5 ms·

Climate Winners and Losers

53 points by zorked 7y ago

tombh 7y ago
I'm British. Thanks to my passport and digital nomading I have spent the last 4 years travelling the world. In that time I have gone from thinking of Britain being a relatively normal country (did some bad things in history, but made significant contributions too), to seeing it in the same league as the countries we were taught to despise in school. I am perhaps a good case study of the shift in thinking that so-called "Winners" need to take. The facts of Britain's (and the rest of the Western World's) history are plain to see. Say in Wikipedia for example, for sure there's bias, but African slavery, Native American decimation, the Opium Wars, the Bengali Famine, the theft of "Commonwealth", to name but a few, are all there. It's that there's simply no impetus to feel any of this, nobody has the power to force us to truly contemplate what we've done, because Britain and its ilk are at the top of the power pyramid. But travelling suddenly makes all of this personal. "Made in China" takes such a more deeper meaning when you literally made friends with them in their own land. I just can't get so angry about Indian email scammers when I've probably met them or their family and learnt that our Queen wears their precious jewels in her crown like an evil, unfeeling, global bully. I made these shifts relatively easily, because like most Western people, I have a heart and perhaps ironically I was taught in school to make judgements based on facts. But I needed to be unrooted from my native context, that is just not going to happen on a large enough scale. What if the actual more fundamental problem raised by the Climate Emergency is this large-scale switch in context? What if we put our energy into that instead of reducing C02? Of course that'll never happen, it's chicken and egg, the motivation doesn't come until you understand the bigger picture. What's more the climate serves as a convenient foil for avoiding the existential sea-change by giving us an all too logistical problem to face instead. I'm glad to see this article on the front page. There is some progress. There are indeed significant seams of Western society which accept such self criticism. Even though most of us did not knowingly cause the damage, we are the only people that can meaningfully take responsibility. It's not fair, but that's the path ahead.
- syshum 7y ago
  >>we are the only people that can meaningfully take responsibility. It's not fair, but that's the path ahead. This is where you lose me.. I am fully supporting of free trade, free exchange of information, making those nations the best through trade and education. Even sending them some aide if needed, wanted and put to good use (not supporting authoritarian governments) But the sins of the part are not my responsibility at all, dont attempt to foist them upon me
  - pimmen 7y ago
    But you’re profiting off of the sins committed in the past, and somebody else is paying for them. Does that not make you feel something?
    - syshum 7y ago
      >> Does that not make you feel something? No >>But you’re profiting off of the sins committed in the past, and somebody else is paying for them. I do not believe I am, not in the way you are implying. You have no idea what my family history is, or what indivual actions they took, instead you are imparting these historical sins upon me because I may be a part of a nation today or may have part of a race in my genetic make up that may or may not committed what in modern context we call "sins" when we look back upon history through our modern eyes It also makes many many assumptions about what the state of those nations would have been with out "interference" from the west, Assumption I do not believe you can accurately make The further back in history you go the worse those assumption get as well.
      - pimmen 7y ago
        I’m not imparting the sins of whatever country you happen to live in on you or your family. I see it akin to finding money on the street, growing up, and then finding out they were stolen. That would make me feel something, even if neither I nor anyone in my family stole that money. And I’m not arguing against Western contact with other nations, I’m merely stating that the West profited off of immoral things towards other civilizations that those nations are still paying for. The Dutch extracting oil from the Dutch East Indies by wiping out cultures island to island, laying the ground work for wars to break out in the power vacuum, is hard to see as anything but a crime against the native people, the instability it caused hobbling that part of the world to this day, that was exclusively beneficial for the Netherlands. That doesn’t mean that the Dutch should feel shame for having been in contact at all with those cultures but a Dutch person who profits off of the business generated by Royal Dutch Shell should probably feel something when they hear about political instability in Indonesia. And when that part of the world becomes uninhabitable because of climate change, and the Indonesian economy can’t handle adapting to that, I think a Dutch person should feel something.
