Climate Change as Entropy/Cost Externalization

Depending on who you ask, between 66% and 80% of all past carbon emissions can be traced to the OECD countries, which comprise 12% of the world’s population. But the biggest victims of climate change are the 4 billion + rural and urban poor in Asia, Africa and Latin America. There is evidence that the Sahel famines in the 1970s and 1980s, which killed millions of Africans, were caused by carbon monoxide pollution in the US and EU. The British Foreign Minister, Margaret Beckett, has said that the Darfur conflict is largely being driven by climate change. Now the IPCC is predicting that the poor in the South will face exacerbated food insecurity, threat from extreme weather events, with all their bacteriological effects, as a result of climate change. None of this has to happen. But the main culprits are bluffing and resisting action on climate change. The logical conclusion of Northern recalcitrance is the use of force to suppress the human consequences of desertification, flooding, soil erosion, hurricanes, and disease. And it seems that the governments of the US, EU and Australia are preparing to do exactly that.

In an article in the Financial Times last week, Fiona Harvey reported (italics mine):

“The award of the peace prize to the UN's climate change panel shows how the problem of global warming has been recast from an environmental issue to one of international security. It is the latest attempt to highlight the potential for conflict that climate change will bring. In April, the UK government brought climate change before the United Nations Security Council for the first time. Margaret Beckett, then British foreign minister, labelled climate change as one of the key factors behind the conflict in Darfur, because desertification had forced people from their traditional homes and into areas where they competed with others for scarce resources such as water.

Around the same time, a group of 11 influential retired US generals produced a report on the military implications of climate change, warning it could prolong the war on terrorism and foster political instability that some governments would be unable to handle. The move to reframe climate change started with Kofi Annan, former UN secretary-general. Shortly before he left office, he warned: "Climate change is not just an environmental issue, as too many people still believe. It is an all-encompassing threat."

[…] In the most comprehensive survey of climate change science yet produced, the IPCC warned earlier this year that global warming would cause widespread food shortages in the developing world. Other destabilising results would include increased flooding, particularly in Asia, as well as fiercer storms and prolonged droughts. John Ashton, special representative of the UK government on climate change, told the Financial Times there were signs of the problem already. He pointed to the recent record rises in the price of grain, which showed that droughts in key grain-growing areas were pushing up prices and forcing governments such as China to look at ways of tackling the problem. Another risk to international security is that the disastrous consequences of climate change will be spread unevenly around the world. Northern regions such as parts of the US, Canada, Russia and Europe may benefit from climate change in the form of increased agricultural productivity[!], but the regions least able to cope - southern Africa, southern Asia and parts of South America - would be hardest hit as a warming climate reduced agricultural yields and led to increased droughts and floods. This disparity could increase the number of migrants and lead to political instability.” [emphasis added]

The latter point, that Northern agriculture might actually benefit from climate change, combined with the recasting of the issue in military terms, presents a very ugly picture of greed and mutually reinforcing inequalities. It’s as if one farmer was using a type of pesticide that improved his wheat yield while destroying his neighbor’s corn, and reacted to his neighbor’s protests by erecting a barbed-wire fence and hiring more guards.

Similarly, Charles J. Hanley of AP reports:

“A 2003 report commissioned by the Pentagon warned that abrupt climate change "could potentially destabilize the geopolitical environment, leading to skirmishes, battles, and even war due to resource constraints." Now, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that warmer and drier conditions are already shortening the growing season in Africa's Sahel, a conflict-ridden region long burdened by food and water shortages. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the German scientists cited other potential "hot-spots," including:

-Egypt's vital, low-lying Nile Delta, where the livelihoods of millions may be at risk from rising sea levels and salinization of agricultural areas.

-The Asian subcontinent, where the retreat of Himalayan glaciers will dry up downstream water supplies, and rising seas and stronger cyclones will threaten tens of millions on the Bay of Bengal coast.

-The poor nations of Central America, where more intense hurricanes could severely damage economies, destabilize political systems and send streams of uprooted people toward the U.S. border.

Global efforts have faltered, however, in trying to cut back emissions of carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases. [Hmmm…maybe that’s because the biggest polluters and the biggest victims are separated by thousands of miles and heavily guarded borders?] That in itself may help sharpen world tensions, the German report said. If, amid recriminations and finger-pointing, governments fail to unite on global warming, "climate change will draw ever-deeper lines of division and conflict in international relations," it said.

