Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
the reduction in fertile land at the onset of the last ice age; the decline of the earliest
cities in Mesopotamia; declines in China, Japan, Ethiopia, Lebanon and Greece
thousands of years before Christ; the political aftermath of poor harvests resulting
from lower levels of Nile
ooding in ancient Egypt; the demise of the Roman
empire; the fatal in-
ict in cold-snap seventeenth-
century Europe. We may simply be returning to the historical norm of climate shifts
being a source of major human con
ghting of the Maya; and con
ict, after a brief interregnum in which it
appeared as if man had, at least in select parts of the world, mastered nature.
54
Notable political theorists such as Francis Fukuyama have argued the climate
change is driving an incipient return to a
'
'
. In the last 250 years
of post-Industrial revolution political development has been predicated on the
state
Malthusian world
'
ts in a context that permitted unsurpassed levels
of wealth expansion. The coming Malthusian world will entail a reversion to
the politics of predation and force, in which
s distribution of bene
'
increased military or administrative
capacity is
…
amoree
cient use of resources than investment in productive
capacity
.
55
A frequently made prediction is that climate change will make it harder to sus-
tain basic openness and interdependence between countries, in terms of trade,
investment and travel; economic localism will become more prevalent.
56
Targeted
by environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs), free trade could be an
early casualty
'
cation for protection when eco-
nomic nationalism is already making a comeback.
57
Jeremy Rifkin predicts the end
of the
-
climate is a readily added justi
: empathy between nations has been predicated upon the
very economic model that can no longer be sustained.
58
The growth of rising powers brings with it an increasingly Darwinian competi-
tion for resources.
59
The battle for control over renewables and their associated
supply routes will become as
'
empathic society
'
erce as the international politics of hydrocarbons.
60
A tilt towards adaptation re
ects a containment-based approach to security
-
in the
hope of keeping climate-induced instability away
-
to the detriment of e
orts to
tackle the driving causes of climatic change.
61
The iconic James Lovelock insists that all the talk of turning back global warming
is useless and that the only option is a
'
'
lifeboat mentality
, on the part of those
countries that will be less a
ected and where some quality of life may be sustained.
In international relations, he conjectures,
will and
must increasingly prevail. This will entail pumping up military capacities to keep out
the hordes
'
the ethics of a lifeboat world
'
ocking from states harder hit by the ravages of global warming.
62
Several
authors foresee an encroaching
'
environmental authoritarianism
'
,asclimatechange
will undermine the conditions necessary for democracy to
ourish. Resource con-
orts to turn back environmental
migrants will encourage disrespect of international human rights norms.
63
icts will endanger fragile democracies, while e
