Winners from climate change
It is easy to forget, amid all the doomsday talk about climate change, that there will also be winners as well as losers from the resulting changes to our environment. Gideon Rachman, columnist in the FT, argued yesterday that one challenge facing anyone seeking to tackle climate change is that the costs and benefits are unevenly distributed.
“But in northern Europe, agriculture will become more productive and the climate will improve. From a parochial British point of view, the latest IPCC report sounds like good news. It has taken off the table the single most threatening scenario - the paradoxical threat that “global warming” was going to make Britain much colder by shutting down the Gulf Stream, the ocean current that gives the UK a much warmer climate than its latitude implies. The latest thinking from IPCC scientists is that this is very unlikely to happen during the next century.
Global warming offers a positive bonanza for Russia. The legendary Russian winter gets more tolerable. As the permafrost retreats in Siberia new mineral resources are revealed - and huge new areas become available for settlement and cultivation.”
The challenge then to those negotiating Kyoto II is to find a way to use the self-interests of the various national participants towards a larger, global good.
“In fact, it is now dawning on the world’s politicians that global warming could transform international relations - introducing a range of new issues and conflicts.
The most obvious problems are struggles over refugees and resources. Some argue that the Darfur conflict is partially caused by global warming, as settled farmers and nomadic herders fight over failing land. This sort of conflict could proliferate in the future.
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Although rich northern countries are best placed to cope with global warming, domestic public opinion means they are also likely to be the countries pushing hardest for new international regulations to tackle carbon dioxide emissions. In the US and Europe, climate change is becoming a new issue to berate China about - merging with protectionist concerns about exports from Chinese companies that practise “environmental dumping”.
But the Chinese will not lack allies in any struggle over who bears the costs of global warming. The Russians - with an economy based on fossil fuels, and a society that benefits from a warmer climate - may well stand with them. So could India and much of the developing world. Global warming presents a formidable environmental and scientific challenge. The political consequences may prove just as vexing.”