Do you want to move to a different part of the world? Start by asking yourself – what will the climate there be like 10 years from now! – says Gaia Vince, who wrote the book titled: Nomad Century. According to its author climate migrations will change the world – the North will get wealthier and new financial centers will emerge.
– Talking about the weather isn’t going to be boring anymore, that’s what Gaia Vince, a journalist and author of books on issues related to climate change, said in her interview with
Henry Mance of the Financial Times which was part of an episode of the 5×15 show “Six Ideas to Change the World”. Gaia Vince isn’t happy about this, but she’s not surprised either. For the past 10 years she has been traveling the world and observing the effects of climate change and its impact on people. Ms. Vince has described what she has seen, backed by scientific data, in several articles published in The Guardian, New Scientist, Australian Geographic, and Science. She has also written three books on the subject including: Adventures in Anthropocene, Transcendence, and Nomad Century.
Ms. Vince’s latest book, “Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World deals” with the subject of climate migration. It is one of four titles translated into Polish and published as part of the Impact Series, (by Krytyka Polityczna in cooperation with Impact’24 – where Ms. Vince is scheduled to speak on May 15th-16th in Poznan Poland).
Why did she write this book? Because no one is taking the problem seriously. Even when the topic manages to sneak its way into the discussions of world leaders, they don’t do much about it. The public perceives it as something that is going to be a serious issue in the future, but large-scale climate migration is happening right now!
In her appearance on the 5×15 show she says – I first became aware that people were emigrating due to climate change more than 10 years ago, while traveling through India, where I saw people forced to leave their villages due to extreme drought.”
She has observed similar situations in different parts of the world. In South America, where crop quality depended on water from melting glaciers in the Andes, farmers had to move to cities and live in the slums. In 2022 almost 33 million people were displaced because of floods in Pakistan!
The Four Horsemen of the Anthropocene
Vince points to four catastrophic effects of global warming which are making some places on earth unfit for life – I call them the four horsemen of the Anthropocene. They are – heat, fire, drought and flood and they often occur together,” the researcher says on the 5×15 show “Six Ideas to Change the World”. There she also talks about a model, created by scientists, which shows the most affected areas of the world. They stretch across the equator but reach as far as the tip of Africa and the south of Spain and Italy, South America as far as Patagonia and Eastern Australia. The effects of global warming will also be felt by countries which are currently wealthy. Cities like New Orleans will stop being attractive investment locations in a matter of moments because of typhoons and hurricanes.
– Politicians and leaders should use global warming maps as their guide and invest in change. It’s in their own best interests – People will move and money, property, cultural capital etc. will follow, she says. Many places can be adapted to accommodate migrants in time. An example? Today’s abandoned “rust belt” cities in the US are safe as far as climate change is concerned. But that’s something that governments aren’t talking about, at all.
An Even Richer North and New Global Financial Centers
According to Ms. Vince, the region around the Arctic – Iceland & Greenland– as well as Scotland and the Scandinavian countries will become global financial centers in the coming decades. – Canada is also going to be an important place. It is the only country planning to triple its population by taking in a lot of people from Afghanistan, Syria and India, she notes. There are several things we should do to deal with migration. That includes adapting living conditions to temperatures. After all, not everyone is ready to give up their country, language, or culture. Geoengineering is also something to consider. Migrations, however, will be inevitable – It is better to plan now and carry them out in stages. Invite the young to build their future in safer places and create communities – these communities will, in turn, help weaker, older members of the population, she says.
A Wise Investor is a Climate Conscious Investor
We can’t escape the effects of global warming, but we can prepare for them. Now! Western cities need to adapt, change the way they are being built in terms of materials used and spatial planning – to compensate for higher temperatures and larger populations. – Talking about the short-term costs of a green transformation is ridiculous. You have to consider the long-term costs of no green transformation, Ms. Vince says on the 5×15 show “Six Ideas to Change the World”. You must put pressure on politicians and act from the bottom up. Vote for people who have a strategy and invest wisely. Even though she has seen many catastrophic effects of climate change around the world, Ms. Vince remains optimistic and believes humans can deal with them – Our imagination is infinite!, she argues.
