we're taking out the very thing that allowed for varied politics. I view this more like cutting out a cancer. It is better to cut out a lot all at once, and be done with it
For me, this is the biggest negative point about the glaciers on numerous islands rather than having a freezing of one whole island. In at least two cases, the glaciers are advancing on the realms that offer the only significant military and political opposition on the islands in question. It hands the political power cards to one side in ongoing conflicts (and some thinly veiled gloating by a few members of the non-iced realms doesn't really help the situation either).
I think this is one of the biggest reasons why so many people are unhappy about this GM glacier event - because it's charged like the proverbial 'bull in a china shop' into existing opposed military and political environments and largely handed the advantage to one particular side.
On the other hand, if a whole island had been frozen it would have put everyone in the same boat (probably literally
). No 'winners' on the particular island from the situation - everyone loses and has to relocate. Yes, people would still have been unhappy, but it would have been a much more egalitarian sense of unhappines. Everyone takes the same fall.
