How might climate change affect global politics and relations between nations in the coming decades?
Will it lead to more conflict or cooperation? If so, how will it develop and culminate?
Europe are already shitting their pants because of a couple of thousand migrant, so guess what will happen when it gets into the 100.000s.
I'm expecting full dystopia.
It's not even the high and mighty, they don't really care who works to build their shit. They are even happy about cheap labour that comes with migration. It's the average Joe that doesn't see the problem, projects everything on migration and is unable to think rational.
Seeing the massive right wing shift in my country (germany) just because the government proposed to shift to 65% renewable home heating in the next 20 years and slightly above average migration numbers that allegedly bring communities close to collapse if you believe the media, I'm losing all hope of anything ever changing to the better. People will never accept any measures that truly address the root of our problems, because they could mean a slight inconvenience for a short moment and limit the freedoms and possibilities that are taken for granted, but are really just a consequence of the technical development in the last decades. Humans where okay with not having a car or fly around the world for thousands of years, but now for some reason it's life-defining. People are egocentric, dumb and can't see past their own little world to understand that there are collective problems that only can be solved collectively. I know how condescending that sounds, but I really don't know how to see all that differently.
We are absolutely, 100% fucked. I've been saying for about 10 years now, that the earliest time for actual change, for collectively deciding what's right for humanity and the planet, socialism or whatever you want to call it, will come after the next wave of fascism and every day it becomes more obvious that this assessment was correct.
Check out the book The End of the World is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan. He uses public data to examine breakdowns in trade, climate, and demographics and which countries stand to lose or gain based on their history of policy making.
In the big picture, more conflict, more human rights violations, more fascism. While crisis brings people together locally, when the going gets real tough for everyone, tribalism and us vs. them will inevitably rear its ugly head.
Tens of millions of people needing to migrate because the areas they live now will become literally uninhabitable (as in not "it'll be a little uncomfortable and hot" but "you will die if you stay there") will be an absolute horrorshow. Genocide, really—I'm fully expecting criminalization of all rescue orgs, "sink on sight" orders for migrant boats and absolute ban on saving any migrant castaway on the Mediterranean.
Your last two predictions are far-fetched in their cynicism. If it gets to that point, the laws will be irrelevant anyway. As it stands today, the migrants are far from the dregs of their own societies. With a bit more enforcement and coordination the boats would stop coming. Presumably the numbers will rise but the genuinely desperate climate refugees of the future will always be going to the first nearby country where they are safe, not halfway round the world to the place with the best economic prospects. Not claiming that any of this is fair, but then the tribalism that you mention is also what makes the cohesion of our societies. People will always resist being overrun from the outside, and that will not make them fascist.
Tough to say, crisis sometimes brings out the best in people. But my gut says this is going to go very badly. Farming is based on steady, long term patterns many of which are being disrupted by climate change while traditional sources of water are becoming more scarce.
America went from the richest country in the world to slightly less rich but still the richest, freaked out and elected donald trump. How will poor, occasionally heavily armed, nations react to famine?
Countries with the raw materials needed to make modern batteries are about to need some freedom. This is actually scary, because a lot of those minerals are in Africa, and China has a pretty large investment in Africa, already.
Hopefully we have our energy shit figured out with China by October 23, 2077.
You mean for sodium batteries?
The science rolls on!
If I do REALLY well I've got about another 45 years to live. 35 is probably a more likely achievable goal. I feel very sure I will witness wars for oil (explicit wars for oil, not what we have now) and for water in my lifetime. I don't think it bodes well for relations between nations OR global politics.
Both, just depends where you look, which groups you consider for a particular issue and what events would not have occurred regardless
A more detailed answer would require a more specific question
The water wars are coming.
There is already a point of confrontation between India, Pakistan and China with the Himalayan glacial melt and rivers
And between Egypt and Ethiopia due to the latter building a dam on Nile
I hope my country doesn't get invaded