Published June 5, 2009
by dbazely
I have recently been attending loads of conferences and workshops at which climate change is on the agenda. Most of them were permeated by a complete lack of any sense of urgency about what climate change will mean for North Americans in the next 20 years. So, I found Gwynne Dyer's gloom and doom in his talk on Climate Wars, sponsored by WWF, and delivered in conjunction with the 2030 North conference in Ottawa this week, to be very refreshing. In his presentation on the state-centred security dimensions of climate change, three main points stuck with me:
1. military generals in the USA are pondering how to deal with forthcoming events such as Florida disappearing when the ice caps melt. This contrasts with what I found when I flew into Ft. Lauderdale for a 2003 conference on invasive plants. I made a point of asking about 10 staff at my hotel whether they were at all worried about the sea level rises that would inevitably accompany the melting ice caps: I should note that I have teaching research into global warming in my ecology courses since 1990. Without exception, the staff all looked at me as if I had just grown 2 heads! How times change - at least in some parts of North American society.
2. a retired US General that he interviewed, said that he viewed the potential for nuclear attack during the Cold War as a "low probability, high consequence event" whereas Climate Change (warming) is a "high probability, high consequence event".
3. never mind about the Arctic, northern nations should worry about the nations to the south, where a 2 degree temperature rise (we are now hearing about a 4 degree temperature rise scenario), will mean that crop plants can't grow and survive. A government that can't feed it's population is unlikely to be stable.
Hmm - the lights in the hotel ballroom where the talk took place were blazing, and I couldn't tell if there were low energy light bulbs - I hoped so.
Dawn R. Bazely
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