I’ve often mentioned my love for apocalyptic fiction. Now I can get my fix from reality. The Center for Strategic and International Studies released a new report entitled “The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change.” It envisions three scenarios: “expected,” “severe”, and “catastrophic.” I haven’t read the whole report yet, so here’s Real Climate’s summary with my comments:
The “expected” scenario calls for 1.3 °C of warming globally above 1990 levels, by the year 2040. Changes in precipitation and sea level prompt migration at a scale sufficient to challenge the cohesion of nations. The potential responses to this scenario are broken down into specific regions with their particular historical and political settings. Just to pick a region at random, Nigeria in West Africa will suffer accelerated desertification with climate change, prompting intensified migration into the megacity of Lagos, which is itself threatened by sea level rise. Compounding Nigeria’s misfortune, there is oil in the Niger Delta, and as global oil supplies dwindle, the strife and corruption that oil brings a weak nation will only intensify.
This is highly conservative. 2°C of warming can only be avoided with action now.
In the “severe” scenario, the globe warms by 2.6 °C by 2040 and sea level rises about a half a meter. Scientists in 2040 conclude that the eventual collapse of Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheets has become inevitable in the centuries that follow. Agricultural production declines in the arid subtropics and in increasingly flooded river deltas. Again to pick a random example from the report: the river systems in the American Southwest collapse, leading to impoverishment of Northern Mexico and increased migration pressure in the U.S. Resource stress in Latin American leads to a tendency toward populist, Chavez-type governments, and more extensive regions of de facto anarchy such as found today in parts of Colombia.
The river systems in the American Southwest are already collapsing, due to decreased snowpack. A brand new report in Science finally links water shortages in the West directly to climate change. I’m hightailing it back to nice wet New England as soon as I get my degree.
The “catastrophic” scenario assumes positive feedbacks in the carbon cycle to warm the planet by 5.6 °C by the year 2100, and sea level has risen by 2 meters. I feel compelled to note that if this is supposed to be a worst-case scenario, I personally can imagine worse in terms of sea level rise. In the social realm the crystal ball gets murkier as the report progresses from expected to severe to catastrophic, but one important ingredient in the prognosis for the catastrophic scenario is the migration of millions of people, a scale unprecedented in human history, potentially enough to undermine the stability of civilized governance. One participant recommended that we check out the movie Mad Max, only imagine it hotter.
Well, shit. Zero emissions now!
January 1, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Apoca-lit, yes. Good post, sir. Have you heard or seen my polar cities blog. Look here or google the term “polar cities” . Maybe blog about the idea, pro or con, later, with images from website? Permission granted. DANNY
said one MSM reporter who declimed to interview me for two reasons: to wit:
Danny -
You’re correct about the local angle. But even if you were local, the
main reason for not doing a story is that your idea hasn’t passed a
“seriousness” test - that is, being taken seriously by someone who could
place it on a path to fruition.
Cheers,
MSM reporter
January 1, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Said another poster: “What’s the problem with Mad Max? I’m totally for “Sound the alarms.” But the Mad Max future was kind of, ahem, cool. Many of the characters it brought out were more appealing - on both the good and not-good sides of the ledger - than those who currently fill our public life. Those movies are more celebratory than cautionary, more about humanity finally coming through even in what, roughly outlined, should be the direst circumstances.
This is a note on rhetoric. Saying “Mad Max” may put a scare into some, as intended. But to many others that’s not the worst of possible futures - and to those less favored in our current socio-economic order, even has appeal.”
January 2, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Danny: I appreciate your enthusiam for polar cities, but posting the same post three times smacks of spam. I have deleted the other two.
Re: Mad Max - that movie is not so appealing if you were Mel Gibson’s wife and child. I’m unduly attached to not being raped or killed at whim. I like civilization, because in a society where might makes right, women don’t have a very nice life.