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Leaked Pentagon report warns climate change may bring famine, war: report
Sun Feb 22, 5:13 PM ET
The report was ordered by an influential US Pentagon advisor but was covered up by "US defense chiefs" for four months, until it was "obtained" by the British weekly The Observer.
The leak promises to draw angry attention to US environmental and military policies, following Washington's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol (news - web sites) on climate change and President George W. Bush (news - web sites)'s skepticism about global warning -- a stance that has stunned scientists worldwide.
The Pentagon report, commissioned by Andrew Marshall, predicts that "abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies," The Observer reported.
The report, quoted in the paper, concluded: "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.... Once again, warfare would define human life."
Its authors -- Peter Schwartz, a CIA (news - web sites) consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of Global Business Network based in California -- said climate change should be considered "immediately" as a top political and military issue.
It "should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern", they were quoted as saying.
Some examples given of probable scenarios in the dramatic report include:
-- Britain will have winters similar to those in current-day Siberia as European temperatures drop off radically by 2020.
-- by 2007 violent storms will make large parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable and lead to a breach in the acqueduct system in California that supplies all water to densely populated southern California
-- Europe and the United States become "virtual fortresses" trying to keep out millions of migrants whose homelands have been wiped out by rising sea levels or made unfarmable by drought.
-- "catastrophic" shortages of potable water and energy will lead to widespread war by 2020.
Randall, one of the authors, called his findings "depressing stuff" and warned that it might even be too late to prevent future disasters.
"We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years," he told the paper.
http://story.news.ya...nt_040222221313
Sun Feb 22, 5:13 PM ET
The report was ordered by an influential US Pentagon advisor but was covered up by "US defense chiefs" for four months, until it was "obtained" by the British weekly The Observer.
The leak promises to draw angry attention to US environmental and military policies, following Washington's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol (news - web sites) on climate change and President George W. Bush (news - web sites)'s skepticism about global warning -- a stance that has stunned scientists worldwide.
The Pentagon report, commissioned by Andrew Marshall, predicts that "abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies," The Observer reported.
The report, quoted in the paper, concluded: "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.... Once again, warfare would define human life."
Its authors -- Peter Schwartz, a CIA (news - web sites) consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of Global Business Network based in California -- said climate change should be considered "immediately" as a top political and military issue.
It "should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern", they were quoted as saying.
Some examples given of probable scenarios in the dramatic report include:
-- Britain will have winters similar to those in current-day Siberia as European temperatures drop off radically by 2020.
-- by 2007 violent storms will make large parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable and lead to a breach in the acqueduct system in California that supplies all water to densely populated southern California
-- Europe and the United States become "virtual fortresses" trying to keep out millions of migrants whose homelands have been wiped out by rising sea levels or made unfarmable by drought.
-- "catastrophic" shortages of potable water and energy will lead to widespread war by 2020.
Randall, one of the authors, called his findings "depressing stuff" and warned that it might even be too late to prevent future disasters.
"We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years," he told the paper.
http://story.news.ya...nt_040222221313
Caolan posted this on the Lance & Eskimo Message Board. I figured I'd give it a whirl here.
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