oddeyed 7y ago
For anyone who is looking for further reading, the term often used with reference to this phenomenon is "Climate Justice". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_justice (Obviously Climate Justice would be if there WERE just distribution of the effects of climate change - the situation now is probably best termed Climate Injustice).
adrianN 7y ago
I wonder whether those numbers take into account the massive refugee crisis that is looming on the horizon. Or wars for arable land and water.
- drucik 7y ago
  I suspect it just assumes that the temparature increase of 2 degrees while make it easier to grow food and overall live in some countries, while screw up already hot countries, but I'm not sure that's how climate change is going to work. But the maps contradict each other nicely.
jotm 7y ago
There are no winners here. There are losers and bigger losers. Any destabilization will be felt worldwide.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Inthenameofmine 7y ago
This map seems to be more than lacking. For one it doesn’t seem to take into consideration wet bulb temperatures on the rise, as we have seen now in central and western Europe. It also doesn’t seem to take into account that what really creates issues for economies is high variability, rather than absolute average changes.
leereeves 7y ago
Here's the study the impact map is based on: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2016.0460 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2016.046... The results are from "a new set of climate simulations." A simulation can easily be wrong. These results say Ireland's GDP growth per capita will be unaffected by climate change and Britain's GDP growth per capita will increase if temperatures rise 2C, but I find it hard to believe these islands wouldn't be hurt. Why should we trust these maps?
- imtringued 7y ago
  Climate migration causes population growth which causes GDP growth.
  - leereeves 7y ago
    The map shows per capita figures, which immigration would probably decrease.
  - lasagnaphil 7y ago
    ... and such migration will also probably cause political unrest, which would potentially destabilize Western countries a bit. (We've observed it before with the Syrian Civil War, whether you like those refugees or not, it will probably cause some stur.)
namanyayg 7y ago
What's the best (cheapest) investor visa one can get to the post-warming winning countries? I'm probably going to see people die from heat exhaustion in front of my eyes if I stay here ~50 years.
alfor 7y ago
Careful it's a trap, it's the victim mentality trap. When everything is the fault of others, for sure you cannot do anything about it. There is even a sentence about old white men ! He seem to forget about all the good that came of western society. Electricity, cars, Internet, vaccine, solar cells, wind turbine, the list go on, even the computer he use to type that article. From wikipedia: "Corruption remains a problem in Sri Lanka, and there is currently very little protection for those who stand up against corruption." "over 12,000 named individuals who have undergone disappearance after detention by security forces in Sri Lanka, the second highest figure in the world" "26-year civil war, which ended in 2009" Look, you have much biggers problem in your own country, that are not the responsibility of others, that your people could do something about. Maybe some of the flood would have been averted if the government had build damn instead of fighting a civil war for 26 years. The problem is that victim mentality make you feel good. It's not your fault, it's not in your hand, you don't have to do anything, just blame other people. I am not saying climate change isn't real, but it's a too much convenient scapegoat because it's out of your control.
open-source-ux 7y ago
We all lose if global temperatures rise, but it's true that those of us living in prosperous industrialised nations (North America, Europe, Australia & NZ, Japan) will be able to cope better with climate change than other countries. We're simply too comfortable in our current lifestyles to make any changes that might challenge that comfort. Would you fly less? No, didn't so. Eat less meat? Nope. How about unplugging your smartphone from its charger when not in use? Yes! We'll happily do that, despite being utterly inconsequential. (Like bailing the titanic with a teaspoon, to use a description from the book Sustainable Energy - without the hot air.) We look to governments for action, but if governments took measures to encourage less flying or reducing the farming of meat, we'd never accept it. Most of our politicians are too weak-willed to enact bold legislation and it's mostly because they know we the electorate won't stomach it. The truth is we love to point accusatory fingers at others but never lift a finger ourselves. Are we all a bunch of hypocrites and simply not willing to admit it?

