Growing Consensus Among Military, Political Planners That Climate Breakdown Will Define Future Wars

[hatrack]

The Cold War shaped world politics for half a century. But global warming may shape the patterns of global conflict for much longer than that -- and help spark clashes that will be, in every sense of the word, hot wars. We're used to thinking of climate change as an environmental problem, not a military one, but it's long past time to alter that mindset. Climate change may mean changes in Western lifestyles, but in some parts of the world, it will mean far more. Living in Washington, I may respond to global warming by buying a Prius, planting a tree or lowering my thermostat. But elsewhere, people will respond to climate change by building bomb shelters and buying guns.

"There is every reason to believe that as the 21st century unfolds, the security story will be bound together with climate change," warns John Ashton, a veteran diplomat who is now the United Kingdom's first special envoy on climate change. "The last time the world faced a challenge this complex was during the Cold War. Yet the stakes this time are even higher because the enemy now is ourselves, the choices we make."

Defense experts have also started to see the link between climate change and conflict. A 2007 CNA Corp. report, supervised by a dozen retired admirals and generals, warned that climate change could lead to political unrest in numerous badly hit countries, then perhaps to outright bloodshed and battle. One key factor that could stoke these tensions is massive migration as people flee increasingly uninhabitable areas, which would lead to border tensions, greater demands for rescue and evacuation services and disputes over essential resources. With these threats looming, the U.N. Security Council held a precedent-setting debate on climate change in April 2007 -- explicitly casting global warming as a national security issue.

EDIT

Such displacement can arise either suddenly or slowly. The growth of the Sahara, for instance, took many millenniums; many thousands of years ago, people were slowly nudged out of the inland region of northern Africa and into such great river valleys as the Nile and the Niger. Over time, incremental but prolonged rises in sea levels will also gradually uproot hundreds of millions of people. But sometimes the displacement happens with shocking speed: Just think of the deadly hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which together drove millions of people to suddenly leave Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. As global warming and population growth increase, we could see far deadlier storms than Katrina. In 1991, a cyclone in Bangladesh displaced 2 million people and killed 138,000.

EDIT

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/02/AR2009010202280.html?wprss=rss_print%2Foutlook

[soothsayer]

1. eh, we'll just use some bio weapons to thin the herd

and quell that nasty unrest before it's a prob.

[soothsayer]

2. eh, we'll just use some bio weapons to thin the herd

and quell that nasty unrest before it's a prob.

[GliderGuider]

3. The case of the Mysterious Microbiologist Murders hints that you could be right.

Over four years from May 2001 to June 2005, sixty-five biochemists and microbiologists died in accidents, under suspicious circumstances, or were murdered. Most of these scientists were specialists in infectious diseases, bioweapons and bioterrorism.

In comparison, according to the above list the six years from 1994 to 2000 saw only 14 such deaths, and in the three years since 2005 we have seen only two. That averages out to less than two deaths a year outside that four year window, versus 16 deaths per year within it. Things that make you go "Hmmm..."

Anyone who wants to explore a real nightmare, instead of the toy stuff we play with here, should read two pages. First look at the list of scientists in question, then dip into this speech transcript from China.

If two more-or-less racially distinct, adversarial nations with dreams of global dominion were working on engineered pathogens that attach to racially-linked genetic markers, what is the probability that the first one to complete the development wouldn't use it? And what is the probability that we clever monkeys wouldn't be able to come up with such a bug? My intuition, urged along by the evidence of the Manhattan Project and its outcome, whispers that those two numbers are pretty close to 0.

Sure it's tinfoil hat stuff, but in comparison Peak Oil, Global Warming and Islamic Terrorism are nosebleeds.

[lutherj]

5. Towards the end of the speech from China that you linked to, the speaker

refers to a convention of influential and creative thinkers who met in San Francisco, sponsored by the Gorbachev Foundation. I found a couple of (right-wing - all I could find) conspiracy theory web sites describing this event, where it is claimed that the participants advocated reducing the population by 90%. This reminded me of the Texas professor, Eric Pianka, who just a few months later made headlines because he gave a speech advocating reducing the population by 90% with the use of airborne Ebola. I wonder if Pianka was present at the San Francisco gathering. One report published after Pianka's speech described the reaction in the audience:

"Immediately, almost every scientist, professor, and college student present stood to their feet, and vigorously applauded the man who had enthusiastically endorsed the elimination of 90 percent of the human population. Some even cheered. Dozens then mobbed the professor at the lectern to extend greetings, and ask questions. It was necessary to wait awhile before I could get close enough to take some photographs."

http://www.citizenreviewonline.org/april2006/15/population.html

When the struggle for resources gets bad, this kind of thinking could easily become mainstream. After all, look how easy it was to go to war in Iraq.

[pscot]

6. If the Chinese evolved independently

from Peking man, as Mr. Chi suggests, wouldn't that make them a distinct species? Surely somone would have noticed. As for the rest, the Chinese government are not our friends. I believe we should be a lot more guarded in our dealings with them than we are. Alas! Commerce rules. You have to admit, though, an exchange of virulent pathogens would address the population issue head on.

[hunter]

7. Mother Nature prefers surprise endings...

I can see it now -- horrible biological warfare breaks out and something entirely unpredictable happens. Everyone dies in horrible plagues except people with little Guatemalan or !Kung grandmas.

Trickster is at one and the same time creator and destroyer, giver and negator, he who dupes others and who is always duped himself. He wills nothing consciously. At all times he is constrained to behave as he does from impulses over which he has no control. He knows neither good nor evil yet he is responsible for both. He possesses no values, moral or social, is at the mercy of his passions and appetites, yet through his actions all values come into being. -- Paul Radin, The Trickster: A Study in Native American Mythology (1956).

[rrneck]

4. Since the cause

of the problem is so pervasive, most people will not understand why they are fighting. They will be ripe for manipulation by unethical governments in a struggle for diminishing resources. There are those who would welcome that conflict (I'm looking at you fuckstick Cheney) to further their own monetary and political aggrandizement.