It's been quite a warm winter. So warm in fact, that it reached almost 60 degrees in my hometown of Chicago in the middle of January. While this has much more to do with the temperature variability caused by the cycles of El Niño and La Niña than global warming per se, the lesson to be drawn is that 2012 can only mark the initial stages of our foray into the erratic weather patterns humanity will be forced to contend with in the century to come.
Assuming the world doesn't end in 2012, climate change is occurring and its repercussions will be felt strongly in the future — whether you embrace climate change as man−made or would prefer to see it as something humanity has no role in (and thus forgo established science as well). As arctic sea ice melts, it will exacerbate existing weather patterns. Global warming doesn't mean it gets really hot suddenly; it means rainy climates get rainier, and dry climates get dryer. In other words, wet climates experience flooding and dry climates experience drought. Add this to ocean levels that could rise several meters over the century and the consequences become very real — consequences that will undoubtedly have strong social, political and economic dimensions.
As it stands, we're already past the tipping point. While the Earth's atmosphere has historically contained about 275 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide its makeup today stands at about 392 ppm. The current scientific consensus is that 350 ppm is the greatest amount of CO2 that can be present in the atmosphere before climate change brings about severe consequences. As it stands, the world currently adds 2 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere per year. Thus, irreversible changes are beginning to occur: melting glaciers that provide drinking water for hundreds of millions of people, rising sea levels that threaten coastal establishments, drought that hinders food production, increasingly acidic oceans that kill marine life, and flooding. Alone, flooding poses a major threat that can devastate entire regions, as the 2010 floods in Pakistan demonstrated, submerging one fifth of the country, creating 2 million refugees and destroying crop yields and infrastructure.
In 2006, the UK's Meteorological Office demonstrated that if current trends continue, half of the Earth's land surface will suffer drought while one−third will be desert by 2100; during the same period, the proportion of land in extreme drought will increase from today's 3 percent to 30 percent. Read that last sentence again.
So while it's possible that things might not be so bad come 2100, it's also more likely that the Earth's state of affairs will be worse in 2100 than predicted now. And given that the UN forecasts humanity's population to exceed 10 billion by 2085, with the majority of growth taking place in developing countries, this has enormous implications for everyone. The convergence of poverty with increasing scarcity will be felt both at the international and local levels. Consider the new dimensions the Kashmiri conflict will take when Indian−controlled Kashmir contains four of the five rivers that provide almost all of Pakistan's water, or how growing giants India and China will be forced to juggle dwindling water resources with growing populations and environmental degradation. Consider how growing desertification will continue to push rural communities into cities, expanding urban slums and worsening already appalling poverty and health conditions as well as crime, such as in the Brazilian favelas. Or how Yemen, an extremely unstable country, will fare when it runs out of water.
But while it may be easy for security experts to look at climate change and consider the potential it has to ignite conflict, unravel national governments or create support for terrorism, this misses the point. No matter what precise form global warming takes, it will certainly create and exacerbate human suffering en masse. Make no mistake: As vital resources dwindle and the occurrence of extreme weather intensifies, people will fight over what we've thus far taken for granted. It may play out as what some are already coining water wars. Water, food and electricity will be in short supply. Or it may play out as the disintegration of economies that sap governments of their revenues, thereby disallowing them to provide even basic public services, such as in Kyrgyzstan. Water, food, and electricity will be in less supply everywhere in the developing world when they're already in short supply. Climate change consequently means political unrest, economic frailty, an upsurge in crime and organized violence, ethnic polarization (as people band together and scapegoat others) and widespread human suffering in general. Indeed, the correlation between increasing scarcity and increasing violence is a strong one, one that is already beginning to play itself out, from the pastoralist corridors of Kenya to the northern cities of Mexico.
In the song "Sleeping In" by the Postal Service, Ben Gibbard sings, "Concerns about the world getting warmer, the people thought they were just being rewarded…now we can swim any day in November." As excited to swim in November as I am (and as cheesy as quoting the Postal Service in an op−ed is), there is a larger connection to be made. The advanced and industrialized countries of the Global North will most likely weather the effects of climate change intact. Venice might sink, but Europeans and Floridians alike will most likely be evacuated in an orderly and responsible manner; there will be no Canadian refugees. Meanwhile, Chicagoans might enjoy more tolerable winters. Europe and North America won't truly bear the crises to come. Rather, it will be 16 percent of Vietnam underwater and 35 percent of its people becoming refugees or many island nations simply disappearing that we have more to be concerned about. It will be Sub−Saharan Africa and India experiencing intense drought and a Philippines battered with continually stronger storms that will have the most on their plate.
Thus, in the decades to come, discussions of the weather might no longer make for small talk. As a prospective international relations major, it's expected that I'd classify contending with global warming as a political hurdle. But if the technology exists to mitigate emissions to required levels (and the technology already exists), and the money exists to put it into action (it does), then dealing with climate change is effectively a matter of policy and political will, which only governments have the power to put into action. It's imperative that we do what we can to mitigate our impact on climate change and try to cut our losses now, but much of the damage has already been done. Policies to mitigate our impact on the planet must now go hand in hand with policies to prepare, adjust and adapt to this new world.
Come and discuss the new shape the world will take from the effects of climate change, both meteorological and social, at EPIIC's international symposium Feb. 25, in the context of Conflict in the 21st Century.
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Gabe Rojkind is a freshman who has not
yet declared a major.