53 points by zorked 7y ago

I'm British. Thanks to my passport and digital nomading I have spent the last 4 years travelling the world. In that time I have gone from thinking of Britain being a relatively normal country (did some bad things in history, but made significant contributions too), to seeing it in the same league as the countries we were taught to despise in school. I am perhaps a good case study of the shift in thinking that so-called "Winners" need to take. The facts of Britain's (and the rest of the Western World's) history are plain to see. Say in Wikipedia for example, for sure there's bias, but African slavery, Native American decimation, the Opium Wars, the Bengali Famine, the theft of "Commonwealth", to name but a few, are all there. It's that there's simply no impetus to feel any of this, nobody has the power to force us to truly contemplate what we've done, because Britain and its ilk are at the top of the power pyramid. But travelling suddenly makes all of this personal. "Made in China" takes such a more deeper meaning when you literally made friends with them in their own land. I just can't get so angry about Indian email scammers when I've probably met them or their family and learnt that our Queen wears their precious jewels in her crown like an evil, unfeeling, global bully. I made these shifts relatively easily, because like most Western people, I have a heart and perhaps ironically I was taught in school to make judgements based on facts. But I needed to be unrooted from my native context, that is just not going to happen on a large enough scale. What if the actual more fundamental problem raised by the Climate Emergency is this large-scale switch in context? What if we put our energy into that instead of reducing C02? Of course that'll never happen, it's chicken and egg, the motivation doesn't come until you understand the bigger picture. What's more the climate serves as a convenient foil for avoiding the existential sea-change by giving us an all too logistical problem to face instead. I'm glad to see this article on the front page. There is some progress. There are indeed significant seams of Western society which accept such self criticism. Even though most of us did not knowingly cause the damage, we are the only people that can meaningfully take responsibility. It's not fair, but that's the path ahead.

syshum 7y ago
>>we are the only people that can meaningfully take responsibility. It's not fair, but that's the path ahead. This is where you lose me.. I am fully supporting of free trade, free exchange of information, making those nations the best through trade and education. Even sending them some aide if needed, wanted and put to good use (not supporting authoritarian governments) But the sins of the part are not my responsibility at all, dont attempt to foist them upon me
- pimmen 7y ago
  But you’re profiting off of the sins committed in the past, and somebody else is paying for them. Does that not make you feel something?
  - syshum 7y ago
    >> Does that not make you feel something? No >>But you’re profiting off of the sins committed in the past, and somebody else is paying for them. I do not believe I am, not in the way you are implying. You have no idea what my family history is, or what indivual actions they took, instead you are imparting these historical sins upon me because I may be a part of a nation today or may have part of a race in my genetic make up that may or may not committed what in modern context we call "sins" when we look back upon history through our modern eyes It also makes many many assumptions about what the state of those nations would have been with out "interference" from the west, Assumption I do not believe you can accurately make The further back in history you go the worse those assumption get as well.
    - pimmen 7y ago
      I’m not imparting the sins of whatever country you happen to live in on you or your family. I see it akin to finding money on the street, growing up, and then finding out they were stolen. That would make me feel something, even if neither I nor anyone in my family stole that money. And I’m not arguing against Western contact with other nations, I’m merely stating that the West profited off of immoral things towards other civilizations that those nations are still paying for. The Dutch extracting oil from the Dutch East Indies by wiping out cultures island to island, laying the ground work for wars to break out in the power vacuum, is hard to see as anything but a crime against the native people, the instability it caused hobbling that part of the world to this day, that was exclusively beneficial for the Netherlands. That doesn’t mean that the Dutch should feel shame for having been in contact at all with those cultures but a Dutch person who profits off of the business generated by Royal Dutch Shell should probably feel something when they hear about political instability in Indonesia. And when that part of the world becomes uninhabitable because of climate change, and the Indonesian economy can’t handle adapting to that, I think a Dutch person should feel something.

