Essay by Eric Worrall
According to Vox, providing “anticipatory” disaster payments to poor countries before the disasters strike is better than helping people survive natural disasters.
Climate disasters hit poor people hardest. There’s an obvious solution to that.
New experiments show the power of giving cash right before extreme weather strikes.
By Sigal Samuel Feb 3, 2023, 7:00am EST
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Mitigation is vastly more popular than adaptation. Of all the funding directed toward fighting climate change globally, over 90 percent goes into the mitigation bucket. And I can’t claim to be surprised: For years, I’ve mostly focused on that bucket, too. I saw mitigation as the way to solve climate change, while adaptation seemed like putting a Band-Aid on one of the world’s biggest problems.
And yet, who determines the time scale of our response to that problem?
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One approach to adaptation is to direct funding to governments so they can build up the infrastructure — whether that’s a seawall or a new irrigation system — to reduce the impacts of shocks. These big public goods are definitely important, and they should get a larger share of climate financing than they do today. But implementing major projects like these can take time. If you’re, say, a smallholder farmer whose food and income source is about to be wiped away by a climate change-enhanced cyclone, you don’t have that time.
So a nascent approach to adaptation aims to help vulnerable people by giving them just-in-time cash transfers. That means free money, no strings attached, that recipients can use to improve their resilience in the days or weeks before extreme weather hits. Researchers can pinpoint when and where it’ll hit thanks to advances in data availability and predictive analytics. Recent experiments show how successful this approach is, making the case that anticipatory cash transfers should play a bigger role in climate adaptation.
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Read more: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23574798/climate-adaptation-anticipatory-cash-transfers-givedirectly
Why do these countries need handouts rather than paying for their own sea walls?
In my opinion the most likely explanation is they are ruled by kleptocrats who stole the sea wall fund.
Any accumulation of money in such places attracts thieves with badges. Very little money reaches its intended.
Providing “anticipatory cash transfers” is more likely to result in the ruling kleptocrats upgrading their luxury automobiles, or armed thugs stealing the sea wall concrete to build a new palace, than vulnerable villagers receiving a new sea wall.
If you have any doubts about the rampant corruption and government backed theft in aid recipient countries, please read Kenyan economist James Shikwati’s Der Spiegel interview “For Gods Sake, Please Stop the Aid“.
How much has Vox and their employees sent?
Employees are necessarily low-paid serfs (and increasingly, text processing software, either digital automation or biological automaton). You want to check out advertisers, board members, stock holders, and who ever holds outstanding loans.
This is what is referred to as vigorish in some circles. The Mafia would be proud.
The WaBenzi will divert any such funds to a country with cooperative banking laws.
They knew months in advance about the severity of flooding in NSW recently. What a crock.
I won’t get it. With the incipient SLR it would take centuries to reach my location 400m above SLR. So sad. Although we did get an earthquake the other day. 😉
Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him.
Source: https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Mountains-Removed
And you wondered where the crazy about Tinker Bell came from.
The story of the ant and the grasshopper comes to mind.
Delicious.
Handing out money does nothing but make the person you took the money from poorer. These guys are crackpots. If you want to help poor people help them construct their own dispatchable power generators. You know like fossil fuel or hydro, or if they are half way responsible nuclear. Then they can take care of themselves. I say half way responsible because I only consider America and Europe half way responsible.
People who suddenly obtain a lot of money — such as through inheritance, lottery, and taxation — quickly lose that money. They did not work to obtain that money, so they do not appreciate how hard it was to obtain. If you pretend that there is no corruption and that there is no graft in the “reparations” given, this still not make the “disadvantaged” rich. The money will quickly be wasted.
However, those who had to earn money understand how hard it is to obtain. They become rich because they understand. Hard work was required to get the money. These people will not be so willing to waste something that took so much work to get. This is the reason why governments are so wasteful with taxpayer money, it took no work to get.
The best way to help Africa and poorer nations is to help them work to become rich. Any money sent to them will quickly wasted. First, by corruption in the government of the country that is paying reparations. Second, by corruption in the government of the country that is receiving reparations. Third, the leftover money given to the poor will be quickly taken by scammers and waste.
Imagine the year+ partying and resulting physical and monetary hangovers from San Francisco’s $5 million reparations payments to each black city dweller. Talk about inflation! Gold jewelry especially will go sky-high.
So, you think as much as half of the population is rational?
This is basically the same logic that allows people laying in front of bulldozers to slip off down the pub for a drink.
(and if you don’t get the reference I will need you to lay down here, in the mud, in front of this bulldozer first)
I’ll get my towel
Vox is the epitome of juice box journalism. Laughed at even by believers. Gawker is gone so they are bottom of the heap, most likely to follow their demise. No one takes them seriously so it’s hard to get too concerned over their stupidity.
But I thought the message was that “Net Zero” by 2050 would prevent all the climate disasters?
So Sigal Samual, by inference is saying we won’t get to “Net Zero” by 2050 and therefore can’t stop these alleged future calamities.
More illogic from the doomsayers.
“Climate change . . .one of the world’s biggest problems.”
Well, yes, the environment that surrounds us can be a problem, and it changes on an hour by hour basis. That’s why we live in houses with roofs, doors and windows. That’s why men developed agriculture in such a manner that sustainable yields became commonplace and periodic famines were prevented. Problems with life and nature swirling around us are what we must face in our daily struggle to survive. Such it has always been and will continue to be.
Researchers can pinpoint when and where it’ll hit thanks to advances in data availability and predictive analytics
Seriously? So we knew about all the flooding that was going to happen in Pakistan and didn’t warn them? I’m too tired to type out five thousand more examples.
And – So a nascent approach to adaptation aims to help vulnerable people by giving them just-in-time cash transfers. That means free money, no strings attached, that recipients can use to improve their resilience in the days or weeks before extreme weather hits.
So major remedial work getting done in a couple of weeks, at the same time a whole region is trying to find contractors / engineering to fix the entire area for a forecast event?
There’s a hole in that bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza
Several, in fact
Band-Aid didn’t help Africa one iota, quite the opposite
As I recall, the guy collected all the money, then worked out what to do with it. Arse-about, as always.
Not just that, but the money was handed over to corrupt government agencies.
“The road to hell, is paved with good intentions”
devious intentions
The argument that the solution to poverty is to make people less poor has merit.
For sure, corruption is a problem. Don’t pretend that the richer countries are immune to that either. It’s just that money lost to corruption in poorer countries is more damaging as there is less money to go round in total.
Mitigation does not work. It requires India and China to reverse their policies – which they have repeatedly said they won’t do. So adaptation is required.
The best adaptation is to be less poor. It also adapts to non-AGW disatsers too.
Why wait until the trouble has hit before sending in the rescue package?
We do send in the rescue package, always. Why not help the poor be less poor?
People may be misconstruing what your trying to say. Probably because the history of 3rd world economic aid is the epitome of mal -investment and just about every approach conceivable has been tried.
How ever do you suppose the aid will get to the poor. It seems to rarely work that way. Micro loans, fully in the hands of people outside the local government, might be an exception.
What is preventing Sigal Samuel and the fine people at Vox from giving their own money for anticipatory mitigation?
Oh, yeah, I forgot. Under contemporary Progressivism, it’s always up to someone else to pay or make the real sacrifices.
Considering the corruption, inefficiency and mismanagement too often associated with foreign aid, sending the poor countries money in advance of climate problems is a guarantee that there just will be more of that money stolen or wasted. Let’s not send money to dictators that will use most of it to pad their bank accounts or to prop up their militaries so that they can keep their populations suppressed and them in power.
If you’re, say, a smallholder farmer your food and income source is far more likely to be wiped away by a climate change-crazed crowd of scientific illiterates and the politicians cashing in on them than by any actual changes in the climate.