Highlights

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the Netherlands and Bangladesh are very similar in their vulnerability to flooding. But the Netherlands has very little problem with flooding, because it has invested hugely in high-capital technologies to lower its risk.

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Bangladesh doesn’t have the capital to make those same adjustments. It’s the global economy that moves the money in one direction and not in the other.

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Climate change is not “causing more natural disasters,” because disasters are not natural. It becomes a disaster when a hazard meets vulnerability. These disasters are an economic choice that we make as a global economy. I think it’s very important to bring that agency into the way that we think about climate change impacts and environmental degradation in the world.

✏️ Reframing what natural disasters are, especially when it comes to climate change. They’re disasters because of the vulnerability created in places that are getting the “waste” end of the environmental colonialism stick instead of the “value” end. 🔗 View Highlight

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But if we make vulnerabilities in this way, we can also unmake them. That’s not a question of inventing technology to suck carbon out of the air. It’s a question of working toward a fairer society, distributing the benefits of the environmental extraction we undertake. There’s no environmental intervention that comes close to the power of making poor people less poor.

✏️ Simple solution that’s isn’t technology based, but money based, and centered on fairness that runs counter to capitalistic intentions 🔗 View Highlight

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Legally, you don’t have to be sustainable outside of our borders. If you want to do anything unsustainable, you can move it to your international supply chain,

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We could extend that legal framework to say, if a company is going to import something into our country, those goods are subject to laws, and a noncompliant company can face specific repercussions or criminal proceedings.

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