My current reading is “Climate Change as a Security Risk,” a sort of threat dossier on a warming world. Amid mountains of dry data, the authors take a few imaginative leaps to picture how the world looks if we start preparing now, and what happens if we don’t.
Scenario: In 2038, a series of strong cyclones strike Bangladesh, permanently spoiling farmland and turning millions of farmers into refugees.
Worst case: Masses move to inland to live hopeless lives in refugee camps, while millions of others flock across the border to India. Hindu-Muslim tensions in India inflame anew, and the militaries of India and Bangladesh clash.
Best case: The world’s most-developed countries pay into a fund to help erect coastal defenses that blunt the worst effects of the storms. India’s and Bangladesh’s governments work together, reducing tensions and developing a strong working relationship.
Scenario: Rising oceans cause Alexandria and other cities of Egypt’s Nile Delta to collapse. At the same time, areas of sub-Saharan Africa suffer permanent drought, spurring a mass migration of refugees.
Worst case: Millions of unemployed, dispossessed young men from North Africa and the Sahel press toward Europe. Europe cracks down and ghettoizes North African migrants; Egypt and Ethiopia go to war over the Nile headwaters.
Best case: The international community helps Egypt and other African nations fend off the spread of deserts through water conservation and irrigation. Nations of the Sahel profit from mining and use the proceeds to support their people; Europe establishes migration quotas that everyone can live with.
Scenario: Rivers dwindle in Peru, the result of shrinking glaciers, and Peru’s hydroelectric power and water supply steadily decline.
Worst Case: The population suffers high electricity bills and blackouts, on one hand, and high water bills and shortages on the other. Corruption and crime are rife. The government buckles under the strain and Peru descends into civil war.
Best Case: The government sees what’s coming and does meticulous planning. With international help, it builds reservoirs, water-conservation systems and desalination plants. The ride is bumpy, but order is maintained and people mostly get what they need.
These scenarios address some of climate change’s worst conundrums: Poor, agricultural countries will most likely be hardest hit by climate change, but have the fewest resources to prepare. This is not a situation the neighbors can ignore: Chaos in one country can easily spill over a border. In other words, each country has a stake in solving the problem, even if is own citizens are unaffected.
Each of best-case results assume that governments of poor nations will plan years and decades ahead and keep in mind the welfare of all citizens. Furthermore, they bank on wealthy countries spending trillions of aid out of enlightened self-interest.
I am not optimistic things will work out so well.
On the other hand, do we have any other choice? Any general, president or congresswoman need only think through the consequences of shrinking glaciers, rising oceans, failing crops to realize no nation can go it alone.
This book impressed upon me is that if we are to survive climate change, we’ll need a level of cooperation an order of magnitude greater than any the world has ever seen. We either make it through together, or we all go down.
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