Mark Whitehouse, Columnist

Russia Should Love Climate-Change Deniers

Research suggests the country could gain from higher temperatures.

October 2, 2017 at 7:00 AM UTC

Mark Whitehouse is a member of the editorial board covering global economics and finance. Previously, he reported on economics for the Wall Street Journal and was managing editor of Vedomosti, a Russian-language business daily.

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President Donald Trump and other climate-change deniers probably don’t think of themselves as contributing to Russia's future prosperity. But judging from a new International Monetary Fund report, that's what they might be doing.

In its latest World Economic Outlook, the IMF offers a sobering analysis of global warming's potential repercussions. Looking at the historical relationship between climate and economic output, it finds that poor countries in hot regions -- home to a majority of the world's population -- are likely to suffer the most as average temperatures rise. Here's a map showing the effect of a one-degree-Celsius temperature increase on per-capita gross domestic product, with countries scaled to reflect their populations: