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Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

nytimes.com

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Re: Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

#101

Post by graeme »

acabal wrote: post #10

It's so crazy to me that everyone in vulnerable places--Tokyo and Houston in the article for example--are happy to spend hundreds of millions, even billions, to put a bandaid on their local climate change problems. It seems like they all acknowledge the reality and danger of climate change and are willing to spend money on it. In TFA Houston wants $400 million to build a reservoir. They seem to acknowledge that thing…

There's a coordination problem at work. If Tokyo stops emitting entirely, it still gets flooded. Whereas the flood prevention actually stops the flood (for a couple of decades anyway). Even though it's not a great solution, it turns out that flood prevention is the only solution Tokyo can actually implement on its own.

I wish we had a global system of carbon taxes, and hope that we might make an effective solution. And I wish cities like Tokyo would push harder for national/international solutions. But I don't think they're wrong to prepare locally.

Re: Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

#102

Post by alexanderstears »

JetSpiegel wrote: post #92
alexanderstears wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telling people who continue to commute by car or use grid electricity or travel internationally that they don’t really care about climate change is idiotic That's a strawman. What the parent comment says is that people's behavior reveals their preferences. A more clear example is this - someone who drives a Suburban for fun and burns their trash isn't in a good position to demand that others go out of their way to tr…

> people's behavior reveals their preferences Only if they are rational economic actors. If you live in the sticks and want to buy food which is several kilometers away, do you throw up your hands in the air and starve so that you don't use your car?

I don't think we have to address rationality / irrationality in action.

If I'm following your point you're saying that some people make choices against constraints and that we should understand their constraints before we impugn their actions.

And you're absolutely right. I don't begrudge anyone for driving a truck who uses a truck, and much of the debate about 'what you need' seems to follow this thinking - if you're using your truck in such a way that a sedan is a viable alternative, how costly is it really to put that person in a sedan? And that's a very valid point (personally, I think we have to many trucks and SUVs on the road because fuel is unreasonably cheap and trucks / suv owners don't bear the full costs of crashing / insuring them).

But we can ask that people do the things they expect of others - or at least it's defensible to ask someone to be the change they want to see in the world.

The person who lives in the sticks might have an opportunity to grow their own food, and depending on their views about the environment it's an avenue to explore.

And there's also a point about 'harm reduction' - driving a car to get groceries is more defensible than driving an SUV to get a candy bar and leaving it running while you shop to keep the A/C pumping.

If someone has to drive a car, they need to understand that not all cars pollute alike. A 2016 Prius pollutes orders of magnitude less than a 1959 Chevrolet 2 ton truck and the person should consider ways they can reduce their harm to the environment if they want others to do the same.

Re: Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

#103

Post by pizza »

pascalxus wrote: post #21
acabal wrote: post #10

It's so crazy to me that everyone in vulnerable places--Tokyo and Houston in the article for example--are happy to spend hundreds of millions, even billions, to put a bandaid on their local climate change problems. It seems like they all acknowledge the reality and danger of climate change and are willing to spend money on it. In TFA Houston wants $400 million to build a reservoir. They seem to acknowledge that thing…

The same thing happens with our health. People would rather spend trillions of dollars on health care, rather than start eating healthy. 70% of all healthcare dollars go towards diseases and causes of death that are lifestyle related causes (eating, nutrtion, excercise, smoking, etc)

Well, as for the excessive spending, there is also the fact that healthcare is basically a parallel to the military industrial complex (doctors, hospitals, insurers, drug companies) especially conducive to oligarchy/monopoly-like behavior.

Paradoxically enough (but not so much if you think about it a while), a review of patient mortality rates during doctor's strikes found that mortality decreased when doctors were on strike.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18849101

Re: Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

#104

Post by foobar__ »

Interestingly, the official website doesn't mention climate change at all, as far as I can see [1].

Instead, it claims that the purpose of the tunnels is to protect the areas surrounding some smaller rivers upstream of Tokyo, which are on flood plains and regularly used to get flooded (no climate change required, just regular rain season/typhoon does this). Now due to urban sprawl more people want to live there, exacerbating the problem and creating the need for this system.

I do not doubt that climate change is happening. I just don't like articles with such a clear agenda in the background, especially when the official sources contradict the statements.

[1] http://www.ktr.mlit.go.jp/edogawa/gaikaku/intro/01intro/inde...

(Please correct me if I'm wrong or I missed something.)

