The Coming International Climate Wars

Lost amidst my thorny thicket of CAPTCHA (sorry about that; I hate it too, but otherwise I get too much comment spam), Andrew Revkin sends along this relevant link to a post he wrote last year:

What if: Standing in Line for Climate Aid

Lisa Friedman of Climatewire has an excellent story on The Times Web site digging in on an issue I’ve touched on periodically here — the prospect of intensifying fights over whatever money might flow someday to poor countries exposed to risks thought to be amplified by human-driven global warming.

He quotes from her piece:

Is it worse to be swallowed by the sea or racked by famine?

As climate change tightens its grip on the world, institutions charged with protecting the most vulnerable nations could be faced with just such a question. Because there is no international consensus for ranking the possibilities of future devastation — and because there are limited dollars lined up to help cope with climate change — some countries already are battling over who will be considered most vulnerable.

“This is a major, major topic of discussion and debate at the moment,” said Saleem Huq, head of the climate change group at the U.K.-based International Institute for Environment and Development.

Judging who is most threatened has real-world implications. Those at the top of the list — if ever such a list is developed and agreed upon internationally — could decide who is first in line to tap a multibillion-dollar Green Climate Fund.

Arguments just within the U.S. over who gets compensated by whom, and for what, are going to be bad enough. Internationally they're going to be an immense climate clusterf*ck. This is a great time to be a student starting a career in international law.