( Six minute read)
It’s one of the most important questions of the 21st century:
You always have a higher potential for violent conflict when the survival conditions of groups of people are threatened. This is a very basic principle.
Will climate change provide the extra spark that pushes two otherwise peaceful nations into war?
The obvious answer is yes.
You can see this when you look at events that are already happening, like land conflicts due to desertification, or various resource conflicts around the world.
There are currently 27 ongoing conflicts worldwide. A quarter of the entire global population lives in conflict-affected areas. This year, it is estimated that at least 274 million people will need humanitarian assistance. But it’s important to remember that the causal links between climate and conflict are rarely direct.
However there has always been an empirical connection between violence and climate change which has persists across 12,000 years of human history.
We now live on a planet expecting changes to temperature or rainfall in the coming decades—which will come faster and stronger than the many natural climate changes of the past.
This is the situation the world finds itself in today.
Conflict is on the rise. Millions are displaced. International law is disregarded with impunity, as criminal and terrorist networks profit from the division and violence.
The reasons for the outbreak of conflict range from territorial disputes and regional tensions, to corruption and dwindling resources due to climate change.
Take the Syrian war for example.
Nearly 11 years after it started, the Syrian refugee crisis remains the largest displacement crisis worldwide (13.2 million, including 6.6 million refugees and more than 6 million internally displaced people). At least 2 million people are living in tented camps with limited access to basic services.
Lasting more than 60 years, the conflict in Myanmar (previously called Burma) remains the longest ongoing civil war in the world.
The cost of war is almost unfathomable with conflicts driving 80% of humanitarian needs.
In 2016, the cost of conflict globally stood at an astonishing $14 trillion. That’s enough to end world hunger 42 times over.
For the seventh year in a row, global military spending is increasing, exceeding trillions’ for the first time.
Just imagine what the world could do with that money if conflicts were to end worldwide.
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If you’re looking for the causes of climate change, it’s us—the overconsuming, fossil-fuel-burning North and West.
If you want to get serious about climate change, worrying about the small-scale details of conflicts in Africa is missing the point. It’s us.
Twentieth-century wars were fought over land, religion, and economics. But the wars of the 21st century will be fought over something quite different: climate change, and the shortages of water and food that will come from it with mass migration leading to social disruption and potentially violent conflict.
I think this will become more apparent over the next decade or so. You can see it already in Europe.
I suspect we’re going to see more nativism, more xenophobia, and more talk of building walls on our borders.
If you look deeply at the source of future conflicts, I think you’ll see a basic resource conflict at the bottom of it all.
The thin veneer of civilization.
‘ Overwhelmed by the disaster, people could not see what was to become of them and started losing respect for laws of god and man alike,” Thucydides wrote.
Do we have the institutions, the structures, the systems of cooperation we need to deal with this problem?
I don’t think we have an existing structure of peacekeeping that can hold up under these conditions — or at least I’m not encouraged by what we’ve seen so far.
Can Western democratic society, which is built on a system of limitless growth and productivity, change its destructive relationship with nature?
No, modern liberal democratic societies are successful at improving the lives and freedoms of people who live in them but the problem is that their systems are based on the exploitation of nature and our environment, and we’re sort of trapped in this paradigm.
Climate change is a threat multiplier, which means it amplifies problems already facing the world.
Stressors such as poverty, political instability, and crime are magnified by increased droughts, floods, or heat waves. Of the 25 countries deemed most vulnerable to climate change, 14 are mired in conflict.
The climate crisis is altering the nature and severity of humanitarian crises.
As the world gets hotter, mayhem could spread.
Humanitarian organizations are already struggling to respond and will not be able to meet exponentially growing needs resulting from unmitigated climate change.
I think one of the things that clearly exacerbates matters is when the issues become politicized.
It’s going to take a combination of both personal action and systemic change to combat climate change. One is not a substitute for the other, and doing one without the other won’t solve the issues we face.
How civilized will we remain?
Climate change will be a small hole through which we glimpsed what always lies below the thin crust we lay across the seething magma of nature, including human nature.
Recycle. Fly less. Eat less meat.
These are some of the ways that we’ve been told can slow climate change.
But the inordinate emphasis on individual behaviour is the result of a marketing campaign that has succeeded in placing the responsibility for fixing climate change squarely on the shoulders of individuals.
With immensely powerful vested interests aligned in defence of the fossil fuel status quo, the societal tipping point won’t happen without the active participation of citizens everywhere aiding in the collective push forward.
While humongous industries continue to shirk responsibility, lobbying against change and top-down regulation. Nothing decivilizes more quickly and surely than war.
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