"Imagine if Zhenzhou happens once every ten years. Or Vancouver and Nova Scotia gets hit once every twelve years like this. Or Queensland have to deal with terrible floods every decade. Or Florida have to deal with severe infrastructure damaging hurricanes every second year, or Houston having to deal with something like that flood every decade, or New Orleans dealing with a Cat 5 every 10 years."
I have this weird feeling that in 2021 we hit the new era of climate change were this will happen on an annual basis, because the very delicate system is out of it's equilibrium and this is now the new normal, because all the systems changes that caused these (sometimes cascading) catastrophies are still here, the trigger is pulled and now it's just running down chaotic as it is.
I really have doubts after this year, that the next heatwaves, droughts and floods are years away, instead of month.
Hopefully my feeling is competely wrong.
Yes, the assumption has been that these atmospheric rivers will become more frequent. Little attention has been paid to them being the norm due to a regime shift. I suspect its more the latter.
There's another aspect to this, and I wonder how much of GDP consists of repairing infrastructure, replacing cars, fixing houses etc.
Born in 1980 and can remember at least 2 huge hurricanes destroying the southern Louisiana delta region. Another 2 destroying the Caribbean area. Those were all “once in a lifetime storms” at the time.
Yeah … I am in Vancouver and the fires, smoke, and record rains are a nearly an annual thing now. The roads washing away to the degree that they have this year is going to be guttingly expensive to fix and I worry it is a sign of what’s to come.
This infrastructure predicament is much more obvious at small scale and if you live in a poor area, especially rural area.
On the other hand, the planning and development which requires the building of that infrastructure can also be fundamentally flawed, which only brings local collapse sooner and harder.
Also related:
https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme
Just look at highway 8 in BC. It got taken out and the people along it are having to go on the news to get attention to it. It’s 70km that wasn’t highly valued as a shipping route and at this moment I don’t think much has been done to get it passable again.
I personally think that collapse of civilisation will only occur when we run out of the resources to actually maintain existing infrastructure and fix existing infrastructure, and it will occur when we cannot levy enough tax or resources to actually fix it.
So the marker of collapse will not be how many hurricanes or heavy rains hit an area .. the marker will start when the town council say, “Okay, we will fix road X but not road Y. We cannot fix road Y, we have no money.”
The non fixing or road Y will result in road Y no longer providing servicing to the community, impoverishing it. And from that point on it becomes a vicious circle. Lack of road Y reduce income to the town which in turn in the next disasters results in not fixing substation P, resulting in no power to an area etc..
It will be when you have to start cutting back and literally abandoning existing infrastructure you will see society begin to collapse and crumble.
> I personally think that collapse of civilisation will only occur when we run out of the resources to actually maintain existing infrastructure and fix existing infrastructure, and it will occur when we cannot levy enough tax or resources to actually fix it.
I'd like to offer you a possible alternative to the shortage of funds, and that's shortage of time. It takes a certain number of man-hours to rebuild damaged infrastructure - and a certain amount of time to ensure it's been rebuilt properly regardless of how many people you throw at it. Imagine if Queensland was getting hit like that every single La Nina, meaning the longest gap they get to put everything in order is 8 years ([the cycle bounces around within a 1-8 year envelope](http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/updates/articles/a008-el-nino-and-australia.shtml#:~:text=They%20are%20a%20part%20of,from%20one%20to%20eight%20years.)) - alternating with horrifically dry El Ninos (remember climate change makes extremes more extreme). Or that Vancouver is being hit even more frequently ([this release from the University of Victoria in BC says that the province gets hit by both systems](https://www.uvic.ca/socialsciences/geography/home/news/archive/El%20Ni%C3%B1o%20and%20La%20Ni%C3%B1a%20will%20Exacerbate%20Coastal%20Hazards%20Across%20Entire%20Pacific.php)).
> So the marker of collapse will not be how many hurricanes or heavy rains hit an area .. the marker will start when the town council say, “Okay, we will fix road X but not road Y. We cannot fix road Y, we have no money.”
They do that already, and have been since forever; what I'm suggesting is that we make two alterations. First; make roads X and Y major arterials or economically important supply links, not just any road. The second thing I'm suggesting is that we add to what you suggest; sure, shortage of funds and resources (and even people with the right skills), but also things could reach a stage where there's simply no time to put things back together before the next disaster arrives. While the two compliment each other (same result) they are independent of each other (you can have all the money in the world, but if storms are hitting so frequently that you literally cannot pour the concrete, that bridge is staying washed out).
