Windfall
"An investigation into how entrepreneurial people and institutions around the globe are cashing in on the new world being created by global warming--and who will pay the price for it"
Stats for nerds
2recommend
7mentions
2people
2015–2023years
57% recommend43% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Here is another good thread from a few days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33849267
Here is the list of some of the good books I read this year https://brajeshwar.com/2022/books/
Starting this year, instead of writing the list at the year-end, I have decided that I will just write as I read along. Besides the 5 odd I listed from a comment on this thread, here are others I have listed from other threads on Hackernews and Twitter. The URL is a pattern anyway, so it will be https://brajeshwar.com/2023/books/
- How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur, https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/How-to-Be-Perfect/Mic...
- [How to Stop Worrying and Start Living](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Stop_Worrying_and_Start...) is from the popular author [Dale Carnegie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Carnegie) of the [How to Win Friends and Influence People](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen...) fame.
- A young girl's diary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diary_of_a_Young_Girl)
- Greenlights by [Matthew McConaughey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_McConaughey)
- How Asia Works: Success and Failure In the World's Most Dynamic Region
- How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future by Vaclav Smil
- How To Talk: Siblings Without Rivalry by [Adele Faber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adele_Faber)
- Impact Mapping: Making a big impact with software products and projects
- Monetizing Innovation: How Smart Companies Design the Product Around the Price
- Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself
- Rewire Your Anxious Brain: How to Use the Neuroscience of Fear to End Anxiety, Panic, and Worry
- The Courage To Be Disliked: How to free yourself, change your life and achieve real happiness
- [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_th...) by [Douglas Adams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams)
- [Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming](https://www.amazon.com/Windfall-Booming-Business-Global-Warm...) by [McKenzie Funk](https://www.mckenziefunk.com)
- The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read: (and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did) by Philippa Perry
- Not a book, but a paper that frames things in terms of a global cumulative emissions budget: Friedlingstein & others -- "Persistent growth of CO2 emissions and implications for reaching climate targets"
Not directly about climate change, but about renewable energy: Mackay -- https://www.withouthotair.com/
Not about how to fix climate change, but an exploration of some factors as to why we're not working to address the problem (propaganda from business groups...): Higgs -- Collision Course
not about climate change, but the general problem of how environmental limits, resource depletion, cumulative pollution limits population growth and the dynamics of different ways population could crash or oscillate or level off: meadows & others -- the limits to growth
McKenzie Funk -- Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming
- You might also be interested in reading "Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming" by McKenzie Funk.
- That was a good read. Some related reading material:
Jared Diamond -- Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed [1]. A historical analysis and discussion of past and present societies, and the multiple factors involved in collapse.
Tim Flannery -- The Weather Makers: The History & Future Impact of Climate Change [2]. Includes a readable overview of the history of the earth's climate, and evidence of recent climate change (~2005).
Kerryn Higgs -- Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet [3]. Higgs' book focuses on the history of how the philosophy of economic growth has come to be a dominant ideology in our civilization. This book roughly addresses the question of "why aren't we doing anything!?".
McKenzie Funk -- Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming [4]. Funk writes about the many exciting business opportunities created by the changing climate, including: the melting arctic provides access to new oil and mineral reserves, new markets for artificial snow makers now some ski fields lack natural snow, private firefighters employed by insurance companies to defend certain high-value homes, climate-based speculation of farmland, mosquito genetic engineering to suppress mosquito-transmitted diseases, ferrying boatloads of economic/climate migrants from africa to the EU, floating buildings, how to define a country's borders (and resulting claim to coastal natural resources) when that country is completely underwater.
Joseph A Tainter -- The Collapse of Complex Societies [5]. I have not read Tainter's book. I believe it roughly focuses around an argument that more complex societies require more upkeep to maintain them, and adding incremental complexity offers diminishing returns.
Graham Turner -- Is Global Collapse Imminent? [6]. A short research paper comparing the various simulated trajectories of the "Limits to Growth" modelling from the 1970s against data measured from the last 40 years of reality.
David JC MacKay -- Sustainable Energy: Without The Hot Air [7]. Almost entirely ignores economics and climate change to focus on physics-based back-of-the-envelope estimates to gauge how realistic it is to provide the UK's energy needs solely using the various forms of renewable energy.
