OMNI
CONVERGENCE OF CATASTROPHES WARS AND WARMING,
ANTHOLOGY #1
Compiled by Dick Bennett, for a Culture of Peace,
Justice, and Ecology
March 8, 2024
What’s at
Stake: These
essays reveal how rapidly and significantly awareness has grown world-wide of
the full scope of increasing, intensifying, interrelated
problems. But not so much in the US. ― Thomas
Hardy
RESISTING DOOM of CONVERGING CATASTROPHES
CLIMATE CHANGE EMERGENCY THE SCIENTIFIC
CONSENSUS NOW
And our stance should be?? 4-15-23
Dante in “The Inferno” places fence-sitters (one translation) just
outside Hell, stung eternally by swarming wasps. Another translation renders the word opportunists.
If nuclear weapons and
global warming each alone threatens our civilization and together seem sure to
end civilized life and most species, shouldn’t we be defiantly, inevitably
abrasively alert, resisting? Numerous
commentators tell us that only a mass movement can reverse our leadership
failure. Who will arrest the leaders and
awaken the majority? Dante condemned to
Hell the adiaphorus and all who claim moral neutrality, are indifferent to emergencies,
would euphemize language. And perhaps he
would condemn today the hypocrites and doublespeakers who advocate violence and
war to control the world in the name of peace and justice. Imposters, phonies, flimflammers,
conmen-women for justice and peace. The
Mealy-Mouthed Sly Party.
In such a world, in such a world, what the peace movement must do is
clear. Now, before the nuclear and
warming dangers end us, we not only must not avoid direct language and action
but must embrace openness and truth, must name the war and warming mongers,
before we are engulfed by their bombs, radioactivity, scorching temperatures,
famines, floods, and drowning cities.
Yet nonviolently. Violence, the
violent have chosen, are choosing to destroy civilization and species. Nuclear war will be necessary to rid the
planet of vermin Putin, etc..
But
remember MLK Jr. and all the models of nonviolent
action. Not strong language and action have impeded
the peace and justice movement, but effete, flaccid, safe language and public
policy . Right here in Fayetteville,
Arkansas, for example. Remember the
countless outrages and crimes committed by the Bush II administration (none
prosecuted). And then remember our chief
university giving Condoleeza Rice (a chief architect of the Iraq War) $170,000
to give one speech here, on world peace! and no copies available to assist
response until one year later, and then only under pressure!! This model charlatan and conwoman for peace
and justice was celebrated as a model by a complicit university. We must reverse both models and quickly.
Our
scientists tell us (the IPCC six Assessments) we have little time left unless
we get off the fence, or the wasps of a million varieties—overpopulation, a
thousand Hiroshimas, ceaseless floods and droughts, hurricanes and forest
fires, rising seas--will destroy the entire species that caused the
emergency. –Dick Bennett
CONVERGENCE OF WAR AND WARMING
By Dick Bennett 7-14-22 https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/07/convergence-of-war-and-warming-and-7-14.html
As climate changes stress our human institutions, we are likely to face
deadly conflicts over critical resources.
Klare.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/nuclear-defense-climate-change/
The threats
of wars and warming, their causes and consequences, are well studied, but
facing and reversing those threats are, to say the least, nascent
sciences. We know well also the success
of organizing denial of or distracting people from the harms of both. Another reason might be that they are studied
piecemeal, when they are occurring simultaneously. And this factor has been little
studied. The result is constant
underestimating of both impact and consequences. A war alone is incalculably horrendous. A war during increasingly extreme weather is
incalculably worse. And then arrives a
succession of pandemics of zoonotic diseases!
And world population is increasing (and consumption in the northern
affluence)!! It’s no wonder populations,
addicted to distractions, are passive and acquiescent, at least preceding the
heat, or droughts, or fires, or floods, or hurricanes.
Most people have
had difficulty grasping the realities of nuclear
war or the realities of climate change. How much more difficult is anticipating
their convergence, and the virtual impossibility of understanding, when
pandemics and population (number and consumption) are added.
So our best
scientists and social scientists must prepare for that multiple, converging
future. Following in the footsteps of the United Nations’ IPCC scientists, they
will not begin from scratch. The
Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has functioned magnificently
(though always underestimating severities) since its founding over 30 years
ago. A new, realistic, matured focus on
convergence requires little change in title or acronym: The Intergovernmental Panel on Planet Earth Convergences (IPPEC)?
Do we have
time? It’s time we convicted fossil
fuels corporations for forty years of lying about their harms; it’s time we made
public the neoliberal promoters of war; it’s time we exposed fully the failure
of neoliberalism to act meaningfully against wars and warming (and the dismantling
of democracy and pandemics) for a full convergence reality, and to replace the
old system by a new that will preserve
us.
Dick Bennett, 7-14-22
CONTENTS WARS AND WARMING
CONVERGENCE
WAR, NUCLEAR WAR
SCOTT RITTER. “THE SILENT EULOGY”
Scott Ritter. “The Silent Eulogy.”
Bradley and Dudziak. Making the
Forever War.
Gilroy. Mass Shooters, US Militarist Culture, and the
Mass Media
Kimberly. Mass Shootings and State
Violence.
Kuzmarov. The Ukraine War.
Tom Dispatch. Ukraine War on a War Planet.
CLIMATE CHANGE
Bendell and Read. Deep Adaptation.
Jaynes. “Climate and Biodiversity.
CONVERGENCE
Bromwich. “Living on a War Planet.”
Garateix. “War & Climate Change.”
McCarthy. “War Impacts Climate Change and Environment.”
