Climate Change Thread

[Tuuvi]

Just because the anti-capitalist/'corporations are always evil crowd' are bandwagon-ing an idea to further their own agendas does NOT mean that the concept being used is necessarily false -- though I doubt you could get the current US administration to agree to that.

Anti-capitalists aren't bandwagoning anything. Leftists like Murray Bookchin have been writing about environmental issues since the 60's. There's no point in building a classless worker's utopia if it all gets destroyed by global heating.

Not to mention global heating is caused by industrialization, which was brought on by capitalism, and just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of greenhouse gas emissions. I think there's a strong case to be made that the shift to a de-carbonized economy will require drastic changes to our economic system.

[Montmorency]

Anti-capitalists aren't bandwagoning anything. Leftists like Murray Bookchin have been writing about environmental issues since the 60's. There's no point in building a classless worker's utopia if it all gets destroyed by global heating.

Not to mention global heating is caused by industrialization, which was brought on by capitalism, and just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of greenhouse gas emissions. I think there's a strong case to be made that the shift to a de-carbonized economy will a require drastic changes to our economic system.

Correct, but if you look at the names that dominate the list of energy companies that are a root source of our energy pathways, a few countries dominate. The "really existing" socialism of Russia, China, and India, driven as it was by the development imperative, has a bad record for rapid and reckless environmental degradation (and carbonization). If we want a decent scenario for the world, we have to invent structures and practices never before seen. At least on the scale needed.

But it remains incumbent on Seamus to explain how "incentives" can resolve the contradiction between:

1. Capitalism incentivizes concentration of wealth and power.
2. Capitalism empowers the largest private actors to regulate government regulation of its incentives.
3. The current trend of climate change entails a drastic change in our way of life, certainly not voluntary, not necessarily guided by any particular government plan, not necessarily according to the wishes of eco-primitivists, but simply falling out of future economic and political facts in a warmer world. Our trade and consumption-oriented way of life as we know it WILL vanish on current trends.
4. Given the distribution of energy consumption and population growth, climate change cannot be checked without unprecedented cooperation between the largest firms and most populous nations.

Please Seamus, distinguish between "is", "ought", and "will be" here. For our purposes I'm concerned about causality, not morality; fundamentally the question of whether or not capitalism will or has failed us is distinct from whether or not some other purported system is optimal or superior. What happens if the forces and incentives of modern global capitalism are inherently vicious?

[Pannonian]

Correct, but if you look at the names that dominate the list of energy companies that are a root source of our energy pathways, a few countries dominate. The "really existing" socialism of Russia, China, and India, driven as it was by the development imperative, has a bad record for rapid and reckless environmental degradation (and carbonization). If we want a decent scenario for the world, we have to invent structures and practices never before seen. At least on the scale needed.

But it remains incumbent on Seamus to explain how "incentives" can resolve the contradiction between:

1. Capitalism incentivizes concentration of wealth and power.
2. Capitalism empowers the largest private actors to regulate government regulation of its incentives.
3. The current trend of climate change entails a drastic change in our way of life, certainly not voluntary, not necessarily guided by any particular government plan, not necessarily according to the wishes of eco-primitivists, but simply falling out of future economic and political facts in a warmer world. Our trade and consumption-oriented way of life as we know it WILL vanish on current trends.
4. Given the distribution of energy consumption and population growth, climate change cannot be checked without unprecedented cooperation between the largest firms and most populous nations.

Please Seamus, distinguish between "is", "ought", and "will be" here. For our purposes I'm concerned about causality, not morality; fundamentally the question of whether or not capitalism will or has failed us is distinct from whether or not some other purported system is optimal or superior. What happens if the forces and incentives of modern global capitalism are inherently vicious?

Everyone should play Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

[Tuuvi]

Correct, but if you look at the names that dominate the list of energy companies that are a root source of our energy pathways, a few countries dominate. The "really existing" socialism of Russia, China, and India, driven as it was by the development imperative, has a bad record for rapid and reckless environmental degradation (and carbonization). If we want a decent scenario for the world, we have to invent structures and practices never before seen. At least on the scale needed.

I'm in the camp that sees China and the USSR as "state capitalism" rather than a real socialist transformation, but ultimately I still agree, socialism as it was conceived of in the past can't serve as a model for the future. Any anti-capitalist political project has to include environmental sustainability as one of its core objectives, along with the abolition of class domination.

