pipbarber wrote: ↑Fri Jan 10, 2025 7:37 pm
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ire-memory
Rebecca Solnit is good on this sort of stuff.
Current death toll stands at 10. That will certainly rise. The life shortening impact of smoke and trauma can't be measured. The impact on wildlife won't be measured, or if is it won't be prominent. Also, it is fucking WINTER! But don't mention climate change.
I find all the hand ringing media coverage over this to be entirely putrid, when compared to Palestine or Ukraine or Sudan or the DRC. However, it is a tragedy unfolding real and terrible for those involved.
I don't give two fucks for the heavily insured celebrities and millionaires who have just jetted off somewhere, but i hope at least some of them come to the realisation that it really don't matter, bro, how much fucking money you have - you can't escape the impact of hothouse earth.
It's going to be interesting to see how the insurance industry fares. We always think of how vulnerable the environment is, but the house of cards of international finance is, perversely, a potential canary in a coal mine. It could be the first thing to go in a climate collapse. I heard this warning a while ago from the International Actuarial Association, representing the world's number crunchers, hired as mathematical oracles for the finance industry. You wouldn't normally look to a bunch of theoretical accountants for environmental assessment, but that's where we are.
I assume that on its own the California disaster probably won't break the industry. But if there are a couple of other major disasters in the coming months and years, it will add to the strain. The big insurers are interlinked, we could soon have a climate-induced GFC causing more widespread chaos than the direct impacts of weather disasters.
Or maybe we won't. But it's one more thing to think about: climate finance adaptation, are you ready for chaos?
