Climatic Cataclysm

The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Climate Change

Kurt M. Campbell

• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780815713326
• eBook ISBN: 9780815701552
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Global climate change poses not only environmental hazards but profound risks to planetary peace and stability as well. Climatic Cataclysm gathers experts on climate science, oceanography, history, political science, foreign policy, and national security to take the measure of these risks. The contributors have developed three scenarios of what the future may hold. The expected scenario relies on current scientific models to project the effects of climate change over the next 30 years. The severe scenario, which posits a much stronger climate response to current levels of carbon loading, foresees profound and potentially destabilizing global effects over the next generation or more. Finally, the catastrophic scenario is characterized by a devastating ""tipping point"" in the climate system, perhaps 50 or 100 years hence. In this future world, the land-based polar ice sheets have disappeared, global sea levels have risen dramatically, and the existing natural order has been destroyed beyond repair. The contributors analyze the security implications of these scenarios, which at a minimum include increased disease proliferation; tensions caused by large-scale migration; and conflict sparked by resource scarcity, particularly in Africa. They consider what we can learn from the experience of early civilizations confronted with natural disaster, and they ask what the three largest emitters of greenhouse gases—the United States, the European Union, and China—can do to reduce and manage future risks. In the coming decade, the United States faces an ominous set of foreign policy and national security challenges. Global climate change will not only complicate these tasks, but as this sobering study reveals, it may also create new challenges that dwarf those of today. Contributors include Leon Fuerth (George Washington University), Jay Gulledge (Pew Center on Global Climate Change), Alexander T. J. Lennon (Center for Strategic and International Studies), J.R. McNeil

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Front Flap
• Title Page
• Copyright Information
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• National Security and Climate Change in Perspective
• Can History Help Us with Global Warming?
• Three Plausible Scenarios of Future Climate Change
• Expected Climate Change over the Next Thirty Years
• Severe Climate Change over the Next Thirty Years
• Catastrophic Climate Change over the Next Hundred Years
• A Partnership Deal: Malevolent and Malignant Threats
• Setting the Negotiating Table: The Race to Replace Kyoto by 2012
• Conclusion: The Clear Implications of Global Climate Change
• About the Contributors
• Index
• Back Flap
• Back Cover