[Montmorency]

Sup dudes, so it was topping out at 100* F over here, and I decided to check out what was going on in the rest of the world...

OH My lord, all next week throughout Western Europe, temps of 100 or even 105 across the board - all week!

Stay safe.

No way we can give up A/C :(

[Husar]

No way we can give up A/C :(

I know, it's sad, but I bought one. I have to work at home and it's almost impossible to concentrate above 27°C...
A/C wouldn't be that big of an issue if we had continued to go for solar (instead of oil and coal) since WW1, but yeah, well....

[Seamus Fermanagh]

... But it remains incumbent on Seamus to explain how "incentives" can resolve the contradiction between:

1. Capitalism incentivizes concentration of wealth and power.
2. Capitalism empowers the largest private actors to regulate government regulation of its incentives.
3. The current trend of climate change entails a drastic change in our way of life, certainly not voluntary, not necessarily guided by any particular government plan, not necessarily according to the wishes of eco-primitivists, but simply falling out of future economic and political facts in a warmer world. Our trade and consumption-oriented way of life as we know it WILL vanish on current trends.
4. Given the distribution of energy consumption and population growth, climate change cannot be checked without unprecedented cooperation between the largest firms and most populous nations.

Please Seamus, distinguish between "is", "ought", and "will be" here. For our purposes I'm concerned about causality, not morality; fundamentally the question of whether or not capitalism will or has failed us is distinct from whether or not some other purported system is optimal or superior. What happens if the forces and incentives of modern global capitalism are inherently vicious?

Regarding:

1: Human nature incentivizes the concentration of power (of which wealth is the most common form), that is true under capitalism, under corporatism, under any-ism. Barring the adoption of an endless anarcho-choatic 'permanent' revolution wherein every power structure was cast down every generation (and we are all smart enough to see the Hobbesian threat in that), some form of system will develop and institutionalize and some persons will game it to advantage. All systems face this threat -- qui custodiat ipsos custodiens?

2: This is functionally true albeit not legally sanctioned. This is one of those weaknesses in a capitalist system that requires constant 'gardening' to prune back the weeds (and the effort will never have complete success, see response to #1 above).

3: The climate is changing and global temperatures are trending upwards (anthropomorphic or not). This will necessitate adjustments to where and how we farm, where and how we will live (and what measures to maintain current geographic locales will be required). I might not use the word "drastic," but they will certainly be profound changes. Trade and consumption will and must change -- but that is not unique to this period of human history. History suggests that periods of climate-begat resource changes also end up engendering conflict (prolonged inundations of modern Denmark leading to the Danish migration ['German' invasion] of the Roman Republic that saw the rise of Marius leading to the destruction of the Republic), the global warming period in the Middle Ages that created a large surplus of Mongols looking for new grazing lands when the temperatures began to cool, the 'Little Ice Age' that made the Eastern Seaboard of North America more accessible to the metal-armored and broadcloth and wool covered Europeans of NW Europe, much to their detriment. Again, I see the inevitability of humanity adapting to changes in condition, many of which will be 'not fun.'

4. Current energy consumption must continue to grow, to do otherwise will have far more deleterious effects on humanity and the human condition than will attempts to curb that consumption. More power use per person, in practice, correlates reasonably well with the growth of personal freedom and opportunity (even with the 'haves' slicing off the bigger steaks). Those that are energy poor now will NOT accept continuing at their current level -- they will seek more and the amenities and capabilities that are attendant with access to more energy. Those that are using power in abundance now can almost certainly use it a good bit more efficiently (we have appliances to remove heat from a contained space to preserve food while separate appliances positioned a body length away use energy to add head to food in an enclosed space to cook it and nobody has come up with a way to use the one to help the other; better batteries, improved infrastructure for distribution with less loss) -- and SHOULD but cajoled, regulated, incentivized into doing so -- but they will not abide the enforced poverty of substantial diminishment of power usage. Again, absent a change in human nature, conservation will not generate any less dislocation than will climate change's current likely impact. Some might suggest it would even do more.

