Thread by @bopinion

One potential consequence of Brexit is that Scotland could leave the U.K.

This would end a 313-year-old union that began in part because of Scotland’s suffering during the Little Ice Age trib.al/XZebNhO

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿The story starts in Scotland, 1695.

❄️Already, much of the Northern Hemisphere was shivering its way through the so-called Little Ice Age, which lasted from about 1450 to 1850 trib.al/XZebNhO

The decade from 1695 to 1705 is Scotland’s coldest in the last 800 years, and the consequences were dire:

🌾Crop failure
📉Population loss of 10-15%
🇵🇦A failed colony in Panama, which cost 2,000 lives and about a third of Scotland’s wealth trib.al/XZebNhO

The rings of trees in the Cairngorms, northern Scotland, reveal that this particular cold spell was caused by:

🌋Volcanic eruptions in Iceland and the tropics
🌨A possible shift in the North Atlantic/Arctic Oscillation, an atmospheric pressure pattern trib.al/XZebNhO

The effects of the crisis — population loss, economic and agricultural collapse — partly drove Scotland to unite with England in 1707 after centuries of resistance.

That made Scotland more resilient, and it never saw the same kind of desperation again trib.al/XZebNhO

There are lessons for today’s crisis, in which the climate is changing not for one region or hemisphere but for the whole planet.

There isn’t really a way for nations to go it alone – emissions anywhere have consequences everywhere trib.al/XZebNhO

🌎We consider ourselves and our economies separate from nature at our own peril.

🌲The need to take from nature and the belief that more can always be taken allows us to think of nature and its limits as an abstract idea rather than a physical reality trib.al/XZebNhO

The U.S. has its own cautionary tales of environmental limits:

🐟Near-extinction of the buffalo and wild Atlantic salmon
🦌Actual extinction of the passenger pigeon and eastern elk
⛏Even the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 trib.al/XZebNhO

We’re already seeing the imprint of the climate crisis on events that may otherwise seem unrelated:

Mass migration to Europe following the Arab Spring and the Syrian Civil War can be attributed in part to climate change trib.al/XZebNhO

As @tatertatiana writes:

We may be able to change the climate, but we should remember that the climate changes us, too trib.al/XZebNhO