Why most of the major powers really want global warming

David Lempert and Hue Nhu Nguyen

12th February, 2009

If you read the international press, it is easy to be convinced that the international ‘debate’ about global warming is about whether international organisations and country governments are able to ‘wake up’ to alarming news about the future of the planet.

But if you actually read between the lines of the analyses done by the IPCC (Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change), there is a different ‘truth’ that is convenient to the major countries of the ‘North.’ Despite leaders’ claims of attention to ‘solving’ this ‘global’ problem, they actually have everything to gain from global warming and seem to actually want it.

We took the best evidence available for impacts on agriculture, on trade routes, on flood damage, on migration, on resource extraction (as impacted by climate) and on health and disease and analysed it.

What we found is that in a world divided by the wealthy countries of the ‘North’ and the poor countries of the global ‘South,’ climate change will make the ‘North’ warmer and richer and the ‘South’ poorer in a way that reinforces the current imbalances of power.

The biggest winner from global warming is going to be Russia, turning its frozen North into arable land and lowering the cost of resource extraction while also opening up new sea lanes for trade through the North Pole. This is one of the reasons why Russia has been comparatively...

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