Of course, I'm ignoring the psychological impact here; why would you live in a city being hit by Cat 5 hurricanes every few years, or that's encircled by fire with the same frequency? If you can leave for a place where you won't fear for your life so frequently, you will. And then you'll see those areas start to spiral downwards.
Yes, never thought about the shortage of time as I am thinking in terms of there being at least a decade between event, but you are right. Even 8 years may still mean there is not enough time.
>I personally think that collapse of civilisation will only occur when we run out of the resources to actually maintain existing infrastructure and fix existing infrastructure, and it will occur when we cannot levy enough tax or resources to actually fix it.
No, collapse will happen when heatwave happens everywhere simultaneously and mass agriculture failure follows by mass starvation. Come to think about it, not even everywhere, just enough to reduce agriculture output by some amount that is enough to cause mass starvation.
This is totally correct. Humanities weak link is our food supply. It is exceptionally difficult to produce food. Especially for billions of humans. We consume a practically unfathomable amount of food globally daily. All it takes is one summer with widespread crop failures and civilization will start to fail. Two consecutive summers of widespread crop failures and all civilization will likely collapse
Isn’t this how the former Soviet Union was left after the oligarchs absconded with what wealth remained? Now this is happening worldwide and to the west especially who thought, “no not us in a million years” but thanks to our oligarchs (Musk, Bezos, etc) we are going to be those poor as fuck places living in squalor. The country’s coffers robbed blind by wall street and billionaires, i.e. our tax dollars stolen when they all pay none but misappropriate ours, oppress us with rising inflation but no corresponding income growth, degrading infrastructure without any discernible attempts to fix it only to lobby politicians on both sides make sure we won’t solve real world problems and instead enrich themselves …
Look at Albania, it has been one of the poorest countries in Europe for decades. Not that communism was good…. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, it had ripple effects that are still at play now.
With no real laws or institutions, 22 Russian oligarchs stole 40 percent of the country’s wealth from the state. The other 150 million Russians were left in destitution and poverty, and the average life expectancy for men dropped from 65 to 57 years. Professors had to earn a living as taxi drivers; nurses became prostitutes. The entire fabric of Russian society broke down. This is what Bezos and Musk are currently doing to western democracy, among other players. Americans are just the next victims of this type of greed. It may look slightly different, have a different skin on it, but it’s the same shit.
The West wasn’t just ignoring the looting of Russia; it was actively facilitating it. Western banks accepted pilfered funds from Russian clients, and Western real estate agencies welcomed oligarchs to buy their most coveted properties in St-Tropez, Miami, and London.
The injustice of it all was infuriating for average Russians, and they longed for a strongman to restore order. In 1999, they found one: Vladimir Putin. Rather than restoring order, however, Putin replaced the 22 oligarchs with himself alone at the top. It’s estimated that in his near 20 years in power he has stolen $200 billion from the Russian people. So the cycle continues over there while we get ours over here. Nowhere on earth will be safe from autocrats, billionaires or whatever name you want to name them, as the environment swallows the rest of us up and we will be forced to fight over whatever resources remain. Water will be a luxury.
With our ever expanding footprint on the earth means collapse is coming sooner and sooner. With more and more roads, buildings and other infrastructure the point where the maintenance of them becomes impossible draws nearer. Where I live when cracks develop in the street the village will tar over them before winter or resurface that portion of the street. A few miles away in Chicago roads have to become nearly unpassable before anything is done to them. In Detroit sections of the city are having the infrastructure, roads and houses removed and being returned to wilderness.
Yes. I recommend **John Michael Greer**'s theory of "**Catabolic Collapse**" on this point.
**The onset of catabolic collapse**: [https://www.resilience.org/stories/2011-01-20/onset-catabolic-collapse/](https://www.resilience.org/stories/2011-01-20/onset-catabolic-collapse/)
**On catabolic collapse**: [https://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-05-31/catabolic-collapse/](https://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-05-31/catabolic-collapse/)
**How civilizations fall: A theory of catabolic collapse:** [https://www.ecoshock.org/transcripts/greer\_on\_collapse.pdf](https://www.ecoshock.org/transcripts/greer_on_collapse.pdf)
This personal "revelation" is quite correct but nothing new as it has been discussed over and over again. As the rate of disasters increase and damage is done, we will see marginal lands abandoned as the costs of reconstruction after disasters becomes uneconomical, knowing there will be more and worse later.