Seneca -- Dialogues and Letters
~6.1.4-7 [the terrors of earthquakes] ... > There is no disaster without some means of escape. Thunderbolts > have never burned up whole peoples. A season of plague has > emptied cities, not carried them off. But the disaster of an > earthquake stretches far and wide; it is unavoidable, voracious, > and deadly to everyone. For it not only devours homes, families > and individual cities: it submerges nations and regions. Sometimes > it covers them in ruins, sometimes buries them in a deep chasm, > not even leaving any evidence that what is no longer there at least > once was. Only the ground covers the noblest cities, without any > trace of their former appearance.[1] http://www.jareddiamond.org/Jared_Diamond/Collapse.html
[2] http://www.theweathermakers.org/
[3] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/collision-course
[4] http://www.mckenziefunk.com/book
[5] http://monoskop.org/images/a/ab/Tainter_Joseph_The_Collapse_...
[6] http://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/M...
- Most of the books I read are influenced by similar threads on HN. This year has not been good overall and it impacted my reading. I need to finish writing the post https://brajeshwar.com/2023/books/
“How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question” by Michael Schur is a fun book that opens with a good question, “Should I punch my friend in the face for no reason?”
I have been meaning to and this year I finally read The Diary of a Young Girl.
For 2024, here are some of the ones from my list (sorry for the formatting, copied Markdown from my notes);
- [Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_War:_The_Fight_for_the_Wo...) by [Chris Miller](https://www.christophermiller.net)
- [First Principles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Principles_(book)) by [Thomas E. Ricks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_E._Ricks_(journalist))
- [Greenlights](https://greenlights.com) by [Matthew McConaughey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_McConaughey)
- How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World's Most Dynamic Region by Joe Studwell
- [Poor Economics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Economics): A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by [Abhijit V. Banerjee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abhijit_Banerjee), and [Esther Duflo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_Duflo)
- Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child The Heart of Parenting by [John Gottman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gottman), and Joan DeClaire
- [The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read](https://www.amazon.com/Book-Wish-Your-Parents-Read/dp/198487...): (and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did) by [Philippa Perry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippa_Perry)
- [The End Of The World Is Just The Beginning: Mapping The Collapse Of Globalization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_the_World_is_just_t...) by [Peter Zeihan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Zeihan)
- [The Tatas: How a Family Built a Business and a Nation](https://www.amazon.com/Tatas-Family-Built-Business-Nation/dp...) by [Girish Kuber](https://mr.wikipedia.org/wiki/गिरीश_कुबेर), and English translation by Vikrant Pande.
- [Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming](https://www.amazon.com/Windfall-Booming-Business-Global-Warm...) by [McKenzie Funk](https://www.mckenziefunk.com)
- [Dieter Rams: The Complete Works](https://www.amazon.com/Dieter-Rams-Complete-Klaus-Klemp/dp/1...) by [Klaus Klemp](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Klemp)
- Richer nations don't necessarily need to build walls around poorer nations to keep the water out. They may find it cheaper or otherwise preferable to build walls around themselves to stop the flow of people fleeing from the poorer nations.
Climate refugees have no legal status under the UN Refugee Convention:
> `there has been a collective, and rather successful, attempt to ignore the scope of the problem... so far there is no "home" for forced climate migrants in the international community, both literally and figuratively` -- Oli Brown [1]
Nations are already following this approach of literally building walls or pouring resources into improving their border security. For example, India is building a wall along its border with Bangladesh, and some of the nations in the EU are spending a lot of money and resources trying to intercept or discourage boats of immigrants from Africa [2].
> With 80 percent of its densely populated landmass lying near sea level, Bangladesh is often hailed as "ground zero" for climate change. A 1 meter rise in sea level, which seems likely by the end of the century, could flood almost one-fifth of the country. Some of the most vulnerable coastal districts in Bangladesh—Khulna, Satkhira, and Bagerhat—lie along India's border. -- [3]
> The Continent's richer, more northerly countries, great emitters of carbon and producers of wealth, barely contributed ships or aircraft to Frontex [4], and they processed a relative trickle of African asylum seekers. So Malta was itself a victim to this, he suggested. It was a power game: Northern Europe bullied southern Europe. Southern Europe fought within itself and with or against North Africa. The big stepped on the small, and the small stepped on the smaller. The migrants themselves were at the bottom. Here, too, shit rolls downhill. -- [2]
[1] http://www.ibanet.org/Article/Detail.aspx?ArticleUid=B51C02C...
[2] see the book: "Windfall: the booming business of global warming" by McKenzie Funk.
[3] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/green_room/...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontex
edit: as usual, I'm not writing this because I advocate this position, or think that it has any moral or ethical merit. But I think it is good to clearly understand that this is already happening and it will almost certainly get worse the further we get into this century.
