Friday, July 23, 2010

Security and the environment: Climate wars


Does a warming world really mean that more conflict is inevitable?

AS THE planet warms, floods, storms, rising seas and drought will uproot millions of people, and with dire wider consequences. Barack Obama, collecting his Nobel peace prize, said that climate change “will fuel more conflict for decades”. He took the analysis not from environmental scaremongers but from a group of American generals.

The forecast is close to becoming received wisdom. A flurry of new books with titles such as “Global Warring” and “Climate Conflict” offer near-apocalyptic visions. Cleo Paskal, at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, predicts that floods, storms, the failure of the Indian monsoon and agricultural collapse will bring “enormous, and specific, geopolitical, economic, and security consequences for all of us…the world of tomorrow looks chaotic and violent”. Jeffrey Mazo of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, also in London, calls climate change an “existential threat” and fears it could usher in “state failure and internal conflict” in exposed places, notably Africa.

See full Article.