Re: Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

#105

Post by spraak »

ctdonath wrote: post #29
acabal wrote: post #10

It's so crazy to me that everyone in vulnerable places--Tokyo and Houston in the article for example--are happy to spend hundreds of millions, even billions, to put a bandaid on their local climate change problems. It seems like they all acknowledge the reality and danger of climate change and are willing to spend money on it. In TFA Houston wants $400 million to build a reservoir. They seem to acknowledge that thing…

yet everyone there still drives everywhere spewing carbon into their own air with every trip This. Every single person who claims they believe global climate change is a very serious, and man-made, problem absolutely should be taking personal steps now to address it. Telecommuting is a thing. Home-solar is a thing. Electric cars are a thing. Quit telling _others_ to solve the problems, and start doing it personally,…

This reminds me of the whole "take shorter showers" thing. The amount of water consumed taking showers is minuscule compared to how much water is used for industrial agriculture. It's not going to make a difference to take a 5 minute shower vs. 10 minutes. So it overall feels very defeating as an individual to try to make a change.

Re: Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

#106

Post by ceejayoz »

flukus wrote: post #96
poulsbohemian wrote: post #8

I may not understand the scope of this project, but when I read the $2 billion, my thought was "wow that's cheap!" Consider the Big Dig or the current Seattle tunnel, at $14B+ and $3B+ respectively.

I don't know how they handle infrastructure, but whatever they do seems like something the rest of the world could learn from. A little while ago it made international news when they fixed a sink hole in a few days: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/15/asia/fukuoka-sinkhole-fill...

It should be noted that that sinkhole re-occurred shortly afterwards.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38129691

Re: Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

#107

Post by brianpgordon »

nostrademons wrote: post #17
acabal wrote: post #10

It's so crazy to me that everyone in vulnerable places--Tokyo and Houston in the article for example--are happy to spend hundreds of millions, even billions, to put a bandaid on their local climate change problems. It seems like they all acknowledge the reality and danger of climate change and are willing to spend money on it. In TFA Houston wants $400 million to build a reservoir. They seem to acknowledge that thing…

It's very likely that local band-aids are the most effective way to deal with this. Your train example is a pretty good one, but you've mixed up the metaphor. Here, "stepping out of the way" = mass migrations out of coastal cities. "A mechanized winch that temporarily lifts us over the train" = flood control projects like in Tokyo, Houston, Venice, or the Netherlands. "Calling the train company and asking them to sto…

> I'd argue that the actual solution to global warming will be more akin to "stepping out of the way": people will evacuate from major cities, major cities will be destroyed, and people will pick up the pieces of their lives elsewhere

Even this is optimistic. It seems more likely to me that cities like Houston will keep getting flooded and "bailed" out (ha ha) by federal relief funds and state bond issuances.

Re: Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

#108

Post by mikeash »

ctdonath wrote: post #29
acabal wrote: post #10

It's so crazy to me that everyone in vulnerable places--Tokyo and Houston in the article for example--are happy to spend hundreds of millions, even billions, to put a bandaid on their local climate change problems. It seems like they all acknowledge the reality and danger of climate change and are willing to spend money on it. In TFA Houston wants $400 million to build a reservoir. They seem to acknowledge that thing…

yet everyone there still drives everywhere spewing carbon into their own air with every trip This. Every single person who claims they believe global climate change is a very serious, and man-made, problem absolutely should be taking personal steps now to address it. Telecommuting is a thing. Home-solar is a thing. Electric cars are a thing. Quit telling _others_ to solve the problems, and start doing it personally,…

To me, this sounds like “if you’re not down in steerage baling water out of the sinking Titanic, you’re not seriously concerned about it sinking.”

It won’t make any detectable difference if I go 100% solar and vegetarian, or if I spend all my disposable income on gasoline that I burn in amusing ways.

Collective action is the only thing that matters for this. If you go all-in on a low carbon lifestyle for yourself, and your friend nudges government policy towards something that reduces emissions, your friend has done far more to mitigate climate change than you have.

Re: Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

#110

Post by lovemenot »

munificent wrote: post #87
KVFinn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Every single person who claims they believe global climate change is a very serious, and man-made, problem absolutely should be taking personal steps now to address it. Quit telling _others_ to solve the problems, and start doing it personally, now. This being effective seems contrary to everything we know about economics. If even a huge portion of people voluntary lower consumption or energy usage, it frees up that…

> You're just concerned about projecting the appearance > that you care. This is a completely unnecessary, uncharitable attack. The reasonable interpretation of the parent comment is that they do actually care about climate change but the two of you disagree on which mechanisms will most effectively reduce it.

>> This is a completely unnecessary, uncharitable attack.

Not necessarily. If your parent had been a car-user and staunch supporter of Pigouvian taxes, they may have felt personally and unreasonably attacked by their previous poster and merely responded in kind. Notice that the language is identical, signaling a reflexive reaction.

Personally, I think they are both right about what needs to be done. Personal action and collectively enforced action.

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