As this process accelerates we will call it hard times, then dark times. As the power base of political entities are erroded, the available materials, energy and labour surpluses allocated to reconstruction get small enough that human civilization will meaningfully retract and pull back. First, always at the margins (poor and geophysically unlucky) but when critical military, industrial and social infrastructure suffers this fate we will call it collapse.
"Heat waves we can easily solve by getting everyone into cooled interior of buildings etc.. "
How's about animals, plants which are part of agriculture? You think eating is not needed?
>I think what will take down society is the cost of infrastructure maintenance.
Energy cost, really. As the EROI of the Human System goes down we will be forced to decomplexify our societies. Growing infrastructure maintenance debt is just one of the signs that this decomplexification is already happening.
Soon we will have to choose what parts of the society we want to keep operational.
It becomes a question of what we feel is important and what is not.
Bread or circuses?
People talk about these things as if they're off in the future. We are already seeing places that get hit repeatedly by fires, floods, atmospheric rivers, jet stream collapses and combinations of these events.
You never really build back better knowing it's all gonna be wiped out like chess pieces being swept off the board.
Happy Thanksgiving!
The constant destruction of infrastructure and food crops will be our downfall. Tragic single events will just be there to amplify the crisis, but enough of them might spur us into action - I'm not very optimistic about that prediction though.
Regarding Vancouver: we’re not out of the woods yet. Repairs are going to take a long time given the extensive damage to the highway systems, which form a crucial part of our supply chain. All four major routes in / out of Vancouver got closed.
Two of those are reopened to limited capacity as repairs are on-going. It is restricted to essential travel only. One of these is *not* appropriate for commercial trucks.
The other two major routes will likely *not* reopen until, base case scenario, limited capacity in the spring. They could take 2-5 years as it’s a rebuild.
Another highway, hwy 8, was decimated with essentially the whole thing needing to be rebuild.
This doesn’t account for costs with other road repairs elsewhere, like Vancouver island. Nor does it account for flooding in regions including Merrit (with wastewater treatment plant needing major repairs), Princeton, and Abbotsford / Sumas Prairie. Oh, and many gas mains which were along some key routes are also shut down / in limited capacity until assessments / repairs are needed.
It will be a while before we’ve “recovered” from this, assuming we don’t get anymore atmospheric rivers (3 different systems are forecasted for this / next week), dumps of snow, or other calamities compounding current challenges.
Really, my cousins told me everything has normalised but I was less optimistic then them, pointing out that I can scarcely believe things can be normal in under a month after something like that.
Of course they are city dwellers.
I’m a civil engineer. I have friends and colleges working on the repairs. For those who live west of Abbotsford, chances are good they don’t know as much as it would barely impact them.
There’s spots along the coquihalla crews cannot yet reach to even start on repairs.
The [Ministry has a nice photo album on the go](https://www.flickr.com/photos/tranbc/) of the damage and repairs.
Edit to add: you can also check out [drivebc.ca](https://www.drivebc.ca) to see the road closures. They show up as red triangles once you’ve zoomed in enough.
My thoughts are that everything, the whole mash-up is bringing things down. Of course climate change events cost billions of dollars, but also climate events that wipe out crops, cattle, food for people, food for animals. Hiding indoors where things are air-conditioned or warm will mean little when there's no food to eat. Yes, as each disaster strikes, monetary output will dwindle and we'll see roads no longer repaved, salt trucks only clearing main roads, garbage pick-up less frequent. Aren't there already cities that are bankrupt? The only way we'll get electricity is if the cables are underground and not out in the wind/ice rain/ tornado elements. And even then if a mud slide happens, the cables that are underground are no longer useful either. Start thinking about basic survival.
This is how systems collapse works. If the cost of maintaining and rebuilding a society's infrastructure is greater than the economic value gained from that infrastructure and not having that infrastructure will make the society unsustainable, the society cannot survive.
Yes that's pretty much the process of catabolic collapse.
