While the news that Ted Cruz decided to take his family on a vacation in Cancun during the worst climate disaster Texas has seen…in a while is not SURPRISING, it does illustrate an important point.
Climate disasters will not affect us all equally. Climate change will hurt the global poor first and worst. While floods and droughts and heat waves and ice storms will ravage the world, the richest and most powerful will still be able to hop on a plane to whatever corner of the planet is still habitable, or go off in their space arc, or hide away on their Mars colony run by Indentured servants.
Do not forget this. Those in power have so much less to lose by doing nothing about climate change. They can afford to let us burn and freeze and drown if it saves them some pennies along the way.
This reminds me of a guest lecturer for one of my classes who’s a professional emergency preparation & mitigation consultant. She hates & refuses to use the term “natural disaster” because even if the inciting event is natural (hurricane, earthquake, etc) it only becomes a disaster when it overlaps with human society. It is the lack of preparation, infrastructure, resources, etc that actually causes the disaster.
(via justnoodlefishthings)