Leaders are growing nervous. At the U.S. Army War College last March, military and scientific specialists quietly convened in a colloquium on "Global Climate Change: National Security Implications." Among the topics discussed: the possible need for a new National Security Act to "oblige intergovernmental cooperation" on climate by future U.S. administrations.” [emphasis added]

The noises coming from Australia are no different. According to an AAP News report:

“Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty says climate change, with the threat of water and food shortages and refugees fleeing rising sea levels, is the greatest security risk of this century. He says the fast-changing situation in China could be the epicentre of such problems. "We could see a catastrophic decline in the availability of fresh water," Mr Keelty said in a speech in Adelaide last night. "Crops could fail, disease could be rampant and flooding might be so frequent that people en masse would be on the move. "Even if only some, if not all, of this occurs, climate change is going to be the security issue of the 21st century. "It's not difficult to see the policing implications that might arise in the not-too-distant future." If such problems took hold in China, millions of people would move looking for new lands, he said. "For China to feed its predicted 2030 population, it needs to increase its food production by about 50 per cent above today's levels," Mr Keelty said. "How does it achieve this, if its available land is dramatically shrinking and millions of people are on the move because of land and water. "In their millions, people could begin to look for new land and they'll cross oceans and borders to do it.” The existing cultural tensions may be exacerbated as large numbers of people undertake a forced migration. "The potential security issues are enormous and should not be underestimated." [emphasis added]

Similarly, the Turkish military establishment is worried about its water-scarce desert neighbors. According to the Turkish Daily News:

“Water hungry countries like Israel, Iraq and Syria could become threats in the future, said the Office of the Chief of Staff's Military History and Strategic Assessment Directorate's expert, Lieutenant Colonel Suleyman Ozmen, in a military publication. In the latest edition of Armed Services (Silahli Kuvvetler) magazine, Ozmen said just like the rest of the world, climate change is the biggest threat facing Turkey and that the national security strategy needed to be amended with climate change in mind.

"Turkey may be forced to wage war to protect its citizens and living space. Our national security strategy needs to be amended in accordance with the risks and threats caused by climate change. The improvement of the military's capabilities on domestic and international security, emergencies and population transfers is being discussed," he said in the article. The rivers Euphrates and Tigris in the east will increase the strategic value of eastern and southeastern Turkey, he said, adding, "In 2025, five billion people will find it difficult to gain access to clean water. When one considers the fact that Turkey has the cleanest water resources in the region, especially countries like Israel, Syria and Iraq that face serious water shortages may become threats to Turkey." Ozmen said water scarcity will also increase domestic threats. "Lack of water may result in food shortages and an economic collapse," he said. [emphasis added]

Agence France-Presse reports:

“The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said in its annual review of world affairs that governments need to do more to tackle a resurgent Al-Qaeda as well as limit the damage from global warming. […] On global warming, the analysts assessed that although there was growing, but still not universal, recognition that the problem exists and may be man-made, urgent action was needed to tackle the rise in harmful emissions. Unchecked, the effects will be "catastrophic -- on the level of a nuclear war -- if not in this century, certainly in the next", they said in a 23-page assessment of the fall-out from the rise in the Earth's temperature. Climate change has important effects for global security, the IISS said, as it could potentially increase migration, water and food shortages and exacerbate existing flashpoints and tensions, particularly in Africa. In a stark warning, it said action taken in the next few years will determine whether the second half of the 21st century will see instability, human tragedy and war, or an easing of and adjustment to climate change and a new emphasis on greater international co-operation.” [emphasis added]

The warnings of the IPCC have posed a direct conflict between the fuel consumption of the North and the major “developing economies,” and the food security of the world’s farmers (and those who depend on their output). This is most obvious in the effects of greenhouse gas output, but it is also true at the level of inputs. In chilling article in the UK Guardian, John Vidal reports:

“The era of "agrofuels" has arrived, and the scale of the changes it is already forcing on farming and markets around the world is immense. In Nebraska alone, an extra million acres of maize have been planted this year, and the state boasts it will produce 1bn gallons of ethanol. Across the US, 20% of the whole maize crop went to ethanol last year. How much is that? Just 2% of US automobile use.[…]"The competition for grain between the world's 800 million motorists, who want to maintain their mobility, and its two billion poorest people, who are simply trying to survive, is emerging as an epic issue," says Lester Brown, president of the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute thinktank, and author of the book Who Will Feed China? It is not going to get any better, says Brown. The UN's World Food Organisation predicts that demand for biofuels will grow by 170% in the next three years. A separate report from the OECD, the club of the world's 30 richest countries, suggested food-price rises of between 20% and 50% over the next decade, and the head of Nestle, the world's largest food processor, said prices would remain high as far as anyone could see ahead.

A "perfect storm" of ecological and social factors appears to be gathering force, threatening vast numbers of people with food shortages and price rises. Even as the world's big farmers are pulling out of producing food for people and animals, the global population is rising by 87 million people a year; developing countries such as China and India are switching to meat-based diets that need more land; and climate change is starting to hit food producers hard. Recent reports in the journals Science and Nature suggest that one-third of ocean fisheries are in collapse, two-thirds will be in collapse by 2025, and all major ocean fisheries may be virtually gone by 2048. "Global grain supplies will drop to their lowest levels on record this year. Outside of wartime, they have not been this low in a century, perhaps longer," says the US Department of Agriculture. In seven of the past eight years the world has actually grown less grain than it consumed, says Brown. World stocks of grain - that is, the food held in reserve for times of emergency - are now sufficient for just over 50 days. According to experts, we are in "the post- food-surplus era".

