My goodness gracious Charles.

Nice piece and something to think about, Charles. I can't wait to see the hailstorm about to rain upon this one. You make perfect sense. "Kills" was the inoperative but ironic word in there. I doubt many will "get it".

But operative. I sorta wrote that with less detail than intended. Inoperative because of course C doesn't want to see anyone die.

How in any way is Charles being racist? Because he has noticed "race"? He's a fucking thinker and writer who has his own perspective. I "love" seeing people get bent out of shape for making others think for themselves.

You got it partly right, Mr. M. Should be "RICH white people" because until they no longer have their gated communities and their A/C and their comfy cars (driven by someone else, of course) and their private jets, nothing will happen. The poor will suffer until the rich start to suffer.

“Something more awful than all our African ancestors is rising with the seas.”

There’s really low hanging fruit here, but I’ll be fair.

@3) again read my post. jesus.

How does obama fit into this? He was in charge for the last 8 years before trump and we only got the paris accord at the end... I’d argue that neo-liberalism is failing to address climate change, hoping that technology will address in a way that is profitable...

Most climate change projections don't have many white people getting killed. Climate change will cause massive agricultural dislocation, but Iowa farmers will figure out how to switch to semitropical crops. Zimbabwean subsistance farmers are fucked, though. :^(

Great piece Charles

"Climate change" is so broad a term that it's almost worthless. It's drought in Australia and crazy storms in the NE. It's the Western Pine Beetle, which has killed forests in the American west, and "acid rain" which has decimated the forests of the Canadian Shield. It's housing policy globally, and rapid industrialization in emerging countries. And it's a million other things.

I agree with Our Dear Randommonkey. that it's much more about class than it is about race. Most rich people in the West are white, of course, but it's really going to be the poor of all races who feel it first. And don't forget that racism is a tool that the economic elites use to keep the "lower" classes sniping at each other instead of at them. Perhaps that explains part of the uptick, and of people like trump.

@8: do you remember the Obstruction by the GOP? the obfuscation of the science and the predictions of doom for the economy?

that's why Obama "only" got Paris signed. because conservatives. its why Al Gore failed, too.

if your only goal is to protect your wealth/industry for 20 more years until you're dead, you don't give a fuck about the future of the planet.

Shoreline, you and yours will always find a mea culpa for your dastardliness. To be expected (since I have read your comments for some time). But what do you do with logical outcomes when the choice arises? Go with brutality or go with humanity? You clearly would choose to see others suffer in fealty to your ideology. Which it really isn't. It is programming and inculcation. You simply do not use your own mind. It is being used by those you ascribe to in order to claim strength.

@11,
Your first paragraph sounds like a more polished line out of the movie Goodfellas:

"But now the guy's gotta come up with Paulie's money every week, no matter what. Business bad? Fuck you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? Fuck you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? Fuck you, pay me."

Your country's been devastated by a hurricane you say? Fuck you, pay me.

Maybe you should consider joining the mafia? Their morals and decency are right in line with your own.

To add to what both Charles and Our Dear Mrs. Vel-DuRay said, the only time the word “crisis” gets used in America is when middle-class white people could be negatively impacted. (We didn’t have a “housing crisis” or “housing affordability crisis” here in Seattle until white people with college degrees couldn’t live just anywhere they wanted. Pricing the poors out of their neighborhoods has always been met with loud, prolonged, official cheering.)

Chuckles, did you know white people can also sense earthquakes before they happen?

Whether I agree with you or not, I always look forward to reading your work

@17,
I'm assuming your moral position on helping people is that they need to pay up first. If that's so, just own it.

"The Fact Is Nothing Is Going to Be Done About Climate Change Until It Kills Lots of White People"

Ah, but it's gonna kill so many brown and black people, who will eventually get tired of Dying and head to the cooler, greener parts (like Seattle!) -- where we Whites already are.

And it's fucking gonna get fucking Crowded. So, expect a great Thinning of the (off-White) Herds, I suppose......

Maybe that's why Trumpfy's here:
The Armageddonner.

David in Shoreline once again show us how immoral and unchristian the modern trump GOP is.

Actually after the fires and land slides LAST year that took out some very affluent areas in California, you would think White people would get a clue....

What Charles is saying here, clearly and forcefully, is that nothing will be done about Climate Change until White People do something about it.

Non-white people have no agency in this matter, and thus no responsibility for doing anything about it.

If it is going to be fixed, it is entirely up to White People to do the fixing. There is really no disputing the logic presented.

(Climate Change itself does not care who does or does not do anything to counter it; Climate Change does not know or care what color your skin is. If you have a refrigerator or a car or children, or live in an old inefficient Single Family Home, or consume agriculturally intensive luxuries like meat or alcohol, Climate Change will happily accept your contributions and accelerate, no matter who you are).

White People will fix the problem, or no-one will.

Excellent post, Charles.

@14 trump has shown how much the gop is willing to do with executive authority alone...explain to me why the gop can do shit kids in cages, or ship green card holders away, but we excuse obama and the dems inaction away....fuck that...i want a liberal president that will that will act...also show me where obama and the dema tried to really solve climate change...they made a half ass attempt at the end, but for the most part just stayed the course.

