Since we in the reality based community have accepted that global warming is happening I have heard wishful thinking that this will eventually force the 1% Luddites to get in line, possibly even forcing an economic realignment. Doubtful. History shows us that great economic or environmental disaster most often benefit the oligarchs. Look at the Great Recession which has facilitated the greatest transfer of wealth from the masses to the masters since, at least, the 19th century AND seen conservative governments entrenched in much of the 1st world. Restricting the supply of resources for a growing population is a breeding ground for sociopathic oligarchs. Keeping the Earth clean and cool is not just a quality of life issue, it is undeniably necessary to keep a safe and democratic culture thriving.
Tremendous weather changes may in fact have created the original oligarchies about 5-6 thousand years ago. Significant sea level rise in the Mediterranean and a shift in the equatorial jet stream blowing moist air from the Indian Ocean over Africa may well have seeded the great cultures of Egypt and the Levant which would bloom a millennium or so down the line.
The Sahara Desert apparently underwent a tremendous expansion about 5000 years BC
When the rains stopped the Nile was the last game in town
that changed north Africa from a verdant fairway stretching for thousands of mile around a manageable sand trap into wasteland from the Red Sea to the Atlantic. This is a regularly scheduled event, happening since Pangea. To this day the hemline of the African jungle and savanah are dictated by these winds but they apparently took a deep southerly arc which could well have erased millions of square miles of good hunting lands within a generation. Thousands of nomadic hunters poured into the Nile valley. In an era in which even spoken language was limited Saharan hunters might not have been aware of the worlds greatest river just a hundred miles away. Violent chaos certainly happened but in the end organization by class trumped mutual destruction. Warlords consolidated the masses by means of alliance, force, religion and foremost, by control of grain. Maximizing grain production drove their stone age technology hard enough into the bronze age to build the Sphinx by the 26th century BC. The bible documents this tactic in the parable of Joseph. After warning Pharaoh of a 7 year famine, Joseph used the disaster to snatch all farm lands in Egypt for the Living God, leaving the Middle Kingdom a communist dictatorship Stalin would be proud of.
Near the same time, give or take a millennium, a frightful eco-tragedy struck just a heron's migration distance north.
Freshwater bed of ancient Black Sea
within the current saltwater well
The Mediteranean sea level rose rapidly, possibly due to a shift in current through Gabraltor. A couple of years of Atlantic water pushed it's way past Gallipoli, up the Bosporus until it crested the foothills overlooking the Black Sea basin. Back in those days the Black Sea was a glacial freshwater lake fed by the Don and the Dnieper rivers. A lot of folks certainly earned a living from that water, fishing from the shores or in reed canoes, and the surrounding velte would have been clogged with early wild wheat. Within months the waterline would have swelled by a great distance and tribes of refugees would be flooding into mountainous anatolian hunting grounds claimed by territorial folk who spoke a different language. These tribulations where so profoundly historic that the tales were passed from elder to child for thousands of years until they were written down as the tale of Gilgamesh. "Moses" or whomever used that nom de plume would later plagiarize it in Genesis as the biblical flood of Noah.
Ironically, mass genocidal death seems to yield far more equitable economic benefit. Two great examples are the Black Death and WWII. Both events left such a manpower shortage that organized labor was able to push workers conditions way up. However, as we have seen, the Empire always Strikes Back!