Goodman. War and Climate Crisis.
Mach. Climate and Armed Conflict.
Mouawad. “Ecocide.”
Berhe. Climate Change and War.
Braun. Impact of War on Climate.
Sengupta. Climate Change Worsening War.
Hendrix. Climate Change and Conflict.
Henderson. Climate Change, Violence, and Cruelty.
PENTAGON
Crist. Military Carbon Bootprint.
Crawford. (Book).
Pentagon, Climate Change, and War.
Ghosal and Arasu. War in Ukraine and Asian Energy Future.
Garriga and Biondo. Pentagon and Climate Change.
Gerson. Prevent Wars and Warming.
REFUGEES
Abel. Climate, Wars and Refugees.
Nahvi. Climate, War, Refugees.
Orellana. War, Climate Change, Migration. USA.
Schuller. Humanity’s Last Stand.
TEXTS
NUCLEAR
WAR
|
SCOTT RITTER. “The Silent Eulogy.” MAR 2, 2024. |
The flight test of a Russian Yars ICBM,
February 29, 2024
I was planning on publishing Part 2 of my
article on Alexei Navalny.
However, today Alexei Navalny’s body is being
laid to rest in a funeral service in Moscow attended by a few thousand
well-wishers and supporters.
My wife has always cautioned me not to speak
ill of the dead.
Especially on the day their mortal remains are
being returned to the earth.
Instead, I am compelled to write about
something else.
It is the funeral that will never be held.
The obituary that will never be read.
The eulogy that will never be spoken.
Who’s passing do I lament?
My own.
My family.
My friends.
My fellow Americans.
Humanity.
The mechanism of our deaths will only too late
be revealed, most likely in a blinding flash of light that will bring us to our
knees, awaiting the shockwave that proceeds the unbearable heat that will
transform our flesh and bones, instantaneously, to ash.
We cannot claim that we were not forewarned of
our imminent demise—ever since Robert Oppenheimer proclaimed himself to be
“Death, the destroyer of worlds,” we have known that we possessed the mechanism
of our own destruction, and yet we have done nothing to remove this danger from
our lives.
|
|
Robert Oppenheimer
Instead, we continued to perfect this most
horrible of weapons, devising even more deadly warheads, and more efficient
delivery systems upon which to deliver them to our enemies, all the while
knowing that any large-scale use of these weapons would signal our own passing.
For an all-too-brief moment, the insanity of
the course we had set became apparent, and we undertook to return the genie to
the bottle, to reverse course, to save ourselves and our fellow human beings.
Scott Ritter will discuss this article and
answer audience questions on Ep. 141 of Ask the Inspector.
But hubris intervened, and when the source of
our nuclear angst—the Soviet Union—faded into the pages of history, we sought
to leverage our new-found status as uncontested nuclear-armed global hegemon by
proclaiming an end to history, promoting ourselves and our political system,
through an intellectual exercise that would have made Darwin proud, into the
highest expression of human development.
But in a flash this moment was gone,
evaporated along with the edifices of our capitalistic existence as remote
corners of the globe pushed back against our arrogant self-coronation. We
sought to conquer a world which no longer brooked being conquered, to dominate
people who refused to bend the knee, all along shielding ourselves from the
reality of our atrophied power by hiding behind an aging nuclear arsenal we
fooled ourselves into believing was supreme.
In our arrogance we divorced ourselves from
the processes of arms control we once used to secure our survival. We withdrew
from the anti-ballistic missile treaty which breathed life into the deterrence
value of mutually assured destruction, believing that the only destruction
which should be assured was that of our enemies, real and imagined.
|
|
SPRINT anti-ballistic missile base
We withdrew from the intermediate nuclear
forces treaty, forgetting that the reason we entered it was to remove one of
the most destabilizing weapons in Europe in an effort to secure peace. Instead,
we sought to reintroduce these destabilizing weapons, secure in our mistaken
belief that our enemies would not be able to match our military prowess.
And we negotiated in bad faith a series of
strategic arms reduction treaties, seeking strategic advantage when we should
have been seeking strategic stability.
The target of our arrogance, Russia and its
leader, Vladimir Putin, tried in vain to dissuade us from the path we were
taking. In 2007, speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Putin cautioned
that Americas had “overstepped its national borders in every way. This is
visible in the economic, political, cultural, and educational policies it
imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?”
As a result, Putin warned, “no one feels safe.
I want to emphasize this—no one feels safe! Because no one can feel that
international law is like a stone wall that will protect them. Of course, such
a policy stimulates an arms race.”
Vladimir Putin addresses the Munich Security
Conference, February 2007 (photo deleted)
We ignored him.
Instead, we convinced our European partners of
the illusive dangers of an “expansive” Russia, all the while minimizing the
real dangers of a Russian nuclear arsenal on the cusp of revival—all it needed
was a push in the right direction, one we were only too happy to provide by
ignoring Russian concerns about missile defense.
In 2018, the nuclear chickens came home to
roost. Citing our disregard for the niceties of arms control, Vladimir Putin
announced that Russia was in the process of developing a new generation of
nuclear weapons capable of overcoming any defense the United States was
preparing to deploy. “You didn’t listen to our country then,” Putin said,
referring to his past warnings about the dangers of an arms race. “Listen to us
now.”
We did not.
Instead, we worked our European allies into a
frenzy, stoking the fires of conflict with exaggerations of both the threat
posed by Russia, and Europe’s ability—through NATO—to defeat this
threat—especially if the vehicle for bringing Russia to its knees was a proxy
conflict in Ukraine.
