Kim Stanley Robinson's novel "The Ministry for the Future".
Here's the blurb from goodreads:
Established in 2025, the purpose of the new organization was simple: To advocate for the world's future generations and to protect all living creatures, present and future. It soon became known as the Ministry for the Future, and this is its story.
From legendary science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson comes a vision of climate change unlike any ever imagined.
Told entirely through fictional eye-witness accounts, The Ministry For The Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, the story of how climate change will affect us all over the decades to come.
Its setting is not a desolate, post-apocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us - and in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face.
It is a novel both immediate and impactful, desperate and hopeful in equal measure, and it is one of the most powerful and original books on climate change ever written.
I assume Karachi isn’t that bad yet. A cursory Google search showed a wet bulb reading of 27C for Karachi — still very hot but not life-threateningly so. In fact, the Telegraph article notes that those who can afford it spend the summer in Quetta or Karachi.
Of course this article also focuses on the cost of electricity and air conditioning, which is a major factor as well.
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people...
Weather or climate? Weather is incidental. In terms of climate, further increases for decades are locked in from past emissions we can't change.
For the present, at each moment, we can choose to contribute to further suffering or not. As you mentioned, it's becoming life-threatening.
Exactly two things work: reducing our consumption and reducing our birth rate. Mechai Viravaidya in Thailand showed how to reduce birth rate in the opposite of China's One Child policy or eugenics -- that is, voluntary, noncoercive, even fun -- as did Costa Rica, Iran, and several other countries. Most Americans can improve their quality of life by lowering consumption. I reduced mine over 90% with just life improvements. I estimate most Americans can reduce theirs 80% or more without sacrifice, just improvements. The most polluting can probably reduce theirs 99%.
Systemic change begins with personal transformation. Government and corporations will follow individual action, as they historically have. Personal transformation enables us to lead others. Leading others has the biggest effect because it multiplies.
To act here and now, the most important thing we can do is to learn leadership skills to lead ourselves and others.
Not quite. At 35C, the body can no longer maintain a normal body temperature, and simply standing outside in the shade will cause everyone to run a fever. However, a degree of fever is not dangerous in otherwise healthy individuals. So at 35C people can cool themselves, but only at an elevated temperature.
However, add a degree above that, and all the elderly and infirm will die. Add two degrees, and even healthy people start dropping like flies.
Our highest registered temperature was an exceptional peak of 52ºC for two days. Was a bit of a massacre, specially on elders. There's no record of those days publicly for some reason, but all locals remember it well.
The high humidity saturation seems to negatively affect evaporation of sweat, making you constantly drenched even with no clothes on. It's a kind of hell you can't escape, only hope it passes soon.
You don't need to have an average to hit anywhere close to it.
Just one single event, wave of temperature over 36 degrees is most likely going to kill millions of people if it hits densely populated area with people having no infrastructure to cool themselves. And no, spraying with water will not help, by very definition.
Hot is hot.
This site is showing quite a bit higher than 27C wet-bulb temp:
https://meteologix.com/pk/observations/pakistan/wet-bulb-tem...
Am I reading the map right? Karachi to me shows 27. But scarily for other places there’s 39 and even 41 in there.
Even in Canada, we are breaking records for heat. Temperatures have reached 49 C / 120 F
Despite that, I believe Canada will be a major recipient of these climate refugees when places just get too hot to live in.
That'll also be an option reserved for the privileged.
When the weather becomes lethal, these people are going to die.
The only realistic solution is building infrastructure to let people live through the worst of the weather.
If it is as bad as it is described in the article, I worry about long term prospects of stable economy and progress, what with people occupied mostly with trying to survive another hellish day.
In 2020 it was estimated that 55 million people were displaced due to climate and weather events, more than 3 times the number displaced by conflict and violence. So the mass migration is already well under way.
To change the slope, exactly two things work: reducing our consumption and reducing our birth rate. Mechai Viravaidya in Thailand showed how to reduce birth rate in the opposite of China's One Child policy or eugenics -- that is, voluntary, noncoercive, even fun -- as did Costa Rica, Iran, and several other countries. Most Americans can improve their quality of life by lowering consumption. I reduced mine over 90% with just life improvements. I estimate most Americans can reduce theirs 80% or more without sacrifice, just improvements. The most polluting can probably reduce theirs 99%.
Systemic change begins with personal transformation. Government and corporations will follow individual action, as they historically have. Personal transformation enables us to lead others. Leading others has the biggest effect because it multiplies.
In what sense would these people be climate refugees rather than infrastructure refugees? What percentage of Canada's population can survive in Canada without canada's infrastructure ?
If you read the article, a major problem the author is complaining about is the infrastructure:
> The electricity problems make it worse. The load-shedding comes during summer months and, these days, often falls in Ramadan, when people can’t drink water.
