Average person will be 40% poorer if world warms by 4C, new research shows

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Homo economicus can’t conceive of anything except the financial cost of things. He knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. He sees numbers on spreadsheets as just ‘numbers’ to feed into calculations, even when those numbers actually relate to an unsurvivabke tempersture rise.

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BlackMassSmoker@reddit

If the worlds warms by 4C then expect breadbasket failures and severe drought and flooding and regions made uninhabitable and billions will die. But oh no muh bank account.

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MonoDEAL@reddit

Lmfaoo that was my first thought. Like bank account?? Do people not realize civilization will drastically change

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Prudent-Current1257@reddit

I think this is pure hopium, i believe our future will look something closer to this:

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Shoddy-Childhood-511@reddit

Not bad. Where is this from?

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Prudent-Current1257@reddit

It's from this site: https://actuaries.org.uk/planetary-solvency

You can download the document if you scroll down a bit

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tenredtoes@reddit

That's both horrifying and hilarious. Thankyou.

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Cultural-Answer-321@reddit

This is a page from their actual report? Good find! Thanks!

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Bayaco_Tooch@reddit

Yikes, the just above 1.5 (severe) seems pretty spot on.

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holistivist@reddit

We’re already past 1.5°C and were at 1.6°C in January. We’re absolutely going to hit 2°C by 2035, and are going to go all the way by 2050.

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holistivist@reddit

We’re already past 1.5°C and were at 1.6°C in January. We’re absolutely going to hit 2°C by 2035, and are going to go all the way by 2050.

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tawhuac@reddit (OP)

Yeah totally

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No-Sherbet6823@reddit

More bullshit, meaningless statistics shat out by a bored journalist.
Billions and billions will die a horrific death and society will be smoking, stinking ruins by the time we hit 4C. Unless you're a billionaire, you'll either be dead, or you'll wish you were dead.

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guyseeking@reddit

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Cultural-Answer-321@reddit

Good find. People knew decades ago.

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Eiswolf999@reddit

Average Person will be eaten if world warms by 4°C. Try to grow crops, the very base of our society's, when Climate and weather patterns are an unstable shitshow. God I hate late stage capitalism headlines.

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CerddwrRhyddid@reddit

Laughs. Gotta love it when everything is boiled down to a dollar value. Wealth. Profit.

If the world warms by 4C, there will have already been significant human die-off, and access to clean drinking water and adequate and consistent food is going to be a well-guarded bastion left only to the richest in this world.

But yeah, the average person will be poorer. What's new?

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IAm_Trogdor_AMA@reddit

Technically the average person would be richer because of all the poor people that would die. The billionaires would still be alive thus raising the average as the population dwindles.

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CerddwrRhyddid@reddit

You forget the poorest among us often produce far more children than most.

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vinegar@reddit

And if all the valuables are lying around for me to pick up, because the former owners are dead, I’m rich!

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diedlikeCambyses@reddit

At +4C continental interiors will see +12. Ports and coastal cities gone.

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Lhun@reddit

I know this is r/collapse but can we talk about how what will also happen is that previous land that was not farmable year round will become farmable year round?
I fully believe there will be collapse but we will bounce back pretty fast by moving north as our ancestors did.

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tawhuac@reddit (OP)

Good point, however, our ancestors weren't 8 billion. What do you think happens when that many people move north? Whatever happens, it ain't peaceful.

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Lhun@reddit

True, but in 40 years we'll have population collapse in most of the world even if the climate were to stop tomorrow.

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Dalearev@reddit

Lo the whole society would collapse lol I’m sure ppl would be basically fighting for life every day. It would be super tragic

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bastardofdisaster@reddit

These is either going to be the worst famine ever or the best diet ever.

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nottobytobytoby@reddit

Lol

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Jeicobm@reddit

I’ll also be 100% deader…

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Little_Switch9260@reddit

It's the billions dead and loss of diversity that get me.

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KernunQc7@reddit

The median person will be a climate refugee past 3C. Always be suspicious of anyone touting anything when it involves "averages".

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_Cromwell_@reddit

My corpse will be super pumped to retain 60% of my wealth

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Alarming_Award5575@reddit

You should put that in a roth ira asap. Your corpse will see taxes much higher with all the reconstruction.

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Alarming_Award5575@reddit

Pretty sure the average person will be 40 percent dead.