@8 look at other countries. Canada has a liberal pm, and a pm basically can do what he wants...what’s stopping Tredeau from really taking on climate change...oh the shit ton of $$$$ that comes from the oil and other resources in Canada

Yes the gop and conservatives are horrible, but the neo liberials arent any better

@29

The most direct and effective way to curtail Global Warming would be to simply kill off a sizable fraction of the planet's human population.

I'd say the GOP is making far more progress in that direction than even the most activist liberal or progressive, but I still ain't gonna vote for 'em.

Trudeau’s a fucking joke, but man, is this getting interesting.

Good Evening Charles,
"The Fact Is Nothing Is Going to Be Done About Climate Change Until It Kills Lots of White People"

Well, you got our attention all right. Indeed, your post's title is a bit of a stretch. Fact is "something" is being done about climate change. I also agree with @13 Catalina. It's more a class issue than a race issue.

I can't elicit in this brief missive all that has been done (roughly since the 70s) to relieve "climate change" by humankind but for a start, read "Enlightenment Now" by Steven Pinker which I recently finished. There is a chapter on just how far we've come along.

To be sure, much more needs to be done. But for one to believe and/or declare that "lots of white people" must be killed as a result of climate change is crass. We're all human on this planet and each one of us in some small or perhaps great(?) capacity can do something about climate change.

@31 someone watch the latest avengers

David will be ironing his bleached polo when they come for him.

@35

Well, I read the spoilers at any rate. The first couple-few Marvel movies were good dumb fun, but now I find every new one more exhausting than the last.

I guess they're still appealing to the sort of person who believes the way to save a planet is to sit and wait for a superhero who will Finally Really Do Something to show up.

sigh Good god, the fate of this planet is beyond sick and sad.
@36 Pridge Wessea: Doofus in Shoreline will still be hiding behind his prized KKK hood when they do, asking 'Is it safe?' while in a desperate last minute search for his ill-gotten diamond stash. Pridge, I just plain love you, Max Solomon, COMTE, kristofarian, iseult, LavaGirl, German Sausage, tensor, Catalina, Phoebe, Gladys, and others for being so consistently spot on!

CM, you tell it like it is. Good piece.

@27 "Non-white people have no agency in this matter, and thus no responsibility for doing anything about it."

I picture Mudede typing in his air conditioned digs:

"But...but...we have no agency...we're incapable of being responsible for doing anything about it...because the White man and stuff."

Nah. White folks are too stupid. They’ll turn on one another — kill each other off before they look at their environment and the planet that gives them their very life and breath...ay dios mio

"White People will fix the problem, or no-one will."

Yet again.

white people this and white people fucking that

@38 - Love you too dear.

Humans always avert disasters this far out. We have more energy old and new, than ever before rewriting the forecasts, fixed starvation models of overpopulation and food shortages. Models are separate from the science. Climate has always been changing, drought is followed by flooding, genius will improvise. Rich white men declared the climate change. Find one scientist in An Inconvenient Truth. Not one would go on camera with the profiteer White AF Al Gore until they were given federal and state grant money. This is called confirmation bias and it is as scientific as climate consensus.

Can we pick the neighborhood that this will happen first? Like Capitol Hill or SLU?

Very true, Charles! Full points for this article. Personally, Fury Road is my favorite movie, so I'm pumped for the water wars.

I'm forced to agree with the headline. By the time this happens, it will be far too late to keep many more people from dying too.

@51 RickFromTexas: Thus I reiterate: sigh Good god, the fate of this planet is beyond sick and sad.

Rich* white people. Good template for our society. Nothing is going to be done about _ until it _ rich white people.

Thanks Mudede for bringing some buzz to dowdy eco-activism. Since everyone is excited to fight racism maybe we can swell the ranks of environmentalists beyond the the socks-with-sandals set. I don't share his theory, since plenty of white Americans have died, from Houston to New York to California, without any federal action. Whatever. It's a fine narrative if it helps the cause.

First, the technology (created largely by white people) that has unfortunately caused climate change has lifted billions of people of all races out of poverty. In even the poorest regions on earth, literacy, child mortality, starvation, and virtually every other measure of human prosperity has increased monumentally. That evil white capitalist Bill Gates has saved an estimated 100 million (mostly non white) lives himself.

So what should be done about this unfortunate side effect of prosperity? Voluntarily go back en masse to an earlier age where life was tougher, which would especially negatively impact the developing world? Seems unlikely to happen as if defies human nature. Most people are biologically programmed to care about the immediate prosperity of their families and themselves. Much more likely that technological solutions will make a difference. Increased efficiency, carbon taxes, alternative energy (including nuclear), carbon sequestration, climate engineering, or sucking the carbon out of the air. If we want to get all racial about this (and I don’t see why we should), which races are most likely to be working on these kinds of solutions?

Charles you should really try excercising some time man. The fat in your gut can’t possibly help with your negativity. You gotta sweat man and try to enjoy some life.