In BC, Canada the Heat record was broken by almost 5C.
This links to: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/05/one-bill...
Titled: One billion people will live in insufferable heat within 50 years – study
Can't they just link to historical temperature records for Karachi rather?
Obviously living in a cave is not great, but properly built underground habitats?
The other option is heat pumps that exchange heat with the ground. These are slowly becoming more popular in the UK, for instance, but aren’t cheap.
One of the main reasons why I would never move to another part of the country.
People have very short memories, and often it is the _current_ summer/winter that appears to be the harshest to them, not the one that happened 20 years ago. Memories are even more shorter when it is generational.
https://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/climate-time-machine/
As a bonus, it also demonstrates that climate != weather. Even as the whole map is turning red, there's still a few cooler spots in any given year. There's just less and less.
Check back my comment (the one that you responded to) some years from now and reach out to me if needed. I skimmed through your other comments on other subjects, you'll probably get there where I currently am. A weird response to your response I know...
Between this and the pandemic response in so many places, I'm not so sure humanity is going to be around in a century or two.
The rich will live in climate controlled domes on remote islands or ships, while billions of people starve, overheat, or fight over scraps. The global "elite" rich have a serious blind-spot though: They never seem to realize that they rely on a massive robust web of interconnected humanity to support their wealth and privilege. From billions of farmers, miners, craftspeople, teachers, to workers of all types, the global rich live at the top of a massive pyramid of humanity.
Makes me wonder if the person who is desperately trying to bootstrap a society on Mars has the right idea...
Sorry for a depressing comment. It's sobering to know that despite having another 50 years or so of life left to live, I will probably die in a food riot or from home invaders looking for water and food.
I'm not particularly convinced of this line of argumentation. The amount of hubris and ignorance required would be truly astonishing. My take, based on misc readings from folks who have one foot in said world, is that the global elite rich are absolutely aware of this.
Furthermore, they're actively debating the problem for the simple reason of self-preservation. They want to keep their station in life: their in-groups, all their "toys", etc. They are viscerally aware of the growing disillusioned on all sides of the spectrum and an increasing willingness of the disenchanted to burn it down instead of playing what is perceived (rightly?) to be a rigged game.
Overall, it's hardly benevolent, and questionably competent. Some individuals most certainly are both; some far from either. Regardless, I do believe that sheer greed alone will mean they'll be throwing themselves as these problems if only to keep some semblance of the "good ol' days".
I don't reallly think we're even at a real risk of actual extinction though. We as a species have gone through far more traumatic climate change in the past. Modern civilisation might collapse but humanity before the hubris of the state and capital - hunter gatherers and nomads will just continue business as always. Even many modern anemeties might be able to persist using more decentralised and sustainable fabrication methods. We will have to make up for the breakdown of those supply chains but there are many alternatives to modern electronics that are not being persued because the status quo is currently more economical.
Hopefuly, the next iteration of civilisation will do a better job of stewardship with the planet instead of being a pest.
However, I think there is an even bigger blind-spot in the general population: technology. We have a level of technology such that aggression and basic necessities can be quite easily produced with few people (drones, modern agriculture etc). They are not as dependent on us as previous elites. I think they know that when they fly to New Zealand they can keep all the refugees out quite easily, while maintaining a life with as much comfort as today.
bots would have to be just as useful/cost-effective as poor humans. Apparently manual labour at $2/hr is cheaper than robots still.
In fact, mean temp of Karachi is 32 C in June - which is not Low at all.
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/pakistan/karachi/climate
and 68% percentile high temp is 35 C.
The highest temp on record for Karachi was nearly 48 C - in 1938.
For sure 44 C is not Cool - but also not worth a Guardian article for a place that has a mean temperature of 32 and many days a year above 40 C.
From a personal note - I am writing this as I sit @ 42C and I am not dying. Heck - my laptop probably does though...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/how-hot-is-too-hot-for-human...
According to this site, there are numerous areas of Pakistan with a wet-bulb temp well north of 35C...that seems extremely dire, and should probably not be flippantly dismissed because other places are hotter.
https://meteologix.com/pk/observations/pakistan/wet-bulb-tem...
What would those more pressing issues be? Soon enough many very populated places in the world will be unlivable. Even now the reality described in the piece is shocking - 330 GBP for a month's worth of power is way more than what I pay in the Netherlands during the coldest winter months. I imagine the vast majority of Pakistanis will never be able to afford the amount of electricity needed to cool their houses down to a bearable temperature.
Where you are sitting in 42 C weather, do you still have electricity? Because that’s mostly what the article is mostly about.
Well this is the only actual data point it makes reference to, it links to a study which makes claims about 50 years in the future, which may contain some data, but that is thrice removed if it does.