So for me, the answer is MORE power using less climatologically impactful means. We under-utilize fission power and have done a piss poor job of addressing waste disposal. We have not tapped geo-thermal sources at anywhere near the level we might. Not enough has been done with hydroelectric power (especially tidal) or ways to generate said power that do not involve damning up rivers and wrecking habitats. Solar power is horribly inefficient -- and we can do much better even AT the bottom of a thick atmosphere (though if we ever get a way to have space mirrors collecting the sunlight and beaming it to collector panels that can get the power down the well without attenuating it so badly then we're golden). Fusion power is finally generating more power than it consumes (albeit briefly and unsustainably). THESE are the things we should incentivize, like the Government did back in the Reagan era to allow Sematech to R&D us into the computer age we now (mostly) enjoy.

By all means incentivize research into mitigation and reasonable conservation/efficiency efforts as well. I have no beef with that either.

But the answer that will work is not Draconian reduction, but encouraged Discovery -- and the chance to make a buck off the discovery has and will be part of the incentive.

[Montmorency]

Seamus, I would have you note a couple of things about consumption:

1. The main source of energy consumption, driving production, is industry (agriculture, transportation, what have you), so this will be the locus of government intervention to reduce emissions.
2. The structure of emissions-producing production structures our mass consumption in turn.
3. Heavy reduction in emissions of industry necessarily translates to changes in the availability of goods and services on the consumer side, even without any direct legal or social intervention into consumer behavior.
4. Just in my lifetime consumption has changed dramatically. The proliferation and availability of goods and services in urban America compared to what was available even in the 1990s is astonishing when you stop to think about it.

Democracy requires wealth I would contend (otherwise one's 'best' incentive is to seize government and thereby enrich yourself/faction/tribe), so there is no question that the rest of the world must converge on a certain target for development - but this can't happen without America and Europe, if not scaling back to a certain degree, then kind of doing a lateral step in their lifestyles. As a planned reform I mean to say, since in the cataclysmic scenario all bets are off and we're in a Hobbesian state anyway, and almost everyone's living standards collapse by default. Remember that. If solidarity is a prisoner's dilemma then we have to cooperate or else the outcome is much less desirable by your own metric (and mine).

It is simply unavoidable that in any effective controlled program of emissions reduction on a medium-term timescale, we will have fewer of our enjoyments available as a natural consequence of changes to macroeconomic incentives and activity. Whether this affects us in a more or less optimal way depending on policy is unknowable, but it has to be acknowledged and factored in. If we're serious about realistic timescales and prospects for when sufficient station action commences, our lifestyles will change "drastically" even if it's not something like the government limiting our automobile hours or something along those lines.

Any major reform is almost certainly not going to have a videogame-level of efficiency in allocation of resources or policies, but this can't be a barrier to implementation because - AGAIN - the alternatives include the erasure of almost all progress in modern living standards. Five hundred years of modernity, almost washed away. When the stakes are this high, arbitrary difficulties and inefficiences have to be taken in stride in service of the greater objective.

However I lack the domain knowledge to really specify what an appropriate or expected derived reduction of lifestyle might entail, in this or that scenario. Maybe in a favorable scenario it means the biggest hit we take is we have to wait a week for our Amazon deliveries again, IDK. If we have to do much more biking and air travel becomes more limited and expensive (like the 60s), how severe a reduction is that? What if electronic consumer goods become more precious and valuable like in the 70s, even as their power and functionality continues to soar? And crucially, how much of it will be counterbalanced by innovation and technological growth of the kind you reference throughout your post? It may be helpful conceptually not to think about what I'm saying as a commitment to "across the board" downgrades, or a callback to the whole ecoprimitivism-post-postindustrialism dichotomy; the reality of a Green New Deal or whatever you want to call it would be much more nuanced. What's indisputable is the sooner and more decisive the intervention, the less we will have to suffer either in this regard or in that of the myriad effects of warmer and more volatile climate. If we have to revisit this subthread in a decade, maybe we'll be reduced to selecting between government beet rations or radish rations for July 4th.

In brighter news, renewable-sourced energy market prices are almost to the point of decisively beating out coal-generated power.

We have MUCH better and more complete data of the last 50 years than of the preceding 100, than of the preceding 1000. These shorter time-frame tools do correlate strongly with an anthropomorphic explanation of the current warming trend, but we lack near equivalent data from the deep past that could establish anthropomorphic causality without demur by explaining how this warming is different than preceding ones as to cause. This is the source, ultimately, of those arguing rationally that the anthropomorphic explanation is flawed. It does not, of course, explain the larger number of climate-change detractors who are shouting 'anti-capitalist-conspiracy-theory' from the depths of their own ignorance.


