Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming

I ordered this book (subtitle: "The Booming Business of Global Warming") as soon as I saw the premise: an exploration of the businesses that will profit from climate change and the businesses whose profits are driving climate change.Restated from a positive perspective, these businesses profit from adaptation or a lack of mitigation, respectively.Restated from a normative perspective, they are businesses that serve or exploit society.So you can see that there's going to be a lot of hope and anguish in this book, except that it's often buried under discussions of revenue, jobs and market share. As an economist, I can appreciate the fact that money incentivizes a lot of behavior. As a human, I am horrified that so many clever people are making money on the corruption, fear and ignorance of politicians. (The book does not discuss a carbon tax or other mitigation policies that would erase the profits under discussion, and that's not the author's job. It's just a context that depresses me whenever I think of the magnificence of our "civilization" that humans seem determined to ruin.)Right.So... the book is divided into three sections: Melt, Drought, and Deluge.In Melt, Funk tells about Canada's rush to defend the Northwest passage that's opening with the shrinking arctic; how Shell oil went from "planning for less oil" to "drilling the arctic" as politicians left the path of Blueprints (limiting carbon emissions) for Scramble (dealing with too much carbon); the development of natural resources (and political shenanigans) as Greenland loses its glaciers; and how the Israelis got into selling (artificial) snow in the Alps. These chapters describe businesses that are making money as ice melts.In Drought, Funk joins private firefighters that protect insured houses while neighbors burn down; the traders who buy and sell water rights (covered often in this blog); the rush to buy farmland in poor countries to ship food to richer countries (see my article PDF); and the battle to halt desertification in Africa (and the refugees fleeing that desertification for Europe). These chapters are about the rich getting richer as they plan ahead and hedge their lifestyles, while the poor are increasingly marginalized.In Deluge, Funk explores the tensions along Bangladesh's borders, which are likely to be overrun as some of the 150 million residents flee their sinking, flooding delta; how the Dutch are willing to sell seawalls to anyone with cash (sorry Bangladeshis!); the quest to outwit nature by destroying mosquitoes before they can bring tropical diseases to middle latitudes; and the hopes of geoengineers (a group that deserves to be slandered with rain makers). Yes, there are some "solutions" in these chapters, but their cost (via adaptation) is so extravagant compared to mitigation that I think that we should be handing out penny-wise, pound-foolish awards to our so-called "leaders."In his final chapter, Funk reflects on his six years of seeing, thinking and talking about climate change. His words say it best: In psychology, magical thinking is the fallacy that thoughts correspond to actions— that to think is to do, to believe is to act. Perhaps the most magical assumption of the moment is that our growing belief in climate change will lead to a real effort to stop it. But as I discovered in Canada and Greenland and Sudan and Seattle and all over the globe, that is not automatically true. We are noticing that in this new world, there is new oil to find. There is new cropland to farm. There are new machines to be built. From what I have seen in six years of reporting this book, the climate is changing faster than we are. [snip] The hardest truth about climate change is that it is not equally bad for everyone. Some people -- the rich, the northern -- will find ways to thrive while others cannot, and many people will wall themselves off from the worst effects of warming while others remain on the wrong side. The problem with our profiting off this disaster is not that it is morally bankrupt to do so but that climate change, unlike some other disasters, is man- made. The people most responsible for historic greenhouse emissions are also the most likely to succeed in this new reality and the least likely to feel a mortal threat from continued warming. The imbalance between rich and north and poor and south -- inherited from history and geography, accelerated by warming -- is becoming even more entrenched [snip] Climate change is often framed as a scientific or economic or environmental issue, not often enough as an issue of human justice. This, too, needs to change. From this moment on, many of us could get rich. Many of us could get high. Life will go on. Before it does, we should all make sure we understand the reality of what we’re buying.The people who should read this book cannot afford it or cannot be distracted from their profits. What should those who read it do? The only action that comes to mind is revolution, but that's unlikely to succeed when citizens are distracted and deluded (e.g., Russia and the US), reactionaries are backed by crony capitalists (e.g., Egypt and Turkey), or people are too worried about big screen TVs to see the bigger picture (e.g., India and Australia). Indeed, it's hard to see how any leaders can win support from voters by promising less now for more later. Does this mean that China's dictators are our last hope?Bottom Line: I give this book FIVE STARS for exploring the stories of those who are profiting from our demise.

