Could there be benefits too from climate change and global warming?

Climate change may bring some benefits, though they are likely to be offset by the negative impacts.

A changing climate isn’t always bad. There are benefits that higher temperatures could bring. For instance, a longer growing season in cool countries could mean higher agricultural productivity. Warmer temperatures might also mean more efficient shipping routes through an ice-free Arctic.

However, any such benefits need to be seen in the context of a number of serious and widespread negative consequences that scientists have warned the world to expect: While agricultural yields might increase in the cooler regions, during the same time, productivity could fall in the poorer tropical areas owing to extreme temperatures. These negative effects from climate change (rising sea levels, droughts, floods, mass species extinction…) could be orders of magnitude more harmful than the relatively minor benefits.

From an ethical perspective as well, the benefits and negative impacts could be highly misaligned. For instance, the regions most exposed to the risks of climate change – mostly poor or developing countries in the tropics – are very often the ones that are least responsible for causing them and least equipped to deal with them! Thus, while there could be some benefits to colder countries due to global warming, the harmful effects will affect the warm and hot countries (the most vulnerable regions) the most!

With our current knowledge of benefits and negative consequences it is not easy to measure and quantify the net effect of global warming. The broad consensus as of now is that any benefits from global warming are likely to be for the short term and could be far lesser than the long term harm it brings.