00:00According to data from the World Meteorological Organization, there's an
00:04increasing number of unusual or unprecedented extreme weather events.
00:09What's causing these? So according to the recent reports, extreme weather
00:15events, especially unusual weather events, have been increasing significantly. But
00:22we have to be careful to attribute all of these extreme weather events to
00:26climate change, because a lot of extreme weather events, such as flooding or
00:29negative impacts related to typhoon damage, and so on, it's also related to
00:37other issues, such as bad government planning, flood infrastructure, or, you
00:42know, over-urbanization and other factors. We cannot simply blame climate change
00:48for people being vulnerable. Being vulnerable, it's also an outcome of
00:52existing inequalities. It's also an outcome of political decisions made by
00:59relevant governments, or just by unequal power relations in society. And what
01:04better choices can governments make to prevent the global climate crisis from
01:09worsening? Well, governments need to take accountability. Accountability in the
01:14sense of, if a community has been struck by severe flooding, or have been struck
01:20by an extreme weather event or extreme climate events, then they take
01:24accountability in which they try to investigate or identify where were their
01:30shortcomings. Some communities are more at risk of flooding because that has
01:35been a political decision. You will see that the most wealthy parts of that city
01:39are not having flood risk at all. So you can ask yourself the question why that's
01:44the case. So an example would be the area that's called the Shih Tzu Dao, which is
01:50part of Taipei's flood zone. A lot of people in Shih Tzu Dao are aging, are
01:56marginalized, have a lower socioeconomic status. And throughout history that
02:02probably explains why they are at the flood zone of Taipei. The World
02:07Meteorological Organization's State of the Climate report shows that extreme
02:12weather events in 2024 displaced a record number of people. So what is a
02:18climate refugee? And is this even a useful term? We have to be very careful
02:23when we label someone as a climate refugee, because then we are also
02:27shifting away the responsibility of why some people tend to move in the first
02:32place. Look, if we talk about displacement, that's a different thing.
02:36If there's a huge flooding, you're not able to stay, you move out. Flooding
02:40might not be necessarily caused by climate change, but it might be exacerbated
02:45by climate change. But if we really talk about the doom scenarios of billions of
02:50climate refugees knocking on the doors of the West because they want to be let
02:55in, then I would say, well, that's an extreme simplification of a very complex
02:59situation, which many rural and local communities, especially in the global
03:05South, face every day. Because I'm not saying they're not facing the negative
03:09impacts of climate change, but the reasons why people migrate are very
03:14complicated and are structured by many different factors, including the global
03:19economy, including people's personal desires, including globalization,
03:24including industrialization of countries. So what I would like to argue for is to
03:29bring politics back into discussions on the climate crisis, on discussions on
03:34climate refugees and on discussions on what constitutes a negative impact of
03:40climate change, because politics plays a very important role here as well.
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