oddeyed 7y ago

For anyone who is looking for further reading, the term often used with reference to this phenomenon is "Climate Justice". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_justice (Obviously Climate Justice would be if there WERE just distribution of the effects of climate change - the situation now is probably best termed Climate Injustice).

adrianN 7y ago

I wonder whether those numbers take into account the massive refugee crisis that is looming on the horizon. Or wars for arable land and water.

drucik 7y ago
I suspect it just assumes that the temparature increase of 2 degrees while make it easier to grow food and overall live in some countries, while screw up already hot countries, but I'm not sure that's how climate change is going to work. But the maps contradict each other nicely.

jotm 7y ago

There are no winners here. There are losers and bigger losers. Any destabilization will be felt worldwide.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Inthenameofmine 7y ago

This map seems to be more than lacking. For one it doesn’t seem to take into consideration wet bulb temperatures on the rise, as we have seen now in central and western Europe. It also doesn’t seem to take into account that what really creates issues for economies is high variability, rather than absolute average changes.

leereeves 7y ago

Here's the study the impact map is based on: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2016.0460 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2016.046... The results are from "a new set of climate simulations." A simulation can easily be wrong. These results say Ireland's GDP growth per capita will be unaffected by climate change and Britain's GDP growth per capita will increase if temperatures rise 2C, but I find it hard to believe these islands wouldn't be hurt. Why should we trust these maps?

imtringued 7y ago
Climate migration causes population growth which causes GDP growth.
- leereeves 7y ago
  The map shows per capita figures, which immigration would probably decrease.
- lasagnaphil 7y ago
  ... and such migration will also probably cause political unrest, which would potentially destabilize Western countries a bit. (We've observed it before with the Syrian Civil War, whether you like those refugees or not, it will probably cause some stur.)

namanyayg 7y ago

What's the best (cheapest) investor visa one can get to the post-warming winning countries? I'm probably going to see people die from heat exhaustion in front of my eyes if I stay here ~50 years.

alfor 7y ago

Careful it's a trap, it's the victim mentality trap. When everything is the fault of others, for sure you cannot do anything about it. There is even a sentence about old white men ! He seem to forget about all the good that came of western society. Electricity, cars, Internet, vaccine, solar cells, wind turbine, the list go on, even the computer he use to type that article. From wikipedia: "Corruption remains a problem in Sri Lanka, and there is currently very little protection for those who stand up against corruption." "over 12,000 named individuals who have undergone disappearance after detention by security forces in Sri Lanka, the second highest figure in the world" "26-year civil war, which ended in 2009" Look, you have much biggers problem in your own country, that are not the responsibility of others, that your people could do something about. Maybe some of the flood would have been averted if the government had build damn instead of fighting a civil war for 26 years. The problem is that victim mentality make you feel good. It's not your fault, it's not in your hand, you don't have to do anything, just blame other people. I am not saying climate change isn't real, but it's a too much convenient scapegoat because it's out of your control.

open-source-ux 7y ago

We all lose if global temperatures rise, but it's true that those of us living in prosperous industrialised nations (North America, Europe, Australia & NZ, Japan) will be able to cope better with climate change than other countries. We're simply too comfortable in our current lifestyles to make any changes that might challenge that comfort. Would you fly less? No, didn't so. Eat less meat? Nope. How about unplugging your smartphone from its charger when not in use? Yes! We'll happily do that, despite being utterly inconsequential. (Like bailing the titanic with a teaspoon, to use a description from the book Sustainable Energy - without the hot air.) We look to governments for action, but if governments took measures to encourage less flying or reducing the farming of meat, we'd never accept it. Most of our politicians are too weak-willed to enact bold legislation and it's mostly because they know we the electorate won't stomach it. The truth is we love to point accusatory fingers at others but never lift a finger ourselves. Are we all a bunch of hypocrites and simply not willing to admit it?