Climate Refugees and Resource Wars, Part 1

My collegue Wonky Muse notes in her announcement of Gore's Nobel Peace Prize, that the heads of the denizens of what she terms "Wingnuttia" collectively exploded upon hearing of Gore's win. One of the main themes in this explosion of venom and fury was "What Has Al Gore Done for World Peace?" This was, in fact,the title of an op ed in the British publication The Daily Telegraph the very morning of the announcement. I quote from that article:

But there is a more fundamental objection to awarding Gore the peace prize that goes beyond issues of character. Climate change is a threat to the environment, not to "peace" and international order. The prize has gone to some sleazy recipients in the past, but at least you can make a case that their actions staved off bloodshed.

The entire article is ridiculous, but this snippet shows how deeply the wingnuts have their heads embedded in the sands of ignorance and denial. Global warming and its multitudinous consequences promises to be the greatest destabilizing force imaginable for the planet. Andrew Simms, policy director of the New Economics Foundation in the United Kingdom and the author of a book titled, Environmental Refugees: The Case for Recognition, warns us that:

Scholars are predicting that 50 million people worldwide will be displaced by 2010 because of rising sea levels, desertification, dried up aquifers, weather-induced flooding and other serious environmental changes.

The end of this decade is not far off, and examples of this societal disruption are already not hard to find. We have had a foretaste of what the abrupt consequences of climate change (in the form of a violent hurricane season) can do to an urban population right here in this most advanced of nations. The flooding, destruction, and displacement which resulted from Hurricane Katrina destroyed the stability of the city of New Orleans to a degree we had never seen before in this country. Two years later the city has not recovered, and many think it never will.

A situation of great concern to the international community, the ongoing conflict, some say genocide, in Darfur is usually attributed to ethnic and tribal hatred. In a piece published in The Atlantic Monthly in April of this year, The Real Roots of Darfur, Stephan Faris posits that we may be seeing there in sub-Saharan Africa the first major conflict caused by global warming. Most of the climate refugees wandering the earth are and will probably for the immediate future continue to be peoples displaced by conflicts over dwindling resources (energy, water, arable land) and unnatural disasters (floods, droughts, desertification) in the developing nations of Africa and Asia. and to a lesser extent Central and South America. But, the developed world is not likely to be spared for long. John Reid, British Secretary of Defense, last year warned in a major London address

that the more advanced and affluent countries are not likely to be spared the damaging and destabilizing effects of global climate change. With sea levels rising, water and energy becoming increasingly scarce and prime agricultural lands turning into deserts, internecine warfare over access to vital resources will become a global phenomenon.

One of the best writers on this subject is Michael T. Klare, who often writes for Tomdispatch, Alternet, The Nation, Tom Paine, and other progressive media. His 2004 book, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict, is an extensive exploration and analysis of what he sees as the the most likely cause of war in the century just begun: demand by rapidly growing populations for scarce resources. So, it might seem to a thinking person, that by his efforts to call our attention to the importance of global climate change, possibly the greatest threat to world peace ever to have faced humankind, Al Gore is making a sizeable contribution to "peace and international order." Awakening the developed nations to the dangers of a future featuring resource wars across the planet could most assuredly "stave off" quite a considerable amount of bloodshed, if, that is, we actually listen to Gore and to the IPCC and initiate some real steps to halt the causes of this global catastrophe.

Technorati Tags: Al Gore, climate change, climate refugees, Darfur, NOLA, Nobel Peace Prize, resource wars,

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