Climate Change: Who wins and who loses? No one wins

Everyone loses. The question is defining when and how.

As climate quickly changes and related-effects are felt worldwide, nation states featuring more financial and military resources will increasingly invest in preventive infrastructure and meet their national security by securing “treaties” with former colonies. However, incremental changes and palliative measures are political smart band-aids to temporarily cover up internal social unrest, nationalist discourses, and economic meltdowns. In the twilight, poor nations had long perished, and rich ones are following suit.

Everyone is to blame for. Rich or poor -- we will sink together in the epilogue. We should not point our fingers at the Japanese, Canadians, Russians, and Australians. If they want to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol it is because they have realized that the Clean Development Mechanism has done little to address global warming. Why only us paying? At what cost? Should not be better to allocate resources within borders where there is more accountability over tax-payers money? Answers to these questions usually gravitate around the argument: “Let’s do our homework and create added value for our constituents.” This is a legitimate nation-state rationale.

However, the beauty of the environment is that it is not about me and them. It is about “us”. No matter how much capital, guns, and scientists a country has in its pockets, the world will increasingly get warmer as the whole depends on all its parts to survive. So, is the solution doing my part and diplomatically asking others to do theirs -- or coerce to do so? Maybe if one plans to break out an unprecedented international conflict and making all of us worse-off in a very short period of time.

The solution is cultural. We should change politics. We should change economics. By voting to candidates that ignore the risks of not investing in elementary education and defending the expansion of existing infrastructure without offering structural and behavior-change alternatives, we are greatly increasing the burden on our children. By believing that happiness derives from “having” and “more”, we are indirectly encouraging the exploration of natural resources and intensive energy-use products by reinforcing a utilitarian mindset very little concerned with surroundings.

Cultural changes, however, are painful processes and heavily rely on legal enforcement or cyclical collapse. We make a choice. Do we share our responsibility worldwide or continue walking towards abysm? I go with the latter because I myself am not taking the stairs, continue driving to grocery stores, and intuitively respond to “Black Friday” irresistible savings.