book review: 'windfall' by mckenzie funk -...
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Book Review: 'Windfall' by McKenzie Funk
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From politicians to profiteers, some people look at the effects of climate change and see dollar signs.
Jan. 28, 2014 6:39 p.m. ET
The changes occurring in Earth's climate appear to present an unfair fight, between themajestic forces of Nature and we minuscule humans, scurrying to protect ourselves. Butwhatever we may or may not have done to heat up our planet, the polar ice is melting, themercury seems to be rising and for those with an eye on the main chance, there is moneyto be made. Once you have contemplated the mind-boggling variety of bets that nations,businesses and politicians are placing based on predicted global temperatures, the choiceof which gas-hybrid SUV to buy will seem trivial.
In "Windfall" McKenzie Funk, an intrepid American journalist, reports on the lesser-knownvictims and profiteers of climate change brings a dizzyingly abstruse phenomenon downto a more human scale. Mr. Funk leads us away from the rarefied air of Al Gore and hislethal PowerPoint slides, to mingle with the militiamen, inventors, politicians and activiststrying to find their way through an era of turmoil. Bad news for flood-stricken Bangladeshis,it turns out, is good news for Greenland's separatists, hoping to break free of Denmarkand profit from an Arctic mineral boom. Russians are taking their lead from PresidentVladimir Putin, who has observed that the warming of his country means "we shall saveon fur coats." Melting sea ice and permafrost would expand Russia's agricultural land,improve its fishing stocks and make it easier to extract minerals from Siberia. A Chinesecompany has signed a lease to farm 5% of Ukraine, some 7.5 million acres, to grow foodfor its home market.
In Africa, though, the Sahara is expanding and a torrent of immigrants heading north toescape the drought. The late Col. Gadhafi used to hold this gun to Europe's head. "Whatwill be the reaction of the white and Christian Europeans faced with this influx of starvingand ignorant Africans?" he asked the Italians. "We don't know if Europe will remain anadvanced and united continent or if it will be destroyed as happened with the Barbarianinvasions." His threats worked. In 2009, Italy agreed to pay Libya 250 million euros a yearfor 20 years in return for joint infrastructure projects, oil contracts and aid in stoppingAfricans from crossing the Mediterranean. Giant camps were built in the Libyan desert tohold the thwarted emigrants. The deal unraveled after Gadhafi's fall, and last year morethan 30,000 immigrants were smuggled from Libya to Italy aboard rickety boats.
The African Union's answer to desertification is a 4,000-mile tree-planting project,laughably called the Great Green Wall—a scrubby line of saplings stretching from Senegalto Somalia. Some enterprising foreigners are betting that doesn't work out. Mr. Funktravels to southern Sudan with a New York money manager hoping to win over the localwarlords who control thousands of acres of rich farmland—"a kind of double bet on chaos,on national fragmentation plus international food crisis," as Mr. Funk describes it. It is hardto tell who is more desperate, the fund manager struggling to justify his dealings withwarlords or the indigent locals fighting for rather than profiting from the natural wealtharound them.
There are many bizarre and wonderful stories in Mr. Funk's book. Who knew that Israelis
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By PHILIP DELVES BROUGHTON
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Windfall
By McKenzie Funk (The Penguin Press, 310 pages, $27.95)
were the masters of artificial snow-making?It turns out to be a lucrative byproduct oftheir experience desalinating seawater toirrigate Israeli farms. Now their machinespump snow all over the Alps and will be inaction at Sochi for the Winter Olympics. InHolland, engineers are rubbing their handsat the prospect of bringing a version of thedam system that protects Rotterdam topost-Sandy New York. And in Seattle, anex-Microsoft scientist is scheming to pumpsulfur into the stratosphere to shield polarice from the sun. These geo-engineersbelieve technology can work more quicklythan global protocols in addressing climatechange.
"Windfall" is not concerned with the causesof climate change, only its effects, both realand imagined. The Arctic melt, for example,is well under way. Elsewhere, countries andinvestors are betting on climate outcomesbased on varying degrees of probability.What unites the characters in this book isthat they share a "simple, cynical premise"about global warming: "we won't stop it
anytime soon."
In climatically benighted Bangladesh, Mr. Funk talks to the country's leadingenvironmentalist, Atiq Rahman, who tells him of the four horsemen of salinity, cyclones,flooding and sea-level rise menacing his country. As more of the country is flooded, hepredicts, more people will move to the cities risking more overcrowding and more civilunrest. All because, he says, the first world wants its cars and refrigerators. On a recentvisit to Los Angeles, Mr. Rahman says, "I told the Americans: I want a piece of California. Iwant a piece of Texas. I want a piece of Maryland for my people that you are inundating."
At the same time, global efforts to impose change might only penalize smaller nations andtheir emerging economies. Mr. Rahman has particular contempt for systems that proposeto pay polluters, whether companies or countries, to reduce their emissions. The pollutersget paid, while those who suffer from pollution while polluting little, like Bangladesh, receivenext to nothing. He describes what he calls "the nightmare scenario on climate change" toMr. Funk: "a lot of zero-carbon technology being transferred to places that alreadyproduce virtually zero carbon. And nothing happens. For the poor, absolutely nothinghappens."
It turns out that climate change is rather like the financial crisis. Those who may havecaused it with their emissions are likely to profit most from it, and the gulf between theworld's rich, who can protect themselves from its worst effects, and the poor, who cannot,will only widen. It is an ugly truth, but one well worth recognizing as we ponder what do ifMaine turns into Tuscany and the Marshall Islands vanish beneath the sea.
Mr. Delves Broughton's latest book is "The Art of the Sale: Learning From the MastersAbout the Business of Life."
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