Mind the Frame

Morality doesn’t mean “following divine commandments.”
It means “reducing suffering.”

Therefore in order to act morally,
you don’t need to believe in any myth or story.

You just need to develop a deep appreciation of suffering.

–Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Anyone who has read this blog for any amount of time knows I'm a huge fan of Hannah Ritchie. I'm thrilled she escaped the Doom Cult and uses her time to push back. 

But for some reason (either because she actually accepts it or is trying to have a broader appeal) Hannah accepts the frame that climate change is fundamentally bad in and of itself. 

Of course, just between you and me, climate change is neither good nor bad. 

Suffering is bad. Full stop.

Arguing, as Hannah does in her book, that people should eat chickens to "fight" climate change causes more suffering. 

That is wrong. That is immoral.

But non-human animals aside, there is this:

When you are living hand to mouth, a bad crop season could be the last one for you and your family. That is the cruelty of climate change.

I understand why she makes this point, but it is factually wrong.

That is not the cruelty of climate change. 

That is the cruelty of living hand-to-mouth. 

That is the cruelty of poverty.

The best thing we can do to help people living in poverty is to help people in poverty.

Luckily, unlike cruel climate fanatics, Hannah gets it:

Pull people out of poverty This is the most important thing we need to do to adapt to climate change. Being poor makes you incredibly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. In fact, being poor makes you vulnerable to almost any crisis. When you live close to the poverty line, you are just one shock away from being pushed below it. If you already live under the poverty line, you live with the constant stress that the smallest shock could be the last straw. It’s a truly terrible position to be in, but it is the reality for billions. Even though deaths from natural disasters have fallen by roughly 90% over the course of the 20th century, we expect that the frequency and intensity of disasters will get worse with climate change. As we’ve seen, fewer people die from natural disasters because we’ve figured out how to protect ourselves against them. Much of that resilience has come from poverty alleviation.

So say we all.