Research conducted by researchers at the University of Gothenburg shows that people tend to rate their own risk of being affected by climate change as lower than that of others. This perception may reduce individuals' willingness to act and slow down necessary climate measures.
I wholehearted agree. In conversation a concept people don’t instinctively understand, is that the world is dominated by global trade. It’s largely been great, but it exacts its own price in a way few understand - A globalized world means that a problem anywhere is a problem everywhere.
E.g. Russia invades Ukraine. Ukraine wheat shipments stop. Egypt can’t get the wheat they contracted for. Egypt seeks out global markets for a solution. Global markets don’t have a Ukraine’s worth of wheat to spare so we ration by price. Price goes up globally, inflation smacks global population in the face. Poor people get skinnier.
Now with climate change, and the geopolitical shenanigans being driven by it, what happens to food markets when war, trade blockades or droughts and floods hit two major producing regions at the same time?
I read an article a while back on edge.org called “What should we really be worried about?” A fascinating read with multiple interesting thinkers and ideas. One answer was so brief but enlightning, it will forever be burned into my brain. “Too much coupling” by Steven Strogatz, a Cornell math prof.
https://web.archive.org/web/20181005201205/https://www.edge.org/responses/what-should-we-be-worried-about
Now I think about how coupled global food markets are and what that entails over the anticipated challenges of ecological overshoot.
In the geopolitical shitstorm we are all now in, we are all going to feel, in very real ways what too much coupling is going to feel like.
A problem anywhere, is a problem everywhere. Deglobalization will be very, very painful for everyone. Thanks to the US, it is hapenning in all haste.
Exactly.
Imagine that climate change leads to really bad harvests in South East Asia, so much that there is famine in China. People still seem to be reassured by the fact that the Western G7 / OECD countries are on average more wealthy than people in China, so them seem to think that they will pay a bit more for food and people elsewhere will starve, because these poor people can’t compete with them on food prices.
But that’s not what would happen. In lieu of rice, Chinese people would buy wheat on international markets. And while the average Chinese family is still poorer than the average American one, China, which has a billion of people, has a middle class which might be one hundred million strong. And these people would out-compete poor Americans on the food markets, I guess.
Which would result in famine in the US and major political instability.