The biophysical effects of climate change will be uneven across the globe and in the United States.2 Some impacts. Indeed, many people and businesses will receive significant benefits, large enough to conclude that they are better off because of climate change. See Robert Mendelsohn et al., The Distributional Impact of Climate Change on Rich and Poor Countries, 11 ENV'T & DEV.
Few legal scholars even allude to the possibility of significant flows of climate change benefiting different regions and industries in the unit. Instead of treating it as taboo, the topic of climate change winners should be aired fully in climate policy dialogue.
A Typology of Climate Change Benefits and
- Direct Benefits
- Indirect Benefits
- P assive
- A daptive
- O pportunistic
- M igratory
- Subsistence
Most of the direct benefits of climate change are related to the initial warming of temperature regimes.43 Higher. Indeed, I have to speculate here because there are so few robust studies on the benefits of climate change. The indirect benefits of climate change will not be limited to areas with large sources of direct benefits.
Nevertheless, passive beneficiaries of climate change are likely to get used to the new good times. Some people and companies will actively work to capture the direct and indirect benefits of climate change.
Who Are the Climate Change Winners?
Many climate change beneficiaries, whether passive, adaptive, opportunistic, migratory, or a combination thereof, will be net winners only in the sense that their lives will be made a little less miserable than they would have been without climate change.76 For example, a family in poverty living in an area of extreme cold, see heating bills slowly drop, or maybe have improved transportation options, or maybe find a slightly longer working season in agricultural fields. A struggling coffee shop in the area may also enjoy lower heating bills and perhaps a few more customers. 34;subsistence category to emphasize that it is not only climate change that presents sympathetic political cases.
Moreover, although only slightly ahead and perhaps not seeing themselves as winners in life in general, many people and businesses in the survival category may highly value their benefits from climate change and strongly desire to save them. Since they are also likely to be concentrated in areas of rural or urban poverty, they can be organized into a significant political force in some local and state jurisdictions.
Defining Climate Change Winners
Second, the most relevant dynamic characterizations of global change involve structural processes rather than the more conventional idea of winners and losers from specific voluntary events.83 Thus, "structural winners and losers emerge from larger social processes or changes, where the distribution of impacts is unequal, such that gains and losses accrue to participants differently."8 4 Furthermore, winners and losers do not necessarily participate in the process of global change by choice, and their knowledge of all gains and losses- es in the entire global system may be incomplete.85. Absolute gains and losses are judged based on a comparison of one's status before and after the relevant event or change, while relative gains and losses are judged based on a comparison with the situation of others.88 Someone who is better off in relative terms may feel like a winner even if he or she is not better off in absolute terms, just as someone who is better off in absolute terms may feel like a loser if he or she is worse off in relative terms.87. Fourth, the identification of winners and losers can be based on self-identification by the winners and losers themselves or on a third-party judgment, such as a government agency measuring various metrics of wins and losses and announcing who has won. and who has lost.88 Self-identification has the advantage of establishing criteria internally, which avoids the need for agreement on metrics, but opens the door to a host of political and personal motives for misidentification.89 Similarly, if external party metrics are used third, the assessment of what counts as gains and losses can be framed according to purely neoclassical economic indicators such as income, or in Marxist political-economic theory that includes consideration of imbalances of political power and economic condition. .
Finally, the scale at which winners and losers are assessed is crucial to understanding the political and economic consequences of global change.9' Aggregating "wins" and "losses" at smaller scales to assess "net" status in larger scales. can mask the presence of winners and losers on a smaller scale.92 A net tabernacle could e.g. have many "winner" individuals and businesses within its borders, and even significant net winner regions and industries, just as a winning nation could have many losers.9". My interest in identifying climate change winners is to assess their potential impact on the policy of climate change mitigation and adaptation In line with most treatments of the topic, I am primarily concerned, therefore, with how people and businesses at the local level self-identify their absolute and relative changes in situation from economic gains and losses throughout the dynamic, structural process of global climate change.94 To clarify this definition further, consider what it includes and excludes .
Primarily, I am concerned with what people and companies think they are based on their absolute and relative self-assessments,95 and not with what government agencies or other organizations tell them they are.96 Of course, climate change is never discussed. winners in official statements, or even calling all people losers from climate change, can keep people from identifying themselves as winners, but that strategy can only go so far in light of the tangible benefits of climate change. It is likely that some people and companies who are winners by my definition would take that status to the political backseat if they perceived themselves to be unfavorable to strong political imbalances or economic dependencies individually caused by climate change.97 there is little research into the political effects – even less than what exists in terms of economic benefits. While I recognize the potential for such perceptions to offset economic benefits in terms of how people identify themselves, I limit my definition in the absence of robust evidence supporting such an effect in the context of climate change. economic version of profits and losses.
Most legal studies have focused on whether the United States is a potential winner among nations and how the winning nations (generally developed economies) should help the losing nations (generally developing countries that are not very responsible for emissions). greenhouse gases in the past. 98. Although these questions will certainly play into domestic climate politics, the uneven distribution of winners and losers within the United States is potentially a far more divisive political force. Finally, it is likely that many people and businesses thrive during climate change for reasons unrelated to the benefits of climate change; for example, through the effects of globalized trade and technological innovations.99 Winners in that category may oppose mitigation policy because of the cost of her or for any other reason, but that is not my concern. What we should care about, in other words, are the people and businesses who believe they are better off economically as a result of climate change.
Will the Winners Know Who They Are?
The Political Economy of Climate Change Winners
Based on the studies discussed in Parts I and II, we can reasonably assume that the benefits of climate change will accrue to a significant number of people and businesses, and that many of the beneficiaries will see themselves as climate change winners. There is every reason to believe that they will at least complicate climate mitigation and adaptation policy, possibly suppress support for greenhouse gas regulation and divert resources away from harm-reducing adaptation measures. In other words, climate policy will soon become not only a trade-off between the present and the future, but also a trade-off between winners and losers at all times.
That's why it's worth thinking now about how climate change winners will think about climate policy.
Thinking Like a Climate Change Winner
This means that climate change winners are likely to start emerging in large numbers relatively early in the era of climate change impacts. But climate change will not stop at the coin to let them enjoy the benefits indefinitely. Of course, whatever we do about the winners, we don't necessarily have to worry about a future full of climate change winners now.
So why haven't legal scholars paid attention to what to do about climate change winners. Ruhl, Empirical Assessment of Climate Change in the Courts: New Case Law or Business as Usual?, 64 FLA. In this piece, I argue that the most effective policy action will be to ignore the winners of climate change.
The other reason, which is uniquely emphasized in the context of climate change, is the need to protect against non-linearities, typ-. Climate change champions will argue that, strictly speaking, this weakened mitigation policy vector reflects a more accurate cost-benefit analysis. Neil Adger, Theory and practice in climate change vulnerability assessment and adaptation facilitation, in.
Here again, investments in adaptations that provide benefits can help improve overall resilience to climate change. Climate change winners are likely to make significant investments to secure and maintain their gains. All investments of these winners will be based on the expected effects of climate change.
In other words, they are backing their investments - they think reasonably - on an expectation of climate change. First, as explained above, climate change winners cannot expect their benefits to outlast climate change itself.