Our European partners played their part
well—too well. Having been convinced that Russia posed an existential threat to
the survival of Europe, and equally convinced of the security provided by the
American nuclear umbrella, Europe fell victim to its own artificially
constructed narrative, believing that a Russian victory in Ukraine really did
threaten the very survival of Europe. They chose to minimize the dangers posed
by Russia’s nuclear arsenal, lulled into a false sense of security by America’s
own dismissal of the capabilities Russia claimed to possess, and opted to chart
a path toward confrontation with Russia on Ukrainian soil, even though Russia
had said this was a red line which, once crossed, would inevitably lead to a
nuclear war.
|
|
German Taurus cruise missile
“There has been talk about the possibility of
sending NATO military contingents to Ukraine,” the Russian leader noted in an
address delivered to the Russian parliament this past Thursday. “But we
remember the fate of those who once sent their contingents to our country’s territory.
But now the consequences for possible interventionists will be far more tragic.
They must realize that we also have weapons that can hit targets on their
territory. All this really threatens a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons
and the destruction of civilization. Don’t they get that?”
Apparently, they don’t.
So here is to the American experiment.
Born July 4, 1776.
Died…we’ll never know.
An imperfect union, it strove to be better,
fighting a revolution to free itself from the tyranny of the British crown
while preserving slavery as a constitutionally approved institution. America
fought a bloody Civil War to end the evil of slavery and preserve the Union,
all the while implementing its self-anointed God-given “manifest destiny” which
drove into near extinction the indigenous people who populated the continent we
conquered. We came to the aid of Europe not once, but twice, over the course of
a century, helping defeat the forces of fascism and imperialism, before
becoming fascist-like in our domestic policies that supported our imperialistic
foreign policies.
America, the beautiful.
God shed his grace on thee.
|
|
The Castle Bravo nuclear test of March 1, 1954
This is the eulogy I will never be able to
deliver, because like the rest of you, I am fated to die in a nuclear holocaust
of our own making. We have embarked on a collective journey whose only
destination is death and destruction.
We have ignored, at our own peril, the efforts
of those, at home and abroad, who have tried to get us to take an off-ramp.
I would have liked to have had the epitaph on
my gravestone read, “Here lies a warrior for peace, who dedicated his life to
the cause of making the world a safer place to live.”
Alas, I, like all of you who are reading this,
am doomed to die in a war that could have been avoided if we just tried a
little bit harder to avoid it.
The shame is that, at that moment when the
inevitability of our passing hits home, in the millisecond that will follow the
flash of light and the comprehension of what it signifies, all of us will think
“If I had just…”
But it will be too late because we did not.
We allowed the military industrial complex
that President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about to become manifest.
We remained indifferent to the reality of its
pervasiveness, even as our own government informed us that the reason for
pursuing our suicidal path of destruction with Russia in Ukraine was so that
our defense industry could profit.
But there is no profit in death.
Rest in peace, America.
And may God damn us all to hell for destroying
that which he had bequeathed us.
Making
the Forever War: Marilyn B. Young on the Culture and Politics of American
Militarism. Edited by Mark Philip Bradley and Mary L. Dudziak University of Massachusetts Press, 2021. Culture and Politics in the Cold War
and Beyond Series. 232
Pages
The late historian Marilyn
B. Young, a preeminent voice on the
history of U.S. military conflict, spent her career reassessing the nature
of American global power, its influence on domestic culture and politics, and
the consequences felt by those on the receiving end of U.S. military force. At
the center of her inquiries was a seeming paradox: How can the United States stay continually at war, yet Americans pay so
little attention to this militarism?
Making the Forever War brings Young's articles and essays on
American war together for the first time, including never before published
works. Moving from the first years of the Cold War to Korea, Vietnam, and more
recent “forever" wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Young reveals the ways in
which war became ever-present, yet more covert and abstract, particularly as
aerial bombings and faceless drone strikes have attained greater strategic
value. For Young, U.S. empire persisted because of, not despite, the
inattention of most Americans. The collection concludes with an afterword by
prominent military historian Andrew Bacevich.
Mass
Shootings from Culture of War
“Thirty Six Percent of
Mass Shooters Were Trained by the U.S. Military, But Few Americans Know This
Because the Media Never Report It” By Jack Gilroy on Aug 30, 2022 10:27 am.
Media pundits and politicians blame lax gun laws, social
isolation and mental illness for mass shootings, but ignore the advent of a
fascist culture that venerates the U.S. military.
In the wake of a barrage of mass shootings, the media have
offered a variety of explanations centering predominantly on the social
isolation and mental illness of shooters and their easy access to
military-style weaponry due to lax gun regulations.
These factors are significant but almost all media pundits avoid
the gorilla sitting in the psyche of the American mind—that of the huge
military budget and culture of military veneration, which is reminiscent of
fascist cultures.
In a July 8 column entitled “Why Shooters Do the
Evil They Do,” New York
Times columnist David Brooks characteristically cites mental illness,
loneliness and the need for recognition and power as lying at the root of
recent mass shootings.
What is missing is any discussion of American-style militarism,
something Brooks has whitewashed throughout his writing career.
According to David Swanson, Director of World Beyond
War, 36% of mass shooters
have been trained by the U.S. military—when only one percent of Americans serve in the military.
Many of the mass shooters also have used military-style weapons
and have worn military-style clothing.
Jillian Peterson and
James Densley recently published a
detailed study of mass shooters sponsored by the National Institute of
Justice entitled The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic, which has been widely cited by the media.
