Imprint Online - Dyer predicts future wars over food

Dyer predicts future wars over food

Neal Moogk-Soulis
staff reporter

Journalist and military analyst Gwynne Dyer signs copies of his books after his climate change lecture in Hagey Hall.

Gwynne Dyer premiered a new idea in front of a two-thirds capacity crowd at the Humanities Theatre Wednesday. The talk, titled Climate Wars, predicted that the wars of the future would not be fought over oil, or to punished rogue states, but that they would be fought over food.

He addressed the crowd in a comfortable leather jacket, jeans and sneakers while predicting that the world was going to be something different. As a well-known freelance journalist with contacts around the world, Dyer keeps his ear close to the ground. On the question of Cuba? "Castro’s finished. They don’t want him back."

The issue of climate wars first occurred to him when he was in Britain shortly after the British government announced that they were going to replace their current fleet of nuclear submarines, set to be mothballed by 2020, with a new generation fit for service through 2050. The British defence minister went on record to say, "Well, you never know what might turn up."

Confused, Dyer discussed the issue with several of his British contacts. "It’s about climate change," they said, “Lifeboat Britain.” That didn’t help Dyer at all, so he had to do some more digging.

"They’re not worried about the ice caps melting or polar bears drowning, though someone might set up a fund to buy polar bear life jackets, or rising seas. They’re worried about food supply."

The British theory goes that should climate change continue at the rate that it will, Britain will be able to sustain approximately 60 million people on agriculture. This normally wouldn’t be a problem, except that the British planners predict that continental Europe will suffer an agricultural collapse, where a hungry population might look to a well-fed Britain with envy.

Dyer is currently developing this for a possible book, a series on the CBC Radio One program Ideas and later potentially television.

Prior to his lecture, he sat down with a group of graduate students and later with Imprint to discuss his ideas. Given the climate change focus of his talk, Imprint asked him whether the climate change debate was simply part of an environmental renaissance and, if so, how it could be explained.

"Have you heard of content analysis?" he asked. Content analysis is the monitoring of keywords across a broad spectrum of media outlets to chart what the popular press, and by extension populations, are discussing. “Generally, there is a steep rise, and then an equally steep fall, generally over a two or three year period. The trigger is some new piece of news, which triggers a media frenzy, and spiking interest. Eventually, they have mined out all of the experts and there is nothing left to say, and interest declines.”

Dyer said that the current fascination with climate change is the third time the environment has been the darling of the news cycle. "The first was started by Rachel Carson and her book Silent Spring. It peaked in the 1970s, but was killed off by the oil crisis." This first wave of interest led to catalytic converters being introduced into automobiles among other environmental measures.

"The second peak occurred in the late 1980s with the discovery of the ozone hole over the Antarctic. It was all very science fiction, but there were real dangers like skin cancer." That debate occurred when climate change science was in its infancy, but climate change rode the wave. The 1992 climate change negotiations that led to the 1997 Kyoto protocol were one result.

"The third wave has been a less steep curve that started sometime around 2001-2002, but there is no clear trigger. Ironically, it may have been U.S. President George W. Bush withdrawing from Kyoto that was the trigger."

News coverage of the issue continues to grow by about 50 per cent per year, compared with the typical doubling. More people have become involved in the issue, which means there are even more experts to mine.

Al Gore’s recent push on climate change has benefited from this renewed interest, "But he’s no Johnny-come-lately. He was the first person to mention climate change in Congress in the 1980s. He’s found his niche."

Dyer singled out Canada as one of the worst abusers of the Kyoto protocol, while other signatories have done their best to meet their targets. "What’s happened is that the Chrétien Liberals signed the deal, and now the Harper Tories will have to pay the price." Under the terms of the Kyoto protocol, signatories that don’t meet their targets have to purchase carbon credits from other nations.

Generally speaking, despite its poor record fighting climate change, Canada would likely fare pretty well, should the world heat up on average between 2-5 degrees Celsius. However, "We’d have a slight problem of 300 million American refugees at our border. [...] We’re going to have to go along, it would be unneighbourly not to, and you don’t dare not co-operate [with the Americans]. I foresee a situation where we would share our food, as long as we weren’t starving more than they were."

Should the climate warm up, nations would be hit hard, and not just the developing nations. China would likely lose a lot of its production, and India would see a 25 per cent drop. Given that India is only now able to feed its own population, a drop in production would be devastating.

Another worrying sign of a global realignment was the current U.S. strategy of isolating China militarily. "Why make China the enemy? India is desperate to be taken seriously, and the only reason they don’t have seat on the Security Council with a veto is because their independence came two years too late." Luckily, the Americans are unlikely to attack China, and the Chinese are so far ignoring the threat.

If the situation becomes dire enough, dire solutions, like a giant sunshade in space, may be needed. "If the emergency is big enough, you may want to do it if it’s the only way to keep from driving off the cliff."

Dyer had some final thoughts for his audience after spending more than an hour on dire prognostications. "Cheer up, it could be worse, but I can’t just remember how. Nobody’s to blame. As soon as we began mass civilization, we were bound to end up at this point. And now we have to deal with it."

During the question-and-answer period that followed, an audience member took Dyer to task for jetting around the world while preaching the need to prevent climate change. "For my work, I need to travel. You can’t do the kind of research from an office somewhere," he replied. “Flying around the world to lay on a beach for a vacation is another matter altogether.”

The final question of the night asked about finding a scientific solution versus a political solution. "Science, if you’re lucky, will produce a range of choices, but you can’t tease out the answers. God knows we need the science, but the choices will be made politically. You don’t need to be a Marxist to recognize the importance of politics."

photos courtesy of Krishna Sivaranjan

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polar cities

posted by danny bloom on Saturday, 6 Sep 2008, 23:44:08

what about polar cities to house survivores. google the term Mr dwyer what do you think? also called LOVELOCK RETREATES

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"military analyst" "climate

posted by danny bloom on Saturday, 6 Sep 2008, 23:44:23

"military analyst" "climate change"

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--	posted by danny bloom on Saturday, 6 Sep 2008, 23:44:54

--
POLAR CITIES BLUEPRINTS:
http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

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posted by danny bloom on Sunday, 7 Sep 2008, 00:07:25

Analyst warns of looming global climate wars

The Arctic ocean could be entirely free of ice in five years' time,
Gwynne Dwyer says

Military analyst predicts 'climate wars' (The World Today)

But according to one of America's top military analysts, governments
in the US and UK are already being briefed by their own military
strategists about how to prepare for a world of mass famine, floods of
refugees and even nuclear conflicts over resources.

Gwynne Dyer is a military analyst and author who served in three
navies and has held academic posts at the Royal Military College at
Sandhurst and at Oxford.

Speaking about his latest book, Climate Wars, he says there is a sense
of suppressed panic from the scientists and military leaders.

"Mostly it's about winners and losers, at least in the early phases of
climate change," he said.

"If you're talking about 1 degree, 2 degrees hotter - not runaway
stuff - but what we're almost certainly committed to over the next 30
or 40 years, there will be countries that get away relatively cost
free in that scenario, particularly countries in the higher
latitudes."

But he says that closer to the equator in the relatively arid zone -
where Australia is situated - there will be very serious droughts.

"[There will be] huge falls in the amount of crops that you can grow
because there isn't the rain and it's too hot," he said.

"That will apply particularly to the Mediterranean... and so not just
the north African countries, but also the ones on the northern side of
the Mediterranean.

"The ones in the European Union like Spain and Italy and Greece and
the Balkans and Turkey are going to be suffering huge losses in their
ability to support their populations.

Climate refugees

He says a fall in crops and food production means there will be
refugees, people who are desperate.

"It may mean the collapse in the global trade of food because while
some countries still have enough, there is still a global food
shortage," he said.

"If you can't buy food internationally and you can't raise enough at
home, what do you do? You move. So refugee pressures - huge ones - are
one of the things that drives these security considerations."

In Climate Wars, even the most hopeful scenarios about the impact of
climate change have hundreds of millions of people dying of
starvation, mass displacement of people and conflict between countries
competing for basic resources like water.

"India and Pakistan are both nuclear-armed countries. All of the
agriculture in Pakistan and all of the agriculture in northern India
depend on glacier-fed rivers that come off the Himalayas from the
Tibetan plateau. Those glaciers are melting," Dr Dyer said.

"They're melting according to Chinese scientists to 7 per cent a year,
which means they're half gone in 10 years.

"India has a problem with this. Pakistan faces an absolutely lethal
emergency because Pakistan is basically a desert with a braid of
rivers running through it.

"Those rivers all start with one exception in Indian-controlled
territory and there's a complex series of deals between the two
countries about who gets to take so much water out of the river. Those
deals break down when there's not that much water in the rivers."

"Some of them, actually, I'm afraid we've already got them wrong in
the sense that there is going to be some major climate change."

Dr Dyer explains the least alarmist scenario for the next couple of
decades still involves enormous pressures on the US border.

"That border's going to be militarised. I think there's almost no
question about it because the alternative is an inundation of the
United States by what will be, effectively, climate refugees," he
said.

"They [US] are concerned actually about losing a lot of land and a lot
of crop production within the United States itself.

"A lot of Florida's basically about six inches above sea level - and
the Mississippi River Delta, well we've already seen what one
hurricane did there - plus of course many interventions overseas by
the American armed forces as much bigger emergencies occur in much
bigger parts of the world."

Worst-case scenario

But the real insight into the US study is that the more severe climate
change scenario is the one that analysts think is the more likely one.

"And it's not just the analysts. I spent the past year doing a very
high-speed self-education job on climate change but I think I probably
talked to most of the senior people in the field in a dozen
countries," Dr Dyer said.

"They're scared, they're really frightened. Things are moving far
faster than their models predicted.

"You may have the Arctic ocean free of ice entirely in five years'
time, in the late summer. Nobody thought that would happen until about
the 2040s - even a couple of years ago."

Dr Dyer says there is a sense of things moving much faster, and the
military are picking up on that.

He also says we will be playing climate change catch-up in the next 30 years.

"The threshold you don't want to cross, ever, is 2 degrees Celsius
hotter than it was at the beginning of the 1990s," he said.

"That is a margin we have effectively already used up more than half
of. It would require pretty miraculous cooperation globally and huge
cuts in emissions."

And if the world does not decarbonise by 2050, you don't want to be
there, according to Dr Dyer.

"My kids will and I don't think that is going to be a pleasant
prospect at all, because once you go past 2 degrees - and you could
get past 2 degrees by the 2040s without too much effort - things start
getting out of control," he said.

"The ocean starts giving back to the atmosphere the carbon dioxide it
absorbed. That world is a world where crop failures are normal.

"Where, for example, Australia does not export food any more, it is
hanging on to what it can still grow to feed its own people but that
is about all that it is going to be able to do, and many countries
can't even do that."

He says China will take an enormous blow.

"There is a study out from the Chinese Academy of Scientists and then
swiftly disappeared again, but about two years ago, we predicted the
maximum damage that would be done to China under foreseeable climate
change in the 21st century was 38 per cent cut in food production," he
said.

"That is only about three-fifths of the food they now eat and there
will be a lot more of them.

"I think we will end up having to do things that at the moment nobody
would consider doing like geo-engineering, ways of keeping the
temperature down while we get our emissions down."

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Danny Bloom adds:

posted by danny bloom on Sunday, 7 Sep 2008, 00:08:11

Danny Bloom adds:

What would make a great news story for some investigate reporter to do would be: how are military analysts in the USA and Europe and Russia dealing with all this, and what kind of contingency plans are they drawing up, perhaps in secret, perhaps in public, for human population refuges in the northern areas? According to Gwynne Dwyer, who has spoke to many military people this past year and is himself a military analyst and now a news columnist, most rich nations have already convenved comittee meetings to address this very topic: where to put all the people fleeing climate change â€” climate refugees â€” as the Earth hots up? Nobody is calling them polar cities yet, and nobody is calling them Lovelock Retreats yet, but I am sure they have â€œnamesâ€ for them. Ask the CIA or the Homeland Security people. Certainly, this should be made public news. When?

For a good background article, google â€œGwynne Dwyerâ€ and read his latest take on all this. He says it is happening even now as we speak. Nations are preparing for the worst case scenarios, even as they hope it never happensâ€¦.

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