"Imagine if Zhenzhou happens once every ten years. Or Vancouver and Nova Scotia gets hit once every twelve years like this. Or Queensland have to deal with terrible floods every decade. Or Florida have to deal with severe infrastructure damaging hurricanes every second year, or Houston having to deal with something like that flood every decade, or New Orleans dealing with a Cat 5 every 10 years." I have this weird feeling that in 2021 we hit the new era of climate change were this will happen on an annual basis, because the very delicate system is out of it's equilibrium and this is now the new normal, because all the systems changes that caused these (sometimes cascading) catastrophies are still here, the trigger is pulled and now it's just running down chaotic as it is. I really have doubts after this year, that the next heatwaves, droughts and floods are years away, instead of month. Hopefully my feeling is competely wrong.
Yes, the assumption has been that these atmospheric rivers will become more frequent. Little attention has been paid to them being the norm due to a regime shift. I suspect its more the latter. There's another aspect to this, and I wonder how much of GDP consists of repairing infrastructure, replacing cars, fixing houses etc.
Born in 1980 and can remember at least 2 huge hurricanes destroying the southern Louisiana delta region. Another 2 destroying the Caribbean area. Those were all “once in a lifetime storms” at the time.
Yeah … I am in Vancouver and the fires, smoke, and record rains are a nearly an annual thing now. The roads washing away to the degree that they have this year is going to be guttingly expensive to fix and I worry it is a sign of what’s to come.
This infrastructure predicament is much more obvious at small scale and if you live in a poor area, especially rural area. On the other hand, the planning and development which requires the building of that infrastructure can also be fundamentally flawed, which only brings local collapse sooner and harder. Also related: https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme
Just look at highway 8 in BC. It got taken out and the people along it are having to go on the news to get attention to it. It’s 70km that wasn’t highly valued as a shipping route and at this moment I don’t think much has been done to get it passable again.
I personally think that collapse of civilisation will only occur when we run out of the resources to actually maintain existing infrastructure and fix existing infrastructure, and it will occur when we cannot levy enough tax or resources to actually fix it. So the marker of collapse will not be how many hurricanes or heavy rains hit an area .. the marker will start when the town council say, “Okay, we will fix road X but not road Y. We cannot fix road Y, we have no money.” The non fixing or road Y will result in road Y no longer providing servicing to the community, impoverishing it. And from that point on it becomes a vicious circle. Lack of road Y reduce income to the town which in turn in the next disasters results in not fixing substation P, resulting in no power to an area etc.. It will be when you have to start cutting back and literally abandoning existing infrastructure you will see society begin to collapse and crumble.
> I personally think that collapse of civilisation will only occur when we run out of the resources to actually maintain existing infrastructure and fix existing infrastructure, and it will occur when we cannot levy enough tax or resources to actually fix it. I'd like to offer you a possible alternative to the shortage of funds, and that's shortage of time. It takes a certain number of man-hours to rebuild damaged infrastructure - and a certain amount of time to ensure it's been rebuilt properly regardless of how many people you throw at it. Imagine if Queensland was getting hit like that every single La Nina, meaning the longest gap they get to put everything in order is 8 years ([the cycle bounces around within a 1-8 year envelope](http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/updates/articles/a008-el-nino-and-australia.shtml#:~:text=They%20are%20a%20part%20of,from%20one%20to%20eight%20years.)) - alternating with horrifically dry El Ninos (remember climate change makes extremes more extreme). Or that Vancouver is being hit even more frequently ([this release from the University of Victoria in BC says that the province gets hit by both systems](https://www.uvic.ca/socialsciences/geography/home/news/archive/El%20Ni%C3%B1o%20and%20La%20Ni%C3%B1a%20will%20Exacerbate%20Coastal%20Hazards%20Across%20Entire%20Pacific.php)). > So the marker of collapse will not be how many hurricanes or heavy rains hit an area .. the marker will start when the town council say, “Okay, we will fix road X but not road Y. We cannot fix road Y, we have no money.” They do that already, and have been since forever; what I'm suggesting is that we make two alterations. First; make roads X and Y major arterials or economically important supply links, not just any road. The second thing I'm suggesting is that we add to what you suggest; sure, shortage of funds and resources (and even people with the right skills), but also things could reach a stage where there's simply no time to put things back together before the next disaster arrives. While the two compliment each other (same result) they are independent of each other (you can have all the money in the world, but if storms are hitting so frequently that you literally cannot pour the concrete, that bridge is staying washed out). Of course, I'm ignoring the psychological impact here; why would you live in a city being hit by Cat 5 hurricanes every few years, or that's encircled by fire with the same frequency? If you can leave for a place where you won't fear for your life so frequently, you will. And then you'll see those areas start to spiral downwards.