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Bandits101@reddit

The “average” person at 4º will be beyond caring, they will be kaput.

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kellsdeep@reddit

40% poorer, 97.2% hotter due to the relativity of most of your community dying.

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LillianCatbutt@reddit

Y’all can’t squeeze much more blood from this stone.

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cookLibs90@reddit

Average person is already too poor

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tawhuac@reddit (OP)

Considering that the rich are getting richer, this is even mocking.

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Astalon18@reddit

This is a most stupid analysis if you ask me.

At 4 degree celsius of temperature rise, many cities in the tropics and subtropics will be verging on or will be uninhabitable ( except oddly enough those with 5 degrees of the equator itself ). For one, typhoons will be a regular phenomena in many of those cities and there is no way to keep preparing for a typhoon. Heavy rains will also be an issue. That is not counting heat waves. This will kill many people.

It should be noted that when I say subtropics, I include areas that covers the line of Capricorn and Cancer, as well as areas up to 5 degrees above the line of Capricorn and Cancer.

So we are talking about life and death here.

Imagine Brisbane getting a cyclone every 5 years .. can they cope? Imagine Taipei having annual typhoon, can they cope? This is the issue.

Also do not think Europe and USA will be spared except this time it will be extreme seasonal polarity, which while preparable is going to escalate the cost of everything ( and many poorer people will die ).

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Shoddy-Childhood-511@reddit

Ira Leifer says of "a 4C hotter world. While prudent, one wonders what portion of the population could adapt to such a world. My view is that it’s just a few thousand people seeking refuge in the Arctic or Antarctica"

I'd think "just a few thousand" maybe overestimating the damage, becuase Ira Leifer cited no real methodology here, but..

Will Steffen cites more serious estimate on page 37 of The Nature of the Challenge (36m in his 2018 talk):

Is a +4°C world inhabitable?
Most of the tropics and subtropics will be too hot for human habitation.
Changing temperature & rainfall patterns may make current large agricultural zones unproductive.
...
Maximum carrying capacity of \~1 billion humans

Alright if 1 billion sounds like our best guess at an upper limit for +4°C right now, then from where does this 40% poorer originate?

Any framing like poorer screams IAM. IAMs were invented by the economist William Nordhaus, who thinks +4°C sounds "optimal." You should hear what Steve Keen says about William Nordhaus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kXKbQWA2EY

In other words, this 40% comes from economist bullshitters removing some of the more obvious bullshit from older economists bullshit models.

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tawhuac@reddit (OP)

Makes sense, thanks

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leisurechef@reddit

Probably 40% deader 💀too

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Shoddy-Childhood-511@reddit

90% according to the sources Will Steffan cites (linked elsewhere inthe thread)

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HanumanjiShivaRam81@reddit

You win comment of the day 🥇

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TheHistorian2@reddit

At +4C the average person will be dead.

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HomoExtinctisus@reddit

This sounds like rather a statistically adjusted meaningless headline.

Yes talk about burying the lead. You can find that here on page 9 which is secondary link from the article itself.

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ElephantContent8835@reddit

Why are there so many articles like this popping up? When the world warms by 4 C, civilization and money will no longer exist in the current form. End of story.

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tawhuac@reddit (OP)

Dunno. Maybe they think they can't say that, as it's becoming obvious how it's getting worse, and they try saying less "dramatic" things?

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BasedDistributist@reddit

Its an ass backwards way of saying that everything will be, on average, at least 2.5x more expensive in today's dollars.

In reality it will be worse than that becuase models like this dont usually account for a variety of things like inflation and negative externalities.

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sorry97@reddit

Tbh if the planet’s temperature is that high, I believe being poor is the least of your concerns.

Like… will anyone even be able to get food? Crops? Animals? What will you get at the grocery shop? Heck, will people give you a can of beans in exchange for the piece of papare that’s a dollar bill?

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NyriasNeo@reddit

"Average person will be 40% poorer if world warms by 4C, new research shows"

If everyone is alive. Or if 40% of humans perishes, then everyone will not be poorer.

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tawhuac@reddit (OP)

Submission statement: collapse related because such a high warming to 4C, more than double the widely accepted warming levels today, can't possibly maintain anything looking like current society, but a "we're just going to be 40% on average" suggests society is still functioning, "just" a bit poorer than today...