Sadly, we can only drag the mid-point of the intelligence bell curve upwards, not eliminate the negative standard deviation side of the curve.

Going forward, we do also need to hold to account the primary ideological and economic motivations toward denial. The rationality such as it was was overwhelmingly neo-classical, and the original detractors tended to consciously understand it that way.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I think we need to look at the real issue here which is overpopulation.

That cuts across everything, from our consumption to our building on flood plains because we've run out of space on higher ground. Around 1927 the world population was about 2 Billion, by 1960 3 Billion, despite the World War, by 1974 4 Billion.

We hit 7 Billion in 2012 and are projected to hit 8 Billion in 2027.

I'd say we need to reduce the World population by half - in the short term that means introducing policies to penalise large families (which means penalising the poor) and in the medium term it means a global implementation of China's One Child Policy. We also need to "roll back" the expansion of Urbanisation.

All of this means at least two generations of people, many childless and never married, who will be employed for their entire lives demolishing unused houses and factories as the population falls and more marginal areas are abandoned. That is, objectively, a miserable existence and not one anyone is going to vote for willingly.

When the current Conservative Government in the UK tried to restrict child tax benefit to the first two children people screamed about women who were raped getting no support. When the Government said it would introduce a dispensation people screamed about women having to prove they were raped.

I think we're going to screw this up, we already have, and we should be focusing on pollution and hardening our infrastructure against climate change rather than trying to slow the temperature rise directly. By reducing pollution, including things like sun screen that kills coral, we can give ourselves and the other species still clinging onto this rock a better chance of weathering the coming storm.

[Pannonian]

I think we need to look at the real issue here which is overpopulation.

That cuts across everything, from our consumption to our building on flood plains because we've run out of space on higher ground. Around 1927 the world population was about 2 Billion, by 1960 3 Billion, despite the World War, by 1974 4 Billion.

We hit 7 Billion in 2012 and are projected to hit 8 Billion in 2027.

I'd say we need to reduce the World population by half - in the short term that means introducing policies to penalise large families (which means penalising the poor) and in the medium term it means a global implementation of China's One Child Policy. We also need to "roll back" the expansion of Urbanisation.

All of this means at least two generations of people, many childless and never married, who will be employed for their entire lives demolishing unused houses and factories as the population falls and more marginal areas are abandoned. That is, objectively, a miserable existence and not one anyone is going to vote for willingly.

When the current Conservative Government in the UK tried to restrict child tax benefit to the first two children people screamed about women who were raped getting no support. When the Government said it would introduce a dispensation people screamed about women having to prove they were raped.

I think we're going to screw this up, we already have, and we should be focusing on pollution and hardening our infrastructure against climate change rather than trying to slow the temperature rise directly. By reducing pollution, including things like sun screen that kills coral, we can give ourselves and the other species still clinging onto this rock a better chance of weathering the coming storm.

We can aim for depopulation as one possible and eventual measure. But there are other measures we can take too. Localising economies and reducing waste is something we can do right now and be popular. Capitalism and the assumption of rights is damaging to the environment somewhere along the line. They're nice, but we can draw them down a tad with state regulation. All of this would be much easier and with greater effect with international cooperation, but hey, what do I know.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Population is already projected to top out at just under 11 billion by end of the century. This projection has only been revised downward every few years or so.
https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs...ic/POP/TOT/900

It's a bit of a red herring because the population growth is:
A. Almost entirely localized in Africa.
B. Impacting populations which do not yet have access to the level of health care and education which precedes population decline.
C. Sustainable with proper management.

Japan, SK are still experiencing a decline in population growth. Several European nations are below 2.1 children per woman as well. By mid century, most of Europe will be declining, China and India as well.

Without pulling out tons of links no one will read, we have the capability to feed 11 billion, it's a matter of politics that we struggle to feed those that are hungry today.
Carbon neutral transportation and industry can scale up as far as you want without increase in anthropocentric climate change, that's the beauty of zero. Developed and developing nations are creating and implementing this technology and processes right now.

In the end, climate change is a political issue. People call my state crazy for mandating by law that new housing must have solar panels as of 2019. I think they are crazy for not doing so. Fast forward 10 years and they are still burning carbon, complaining about the worsening heat waves and my state will continue to be in the top 10 largest economies.

[a completely inoffensive name]

By reducing pollution, including things like sun screen that kills coral, we can give ourselves and the other species still clinging onto this rock a better chance of weathering the coming storm.