The book casts light on many dark corners of American life but
characteristically ignores among the darkest—the military-industrial
complex. […]
This essay appeared first
in CovertAction Magazine.
Margaret Kimberley.
“Mass Shootings, Empire, and Racist, Copaganda Dog Whistles.”
Mronline.org (6-3-22).
Two mass shootings produced not only anger and grief
but lies and pretense that violence here is somehow mysterious. Political
leaders advocate state violence all the time, calling for new victims to be
created here and around the world.
Jeremy
Kuzmarov. “If the U.S.
can’t boss the World, it will spitefully destroy it.” CovertAction Magazine (April 13, 2023) (more by CovertAction Magazine). WarAmericas, United StatesNewswireJohn Bellamy Foster, New Cold War. Mronline.org (4-16-23).
In May 2022, Henry
Kissinger gave a remarkable speech at the World Economic Forum meeting in
Davos, Switzerland, where he urged the Biden administration to seek a peace
agreement in Ukraine that satisfies the Russians because “pursuing the war
beyond this point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine but a new war
against Russia itself.”
Unable to accept the reality of a growing
multipolar world order, U.S. elites are willing to risk nuclear war.
TomDispatch. August
29, 2023.
[If you're in a giving
mood, do visit our donation page and think about
offering us a (brief) donation. Tom]
The old anti-Vietnam War song that began,
"War, what Is It good for? Absolutely nothing!" couldn't be more on
the mark these days. Just imagine that you live on a planet where the truest
"war" may be the one we're waging against nature -- and that nature
is increasingly waging on us. That "war" could, in the end,
simply broil us all.
This summer, the war in Ukraine has
finally started to take a backseat to endless headlines about heat waves, fires, floods, and record extreme weather of more or less every
sort. As we broil and sweat, as communities are burned down or flooded out, who even notices the latest casualty figures
from that other war? Yes, the New York Times recently reported that, based on the
estimates of American officials, an almost unimaginable 500,000 Ukrainians and Russians
have already been killed or wounded in that conflict which, despite
recent lame peace efforts, shows not the faintest
sign of resolving itself any time soon.
In fact, escalation continues to be the rule of
the... well, under the circumstances, let's not say "game."
Russian bombardments of Ukrainian ports and grain storage facilities have worsened
recently, while the Ukrainians have begun using -- god save us all -- American cluster
bombs in quantity on the front lines of the war. (The Russians had already been
doing so.) And the latest news is that the Biden administration has once again
(as with those cluster munitions and before them Abrams tanks, among other
weapons systems) decided to up the ante on the Ukrainian side by allowing Denmark and the Netherlands to provide
that country with F-16 fighter planes. And so it seems to go... and go and go
and go some more.
As TomDispatch regular David
Bromwich suggests all too vividly today, we now find ourselves on a war
planet -- and whether that war is among humans or with nature, it only
seems to be escalating by the month. Tom
CLIMATE CATASTROPHE,
EMERGENCY, CHAOS
Deep
Adaptation: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos.
Jem
Bendell and Rupert
Read, Editors. Polity P, 2021.
Publisher’s description:
‘Deep adaptation’ refers to the personal and collective
changes that might help us to prepare for – and live with – a
climate-influenced breakdown or collapse of our societies. It is a framework
for responding to the terrifying realization of increasing disruption by
committing ourselves to reducing suffering while saving more of society and the
natural world. This is the first book to show how professionals across
different sectors are beginning to incorporate the acceptance of likely or
unfolding societal breakdown into their work and lives. They do not assume
that our current economic, social and political systems can be made resilient
in the face of climate change but, instead, they demonstrate the caring and
creative ways that people are responding to the most difficult realization with
which humanity may ever have to come to terms.
Edited by the originator of the concept of deep adaptation,
Jem Bendell, and a leading climate activist and strategist, Rupert Read, this
book is the essential introduction to the concept, practice, and emerging
global movement of Deep Adaptation to climate chaos.
Jem Bendell is
Professor of Sustainability Leadership at the University of Cumbria and the
originator of the Deep Adaptation movement.
Rupert Read is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the
University of East Anglia, a Green Party campaigner and former spokesperson for
Extinction Rebellion.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: what now the limits are breached?
Part I: The Predicament
1. The scientific case of global over-heating and the root of denial
2. Deep Adaptation: a map for navigating climate tragedy,
Jem Bendell
3. The reasons for anticipating collapse, Pablo Servigne, Raphaël Stevens,
Gauthier Chapelle, Daniel Rodary
Part II: Shifts in Being
4. Climate Psychology and its Relevance to Deep Adaptation, Adrian Tait
5. Deeper implications of societal collapse: co-liberation from the ideology of
e-s-c-a-p-e. Jem Bendell
6. Unconscious addictions: mapping common responses to climate change and
potential climate collapse, Rene Suša, Sharon Stein, Vanessa Andreotti,
Tereza ajkova, Dino Siwek, and the Gesturing Towards Decolonial
Collective
7. Facilitating Deep Adaptation - enabling more loving conversations about our
predicament, Katie Carr and Jem Bendell
8. The Great Turning: Reconnecting through Collapse, Sean Kelly and Joanna Macy
Part III: Shifts in Doing
9. Leadership and management in a context of deep adaptation
Jonathan Gosling
10. What Matters Most? Deep Education Conversations in a Climate of
Change and Complexity Charlotte Von
Bulow and Charlotte Simpson 74l.
11. Riding two horses: The future of politics and activism, as we face
potential eco-driven societal collapse
Rupert Read
12. Relocalisation as Deep Adaptaton: Matthew Slater and Skeena Rathor.
Concluding the Beginning of Deep Adaptation: Jem Bendell and Rupert Read.
REVIEWS
“The authors of this book have courage to recognise the
reality of our time and face the uncomfortable facts of climate calamity.
The theme of this book is indeed scary. But it’s full of bright ideas for how
to transmute both fear and difficulty into kind and wise ways of living and
working. The thinkers, academics and activists who have contributed to this
book embody the wisdom to adapt to this unprecedented catastrophe. They also
show the practical ways and means to live and act with the imagination and resilience.
Not everyone would agree to these radical ideas but everyone needs to know
about them. So, I recommend this book to all.”
Satish Kumar, Editor Emeritus Resurgence & Ecologist and Founder,
Schumacher College
“This book is the “red pill” of our times, offering neither certainty nor
confirmation of any story you may be holding about where we are heading in the
face of so many colliding crises. What it does offer is togetherness in
our insecurity and frameworks in our unknowing for coming to terms with and
making sense of these times. I look forward to both “deep adaptation” and
“collapsology” entering mainstream discourse, so that we might then imagine
creating together, as our current paradigm crumbles.”
Gail Bradbrook, co-founder, Extinction Rebellion
“The contributors are unafraid to challenge conventional wisdom on the
climate crisis and go against the grain with a provocative assessment of what
we are now able to achieve and where we should focus our efforts.” Ecologist
“Collapse followed by transformation is a common way that complex systems
evolve. Perhaps collapse of our high consumption, climate-destabilising
society can lead to transformation towards a brighter human future. The
Deep Adaptation framework outlined in this book is a helpful way to seek that
transformation.”
Professor Will Steffen, Australian National University Climate Change Institute
“In this book I am joined by scholars from around the world who seek to be
present to the suffering and difficulties of our time. Please turn toward these
ideas, not away, to find your own path in a turbulent future.” Joanna Macy, author of A Wild Love for the
World
“Deep Adaptation is only the beginning – it is one in which we expand our
thinking and open ourselves to the possibility of a completely new emergent
paradigm, as yet unknown. That fills me with curious hope.” Maddy Harland, Permaculture Magazine
“Lucid, productive, and necessary… Bendell succeeds in distilling a
terrifying future into a series of questions that invite people into
conversation. By doing so, he gives us a language to speak the
unthinkable.” Salon
[I have read this Publisher’s Description several times, each time becoming
less sure Deep Adaptation is the radical analysis it claims for itself. Its apparent argument that we have passed all
crucial climatological tipping points and all will face climate chaos sooner or
later will be radical for most readers.
But its solutions sound like neoliberal individualism. The radical for our capitalist nation
would be an argument for large government able to resist changes of planetary
scope, international collective action; that is, the Marxist explanation of the
global collapse and reorganization into a cooperative society. I look forward to reading the book. No Index so I do not know if Marx is even
mentioned or any Marxist principles, or if the features of minimal
government capitalism are examined. No clues either in the Table of Contents. Deep Adaptation? –Dick]
STRUGGLING TO GRASP THE TRUE MAGNITUDE OF THE EMERGENCY:
CLIMATE AND BIODIVERSITY TOGETHER
“Treat Climate And Biodiversity Crises As
One Global Health Emergency.”
By Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. PopularResisstance.org (10-29-23). A new editorial published in more
than 200 health journals challenges health professionals and world leaders to
look at global biodiversity loss and climate change as “one
indivisible crisis” that must be confronted as a whole. The authors of the
editorial call separating the two emergencies a “dangerous mistake,” and
encourage the World Health Organization to declare a global health emergency.
“The climate crisis and loss of biodiversity both damage human health, and they
are interlinked. That’s why we must consider them together and declare a global
health emergency. -more-
CONVERGENCE
WAR AND CLIMATE CHANGE
DAVID
BROMWICH. “Living on a War Planet: And
Managing Not to Notice.”
David Bromwich, “The Everlasting Alibi.”
A new war, a new alibi. When we think about
our latest war — the one that began with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, just
six months after our Afghan War ended so catastrophically — there is a hidden
benefit. As long as American minds are on Ukraine, we are not thinking about
planetary climate disruption. This technique of distraction obeys the familiar
mechanism that psychologists have called displacement. An
apparently new thought and feeling becomes the substitute for harder thoughts
and feelings you very much want to avoid.
Every news story about Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky’s latest demand for American or European weaponry also
serves another function: the displacement of a story about, say, the Canadian
fires which this summer destroyed a forest wilderness the size of the state
of Alabama and 1,000 of which are still burning
as this article goes to press. Of course, there is always the horrific
possibility that Ukraine could pass from a “contained” to a nuclear war, as out of control as
those Canadian fires. Yet we are regularly assured that the conflict, close to
the heart of Europe, is under careful supervision. The war has a neatly framed
villain (Vladimir Putin) and — thanks to both the U.S. and NATO — a great many
good people containing him. What could possibly go wrong?
A fantasy has taken root among well-meaning
liberals. Ukraine, they believe, is the “good war” people like them have
been searching for since 1945. “This is our Spain,” young enthusiasts have been
heard to say, referring to the Spanish Republican war against fascism. In
Ukraine in the early 2020s, unlike Spain in the late 1930s, the Atlantic democracies
will not falter but will go on “as long as it takes.” Also, the climate cause
will be assisted along the way, since Russia is a large supplier of natural gas
and oil, and the world needs to unhook itself from both.
That theory got tested a year ago, with the
underwater sabotage of Russia’s Nordstream natural gas pipelines in the Baltic
Sea. President Biden, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and Deputy
Secretary of State Victoria Nuland all welcomed that environmental
disaster. In an eventually deleted message the former Polish foreign minister
and war advocate Radislaw Sikorski tweeted thanks to the U.S. for
what he took to be a transparently American operation. The American media,
however, treated the attack as an imponderable mystery, some reports even
suggesting that Russia might have destroyed its own invaluable pipeline
for reasons yet to be fathomed. Then, in a February 2023 article, the
independent investigative reporter Seymour Hersh traced the attack to the U.S., and
later Western reports would come halfway to his conclusion by assigning credit to Ukraine, or a
pro-Ukrainian group. As of late summer, all reporting on the Nordstream
disaster seems to have stopped. What has not stopped is the killing. The
numbers of dead and wounded in the Ukraine war are now estimated at
nearly half a million, with no end in sight.
The Nordstream wreck was
only one attention-getting catastrophe within the greater horror that a war
always is. An act of industrial sabotage on a vast scale, it was also an act of
environmental terrorism, causing the largest methane leak in the history of the
planet. According to a report in Forbes, “The
subsequent increase in greenhouse gases… was equivalent to as much as 32% of
Denmark’s annual emissions.”
The Russian invasion of Ukraine was an illegal
and immoral act, but the adjective that usually follows illegal and immoral is
“unprovoked.” In truth, this war was provoked. A contributing cause,
impossible to ignore, was the eastward extension of NATO, always moving closer
to the western borders of Russia, in the years from 1991 to 2022. That
expansion was gradual but relentless. Consider the look of such a policy to the
country –- no longer Communist and barely a great power — which, in 2013,
American leaders again began to describe as an adversary.
With the end of the Cold War in 1991 (the very
global conflict that gave NATO its reason for being), the eastward projection
of the alliance accelerated dramatically.
Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic, all former members of the Soviet bloc,
were brought into NATO in 1999; and 2004 witnessed an even richer harvest of
former satellites of the USSR: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania,
Slovakia, and Slovenia, all either near to or bordering on Russia. Then came the Bucharest Summit Declaration of
April 2008: Georgia and Ukraine, the NATO heads of state announced, would be
given the opportunity to apply for membership at some future date. If you want
to know why Putin and his advisers might have considered this a security concern
for Russia, look at a map.
Counterfeit Solidarity
The United States has supported Ukraine with
copious donations of weapons, troop-trainers, and logistical and technical
advisers left to work the interoperable targeting equipment
we “share” with that country. Between 2014 and 2022, NATO drilled at least 10,000
Ukrainian troops per year in advanced methods of warfare. In the war itself,
weapons supplies have climbed steadily from Stinger and Javelin missiles
to Abrams tanks (whose
greenhouse-gas environmental footprint is 0.6 miles per gallon of gas, or 300
gallons every eight hours of use), to cluster bombs, and most recently
the promise of F-16s.
All this has put fresh wind in the sails of
the weapons manufacturers of the American military-industrial-congressional
complex. In May 2022, the CEO of Lockheed Martin thanked President Biden personally
for his kindness. F-16s, after all, are big
money-makers. As for the additional fuel that ordinary Ukrainians require, it
is now being sequestered underground by
Ukrainian commodities traders at enormous environmental risk.
Wars and their escalation
— the mass destruction of human life that is almost invariably accompanied by
destruction of the natural world — happen because preparations for war bring
leaders ever closer to the brink. So close, in fact, that it feels natural to
go on. That was certainly the case with Russia, Ukraine, and NATO, and the
escalation that followed. Examples of such escalation are indeed the
rule, not the exception in time of war.
Think of the invention, testing, and strategic
planning that led to the dropping of the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima on
August 6, 1945. In Jon Else’s extraordinary documentary The
Day After Trinity, the physicist Freeman Dyson offered a sober
analysis of the momentum driving the decision to use the bomb:
“Why did the bomb get dropped on people at
Hiroshima? I would say: it’s almost inevitable that it would have happened —
simply because all the bureaucratic apparatus existed by that time to do it.
The air force was ready and waiting. There had been prepared big airfields in
the island of Tinian in the Pacific from which you could operate. The whole
machinery was ready.”
In the same sense, all the apparatus was in
place for the war in Ukraine. Joe Biden, a conventional cold warrior, has
always had a temperament rather like that of President Harry Truman. The Biden
of 2023, like the Truman of 1945, comes across as impulsive, not deliberate. He
likes to pop off, thinks he is appreciated for taking risks, and fancies
himself particularly good under pressure. This state of mind partly accounts
for his decision to label Vladimir Putin a
“war criminal”: never mind that such a description would apply with equal truth
to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for launching the invasion of Iraq in 2003 —
a war that Biden, as chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, supported unreservedly. His
insistence that “this man [Putin] cannot remain in power for god’s sake”
and his belief (as of mid-July
2023) that “Putin has already lost the war” exhibit the same pattern of
effusive moralism accompanied by a denial of inconvenient facts.
A different perspective was offered by Anatol
Lieven at the Responsible Statecraft website:
“We are repeatedly told that the war in
Ukraine is a war to defend democracy and help secure it across the world. Our
American, French and British ancestors (and even the Russians, from March to
October 1917) were also told the same about the Allied side in the First World
War. It did not quite work out that way, and nothing guarantees that it will
happen that way in Ukraine.”
In the case of Ukraine, such false hopes have
been pushed far more freely by the media than by the military. War is a drug,
and they have chosen to be the dealers.
The Media Airbrush
War propaganda can be delivered in picturesque
as well as popular ways. A prime example of the former approach was Roger
Cohen’s August 6th front-page New York Times story, “Putin’s Forever War,” based on a recent
visit. (“I spent a month in Russia.”) The apologetic intent here is underscored
in the headline, which picks up an epithet once applied to the disastrous
American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and slyly transfers it to Russia. The coverage
is all in the same key, over six full pages of the paper Times,
bulked out with color photographs of cheerleaders, churches, dank stairways,
military processions, statues, tombs, and models on a fashion shoot.
From the start, Cohen adopts the voice of a
prophetic observer of a new war, even as he makes it sound a good deal like the
old war with the Soviet Union. “Along the way,” he writes,
“I encountered fear and fervid bellicosity, as
well as stubborn patience to see out a long war. I found that Homo sovieticus, far
from dying out, has lived on in modified form, along with habits of
subservience. So with the aid of relentless propaganda on state television, the
old Putin playbook — money, mythmaking and menace of murder — has just about
held.”
The name Putin appears with great regularity
as the article proceeds, doing extra duty for the historical analysis and
exposition that are mostly absent.
“I first visited Moscow,” writes Cohen, “four
decades ago, when it was a city devoid of primary colors eking out existence in
the penury of Communism.” But Moscow has changed and the reason is Putin: “He
opened Russia, only to slam it shut to the West; he also modernized it, while
leaving the thread to Russia’s past unbroken.” So here, as in many Western
accounts, the problem turns out to be not just Putin but the fact that he embodies a
backward, naturally vengeful, country and its irretrievable past. The people of
Russia are lost and — a few courageous dissidents excepted — they are given
over to primitivism, hopeless nostalgia, and of course aggression. Putin is
their epitome.
He “governs from the shadows” — no point in
skipping the vampire trope — “unlike Stalin, whose portrait was everywhere.
There is no cult of the leader of the kind Fascist systems favored. Yet mystery
has its own magnetism. The reach of Mr. Putin’s power touches all.” There is,
in other words, a cult of personality without either the personality or the
display that belong to such a cult: “Putinism is a postmodern compilation of
contradictions. It combines mawkish Soviet nostalgia with Mafia capitalism, devotion
to the Orthodox Church with the spread of broken families.” It did not take a
month in Russia to write those sentences. A day at the New York Times would
have sufficed.
The former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
finally emerges as the hero of this story. Nowhere quoted, however, is the
Gorbachev who, between 2004 and 2018, contributed eight op-eds to the New
York Times, the sixth of which focused on climate change and the eighth on
the perilous renewal of a nuclear arms race. Gorbachev was deeply troubled
by George W. Bush’s decision to withdraw from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile
Treaty (which Putin called a “mistake”) and
Donald Trump’s similar decision to pull out of the Intermediate-range Nuclear
Forces Treaty. Does anyone doubt that Gorbachev would have been equally
disturbed by the Biden administration’s virtual severance of diplomatic
relations with Russia?
In an October 25, 2018, op-ed, Gorbachev
summed up the American tendency throughout the preceding two decades: “The
United States has in effect taken the initiative in destroying the entire
system of international treaties and accords that served as the underlying
foundation for peace and security following World War II.” Notice that the
bellicose American “initiative” began well before the ascent of Vladimir Putin
and, according to Gorbachev, it possessed — like the expansion of NATO — a
dynamism that operated independently of developments inside Russia.
Marilyn Garateix. “War and Climate Change: At the Intersection
of Geopolitical Conflict.” IRE
Journal (Third Quarter 2022).
Several topics: 1) The struggle of
journalists to report even record-breaking climate news that is complex and
divisive and competing with war. For
example, “Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” from the
IPCC was reported by The Oxford Climate Journalism Network March 4, 2022, in
“As an Oil-funded War Ravages Ukraine, Climate coverage Struggles to Find Its
Footing.” But the occasion did inspire the
needed “warning that the twin crises of war and climate change were deeply
connected.” 2)Websites are
referenced that help reporters with war and warming assignments. The Media and Climate Change Observatory is
cited for recording the increase of
global coverage of climate change. 3)
The Costs of War Project website at Brown University reveals the “human and
financial costs of war. The Pentagon “remains
the world’s single largest consumer of oil.”
Unfortunately, the author repeats the false label of Department of
Defense when its reality is the same old Department of War and it’s the
War of Terror. 4) The author
urges reporters to “put a human face” on their stories. --Dick
Joe
McCarthy. “How War Impacts Climate Change and the Environment.”
“ Global Citizen. April 6,
2022. Few
things fuel the climate crisis quite like war. The US’ broader “War on Terror” has released 1.2
billion metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, according to the
Watson Institute at Brown University, which has more of a warming effect on the
planet than the annual emissions of 257 million cars.
Amy Goodman. “War Helps Fuel the Climate Crisis
as U.S. Military Carbon Emissions Exceed 140+ Nations.” Democracy Now! November 9, 2021. www.democracynow.org ›
2021/11/9 › cop26_militaryWar Helps Fuel the Climate Crisis as U.S. Military
Carbon ... Climate activists protested outside the
U.N. climate summit in Glasgow Monday spotlighting the role of the
U.S. military in fueling the climate crisis.
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe. “On the relationship of armed conflicts with
climate change.” PLOS.org. June
1, 2022. journals.plos.org ›
climate › article The current attention
on how climate change can increase the damage caused by armed
conflicts is ultimately motivated by theories that suggest that resource
availability and access are the root causes of most violent conflicts [ 19, 20]
because climate change is expected to have serious implications
for resource access and availability….
