During a war, ammunition companies make money; in a disease outbreak, pharmaceutical firms reap the benefits.

So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that as the world grapples with global warming there are people who have turned the crisis into opportunity — bankers, engineers, entrepreneurs and oil companies.

That is the core of McKenzie Funk’s astonishing new book “Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming.”

Funk, a Seattle-based journalist, visited two dozen countries on five continents over six years, including spending almost two weeks aboard a Canadian frigate bound for the Arctic. The Royal Canadian Navy was conducting 12 days of “war games” to show its determination to defend the Northwest Passage, which was then on the brink of being ice-free for the first time.

He travelled to the border of India and Bangladesh, where the former is building a fence to stop climate change refugees from crossing. He spent weeks in Greenland where melting ice is creating a mineral and oil boom and has become a boon for independence movement.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

The premise of the book is profiting off global warming. Did you think anyone you met was sowing the seeds for future ruins?

There were very few people I talked to who were saying to themselves, “Yeah, let the Earth burn so I can make a buck.” Even down to the Greenlanders, where there are many new mining opportunities but the loss of ice has been a very big deal. For instance, in the winter Greenlanders were able to get away from their villages easily because there used to be thick ice for an ice road. Small towns were connected to big ones. Now, it is so warm it isn’t easy to do. So even in Greenland, it is not an absolute positive for the people who want independence (from Denmark). And most people are very thoughtful, they know what they are losing.

Greenland is such a small place, 57,000 people who have lived a basic life for so long. They are a small part of the problem causing climate change. This is happening to them, not them making it happen. Of course, when they start drilling for oil, that changes the equation a bit.

The chapter on the Northwest Passage is a riot of humour and irony. But there is more to it.

Americans tend to think we are the ones who tend to run around doing silly things with guns. But to witness the Canadian military up there acting so tough, it was strange. Canada is a northern nation and it paid so much more attention than anyone else to the opening of the Northwest Passage and sovereignty issues in the Arctic and to oil. A lot of it is still a mystery. I still don’t know how strategic it really is as opposed to being patriotic. I say that because the passage is unproven for shipping. To fight over the passage itself doesn’t really make strategic sense — maybe it is patriotic for all of Canada? I don’t think there will be a big fight over the Arctic.

Why do you say that?

I have spoken to spooks in the U.S. government and their point was why would five relatively stable world countries — Canada, the U.S., Denmark, Norway and Russia — come to blows for something they could carve out diplomatically? I don’t see an armed conflict, unless it happened for very strange reasons — and not strategic reasons — like (Russian President Vladimir) Putin needs to look brave for his country or (Stephen) Harper needs to look brave for Canada.

Was there anyone in the book who came close to being a hero?

I don’t know about heroes, but I can say there were some who impressed me more. In terms of spirit, some people I met in Bangladesh and India were high on it. Some were defending their homeland and others were looking at the ways Bangladesh could survive.

I was very impressed with the Israeli snowmakers and desalination engineers, especially Avraham Ophir (CEO of Israel Desalination Enterprises), who recently passed away. It was an incredible story of perseverance and coming up with technology to turn Israel green, something it maybe was in Biblical times.

Your book isn’t just about those who are profiting from global warming, but also about poor countries versus rich ones.

I think, unfortunately, there is a degree to which wealth and geography are exacerbating the rich-poor division. The rich will be able to defend themselves with technology. For instance, New York City can afford a $10-billion seawall to save itself from the next Hurricane Sandy. A lot of the rest of the world can’t. For me, the most important take away from the book was the imbalance, that it mostly favours those who caused the emissions and that we are also kind of stuck adapting at this point. Even if we stop emissions today, there will be more warming and so as we think about saving ourselves from ravages, we need to look at the wider world.

Global warming is one of the worst crises the Earth has faced. Why can’t world leaders agree on most related issues?

I think people in countries like Canada and the U.S. don’t care enough yet to push governments to do anything. For one thing, we don’t have a strong movement that talks about the morality of this thing. The other is that countries have really divergent aims: cutting emissions will hurt some countries more than others because they are more reliant on coal or energy exports, or they are just rich and used to it and their economies are teetering.

Did your perspective on global warming change as you worked on the book?

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

As a journalist, I had barely thought about it before I went on the expedition up to the Canadian Arctic. I considered it (global warming) not a very human story, or not a very interesting story. I hadn’t considered how big it was and how human it was. That has changed. The second thing is as I went around understanding how different the impacts would be for different countries, the ones likely to get it worst are the ones who have had the least to do with the problem — that I hadn’t fully understood. I do now.

Will geo-engineering solve the problem of CO2?

Geo-engineering is still very much on the edge. But it is more OK to talk about it than it was a few years ago. Yet, the fact is that if we can’t get an international agreement to cut emissions, do we really think we get one to agree on where to set the thermostat? Also, climate change isn’t just warming, it is precipitation change, rising sea levels . . .

Read more about: