivable areas don't run you over...

You can even see this happening already, with all the money that's going into climate projects: This is money which is not available for cancer research. Opportunity costs, ppl, opportunity costs.

As a consequence of all the effort we need to put into coping with climate-caused problems, there'll be fewer people to do other stuff. Like scientific research. Like updating all your beloved gadgets. Like fixing your roads or rooftops or building new hospitals and kindergartens and playgrounds.

What do new hospitals have to do with climate change? As I said there's only so much work humans can do in one day. Every person who works on building a new dam is one person who does not work on building a new hospital.

What is it going to look like for you and I? It'll mean that a lot of infrastructure will deteriorate and not be fixed, and consumer products will get more expensive until they become unaffordable for all but the super-rich. Want internet at home? That'll be $500 a month.

Most of us have grown up with constant progress. Tech gets better and cheaper all the time. We're so used to it we take it for granted. Well you know what it's not a law of nature. Things can fall apart very quickly, ask anyone in Venezuela or Zimbabwe.

That's the point you "cmon we'll get an AC" guys do not understand. You can get your AC alright but it'll cost you a year's worth of income.

I don't want my children to grow up in a phase of economic regress, that's why I support action on climate change. It's not because I think it'll kill us all. It's because the next 100 years will be fucking depressing.

Darryl 🌪️Viva la Entropy🌪️ Morris asks:

Now, about that pro-capitalism video you did.... well, Climate Change is what capitalism got us, and still all that extra work fixing things will be good for GDP and all the stuff that brakes gets written off as 'consumption', also good for capitalism

Hossenfelder answers:

I made the entire video to explain that, no, capitalism is not what caused the problem, the problem is that we did not do what economists have been saying for decades: Account for externalities. The "capitalism is bad" people are the CAUSE of the problem.

The conversation keeps going. There's more at the link.