@55 Greenwood,
You raise a very good point. I believe natural and human-made catastrophes (I'll include epidemics) are less and less likely to be treated in the context of race and humanity is more & more likely to relieve and/or combat them collectively. I believe good technology (communication) is aiding & abetting the latter.

Consider the Ebola epidemic in west Africa of 2014-2016. More than 11,000 humans died on the continent of Africa alone as a result of that ghastly disease.

However, humanity banded together rather quickly I'll say, to nip that tragedy in the bud. Lots of black people died but a concerted array of humanity got together to render assistance in virtually any capacity.

Race had nothing to do with that extraordinary endeavor. I believe Charles is off the mark on this one regarding climate change as well.

is wokesplaining a word? kind of want to coin it. also, is the presumption/understanding that global warming as we know it now is reversible?

Obviously we should pass a Carbon Tax dramatically increasing world food prices causing millions to die. Because the world economy runs on oil and to suggest otherwise or that an alternative can be administered by the govt is asinine.

@27 "non white people have no agency,"

Really tell that to the Chinese who have the fastest growing carbon emissions.

What Charles fails to grasp (as usual) is that blaming segments of the population only makes it harder to get REAL results.

I really enjoyed this thread. It was very entertaining and serves to prove that the status quo won't change. It makes this old man smile!

Dear Charles...
You do realize that you're writing for a local Seattle rag, right? There's not that many people here who aren't already doing everything they personally can to prevent climate change. It ends up that there's very little we can do without the rest of the US stepping in.
Try publishing this in the New York Times or something, rather than berating the Choir.

Blah blah blah. White devil. Blah blah blah. White devil. Blah blah blahhhhhhhhhh...Whuuuuuuite devil.

Keep wasting your time with blaming the White devil, Mudede, as the world burns.

This whole feeble minded notion that if White people don't do this, that, or the other then the world is going to go too shit is nonsense. Why don't you shut the fuck up about White devils, and sort your own shit out. Let me guess, it's because I'm in your way. How convenient.

I get the reason you focus on White people though. If you focused that same degree of much needed attention to the Black community, your wheelhouse, heads would explode. So you work on the low hanging fruit of racialized political cheap shots.

A man has to make a living though, I get it. While your brothers are slaughtering one another in the streets of America, you don't have shit to say. Fucking coward.

@63 Brainless in Seattle: Oh MY. For a troll you have a lot of word salad to spew, don't you?

What a racist article.

Could we not substitute the words "rich" or "wealthy" for white and "poor" or "working class" for black or non-white?

Rich lives.

Let's not add false fuel to the fires.

Racist ideology has no place in these discussions.

@3 you are clueless about Denmark's environmental impact. According to the World Wildlife Fund Denmark has nearly the worst ecological footprint on the planet when you measure total impact of all consumption including air travel and foreign goods manufacturing. The place might be the most deforested country in the world, and their major ag industry supplies much of the world with canned pork. On the whole the place is filthy, and actually a great example of Charles' silly premise that white middle-class people are special polluters because of their privilege. As if black people on the whole give more of fuck, yeah right. But anyway you've got Denmark all wrong.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thelocal.dk/20140930/denmark-has-worlds-fourth-largest-ecological-footprint/amp

I hate to throw in some non-racist facts but have a look at this (it literally took less than 30 sec to fact check this):
https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/science/each-countrys-share-of-co2.html#.W3Bb3c5KhhE

"Hottest month on Record" Lol. When you add a strip of concrete 8,500 feet long, 150 feet wide, and 17 inches deep right next to your thermometer the temperature readings you take before and after that addition are going to be very different. That is how we get our phony "hottest months on record" at Sea-Tac. I'm sure they are doing something as equally silly in the leftist state of CA to separate uneducated people from their money in the form of an unwarranted carbon tax.

It won't ever kill a lot of white people because white people are a global minority and live in the richest places on the planet with more capability than anyone else of creating a defensive infrastructure to deal with both the environmental catastrophe and the subsequent mass human displacement. Plus, a lot of the white-majority parts of the world will actually slightly benefit from climate change at least in the most immediate sense.

But I'm not entirely pessimistic. It doesn't have to start killing a bunch of white people for white people to care. It just has to start costing them money, and the solutions have to be economically viable. And luckily for the rest of us, this reasoning also applies to a lot of non-white people as well.

Not to belittle the magnitude of the shit-storm that we are just starting to deal with (it is going to be historically catastrophic) but it's not going to be as bad as projections based on current realities continuing unchanged.

This article is so ridiculous its almost comical. It's so easy to blame climate change (or anything for that matter) on the evil racist white man. Whats difficult is actually trying to come up with solutions. I have a great idea..quit blaming everything on racism, grow the fuck up, take some responsibility, and be part of the change you want to see in this world. I find this trashy article and its author extremely racist, the author adds nothing to the conversation.

This is true. If Mudede dropped dead, no one would care. However, there would be national mourning if Taylor Swift got a hangnail. Life is tough.