The food crisis, Brown warns, is only just beginning. What worries him as much as the new competition between food and fuel is that the booming Chinese and Indian populations - the two largest nations in the world, with nearly 40% of the world's population between them - are giving up their traditional vegetable-rich diets to adopt typical "American" diets that contain more meat and dairy products. Meat demand in China has quadrupled in 30 years, and in India, milk and egg products are increasingly popular. In itself, this is no problem, say Brown and others, except that it means an acceler- ated demand for water to grow more food. It takes 7kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef, and increased demand will require huge amounts of grain-growing land. Much of this, of course, will need to be irrigated. "Water tables are now falling in countries that contain over half the world's people," Brown points out. "While numerous analysts and policymakers are concerned about a future of water shortages, few have connected the dots to see that a future of water shortages means a future of food shortages."

[…] Climate change, meanwhile, is leading to more intense rains, unpredictable storms, longer-lasting droughts, and interrupted seasons. In Britain, the recent floods will result in a shortage of vegetables such as potatoes and peas, and cereals such as wheat. This comes on top of a 4.9% rise in food prices in the year to May - well over consumer price inflation - and a 9.6% hike in vegetable prices. Britain can get by, but elsewhere climate change is proving disastrous. "I met leaders from Madagascar reeling from seven cyclones in the first six months of the year," Josette Sheeran, new director of the World Food Programme, told colleagues in Rome recently. "I asked them when the season ends and was told that such questions are becoming more difficult to answer. Farmers know that predictable patterns in weather are becoming a thing of the past. How does the global food supply system deal with such changing risk?"The answer is: with ever greater difficulty. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that rain-dependent agriculture could be cut in half by 2020 as a result of climate change. "Anything even close to a 50% reduction in yields would obviously pose huge problems," said Sheeran. Within a week, Lesotho had declared a food emergency after the worst drought in 30 years and greatly reduced harvests in neighbouring South Africa pushed prices well beyond the reach of most of the population. [emphasis added]

Meanwhile, John Zaracostas of Lloyds List reports:

“Calls for a review of food aid shipment policy come as a top UN climate change expert, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, has highlighted the threat posed by a decline in the availability of water in Africa to agricultural yields and food prices. The UN intergovernmental climate change panel chairman is alarmed over the impact of increased plantings of corn and other crops for biofuel production on global food supplies. 'This is a growing concern, because if there's going to be competition between food and fuel then clearly this would leave the poorest of the poor in a position of disadvantage‛,' Dr Pachauri told reporters in Geneva. 'Lower stocks worldwide mean prices of food grains will go up and this has stark implications for the poor all over the world.'‛ UN climate change experts are calling for a biofuels policy to avoid damaging the prospects of high-yield agricultural crops needed to feed the poorer nations. 'Let's face it, the population of the world is going up, and it's going up in some of the poorest regions of the world,' said Dr Pachauri. [emphasis added]

Meanwhile, AFP reports that the floods that struck Africa in July, August and September were “the worst floods in three decades.” The floods, which have affected over 1.5 million people in 22 countries, “are believed by some experts to be caused by the "La Nina" weather pattern, thousands of miles away in the Pacific Ocean. Several government officials have warned that the floods were a wake-up call for the world, and especially the poorest countries, to increase their preparedness for disasters induced by climate change.”

And the New York Times reported in August:

"Nothing tests the mettle of government in this part of the world than a fierce monsoon, as unusually heavy rains across South Asia showed this week, leaving a trail of death and ruin and raising the risk of disease. Freak rains, which scientists describe as a hallmark of climate change, seemed to be responsible. The devastation was all the more severe because flimsy dams and embankments collapsed under the weight of floodwaters. The mud houses of the poor were the first to wash away. Weather scientists have said South Asia is likely to get much more unpredictable rain in the coming decades, bringing greater challenges for its governments to prepare and cope with nature's fury. In Bangladesh, perennially inundated because so much of it is low-lying delta, more than half of the districts were under water. More than one million families were affected by flooding, according to government officials; the death toll after a week's heavy rains stood at 58. [emphasis added]

What all these events suggest is that climate change is happening now. It's only being discussed as a "future" problem in the North because, as one would expect of a dissipative structure, the gains and losses of industrial capitalism are separated in time and space (climate change is just the culmination of this tendency). The real costs of the system have so far been effectively dumped on peripheral areas (most of the South, parts of the North), and on future generations. In both cases, it's "out of sight, out of mind" for metropolitans, because the same vested interests that are behind the problem block its accurate diagnosis in public discourse, let along treatment in policy. So we need to keep it in our sight, in our minds, and act.