Monday, November 05, 2007

“The Age of Consequences”

AP / Climate Affects Security
Climate change could be one of the greatest national security challenges ever faced by U.S. policy makers, according to a new joint study by two U.S. think tanks.


Center For American Progress: Global Warning - The Security Challenges of Climate Change (press release)
During the course of the past year, a high-level working group of foreign policy experts, climate scientists, historians, and other specialists has met regularly to investigate the national security and foreign policy implications of climate change. Many of the key findings of this task force, which was directed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for a New American Security, are presented in the new report.

[...]


  • Intensifying intra- and inter-state competition for food, water, and other resources, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa.

  • Heightened risk of state failure and regional conflagration.

  • Increased U.S. border stress due to the severe effects of climate change in parts of Mexico and the Caribbean.

  • Strain on the capacity of the United States—and in particular the U.S. military—to act as a “first responder” to international disasters and humanitarian crises due to their increased frequency, complexity, and danger.

  • Growing demand for international institutions to play new and expanded roles in the management of refugee crises and in providing forums for the negotiation of climate agreements.

1 comment:

  1. see my polar cities blog here about this:

    http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

    danny bloom

    GOOGLE "polar cities" for more info

    RE:

    The “catastrophic” scenario assumes positive feedbacks in the carbon cycle to warm the planet by 5.6 °C by the year 2100, and sea level has risen by 2 meters. I feel compelled to note that if this is supposed to be a worst-case scenario, I personally can imagine worse in terms of sea level rise. In the social realm the crystal ball gets murkier as the report progresses from expected to severe to catastrophic, but one important ingredient in the prognosis for the catastrophic scenario is the migration of millions of people, a scale unprecedented in human history, potentially enough to undermine the stability of civilized governance. One participant recommended that we check out the movie Mad Max, only imagine it hotter.

    ReplyDelete

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