Thanks! Sure, various issues might in theory interfere with international cooperation efforts, but as regards climate change, we see tensions over very large economic stakes on compensation, reparation etc unfolding before our eyes. Just this past month, there were two big illustrations of this. In addition to the UN discussions of a global tax to pay for climate-related loss and damage, a link on which I included, there was this.
As expensive disasters and flooding abound, new tensions are likely to arise and interfere with the ability to work together on addressing existential risks, through two mechanisms:
angry parties don’t work well together (a recent illustration is how the Ukraine war foiled progress on climate).
parties with acute, time-sensitive needs will sometimes try to force stronger parties who are relatively indifferent to those needs to address them by making addressing them a condition for cooperation on shared needs. That can infuriate the stronger parties, who feel blackmailed. Cooperation on the shared needs then collapses (that seems to be precisely how acute, time sensitive needs in development assistance brought down recent discussions of the biological weapons convention—see my link to the 80,000 hours podcast with Jaime Yassif). Climate change will often create acute, time sensitive needs (e.g. in flooding relief, in license to immigrate).
Thanks! Sure, various issues might in theory interfere with international cooperation efforts, but as regards climate change, we see tensions over very large economic stakes on compensation, reparation etc unfolding before our eyes. Just this past month, there were two big illustrations of this. In addition to the UN discussions of a global tax to pay for climate-related loss and damage, a link on which I included, there was this.
As expensive disasters and flooding abound, new tensions are likely to arise and interfere with the ability to work together on addressing existential risks, through two mechanisms:
angry parties don’t work well together (a recent illustration is how the Ukraine war foiled progress on climate).
parties with acute, time-sensitive needs will sometimes try to force stronger parties who are relatively indifferent to those needs to address them by making addressing them a condition for cooperation on shared needs. That can infuriate the stronger parties, who feel blackmailed. Cooperation on the shared needs then collapses (that seems to be precisely how acute, time sensitive needs in development assistance brought down recent discussions of the biological weapons convention—see my link to the 80,000 hours podcast with Jaime Yassif). Climate change will often create acute, time sensitive needs (e.g. in flooding relief, in license to immigrate).