Right idea, but wrong reason. I have a suspicion that our "clean air" is really still considerably toxic relative to pre-industrial levels. When we electrify our transportation and various industries go green/carbon neutral, our baseline levels of illness across the board will show a noticeable drop.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Right idea, but wrong reason. I have a suspicion that our "clean air" is really still considerably toxic relative to pre-industrial levels. When we electrify our transportation and various industries go green/carbon neutral, our baseline levels of illness across the board will show a noticeable drop.

You know, we used to think there was a "natural background level" of lead in the air - there isn't.

If you need to be worried about "Climate Change" to want to clean up the planet then you are the one with the wrong reason.

Even if we had not managed to turn up the heating we would still be living in toxic sludge and everybody needs to see that as a problem in itself.

[Montmorency]

Population is already projected to top out at just under 11 billion by end of the century. This projection has only been revised downward every few years or so.
https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs...ic/POP/TOT/900

[...]

Well, some thoughts. It should be easier to deliver a good life to fewer people than to more (after a certain minimum threshold). With more people there is more usage of all things, and the whole resource chain from land to water to atmosphere is implicated. And a theoretical present capacity to feed 11 billion people is not relevant, because (1) it says nothing about potential drops in agricultural capacity or production in the future; (2) there is no such thing as a perfect distribution of resources and no one should ever plan or project around such a thing, for example we could theoretically distribute wealth today to give every human the lifestyle of a middle-class American - but it won't happen, even if we were to suddenly transition to socialism successful beyond all expectations; (3) we should aspire to more than sustaining the masses at the level above starvation, unless in the projection where climate change fucks the planet and the best we can hope for is 1940s Soviet living standards by 2100.

Fortunately, there are projections taking into account a rapid decrease in African fertility rates predicated on increasing urbanization and education of women. If other developing countries can drop from a rate of 6 to a rate of 2 in less than a generation, so can African ones if we facilitate the conditions. See also the case that the UN forecasts for African fertility are hilariously overblown. What was that relevant xkcd comic again?

But, as I will reiterate below, this demands gigantic wealth transfers on our part. At the very minimum, it calls for investments in the low hundreds of billions to set countries awash with knowledge and availability of contraception (which tends to work where it is tried, though we need to scale it way up from the current hundreds of millions or low billions). But we can't even do that until we neutralize the conservatives and repeal the Global Gag Rule (on abortion and contraceptive services). Or if you believe that fertility rates will drop even faster if child mortality drops, then -- do something about African child mortality!

African child mortality is 10 to 20 times higher than ours. Let's stop the racist handwringing over too many African babies and do something! With money! And by something, I mean establish networks of hundreds of modern hospitals and thousands of clinics and ship thousands of nurses and medical students from surplus areas in rich countries to do a few years work in African countries. Train hundreds of thousands more of local citizens in medicine per decade, and incentivize them against going abroad by paying them handsomely and investing elsewhere to improve the physical and social security of African citizens.

You know what? Go ahead and make it a comprehensive multi-trillion dollar transformation of the continent, alongside the multi-trillion dollar transformations of the other continents. Or we can hope billionaires will innovate away our problems lol.

There's just no getting around those wealth transfers, we're all in this together so mutual prosperity (or at least aversion to mutual destruction) must inspire us to pay for others.

I think we need to look at the real issue here which is overpopulation.

There are three ways to address world population, we having created this climate: betray all the brown people by genociding them; betray all the brown people by quarantining them and hoping they die of climate disaster or famine or disease or war before they can get to Europe or America (contract genocide to Nature); engage in unprecedented wealth transfer to the Global South to rapidly equalize world development, reducing absolute Western wealth in the medium-term. Which do you prefer?

I'd say we need to reduce the World population by half - in the short term that means introducing policies to penalise large families (which means penalising the poor) and in the medium term it means a global implementation of China's One Child Policy. We also need to "roll back" the expansion of Urbanisation.

If you think overpopulation is a problem then more urbanization is exactly what you want, not less. Density is more efficient in use of land and resources and delivery of services. Urban life also directly depresses fertility rates, and enables higher penetration of complete public education which in turn also depresses fertility rates. Urban women also tend to work more outside the home, which in turn depresses fertility rates. The third factor underlying fertility rates (others just mentioned being urbanization and women's education/work), as demonstrated in my link above, are child mortality rates. I've already begun to describe what it will take to reduce those.

