Is it time to prepare for the inevitable?

Sage Magazine recently featured a blog post from Durban titled "COP 17: What to expect when you're expecting climate change".  The post focuses on two things: extending the Kyoto commitments and "securing financial commitments to the Green Climate Fund", which would provide funding to projects like REDD+ and other emissions reduction schemes in the developing world.

At the pace climate negotiations are currently progressing, however, it seems unlikely that we'll see anything substantial come out of Durban, especially when we consider the United States' continued unwillingness to commit to meaningful targets.  With that in mind, it may be judicious to be a bit...pessimistic.  Instead of wasting time bickering over details that probably won't matter in the long run, countries should begin preparing for the inevitable.

There are two key elements to this: the costs of adaptation and climate migration.  The first should be relatively straightforward.  We know climate change is happening, so we should invest money in things that help us prepare for it.  For big, rich countries, this isn't an issue; if the sea level rises, the UK can afford to build a sea wall.  But for states like Tuvalu, Madagascar and Indonesia, this will be a challenge - one that's insurmountable without the help of developed countries like the US.  Morally, we're obligated to do it, since it definitely wasn't Tuvalu's GHG emissions that induced climate change.  That should be priority number one.

Another important issue is conflict and migration that climate change will inevitably spur.  Jeffrey Sachs is kind of silly sometimes, but he's right that most future wars will be fought over resources.  In Africa, for example, it's easy to see how a lack of fresh water or arable land - resources that are already too scarce for the continent's rapidly growing population - could lead to genocide.  If there are too many people, the most obvious solution is...less people.  International organizations and powerful countries must be willing to obviate these problems.  They must also be willing to accept immigrants. To use Tuvalu as an example again, they're out of fresh water, and importing it from Guam is obviously unsustainable.  They'll probably have to migrate to Australia and New Zealand, and richer countries have to be prepared to accept immigrants whose home countries have become uninhabitable.  It's important to start designing these legal frameworks now.