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I‘m worried that as the earth is warming up the benefactors of it become so powerful that they start to defend the new status quo. Say the main benefactor would
by cmarschner 7y ago
I‘m worried that as the earth is warming up the benefactors of it become so powerful that they start to defend the new status quo. Say the main benefactor would be Russia, and Canada‘s population would grow to 300 million and take on the US‘s role as a global superpower. It would be very hard to convince them to go back to where we are now in supernational bodies, and consensus would be impossible to achieve.
Meanwhile we have to say good-bye to New York, Shanghai, the Netherlands, and many other places that are close to the seas.
- the-dude 7y agoLarge parts of The Netherlands are already below sea level. We will be fine.
- CalRobert 7y agoI'd be more worried about invasion from armies than the sea. There's a strange assumption that the losers in climate change will just sit calmly and accept their fate.
- ekianjo 7y agoArmies? From where?
- piva00 7y agoFrom countries suffering social unrest caused by climate change, electing populist leaders proposing to solve the crisis in their borders by expanding their "living space" and so on. History is a circle...
- ekianjo 7y agoNo, History is not a circle, it never repeats itself because the variables always change. Context matters. > proposing to solve the crisis in their borders by expanding their "living space" When you are in a crisis mode you don't have to time to wait for elections, the most likely result of social unrest is civil war. There are ample examples in very recent History.
- CalRobert 7y agoFrom places with hungry people and newly-arid landscapes. What do you think will happen when they can't get visas? Just happily sit there and starve?
- ekianjo 7y agoI have a hard time picturing how tired and hungry people would suddenly become a threat against countries producing all the weapons in the world and armed to the teeth. But surely you can explain?
- CalRobert 7y agoChina, as noted by others, stands to lose a lot of arable land and makes plenty of weaponry. India and Pakistan are both likely to become more or less uninhabitable, and have nukes and (for the former) no shortage of people to draft. The United States of America, under a 4C rise, would also see large regions become uninhabitable, and has a northerly neighbour that could not repel an invasion. Russia has already shown a fondness for acquiring territory (see Crimea) when the opportunity presents itself, and Europe is weakly defended. Not to mention that "set up turrets on the southern border and mow them down" is not the most humane way to handle this, especially since the nations likely to fare OK(ish) are generally the ones that caused this trouble in the first place.
- nine_k 7y agoOK, maybe central Africa is not going to be a major military threat. How about China and India, whose southern parts are densely populated, and who are capable of launching rockets to space, have nuclear weapons for a long time, etc? You don't want them to feel desperate.
- vixen99 7y agoChina and India are not desperate enough to choose to reduce their projected increase in coal-fired power stations. Nuke themselves?
- CalRobert 7y agoNo, the idea is: 1) Keep building coal stations 2) Invade northerly regions that are now better for growing crops Not just China and India. Russia could just about do this for the lolz when you consider they're already expansionist. Mind you I'm not _endorsing_ this, I'm just worried about it.
- ekianjo 7y ago> Russia could just about do this for the lolz when you consider they're already expansionist. In all seriousness if you really want to picture Russia as expansionist, the only time when this was really true was post-WW2 and Cold-war Era. Now Russia is far from being a fool enough to "invade" countries around much beyond their border. Let's not forget NATO as well. I'm not sure in what world this scenario would ever happen.
- the-dude 7y agoWe already have 'open borders'.
- CalRobert 7y agoDude, you're being very un-dude. Also, it might be a good idea to bring evidence of this forward since immigrating seems to be getting harder as time goes on.
- the-dude 7y agoSchengen is literally an open border treaty. Zhe Germans could invade The Netherlands by driving about a thousand cars and trucks in smeared over a couple of days. Then change to combat dress and take over. How is that not an 'open border'? No need to bomb Rotterdam.