Despite prognostication from the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar that 2012 is the world’s end date, the world’s tipping point will most likely begin around 2016. After that, global warming, rising sea levels, and the resulting migrations of millions of people are thought to be unchangeable. If Cleo Paskal’s latest work, Global Warring, holds true, these massive changes will only be the beginning.
In the future, Paskal envisions, the devastation that humanity has brought upon itself through environmental degradation is only the first step in escalating geopolitical tensions that will erupt into full-scale war. Gwynne Dyer’s Climate Wars predicts the same thing. This change in temperature will begin to fundamentally alter how governments deal with each other, turning already conflict-prone areas into powder kegs, while pushing the seemingly stable northern countries into potential collision courses.
Already, the green debate, a nice-sounding term considering how dirty the fight is getting, is becoming increasingly polarized. The “refuse-niks” claim that the scientists and their models are wrong. In essence, their argument is that the world need not concern ourselves with the goings-on of the climate that has sustained us for millennia.
The ramifications that even a slight temperature variation can cause are staggering, according to Paskal. With a generally warming world, developing countries will see millions of people flee their coastal areas. Many of the smaller states in the Pacific will simply slip below the waves. Heat waves could bake the cities of London, Paris and Berlin, resulting in substantially more deaths than the estimated 35,000 caused by the heat wave that rolled through Europe in 2003, according to New Scientist.
More important is the shift in geo-political power that will result. America, ravaged by rising ocean levels, will see a drastically altered landscape with Manhattan, Miami, and Los Angeles in need of numerous dykes and dams—frightening considering the substantial failures in these very systems in and around New Orleans. Lacking a hegemonic power, China, Russia, India, and potentially Canada could come into greater conflict with each other. China and India, with the largest populations in the world, could face instability due to massive migration. At the same time, these two nations both stand to gain from projecting their power across the Pacific.
While the Chinese and Indians jockey for power, Canada, Russia, and the U.S. will be fighting over the Arctic and the Northwest Passage. In addition to the resources boom thought to be hiding beneath the icy tundra of the north, the Northwest Passage is poised to become the next Suez Canal. With the potential to cut thousands of kilometres off traditional shipping routes, control of this straight will send the economies of Siberia, Alaska, and Northern Canada skyrocketing. Future boom cities—like that of Churchill, Manitoba, a city that is often forgotten, ignored, or unknown to the majority of Canadians—could become the 21st-century version of Rio, Rotterdam, Halifax, or Hong Kong. However, control over this straight will mean that Canadian and American interest will more than likely diverge. As both countries bristle, the 49th parallel may become significantly more guarded than in years past.
Sadly enough, Cleo Paskal’s dire warnings of global warring will fall upon deaf ears, as politicians will be complacent on the reduction of greenhouse gases. The Copenhagen climate conference will most likely bring about no significant change on the reduction of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. At least we can say that we have been warned. As for myself, I’m looking to buy property in Churchill.
