open Democracy News Analysis - Climate security: the new determinism, Mike Hulme - Comments

alunanderson on "Climate security: the new determinism"

alunanderson — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 10:06:43 +0000

Having recently attended a briefing in Washington DC given by senior US military figures about future threats, climate change very much among them, and new strategies and alliances needed to meet them, let me see if I can add to Hulme’s argument as well as criticising it. Much of what Hulme says is aimed at the “naïve” and the “mischievous” which sounds suspiciously like a group of straw men; certainly the US military strategists I listened to have long passed beyond a view that is “crudely deterministic, detached from the complexities of our world” regarding climate change. I don’t buy two important parts of Hulme’s argument. First, I don’t agree that the world is growing more peaceful in some inevitable trend so it is wrong to talk up future military threats. In fact the most recent study, published just last week from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program at the Uppsala University Department of Peace and Conflict Research, shows that the trend towards a more peaceful world appears to have ended. There was indeed a decline in the number of conflicts up until 2002, as Hulme contends, but it has not continued. Second, I don’t agree with his view that climate change isn’t a very important factor in triggering conflict. The reports from Darfur that Hulme mentions, but dismisses without providing any reason, do provide convincing evidence that deteriorating agricultural conditions related to climate change have helped trigger conflict. To deny that shortage of resources which that we can reasonably predict will happen as a result of climate change will not a cause of conflict is foolish. To argue that it is the only cause of conflict in some deterministic way is certainly wrong too but that is a view that can only be attributed to straw men. Nevertheless I very strongly agree that we should be worried about the “militarization” of climate change. The world cannot make progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions without US leadership. But within the US there are a number of forces that might divert efforts in another direction. Many in the US who back energy efficiency programs do so less because they care about climate change but because in the post 9/11 world they regard “energy security” as the overriding issue and want to be free from dependence on overseas energy sources. The US military, as I discovered at the briefing, is looking ahead to the new conflicts that might emerge as a result of climate change, with Darfur being seen as the first of the new class of climate wars, and is planning the military means and strategic partners as well as the new equipment it will need to ensure that these conflicts do not impact the US or the world trading system. That of course is what the military is paid to do and their thinking is anything but naïve. But add together the desire for “energy security” and “military preparedness” for climate conflicts and you end up with some troubling temptations for a new US leader. A future US leader might just decide that America will continue to put economic growth before tackling climate change: that is, its focus should be on making sure that the nation can adapt to climate change (well within America’s potential), and planning security of energy supply and military response to conflicts that affect the global trading system. Leadership in tackling greenhouse gas emissions would never appear. The language of “security” does provide some frightening alternatives to the preventative action of tackling greenhouse gas emissions. The future depends very much on who wins the US presidential race and whether they’ll be the kind of person the world needs. At the beginning of 2008 there were eight Democrats and seven Republicans pursuing the presidency. Six of the eight Democrats and two of the seven Republicans support “cap and trade” schemes and vigorous reductions in US greenhouse gas emissions, although none have provided detailed plans of how this is to be achieved. Of the remainder there is much stronger emphasis on “energy independence” and free market solutions.

jamesg17 on "Climate security: the new determinism"

jamesg17 — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 20:11:22 +0000

Good article. You've noticed the connection with the race to invade Iraq. There are indeed astonishing similarities. This pretense about enemies at the gates was all well observed by George Orwell in "1984". It's not just the security issue, as Lita observed there are in fact many human factors involved in poverty increase, land abuse and pollution and they can even lead to climate catastrophes eg. droughts from inappropriate farming, floods made worse by tree-cover depletion, coral destruction from trawling, but global warming is being used as a catch-all. This means that the real problems, which are here and now, not in 2050, are ignored by the media. I really wish we could focus on the real problem, which is the coming energy crisis. I'm sure this was the original intent of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth - to push for clean, renewable energy sources - so they latched onto CO2-based climate change as a means to force change from fossil fuel consumption. Now however, the law of unintended consequences has struck and we have everyone pushing their own agenda. Need research funds? - link your studies to global warming catastrophe. In the nuclear power game? - tell them it's CO2 free. In the oil business? - push hydrogen power (made of course by fossil fuels). Trying to sell a car? - call it economical (true or not) and charge more. Need new trading scams? - try selling air and call it carbon credits. Now it's security issues - so we can sell arms. How dumb do they think we are?

david hayes on "Climate security: the new determinism"

david hayes — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 20:59:00 +0000

http://www.opendemocracy.net/blog/the_right_and_wrong_stuff

outsider63 on "Climate security: the new determinism"

outsider63 — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 14:00:24 +0000

Mick Hulme belongs to the Frank Füredi sect, previously known as the Revolutionary Communist Party, then Living Marxism Group, then LM Mag and more recently as a motley crew of media-savvy pseudo-intellectuals behind Spiked Online. With their distinctive style, reminiscent of the Italian Partito Radicale, they court controversy, usually railing against "green fascists" and moral conservatives, but actually act as mercenaries for corporate interests. Recently they organised "What's the greatest innovation?" in association with Pfizer. Mick Hulme excels at handpicking a few verifiable facts and embellishing them with literary devices to turn biased opinions into incontrovertible facts. Just because climate change is not uniform or predictable, does not mean that the undeniable rise in aggregate human consumption has had no effect on the atmosphere, endangering the livelihood of millions of the world's poorest. At fault here is a model of development addicted to growth at all costs whatever the long terms human consequences. For more see: http://www.ghgonline.org/evidence.htm . Denying climate change, just because you believe any limits on the rapid growth of human consumptions infringes someone's theoretical right, is as rational as denying it's raining outdoors just because you don't want to play football without getting muddy. The real question is what are we going to do about it or rather how can we tackle climate change with minimal loss of human life?

