Global climate changes could lead to violence

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/6113758.html

Experts say it will accelerate the race for food, water
By SCOTT CANON
McClatchy-Tribune
Nov. 15, 2008, 6:06PM

KANSAS CITY, MO. — A warmer planet could find itself more often at war.

The Earth's fast-changing climate has a range of serious thinkers — from military brass to geographers to diplomats — predicting a spate of armed conflicts driven by the weather.

Shifting temperatures lead to shifting populations, they say, and that throws together groups with long-standing rivalries and thrusts them into competition for food and water.

"It's not hard to imagine violent outbursts," said Julianne Smith of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Smith helped write one of four major studies put out in a little more than a year by centrist organizations in Europe and the United States that warn climate change threatens to spark wars in a variety of ways.


Each report predicted starkly similar problems: gunfire over land and natural resources as once-bountiful soil turns to desert and coastlines slip below the sea. They also expect violent storms to unsettle weak governments.


Just years away
Security analysts say profound dangers are just years, not decades, away. They already see evidence of societies at odds.

Ethnic groups clash in Sudan's Darfur region, trading gunfire in a conflict with climatological overtones. The armed thugs who rule Myanmar were exposed, and their regime knocked back on its heels, when Cyclone Nargis killed tens of thousands of people in May and the leadership responded so poorly. Likewise, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 began the fall of President George W. Bush's approval ratings.

Much more is going on in Darfur than climate change, but crop scarcity in the region has pushed rival ethnic groups onto the same turf.

Even those scientists who are most adamant that the planet is warming in unnatural ways don't blame single storms on climate change. But even conservative climatologists predict crazier weather that is capable of toppling governments.

"Governments that are already weak will be destabilized much more often and much more easily," said Jay Gulledge, a senior scientist at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "And if cooperation isn't enough to stretch resources, then what happens?"


Military planning
Although still controversial in some circles — Congress has split along partisan lines over whether the military should plan for global warming — the scientific consensus is that the Industrial Revolution increased greenhouse gases that set off an unprecedented rate of climate change.

Growing seasons could lengthen. Frozen seas could thaw to make way for convenient shipping routes. Previously inaccessible spots could be ripe to gush oil.

Meantime, wetlands could dry up. Rivers could disappear. Scientists already think that hurricanes, blizzards and droughts are more frequent and more severe. Rising sea levels could send tens of millions of people scurrying for higher ground.

"The idea that somehow there are winners in this is wrong," said Peter Ogden, a security analyst at the Center for American Progress. "Even places that come out ahead will see pressure on them from outside from the losers."

Last year the Center for Naval Analyses gathered retired generals and admirals to gauge the potential for climate to cause conflict. The former commanders concluded that war would be more likely, that the U.S. military needed to plan for the new threats, and that the United States had to reduce its carbon emissions.

"We will pay for this one way or another," wrote retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former chief of the U.S. Central Command. "We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we'll have to take an economic hit of some kind. Or, we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives. There will be a human toll."

Developing countries stand most at risk, the studies conclude. Those countries lack the resources to absorb resulting disasters.

Consider Bangladesh. Long riddled by crushing poverty, it lies in a region that scientists expect will see even more devastating storms and the steady retreat of its coastline. That could send even more Bangladeshi Muslims running to the fence that predominantly Hindu India is building to keep them out.

Likewise, weather patterns that make it harder to grow food in Latin America could increase the rush to cross the southern U.S. border.

"People will pay no attention to borders. They will swamp borders. They will trample over them in desperation," said Raymond Callahan, a military historian at the University of Delaware.

Even efforts to mitigate global warming could prove dangerous.

Nuclear power doesn't add greenhouse gases, but it could mean the spread of doomsday technology to unstable parts of the world. Iran already is thought to be cloaking nuclear weapons ambitions inside "peaceful" nuclear facilities.