Climate change winners and losers
The New York Times reports on the inequities generated by global warming below. The April edition of The Atlantic also featured a story on the same theme, but it was really poorly done. While the article makes a few interesting observations of what might happen in different parts of the world, Gregg Easterbrook, from Brookings, was more inclined to treat global warming as an investment prospectus (where to buy and sell land to take advantage of global warming). His tone reaks of a skeptic grudgingly convinced by the overwhelming evidence on climate change (he repeatedly used the term “artificial climate change” insinuating that much of what is happening is actually just the Earth doing her thing). He closes with a rallying cry for capitalism to save our collective bacon. And he made some plain old factual errors, including most of his commentary on Canada, that a decent fact-checker should have caught. All in all, a disappointing read, though I did find the cover picture quite humorous.
Here’s the Times’ contribution:
The Climate Divide: Reports From Four Fronts in the War on Warming
Over the last few decades, as scientists have intensified their study of the human effects on climate and of the effects of climate change on humans, a common theme has emerged: in both respects, the world is a very unequal place.
In almost every instance, the people most at risk from climate change live in countries that have contributed the least to the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases linked to the recent warming of the planet.
Those most vulnerable countries also tend to be the poorest. And the countries that face the least harm — and that are best equipped to deal with the harm they do face — tend to be the richest.