http://taghioff.info/dant/ on "Climate security: the new determinism"

http://taghioff.info/dant/ — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 09:47:06 +0000

What Lita is commenting on above is what Gandhi might have called "the violence of poverty." Now it is true that this may not lead to open conflict, but the question is, will climate change make the violence of poverty yet worse? If so, is that not enough of a risk in itself? Perhaps the problem with the security agenda is that it assumes people will only respond to threats to themselves, and thus are happy to let others die. So are we facing a security crisis or a crisis of conscience? And where is the evidence that we need take neither seriously?

Litadavidson on "Climate security: the new determinism"

Litadavidson — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 05:18:07 +0000

I have a few short comments on the above arguments on climate change and conflict. I believe what is missing in many studies on conflict is what exactly is it? I would never be so naive as to claim to have an overall theory on it, as it is a much more complex issue than what is proposed by the U.N. and academics. I have worked on the Thai Burma border for about 10 years reporting on issues of conflict there. The Burmese people have been suffering under low intensity conflict for over 50 years and the problem from what I have seen and read about is a complete lack of social and political rights of the people, there is no profound climate change happening there as of yet, but land and resources connected to social, cultural and poltical rights are denied to those who are unable to exercise them, they have no rights to law and order and all the other rights we enjoy in the west, this I believe leads to conflict. The Burman dictatorship is bent on complete control of all land and resources, no one can own property, no one is free anymore to farm their land, as they are being pushed off once productive land by the military who want to control everything. Burma was once a very productive country in terms of rice agriculture, the land is rich in resources and the population relied on subistence agriculture for centuries, but mismanagement by successsive military regimes, and a closed mind to social, political, and economic rights since 1948 by a illegal government have denied farmers all over the country to grow their own food. There, as in Darfur, one could argue that land and resources, not climate change, are at the core of the problem, the Burmans have been migrating southwards from the central plains for over a thousand years displacing farmers who grow rice paddy, as the central plains is a inhospitable climate for agriculture where the Burman live. I am not saying that the dry zone forced the Burmans to engage in war, perhaps this is a small factor, but not the overall one. The Karen and Mon that live in the agricuture areas and other ethnic groups sometimes clash in which people are killed over arguments concerning land and its use, but still even then, it's small scale fighting, these people face intense poverty from expressing their rights as a free people by the Burman dictatorships who use divide and rule tactics. The Burmese people, including the Burmans themselves, do not have economic rights or any judicial system to bring their complaints to for recourse. These people are desperate and this may lead to conflict but even then, most Burmese are peaceful and would not even have the means to wage a major war of any kind. Conflict that does occur however; occurs because they are defending themselves from the rampages of the Burmese military in their areas bent on total control. They are just plain bullies as far as I am concerned. But the people face intense insecurity as they dont know whether their land will be taken away at any moment by the miltiary. More and more people are pushed off their land by the military each day displacing thousands, even those who have land, are very poor and their government does not allow aid into the country due to a number of political reasons, but mostly because they are xenophobic and not open to suggestions overall. The people are not allowed to participant in their development of their country at all, they have no say. They say that freedom and development go hand in hand, if one is able to exercise their rights, to take control of their lives, then propersity follows, that's common sense. The junta takes all the fees and profits it gets from Burma's natural resources and enriches and arms itself. Most of its pofits goes directly to the generals in charge, Burma spends the most in the region on its military expenditure. Most of the country, in all ethnic rural areas have no electricity or any other modern equipment, no telephones, no computers, nothing but their hands and water buffalos. But some farmers are saying that the weather has become irratic, the rains are unpredictable, and problems with erosion and deforestation as the forests are being ripped down due to mismanagement in some areas. At this point, some might say climate change, while others say perhaps this is another cycle, as this has happened in the past, but here climate change is not a factor in the conflict in Burma, lack of rights are. Whatever the reason for the conflict in Burma, these poor people face a desparate situation being so poor, I can't imagine them being forced in a war because of climate change, suffering from malnutriction and having no food to eat, as they would never have the means to wage a war against a government that is supplied with arms by China, India, and others, the problems in this conflict ridden country is a complete lack of freedom to exercise their economic, social and political rights.

richarddnorth on "Climate security: the new determinism"

richarddnorth — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 19:16:55 +0000

