Anthony Zinni: "We Will Pay To Reduce GHG Emissions Today Or Pay Later In Military Terms" - Nature

[hatrack]

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Recent projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimate that by 2080, 1.1 billion to 3.2 billion people will be facing water scarcity; 200 million to 600 million, hunger; and two million to seven million more homes will be hit hard by coastal flooding6. Between 75 and 250 million people in Africa alone will experience increased water shortages due to climate change by 2020. Although greater wealth may offset damage through adaptation in many nations7, without the ability to pay for such measures the world's poor are likely to suffer more stress from climate impacts in the coming decades. Even more worryingly, many of the seemingly dire predictions are based on middle-of-the-road IPCC scenarios, rather than the most extreme ones, says Jay Gulledge, a climate scientist with the Washington DC-based Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "Many of these conditions are already being observed," Gulledge says. "You don't have to stretch much to get some pretty bad consequences in the coming decades just from the changes in freshwater availability."
Rising tensions

In countries such as Algeria, Morocco, the United States, France, Spain and Italy, migration is now an issue of increasing political importance, according to a recent report by the UN8. The report noted that around 50 million people will be at risk of displacement due to severe desertification over the next 10 years, causing an "environmental crisis of global proportions". These risks threaten not just unstable regions, but also countries that are likely to experience the spillover of large-scale migration from areas directly impacted by a changing climate. "People are now recognizing that it's not just happening in some distant African country but that the effects could be on your own doorstep," says Zafar Adeel, a policy expert at the United Nations University in Hamilton, Canada, and a lead author of the report.

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Accordingly, issues of border security are gaining increasing attention, with the realization that heightened regional flooding or drought will probably result in an upsurge in immigration. Spain is involved in ongoing discussions with northern African nations to find possible preventive measures to large-scale immigration. "There's a notion that by investing in North African countries, it would be possible to create more amenable conditions so that people don't have to move north," says Adeel. But, he says, the reality is that North African countries are already having their resources stressed due to immigration from sub-Saharan Africa. Along with considerations about potential adaptation strategies, these regions are also facing looming pressures to reinforce their border control in order to stem the flow of large numbers of immigrants. "If you get into extreme climate change, there may be no easy way to manage the flow of people who are coming at you from every possible direction," says Leon Fuerth, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University in Washington DC.

Similarly, India looks set to face these issues as rising sea levels could result in the mass-migration of millions from Bangladesh over the next century. Since the 1950s, some 12 to 17 million Bangladeshis have migrated to India, according to Reuveny, due in large part to natural disasters, droughts and food scarcity. Half of Bangladesh is situated just a few metres above sea level and about a third of the country is flooded during the rainy season. Bangladesh faces the future loss of large areas of coastline due to flooding and sea-level rise, which could affect 35 million people, or a quarter of its population8. Tensions are already high, as the 4,000-kilometre, 3-metre-high barrier that India has spent nearly a decade erecting along the border is due for completion this year. And along the US-Mexico border, political tensions over water and agricultural resources are bound to escalate as temperatures rise. The IPCC projects that the southwestern US and parts of northern Mexico will become more arid and could experience a decline in water availability of 10–30% by the end of the century. By the 2050s, 50% of agricultural lands in Latin America are very likely to undergo desertification and salinization. "If agricultural productivity in Mexico declines, we're going to see even greater pressure," says US defense and energy consultant Thomas Morehouse.

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http://www.nature.com/climate/2007/0710/full/climate.2007.56.html

[rusty quoin]

1. These are OMG times and we have yet to start to really address them enough.

Never mind take action.

[Mojorabbit]

2. They are always

upping the timetable. This is what worries me the most. That it seems every report states that things are happening faster than they originally thought it would.