I'd say we need to reduce the World population by half - in the short term that means introducing policies to penalise large families (which means penalising the poor) and in the medium term it means a global implementation of China's One Child Policy. We also need to "roll back" the expansion of Urbanisation.
[...]
When the current Conservative Government in the UK tried to restrict child tax benefit to the first two children people screamed about women who were raped getting no support. When the Government said it would introduce a dispensation people screamed about women having to prove they were raped.

I suspect the primary complaint would have been against penalizing the poorest families who rely most on benefits. Let the affluent go first. No tax inducements will actually reduce fertility rates anyway; no one, especially not low-income people, plans children around the tax code. So as I'm sure the critics pointed out, all it does is contribute to misery and poverty to suggest such adjustments to taxation. Sad that you didn't stop to think of it.

On to a global One Child policy: Who's going to enforce it, and how? Is it going to be like in China too? Indeed, if we can forcibly abort fetuses or incarcerate over-quota women, I would have to ask why we can't just go ahead and expropriate all the property of the wealthy first. Liquidate the bourgeoisie.

I think we're going to screw this up, we already have, and we should be focusing on pollution and hardening our infrastructure against climate change rather than trying to slow the temperature rise directly. By reducing pollution, including things like sun screen that kills coral, we can give ourselves and the other species still clinging onto this rock a better chance of weathering the coming storm.

What state do you think can absorb hundreds of millions of refugees and internally displaced persons? How are we going to harden against the disintegration of the international trade regime and the loss of supply chains?

I at least agree in principle that in a certain range it is more difficult to deliver a good life to more total humans than to fewer, but that duck won't hunt. As long as we're making sweeping proposals no government could ever form a coalition around, the ethical option is solidarity - and yes, that means sacrifice. Developed countries will nevertheless always be sacrificing less, so it's not an unreasonable burden in the grand scheme.

Anyone who is serious about preserving world civilization needs to accept that the only way to mitigate conflagration is to spend many trillions of dollars reeling back and redesigning the American, European, and Asian economies, bottom-up and top-down.

Anyone who isn't a racist, or else someone who doesn't devalue human life in a Stalinist manner, needs to accept that preventing the deaths of hundreds of millions of Africans and privation of more, or preventing the birth of hundreds of millions more into such conditions over time, will require us to spend many trillions of dollars on a continental forced march of development.

We can talk about long-term population reduction once we have a world state.

We can aim for depopulation as one possible and eventual measure. But there are other measures we can take too. Localising economies and reducing waste is something we can do right now and be popular. Capitalism and the assumption of rights is damaging to the environment somewhere along the line. They're nice, but we can draw them down a tad with state regulation. All of this would be much easier and with greater effect with international cooperation, but hey, what do I know.

Quite right, but anything is something we can do right now, for all the difference it makes when monied interests set the limits of acceptable action so tight.

[Pannonian]

Quite right, but anything is something we can do right now, for all the difference it makes when monied interests set the limits of acceptable action so tight.

In the UK, we're reducing the use of plastic bags through government action, and through David Attenborough publicising the effects they have on wildlife. The current attitude towards such waste would have been almost unimaginable 10 years ago. There is much more scope for more small changes allied to a bigger narrative.

[Viking]

Let's stop the racist handwringing over too many African babies and do something!

That's one angle to take, but with the huge amounts spent in Europe on non-Western immigration; you could quickly rake up vast sums money for the kind of purpose you describe here by turning the European migration policy on its head.

As a specific example, Norway had a budget of 18.9 billion NOK in 2017 (non-English source) for "integration and diversity", or roughly $2.19 billion with today's conversion rate. Five years worth of similar-sized budgets, and you are up to roughly $10 billion, and that's all from a country of 5 million inhabitants.

With agreements with African governments, all non-legal migrants into Europe could be given the offer to be sent either to their home country, or to locations in Africa (potentially newly established migrant cities). It is much cheaper to provide for migrants in Africa, the labour market there is much, much more open to people with lower education than it is in Europe, and treating almost all asylum applicants and illegal migrants the same should free up a lot of money that would otherwise be spent on handling the individual cases, appeal processes, and other general benefits that can be expected by managing things in bulk. The flow of migrants would also be reduced to those who consider themselves to be in serious danger where they come from, unless the African migrant locations turn out to be success stories, which should be a good thing.