PRESSSURE ON THE USA BORDER
Military strategists have briefed USA and the United Kingdom of the
consequences of imploding climate change that could result in
worldwide famines, floods and conflicts over resources.
Military analyst Dr Gwynne Dyer, author of the book Climate Wars, said
there was a sense of suppressed panic from scientists and military
leaders.
Having spent the past year doing high-speed research on climate
change, Dr Dyer has spoken to some of the most senior advisors to
world governments.
Even the least alarmist scenario for the next couple of decades
involves enormous pressures on the US border, contends Dr Dyer.
"That border's going to be militarized. I think there's almost no
question about it because the alternative is an inundation of the
United States by what will be, effectively, climate refugees," he
said.
"They're scared, they're really frightened. Things are moving far
faster than their models predicted. You may have the Arctic Ocean free
of ice entirely in five years' time, in the late summer. Nobody
thought that would happen until about the 2040s - even a couple of
years ago.
"If you're talking about 1 degree, 2 degrees hotter - not runaway
stuff - but what we're almost certainly committed to over the next 30
or 40 years, there will be countries that get away relatively cost
free in that scenario, particularly countries in the higher
latitudes."
Countries closer to the equator in the relatively arid zone were
likely to experience serious droughts, claimed Dr Dyer, who has served
in three navies and held academic posts at the Royal Military College
at Sandhurst and at Oxford.
African, northern Mediterranean, Spain, Italy, Greece, the Balkans and
Turkey could be expected to suffer huge losses in their ability to
support their populations, he said.
Dr Dyer contends that even the most hopeful scenarios about the impact
of climate change have hundreds of millions of people dying of
starvation, mass displacement of people and conflict between countries
competing for basic resources like water.
Governments will be playing climate change catch-up in the next 30
years. And, according to Dr Dyer, if the world does not decarbonise by
2050 "you don't want to be there."
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