Richard D North www.richarddnorth.com It's great to have such a sensible round-up of the non-evidence connecting climate change with violence. And it's excellent to have a proper pathology of the longing to make everything about climate change. If climate change brings chaos and misery to some parts of the world, that may trigger violence. But we need to be reminded that it doesn't seem to be happening yet and in any case there are plenty of other causes of people being variously desiccated and indundated. It all reinforces one's scepticism about Al Gore's share in the Nobel Peace Prize. (I hope you won't mind my pointing you at my eponymous site on YouTube where there's an Al Jazeera TV interview between RDN and Greenpeace on this theme.)

http://taghioff.info/dant/ on "Climate security: the new determinism"

http://taghioff.info/dant/ — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 17:42:07 +0000

When I read this I wanted to find out who you were, and so I went to your site and saw that you are one of the founders of the Tyndall center. I take this to mean that you are pretty strong on the science sides of this question. But as a social scientist who looks at these issues, I have to say there are some gaping holes in your arguments. Let me take them organized by the assumption that they are based on. Determinism: A description of a risk cannot be said to be deterministic. It is a risk, a possibility, not a pre-determined outcome. You cite people describing risks as examples of a new determinism. This is a basic error. Social complexity and response: You then argue against this straw man you have set up by saying that this ignores social responses, governance etc... But surely people are raising these risks as issues in order that we look at social responses to lessen the risk. Yes social responses are complex, but they are also political and driven by discourse. Thus these reports are not really describing the social, they are making performative interventions aimed at getting a social response. You cannot really thus argue that they are being reductive of social complexity. History of the discourse: Every single social discussion must necessarily draw on previous discussion. It is a human limitation that we cannot invent whole new vocabularies and whole new organizational schemes for our thoughts all at once, out of the blue. So your argument applies to any set of ideas. Since ideas are very context bound, the fact that these ideas did not fit with past contexts does not discredit them now. Climate change is a fairly unprecedented circumstance in human history. I am sure you would not argue that you can fully predict the future of our current climate based on paleo-climate records, yet you seem to infer that the history of ideas is predictive of the outcomes of their usage. You have fallen into one of the basic errors of discourse analysis, which is to see discourse as deterministic, ironic given your background and the general shape of your argument here. The inevitable link between militarization and these ideas: This is an implied argument, that goes along with your sense of discursive determinacy. You yourself argue that there are many ways to respond to the predicament of what climate change may well do to food supply. One of them is to argue that this dwarfs current military threats, so why not cut military budgets hugely and divert the money into mitigation and adaptation? We face a common threat, so why spend money on tearing each other apart, when we could opt to face the issue together? This is an ongoing principle in poiltical science, the emphasis or creation of threats to unite people. And yes, this is a hegemonising move. But no, it does not necessarily lead to militarisation. And with hegemony, honesty makes a difference - it is not easy to establish truth claims, but there is a distinction to be made between BS and honest attempts at leadership. This is where evidence helps a bit, hopefully narrowing down the bandwidth of the BS. You cite no physical evidence: This is surprising, you are clearly an expert in this area. Why no physical evidence cited in this article? Based on the evidence I have seen there is an issue with food security. The IPCC report says that food supply will most likely increase globally until 3 degrees of warming. But it also says extreme weather events are not included in this estimate of risk, and that food supply is likely to decline in the tropics past 1 to 1.5 degrees. Is this evidence-base wrong? The social implications: Farmers fear unpredictable weather, particularly poor rainfed farmers. Your colleagues at the excellent UEA development studies department can tell you all about how farmers strategise to try and manage such risks, because it is what their survival depends upon. So extreme weather events are very significant for poor farmers. They are also serious for farmers in Europe: The 2003 heatwave made a very significant dent on European crop yields for that year. But the problem is worse still. What starves people is not lack of food, but lack of the means to obtain food. Many famines are characterized by food being transported out of the famine areas because the local markets have collapsed. This is because incomes have collapsed in the area. Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze wrote a lot about this, in works which have become classics in development studies. Needless to say a collapse in agricultural productivity will be a problem even if there is spare food in the temperate zones. And this is the IPCC's prediction without extreme weather events taken into account. So tell me Mike, is there a strong evidence base that lets you say "the risks of starvation due to climate change really are minimal" or do we need to take this risk into account, and apply the precautionary principle to avoid letting people starve? And also Mike, are you calling for a cut in Military budgets to be diverted towards fighting climate change? Does the book you are selling have some proposals for avoiding miltarisation and preserving democracy? Because I agree, there is a danger of militarisation and a loss of democracy, but I see the main danger stemming from us sticking our heads in the sand about the risks to food security climate change presents.

Climate security: the new determinism, Mike Hulme

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 09:42:54 +0000

There is a new form of climatic determinism on the rise and the allure of this thinking for the naïve or for the mischievous is dangerous. It finds its expression in some of the balder claims made about the future impacts of climate change: 180 million people in Africa to die from hunger; 40% of known species to be wiped out; 20% of global GDP to be lost. But such determinism is perhaps at its most insidious when found in the new discourse about climate (in)security. Here are only five recent examples, among an increasing number:

* a report on Sudan by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) which concludes that the "impacts [of climate change] are closely linked to conflict in [Northern Darfur]" (see "Sudan Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment", UNEP / Post-Conflict and Disaster Management Branch, June 2007)

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