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The planet is in a no-win situation when it comes to extreme weather, unless we fix inequality [1]

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Date: 2022-08-30

Officials in Pakistan are furious that the country is experiencing the worst of climate crisis while emitting far fewer greenhouse gases than the likes of China and the U.S. “The international community has a responsibility to help us, upgrade our infrastructure, to make our infrastructure more climate resilient, so that we don't have such losses every three, four, five years,” Pakistan Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal told Reuters.

Iqbal estimates damages from the flooding could exceed $10 billion. The Washington Post notes that countries whose emissions have played the biggest role in hastening climate change likely won’t be footing the bill as communities in Pakistan continue to suffer. The U.S. has been especially reticent to help, despite playing such an outsized role in polluting the planet, and experts believe determining financial responsibility could be a key issue at the forthcoming COP27 to be held in Egypt.

It’s impossible to solve inequality by washing your hands of responsibility for it. A new book spanning two years of research tilted Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity, spells this out explicitly and puts addressing gross inequality and ending poverty as its top two tools to fight the climate crisis. The book’s six co-authors lay out various real-world scenarios as well as models of what our world could look like depending on how willing we are to address climate through the lens of environmental justice and all that intersects within that framework.

“Unless there is truly extraordinary action to redistribute wealth, things will get significantly worse,” co-author Jorgen Randers said in a press release. “We are already sowing the seeds for regional collapse. Societies are creating vicious cycles where rising social tensions, that are exacerbated by climate breakdown, will continue to lead to a decline in trust. This risks an explosive combination of extreme political destabilization and economic stagnation at a time when we must do everything we can to avoid climate catastrophes.”

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/30/2119587/-The-planet-is-in-a-no-win-situation-when-it-comes-to-extreme-weather-unless-we-fix-inequality

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