This book provides a human element to how various groups have responded to the perception of "global warming". The author has clearly been jetting around to various places to report on several human stories - how some individuals are being affected and other people and businesses are capitalizing on this trend, making a rather large carbon footprint along the way.I was a bit disappointed the author seemed to accept anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming as a given, which I personally do not hold with. Was also disappointed at the lack of footnotes backing up various stated statistics. The facts reported may be correct, but where did they come from? At the end of the work, he does state a number of books read, but does not correlate them with the facts reported as near as I could tell.So to me the book was interesting on a personal, human-interest level, but I did not find it compeliing as to the basic issue of "global warming". Sadly, I feel the public is lazy and easily swayed by politicized science, such as what is being spewed out by the IPCC and regurgitated by "JV Scholars", such as Barak Obama, who thanks to the bully pulpit, has the ear of the masses. They play loose with the facts and in my view have drawn at best inconclusive, and more likely flat-out false conclusions.All one needs to do is look at a record of the recent interglacial ice ages (about 4 of them over the last half million years) to observe two things: 1/ We emerged from most recent ice age about 10,000 years ago, and appear to be nearing the peak of warming, thus the melting glaciers), and 2/ the historic record shows that CO2 increases LAG behind warming, are a RESULT of warming, NOT the cause. It should also be noted that there are times in the past when CO2 levels have been higher than they are today, which Al Gore, the media and Michael Mann must find to be an Inconvenient Truth, one which does not fit their disaster dialog. It also might be noted that during the last ice age, roughly 30,000 years ago ( a geological eyeblink), places like Seattle and New York were buried under thousands of feet of ice. Based on the geological record, after about 10,0000 years of balmy temperatures, we are about due to plunge into another ice era. Maybe the global warming hysterics will turn into global cooling hysterics at that point....The other fact the warming propagandists find hard to swallow is that CO2, a trace gas, which even at today's levels, comprises less than HALF of one percent of the atmosphere, has more than an order of magnitude LESS effect on global warming than does water vapor in its various forms. Scientists such as Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer and Fred Singer have countered the political screeching with sober facts and been howled down by the entrenched academia.If you have a true thirst for knowledge about "global warming", an excellent book is "Unstoppable Global Warming- Every 1500 years" by Fred Singer and Dennis Avery. If you wish to delve further into the "hockey stick" graph, which Al Gore used to buttress his gloom and doom claims in his film "An Inconvenient Truth", you should read "The Hockey Stick Illusion" by A. W. Montford, which documents the data manipulation and coverups of Professor Michael Mann and his team. In fairness, Mann has also written a book titled "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars", which oozes self-pity and sidesteps a number of the issues brought up in the former work. I perceive that, like Galileo, a number of educated people who are voicing scientific doubts about the Al Gore - United Nations - IPCC political propaganda on GW, are being shouted down and politically being "burned at the stake" by the entrenched establishment, who benefit by increasing their political power and by weath redistribution, which will ultimately harm the very people they claim to protect.To conclude, if you want to read a personal interest type book which in my view does not bring you closer to understanding the real issues (that with or without humans, the earth will get hot, cold, wet, then dry) then this work may entertain you for a few hours. But if you are sincerely interested in getting a more comprehensive image about what "global Warming" is really about, you might check out some of those other works mentioned.

this is part of our energy library. it's inherently popular science / economics but for that it's a great read. Funk is a talented story teller. For those who work in energy in new markets and around the world, this book will make you feel at home.

This book takes you on a journey around the world highlighting key results of climate change and a wide range of responses - whether it's scientific at solutions (water desalination, bio-engineered crops and insects, geoengineering, etc.) or political measures to cope (such as combating environmental migration and building seawalls). It does a great job telling the story of the people affected, whether positive (in the case of greenland, canada, and russia) or negative (just about everywhere else) and allows the reader to view climate change from a number of vantage points. I came into it thinking that it would be a bit of a drier read given the covers emphasis on money and business, but it balances environmental, economic, and social aspects of the subject matter terrifically and all through a very genuine and relatively unbiased perspective.

This book is a level-headed inquiry and answer to the question of what we're doing about climate change? Since few years went into it's writing and the Paris conference is also behind us, Old-dates might put some readers off...Still I'll recommend this book as a case study into How Humans confront a crisis.

If you want to read about how business and governments make money out of climate change then this is the book for you. Frighteningly predictive of the mess we are likely to end up with as some countries and businesses make lots of money out of disasters afflicting others.

Decent if slightly offbeat angle on GWCC. As any entrepreneur of investor knows, change brings opportunity, and the opportunists are making hay.