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Global warming is just the tip of the iceberg
We need to get our heads around the idea that global warming is one of the most serious long-term threats to our personal security.
- By James R. Lee, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post
- Published: 23:38 January 8, 2009
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."
Defence experts have also started to see the link between climate change and conflict. With these threats looming, the UN Security Council held a precedent-setting debate on climate change in April 2007 - explicitly casting global warming as a national security issue.
Global warming could lead to warfare in three different ways.
The first is conflict arising from scarcity. As the world gets hotter and drier, glaciers will melt, and the amount of arable land will shrink. In turn, fresh water, plants, crops and cattle and other domestic animals will be harder to come by, thereby spurring competition and conflict over what's left. In extreme examples, a truly desiccated ecosystem could mean a complete evacuation of a hard-hit region. And the more people move, the more they will jostle with their new neighbours.
All this can lead to warfare when it's time for the displaced to find a new home.
The second cause of the coming climate wars is the flip side of scarcity: the problems of an increase in abundance. Suppose that global warming makes a precious resource easier to get at - say, rising temperatures in northern Canada, Alaska and Siberia make it easier to get at oil and gas resources in regions that had previously been too bone-chilling to tap. But what happens if some tempting new field pops up in international waters contested by two great powers? Or if smaller countries with murky borders start arguing over newly arable land?
Finally, we should also worry about new conflicts over issues of sovereignty that we didn't need to deal with in our older, colder world. Consider the Northwest Passage, which is turning into an ice-free corridor from Europe to Asia during the summer months.
Other kinds of territorial quarrels will arise, too. Some remote islands - particularly such Pacific islands as Tuvalu, Kiribati, Tonga, the Maldives and many others - may be partially or entirely submerged beneath rising ocean waters. Do they lose their sovereignty if their territory disappears?
The net result of these changes will be the creation of two geopolitical belts of tension due to global warming, which will dramatically shape the patterns of conflict in the 21st century.
First, politics will heat up along what we might call the equatorial tension belt, a broad swath of instability around the planet's centre. This belt will creep southward, deeper into Africa, and extend far into central Asia.
Second, a new tension belt will develop around the polar circles. In the short term, the main problems will arise in the Northern Hemisphere, but later in the 21st century, the area around the South Pole may also see increasing security strains as countries rush to claim and develop heretofore frozen areas. If the equatorial tension belt includes mostly poor, developing countries fighting over survival, the new polar tension belt will draw in wealthy, developed countries fighting over opportunity.
This is, admittedly, a glum view of the future. But we can still avoid the new hot wars - or at least cool them down a bit. For starters, we should redouble our efforts to slow down global warming and undo the damage humanity has already done to the environment. Every little bit helps, so by all means, hassle your senator and recycle those bottles.
Beyond that, we need to get our heads around the idea that global warming is one of the most serious long-term threats to our national and personal security. For the next two decades or so, the climate will continue to change. So we need to do more than simply reverse climate change. We need to understand and react to it - ordinary people and governments alike - in ways that avoid conflict. Over the next few years, we may find that climate-change accords and peace treaties start to overlap more and more. And we may find that global warming is heating new conflicts up to the boiling point.
James R. Lee runs American University's Inventory of Conflict and Environment project. He is at work on a book on climate change and conflict.
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