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Comment by guerrilla | Hacker News Reader

There were no nation-states at that time either. It's going to be a meatgrinder this time around.

Several nation-states will be huge beneficiaries of a hotter world.

Russia's tundra becomes arable land, and their fossil fuels become more accessible. Their navy will be able to freely roam the seas when the polar ice caps melt.

Canada will receive the same benefits - enormous access to fresh water, ease of navigation, and agriculturally ideal conditions.

Greenland will have an increasingly large stake in geopolitics, trade, and energy.

China will be less existentially concerned about a blockade of the Strait of Malacca.

The Canadian Shield[1] is hard rock with a very thin layer of dirt. There's nothing remotely "agriculturally ideal" going on here. South and west of the Shield are peatlands[2] -- those are dessicating and deflagrating. As hot winds continue to blow across increasingly treeless land, thin topsoils will be stripped from the land. Saskatchewan is already facing a collapse due to farm practices, and a second "dust bowl" seems nigh inevitable. Do not look to Canada, we cannot feed billions in the decades to come.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Shield

[2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/wildfires-peat-chall...

Obviously, but you missed the point. The problem is competetion by increased polarity between the haves and have-nots. The latter aren't just going to roll over and die. They're going to go to war to survive because there's nothing to lose in not doing so and everything to gain.

> The latter aren't just going to roll over and die. They're going to go to war to survive because there's nothing to lose in not doing so and everything to gain.

And they'll lose.

If you look at the distribution of power, it's not predicted to change all that much. The superpowers are enormously capable of maintaining their grip.

The complaints of poor nations will be met with meager welfare packages and mostly tuned out by the working class of weather nations. It's how the world already operates.

I figured you would say that but your hubris is entirely unwarranted. The Taliban just handed the most powerful military on the planet their ass. They beat the USSR too. The Veitcong did it before them. Look at how badly the barefoot Houthis beat the shit out of KSA even with direct US support. Look at Russia being sent packing. Don't gamble on these things. It's foolish to expose yourself to those kinds of risks if you don't need to.

I'm not sure this is a good stick to measure. The American voting public didn't have an appetite for those fights.

Put the American economy at risk and you get the Gulf War. Attack America directly and you get the Pacific theater.

In any case, none of those particular points matter. No poor country is going to be able to resource starve the wealthiest nations. If they try to invade or block trade, they'll find out the limits of their power.

It's irrelevant what appetite they had because they lost abd they were losing long before they left both Afghanistan and Vietnam.

Several of the countires made "poor" by climate change will have nuclear weapons: Indian, Pakistan, France, Israel, North Korea. You're living in a fantasy. Time to wake up.

Certain cities on the SF peninsula like Daly City with their "natural air conditioning" might become the most expensive real estate in the world.

And a lot less population density. People in low-lying areas aren't going to be able to move to higher ground, because someone else already owns that ground.

Why do you say low-lying areas? Do you mean like because of coastal/sea-level rise?

And people think that ground can be owned now

Many animals 'think' it too. Grizzly bears come to mind.

There's a key difference; territorial animals are owner-occupiers. If a bear loses a territorial fight, it dies or moves. It doesn't call in the forest police. Also, bears want to keep other bears out. They don't much care about smaller animals, or try to restructure the entire landscape in the name of bear commerce.

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