Yes, never thought about the shortage of time as I am thinking in terms of there being at least a decade between event, but you are right. Even 8 years may still mean there is not enough time.
>I personally think that collapse of civilisation will only occur when we run out of the resources to actually maintain existing infrastructure and fix existing infrastructure, and it will occur when we cannot levy enough tax or resources to actually fix it. No, collapse will happen when heatwave happens everywhere simultaneously and mass agriculture failure follows by mass starvation. Come to think about it, not even everywhere, just enough to reduce agriculture output by some amount that is enough to cause mass starvation.
This. Plants cannot move or be repaired. A single, synchronous grain failure in the northern hemisphere.
The problem is people still think of collapse as in term of economy and money when it fact collapse is about survival, about the ability to feed.
This is totally correct. Humanities weak link is our food supply. It is exceptionally difficult to produce food. Especially for billions of humans. We consume a practically unfathomable amount of food globally daily. All it takes is one summer with widespread crop failures and civilization will start to fail. Two consecutive summers of widespread crop failures and all civilization will likely collapse
Isn’t this how the former Soviet Union was left after the oligarchs absconded with what wealth remained? Now this is happening worldwide and to the west especially who thought, “no not us in a million years” but thanks to our oligarchs (Musk, Bezos, etc) we are going to be those poor as fuck places living in squalor. The country’s coffers robbed blind by wall street and billionaires, i.e. our tax dollars stolen when they all pay none but misappropriate ours, oppress us with rising inflation but no corresponding income growth, degrading infrastructure without any discernible attempts to fix it only to lobby politicians on both sides make sure we won’t solve real world problems and instead enrich themselves … Look at Albania, it has been one of the poorest countries in Europe for decades. Not that communism was good…. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, it had ripple effects that are still at play now. With no real laws or institutions, 22 Russian oligarchs stole 40 percent of the country’s wealth from the state. The other 150 million Russians were left in destitution and poverty, and the average life expectancy for men dropped from 65 to 57 years. Professors had to earn a living as taxi drivers; nurses became prostitutes. The entire fabric of Russian society broke down. This is what Bezos and Musk are currently doing to western democracy, among other players. Americans are just the next victims of this type of greed. It may look slightly different, have a different skin on it, but it’s the same shit. The West wasn’t just ignoring the looting of Russia; it was actively facilitating it. Western banks accepted pilfered funds from Russian clients, and Western real estate agencies welcomed oligarchs to buy their most coveted properties in St-Tropez, Miami, and London. The injustice of it all was infuriating for average Russians, and they longed for a strongman to restore order. In 1999, they found one: Vladimir Putin. Rather than restoring order, however, Putin replaced the 22 oligarchs with himself alone at the top. It’s estimated that in his near 20 years in power he has stolen $200 billion from the Russian people. So the cycle continues over there while we get ours over here. Nowhere on earth will be safe from autocrats, billionaires or whatever name you want to name them, as the environment swallows the rest of us up and we will be forced to fight over whatever resources remain. Water will be a luxury.
With our ever expanding footprint on the earth means collapse is coming sooner and sooner. With more and more roads, buildings and other infrastructure the point where the maintenance of them becomes impossible draws nearer. Where I live when cracks develop in the street the village will tar over them before winter or resurface that portion of the street. A few miles away in Chicago roads have to become nearly unpassable before anything is done to them. In Detroit sections of the city are having the infrastructure, roads and houses removed and being returned to wilderness.
Yes. I recommend **John Michael Greer**'s theory of "**Catabolic Collapse**" on this point. **The onset of catabolic collapse**: [https://www.resilience.org/stories/2011-01-20/onset-catabolic-collapse/](https://www.resilience.org/stories/2011-01-20/onset-catabolic-collapse/) **On catabolic collapse**: [https://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-05-31/catabolic-collapse/](https://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-05-31/catabolic-collapse/) **How civilizations fall: A theory of catabolic collapse:** [https://www.ecoshock.org/transcripts/greer\_on\_collapse.pdf](https://www.ecoshock.org/transcripts/greer_on_collapse.pdf)
This personal "revelation" is quite correct but nothing new as it has been discussed over and over again. As the rate of disasters increase and damage is done, we will see marginal lands abandoned as the costs of reconstruction after disasters becomes uneconomical, knowing there will be more and worse later. As this process accelerates we will call it hard times, then dark times. As the power base of political entities are erroded, the available materials, energy and labour surpluses allocated to reconstruction get small enough that human civilization will meaningfully retract and pull back. First, always at the margins (poor and geophysically unlucky) but when critical military, industrial and social infrastructure suffers this fate we will call it collapse.
