Climate Change & Peace
The number of people I’ve seen who don’t understand the connection between climate change and conflicts that resulted in the Nobel committee selecting Al Gore and the IPCC for the Peace prize is amazing.
Does anyone think that the US would know where the Persian Gulf was, much less be occupied with war there if it wasn’t for a scarce resource?
Do they not understand that the people of Darfur are being forced out because they have arable land?
Do they think it is accidental that Israel is “discovering” security reasons to retain certain sites in the West Bank that have water?
Did they not learn in classes that the whole point of colonies was to gain raw materials?
Scarce resources lead to wars. Climate change will alter the world-wide distribution of resources. Those who lose resources will be willing to fight to replace them. A sea level rise will cause mass displacement of populations.
If we don’t deal with climate change, we will be forced to deal with the resulting wars. This is why climate change is a security issue. This is why the Pentagon has paid for its own climate change studies.
10 comments
Bryan, thanks. For me at least, it is beyond belief that people do not understand the relationship. Do I have to put a stupid bumper sticker on my car, something like “SUV=WW3”, for people to understand the relationship between environmental degradation and the (IMHO) inevitable human conflict it will bring?
Perhaps the Nobel committee’s understanding that led to their giving Gore the award will have some impact on some other people. If Gore can make a sufficient number of people aware of the urgency of the problem, he will have earned this award.
Or perhaps the media will focus on what Gore wears to any award ceremony he may attend, or whether he sighs and rolls his eyes. At the moment, I wouldn’t take a bet either way.
Meanwhile, some of us contemplate where to live when our coastal residences become untenable… and whether our neighbors will aim their weapons at us when that happens.
i am soooo looking forward to global warming: i can move to canada for the health care and have my subtropics too. if y’all try to follow me there, i am going sic my attack kittens on you.
i have to admit that the thought of war, pestilence, drought, flooding, and famine significantly reducing the human population fills me with misanthropic joy. just so long as none of it affects me personally. 😈
In general, times of greater warmth are times of greater abundance. The problem is there are winners and losers.
If they think Gore’s movie is a downer, they should try reading the Pentagon’s “worst case scenario,” that is an Irwin Allen script in the making.
You wonder if these people are aware that we have combat weather personnel in AF Special Ops, that’s how important climate is to the military, and why the Hurricane Hunters are an Air Force outfit.
Anything north of Birmingham should do and I would hang in the mountains, because a topographic map of Canada would show that the country will probably be split by water.
Anyone who thinks the losers are just going to sit idly by is crazy. The water wars are coming.
“climate change is and will be a significant threat to our national security and in a larger sense to life on earth as we know it to be,” retired gen. gordon sullivan, former u.s. army chief of staff, told a congressional panel last month.
http://xnerg.blogspot.com/2007/10/whats-peace-got-to-do-with-it.html
whig, I am curious just who you think the winners will be. Most humans cling to life rather stubbornly, and a climate change that displaces, say, 10 percent of humankind will almost certainly result in wars over a variety of resources… driven primarily by fresh water, of course, but not limited to it. How much of your food do you grow yourself? How much of it could you grow if California gradually went under the sea, and you were forced to move to places in which the people already there really didn’t want to see you set up shop?
Bryan, which Birmingham do you mean? Alabama? You’re the one with possible inside knowledge. Usually I don’t ask you for such information, but in this case…
This is all about the transition. After a climate catastrophe, presuming there’s a new stable solution to all those equations, a new equilibrium will be reached, new coastal regions defined, and any humans who managed to survive (assuming some do) will set about recovering what is lost… i.e., much of agriculture, and hence most of civilization. But there is a very real chance that we will be the people trying to survive the transition. I am not fond of the idea. If this can be avoided, I’d prefer that. If not… well, maybe I won’t last that long. Even a decade ago, I never thought I’d be conditioning my thoughts about my “golden years” (hah) on the possibility that my home would be a dozen feet under water.
Alabama, Steve, in the mountains, with patches of good dirt for farming, water around.
Most of Appalachia will become valuable property if something isn’t done.
Do they not understand that the people of Darfur are being forced out because they have arable land?
everybody knows food grows in grocery stores. duh. of course they don’t understand [last graph, but that flat spot in the 30s in the center graph is instructive]
Take a look at overall population figures for US. You see the slump caused by the the influenza outbreak following WWI, and then the real problem during the Depression, but people won’t admit the starvation deaths in the US during the Dust Bowl period.
Many of the “proximate causes” of death were the result of malnutrition.