2 World Wars Are Converging -- the War on Nature and the War of Resentment

[marmar]

[font size="3"]"The two wars are connected by a common thread: the negative effects of an elite minority trying to control access to resources."[/font]

Chandran Nair
Founder and CEO of the Global Institute For Tomorrow


HONG KONG -- As we enter the latter half of the 21st century's second decade, the hope that the world was entering an era of great promise and convergence has been shredded by two poorly recognized "world wars." They are the "war on nature" and the "wars of resentment."

We too often focus on the Middle East as the confluence of instability and historical grievance, but the region is merely an extreme manifestation of a worldwide trend. Throughout the developing world, feelings of past injustice and humiliation are being brought back to the fore. Regional and international tensions grow as social groups try to reverse past humiliation, establish equal economic opportunities or settle scores.

The "war on nature" and the "wars of resentment" are interlocked. Environmental change can create new conflicts and worsen existing ones. Several experts now agree that an extended drought -- part of a long-term warming and drying of the Fertile Crescent -- was a significant factor to the unrest leading to the Syrian Civil War.

However, the link between these two "wars" runs deeper. They are connected by a common thread: the negative effects of an elite minority trying to control access to resources. This is both the reason for our warming climate and the long-term historical cause of many of the grievances that motivate today's conflicts.

When thinking about grievance, those on the receiving end of aggression often ask a personal question: "Why do they hate us?" Satisfactory answers, at least in day-to-day commentary, are rare. The two reasons commonly given: "They hate because of our freedoms and way of life" and "They hate us because of our foreign policy" -- are too shallow to tell us much of anything. .......................(more)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chandran-nair/2-world-wars-nature-resentment_b_8685124.html

[Abouttime]

1. Climate change

Is the real problem. We must fundamentally transform our society, we must stop burning fossil fuels before we destroy the environment.

[The2ndWheel]

4. Is that really fundamental transformation?

We changed environments when we hunted with sharp sticks. We've changed environments by planting seeds where we want them planted. When we started irrigation. We've destroyed environments well before fossil fuels.

Whether it's fossil fuels, or renewable energy, the goal is the same; to transcend physical limits. If we were to change that, then you're talking about something fundamental. That's clearly not what we want to change though, even if we could, which we most likely can't.

[The2ndWheel]

2. "the negative effects of an elite minority trying to control access to resources"

Civilization is a resource concentration mechanism.

[Octafish]

3. Bingo.

"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

-- Charles Dickens, "A Christmas Carol" (1843)

[2naSalit]

5. It's all about control...

over nature and all life on the planet. I often am confronted with the argument based on the "marvels of the industrial age" and how it makes the industrialized "better humans" than those who learned to live with the natural world rather than to exploit, destroy/control it.

Buffalo chips.

I suspect that when the biospheric/trophic cascade crash is irreversible (and I actually think we are already there) where nobody can dispute it anymore, it will be those who are resourceful and adaptive to the natural world - what remains of it that can be sustaining for life - will be survivors. That is as long as there is still a viable biosphere to adapt to left in the end.

We have been hell bent on achieving total control over the natural world and it will be our undoing as far as livability on this planet... and remember, there is no "Planet B".

[marmar]

6. PM kick

[H2O Man]

7. Recommended.

Outstanding! Thank you for this.

[raouldukelives]

8. The insatiable desires of shareholders made whole.

All for them, today, because they are so damned special that all of the worlds wildlife, all future generations, all the thoughts of any person throughout history, all the art created, all the losses and all the victories, all for naught.

It isn't as it should be, but it is as people labor for it to be. So on that note, they truly are as successful as they must imagine themselves to be.

[pampango]

9. Juan Cole made that same point recently.

How Repression, Drought & Climate Change Drove the Syrian Civil War

Long before March of 2011, when Syrian demonstrations calling for reform and in some cases, regime change, morphed into a full-blown military conflict that has transformed into a supranational bloodbath, the economic and political policies of Bashar Al-Assad’s Baa’thist regime undoubtedly fomented major discontent among various segments of Syria’s population. ... events in the south-Syrian bordertown of Dera’a would forever change the socio-political dynamics of a nation ruled by the iron fists of the Al-Assad clan for more than four decades. Upon assuming the mantle of power in Syria, Syrians hopeful of political and economic liberalization under the modern, western-educated ophthalmologist-turned-president Bashar Al-Assad were mainly met with disappointment.

However, in a nation where the mukhabarat (secret police informants/intelligence agents) have long infiltrated all segments of society and institutions, a general aura of fear, suspicion, and paranoia persisted well into Bashar’s reign. I witnessed this first-hand when I visited and stayed in Dera’a for a few days with family friends several years before the uprising and recall the kind of vexing stares I received from some of those whom I attempted to raise the issue of Syrian politics with. I was a bit naïve and so I, more than anything, wanted to know if the stories I had heard about Syrian fears of the regime were legit. They were.

During the same year Bashar Al-Assad took power, ninety-nine Syrian intellectuals, writers, and critics crafted and signed the “Statement of 99” calling for an end to emergency rule/martial law that had been in place since 1963, for the state to pardon political dissidents detained, imprisoned, deported, or exiled by his father’s regime, formal recognition and implementation of freedom of assembly, press, and expression, as well as an end to the surveillance of its citizens by the secret police and security forces. The movement behind the statement was composed of both anti-regime hardliners as well as moderates who collectively sought political reform. The result of long-festering political and economic dissent among Syrians, the “Statement of 99” was a brow-raising announcement that, at minimum, made the regime slightly uncomfortable. The formation of various think-tanks, organizations, and social and political ‘parties’ coincided with Bashar’s takeover of Syria- all of which were critical of the regime’s political and economic monopolies on the country caused the regime to crack down on dissenters. The following year, in 2001, one thousand academics, critics, and activists launched the “Statement of 1,000” which expanded on the previous statement’s tenets and called for a multi-party democracy to supplant the one-party Baa’thist state. This was met with another, albeit harsher, government crackdown.

All of these grievances began to fester when anti-regime protests began in early 2011. While initially limited to small demonstrations calling on the lifting of the Emergency Laws and better economic policies, the government was able to contain them with relative ease. When they grew as they did in Dera’a in March of that year, the government’s crackdowns intensified and greater numbers of Syrians became disillusioned by the regime’s insincerity in addressing and implementing political, social, and economic reforms. The zero-tolerance policies of the Assad regime only sought to radicalize some already, economically and politically disenfranchised segments of the Syrian population, some of which had been subdued by his father in previous years and had since been boiling with discontent.

http://www.juancole.com/2014/09/maelstrom-repression-climate.html