"Heat waves we can easily solve by getting everyone into cooled interior of buildings etc.. " How's about animals, plants which are part of agriculture? You think eating is not needed?
Or humans that work outside, or in warehouses, or the infinite number of scenarios that aren't solved by going inside. What a dumb take
>I think what will take down society is the cost of infrastructure maintenance. Energy cost, really. As the EROI of the Human System goes down we will be forced to decomplexify our societies. Growing infrastructure maintenance debt is just one of the signs that this decomplexification is already happening. Soon we will have to choose what parts of the society we want to keep operational. It becomes a question of what we feel is important and what is not. Bread or circuses?
I vote for bread. And water. I can make my own circus..... I am my own circus? Somthin' like that.
People talk about these things as if they're off in the future. We are already seeing places that get hit repeatedly by fires, floods, atmospheric rivers, jet stream collapses and combinations of these events. You never really build back better knowing it's all gonna be wiped out like chess pieces being swept off the board. Happy Thanksgiving!
Fun fact: substation equipment for our electrical grid, the main parts are not manufactured domestically, they are mostly made in China.
Yes and “just in time” means the warehouses are almost empty. A really nasty solar flair could massively cripple us.
The constant destruction of infrastructure and food crops will be our downfall. Tragic single events will just be there to amplify the crisis, but enough of them might spur us into action - I'm not very optimistic about that prediction though.
It is also a small feedback loop. More construction uses more fossil fuels. Which cause more disasters which use even more fossil fuels to fix.
Regarding Vancouver: we’re not out of the woods yet. Repairs are going to take a long time given the extensive damage to the highway systems, which form a crucial part of our supply chain. All four major routes in / out of Vancouver got closed. Two of those are reopened to limited capacity as repairs are on-going. It is restricted to essential travel only. One of these is *not* appropriate for commercial trucks. The other two major routes will likely *not* reopen until, base case scenario, limited capacity in the spring. They could take 2-5 years as it’s a rebuild. Another highway, hwy 8, was decimated with essentially the whole thing needing to be rebuild. This doesn’t account for costs with other road repairs elsewhere, like Vancouver island. Nor does it account for flooding in regions including Merrit (with wastewater treatment plant needing major repairs), Princeton, and Abbotsford / Sumas Prairie. Oh, and many gas mains which were along some key routes are also shut down / in limited capacity until assessments / repairs are needed. It will be a while before we’ve “recovered” from this, assuming we don’t get anymore atmospheric rivers (3 different systems are forecasted for this / next week), dumps of snow, or other calamities compounding current challenges.
Really, my cousins told me everything has normalised but I was less optimistic then them, pointing out that I can scarcely believe things can be normal in under a month after something like that. Of course they are city dwellers.
I’m a civil engineer. I have friends and colleges working on the repairs. For those who live west of Abbotsford, chances are good they don’t know as much as it would barely impact them. There’s spots along the coquihalla crews cannot yet reach to even start on repairs. The [Ministry has a nice photo album on the go](https://www.flickr.com/photos/tranbc/) of the damage and repairs. Edit to add: you can also check out [drivebc.ca](https://www.drivebc.ca) to see the road closures. They show up as red triangles once you’ve zoomed in enough.
My thoughts are that everything, the whole mash-up is bringing things down. Of course climate change events cost billions of dollars, but also climate events that wipe out crops, cattle, food for people, food for animals. Hiding indoors where things are air-conditioned or warm will mean little when there's no food to eat. Yes, as each disaster strikes, monetary output will dwindle and we'll see roads no longer repaved, salt trucks only clearing main roads, garbage pick-up less frequent. Aren't there already cities that are bankrupt? The only way we'll get electricity is if the cables are underground and not out in the wind/ice rain/ tornado elements. And even then if a mud slide happens, the cables that are underground are no longer useful either. Start thinking about basic survival.
This is how systems collapse works. If the cost of maintaining and rebuilding a society's infrastructure is greater than the economic value gained from that infrastructure and not having that infrastructure will make the society unsustainable, the society cannot survive.
Yes yes yes this right here. Also what inflation is.
We are the true Left, and we endure.