
Climate Winners and Losers - zorked
https://medium.com/@indica/climate-winners-and-losers-in-two-maps-c89f17ef0a80
======
leereeves
Here's the study the impact map is based on:

[https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2016.046...](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2016.0460)

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
Climate migration causes population growth which causes GDP growth.

~~~
lasagnaphil
... 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.)

------
Inthenameofmine
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.

------
open-source-ux
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?

------
adrianN
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
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.

------
namanyayg
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.

------
tombh
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
>>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

~~~
tombh
I don't think being-guilty-of and taking responsibility are the same thing.
Eg; I don't think I was guilty of starting the argument with my colleague, but
I nevertheless have a responsibility to contribute to its resolution.

But there's potentially a deeper implication of your position. Can one
simultaneously disown the sins of our ancestors whilst being so attached to
the benefits they reaped? If there is no moral connection between then and
now, why is it so difficult for me to contemplate foregoing the relative
wealth afforded to me by my currency, education, medical health and passport,
in order to return the trillions of dollars of labour and natural resources
stolen from say India and Africa?

~~~
air7
> why is it so difficult for me to contemplate foregoing the relative wealth
> afforded to me by my currency, education, medical health and passport

Because deep down you know that's silly. Fundamentally, the world is a leveled
playing field: Each person is born with a set of internal and external
qualities and they do the best they can with the hand there were dealt. You
don't feel the need to forgo your (let's say) above average intelligence/good-
looks/grit/sanity caused by more or less normal family, etc. Your nationality
is just another bullet point on your personal list. If anything, you have
moral responsibility to make use of your perceived privileges better yourself
and the world around you.

------
alfor
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.

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

------
oddeyed
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).