Stuart Braun. “The Climate Impact of Conflict.”
DW.com. 2021. www.dw.com ›
en › the-bootprint-of-war-carbon May 28, 2021. Less talked about is the impact
of war and the military on the climate crisis.
This is partly because military emissions
have been largely exempted from international climate treaties,...
Somini Sengupta.
“Climate change is making armed conflict
worse. Here’s how.” NYT. Mar
18, 2022.
www.nytimes.com › 2022/03/18 › climate The
people of that Mariupol are trying to survive not just shelling by Russian
forces.
“Scientist details reasons why climate change is a recipe for
'political violence and cruelty'.” Story by Alex Henderson • July 2023.
Climate change deniers often argue that it's
wrong to link natural disasters to a changing climate because hurricanes,
floods, tornados and droughts were causing misery long before the 20th and 21st
Centuries. But the point they miss, according to scientists, is that climate
change is making disasters both more common and more intense. . . .
According to
scientist/author Stan Cox, climate change will also lead to more violence
— from crime to political conflicts. In
an article published by The Nation on July 7, Cox explains, "Climate
disasters are not only failing to goad governments into taking bold action, but
may be nudging societies toward increasing violence and cruelty…. Although
weather disasters of many kinds can increase public concern about climate
change, they can also help to whip up an oppressively violent sociopolitical
climate that may prove ever more hostile to the very idea of reducing
greenhouse-gas emissions — especially in large, affluent, high-emission
societies." MORE https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/scientist-details-reasons-why-climate-change-is-a-recipe-for-political-violence-and-cruelty/ar-AA1dzMHV?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=26441cc245aa4e9989c3a2f0dd8e5f8b&ei=37 0M
O ANIRUDDHA GHOSAL AND SIBI ARASU Bharatha Mallawarachi in
Colombo, Sri Lanka; Edna Tarigan in Jakarta; Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo; and
Tong-hyung Kim and Hyungjin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report. “At an energy
crossroads.” Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette (Oct 06, 2022). What
the war in Ukraine means for Asia’s climate goals. Read more...
PENTAGON
Meehan
Crist. “Let’s get out from under the
carbon military boot print.” June 21, 2023. Editor. Mronline.org (7-4=23). In March last year, U.S.
author Meehan Crist wrote the following in the London Review of Books,
One of
the worst outcomes of the war in Ukraine would be an increasingly militarised
response to climate breakdown, in which Western armies, their budgets
ballooning in the name of “national security” seek to control not only the
outcome of conflicts but the flow of energy, water, food, key minerals and
other natural resources. One does not have to work particularly hard to imagine
how barbarous that future would be.
Crist’s point is simply to describe the world we already have,
but a bit more so; and her prediction is exactly what is happening. The U.S. has raised military spending
to $858 billion this
year; up from $778 billion in 2020. France
has announced an increase from a projected E295 billion to E413 billion in
the next seven years (an average of E59 billion a year). German spending is rising sharply, from E53
billion in 2021 to E100 billion in
2022 and is set to go further. Japan
aims to double its military spending by 2028 and is also
debating whether to start deploying nuclear weapons. In the UK, the government’s aim to increase
military spending from 2.1% of GDP to 2.5% by 2030 comes on the back of what is
already among the highest per capita military spends in the world. NATO,
the core alliance of the Global North, already accounted for 55.8% of global
military spending in 2021 before any of these increases. Other direct U.S. allies—with a mutual
defence pact—accounted for another 6.3%.
·
So, the direct U.S.
centred military alliances account for three fifths of global military spending
and yet they are now raising it further at unprecedented rates. These are
the world’s dominant imperial powers, acting in concert to sustain a “rules
based international order” in which the rules are written in, and to suit, the
Global North in general and Washington in particular.
The carbon boot print of these militaries is
not measured under the Paris Agreement. It is, nevertheless, huge and
growing; and we can’t pretend it isn’t. At the moment, the carbon boot print of
the U.S. military alone is the same as that of the entire nation of France.
This is incompatible with stopping climate breakdown; both in the direct impact
of production and deployment, the diversion of funds which are urgently needed
to invest in the transition, and the potential impact of their use—which could
kill us all very quickly; particularly if nuclear weapons are used. John Bellamy
Foster’s Notes
on Exterminism for the Twenty First Century Ecology and Peace Movements should
be required reading for both movements.
Because this military is not sitting idle. The first phase of
the Wars for the New American Century—in the form of the War on Terror
since 2001—have been calculated by Brown University at 4.5 million
people; three quarters of them civilians killed by indirect impacts of
U.S. and allied military interventions. The scale of this is because doctrines
like “shock and awe” are not simply an impressive displays of
explosive power, but specifically designed to smash energy and water systems,
both clean water supply and sewage treatment, within the first twenty four
hours of an intervention to reduce surviving civilian populations to a state of
numbed misery and demoralisation. “Why do they hate us?” I
wonder. 4.5 million people is about half the population of Greater London, or
three quarters of the population of Denmark and twenty two times as many as
have died in the Ukraine war so far (assuming total casualties of 200,000, most
of them military on both sides). It’s a lot of people.
RESISTANCE
FOR WORLD PEACE
Neta C. Crawford. The Pentagon, Climate
Change, and War: Charting the Rise
and Fall of U.S. Military Emissions. MIT, 2022.
392 pp.
How
the Pentagon became the world's largest single greenhouse gas emitter and why
it's not too late to break the link between national security and fossil fuel
consumption.
Examining the idea of
climate change as a “threat multiplier” in national security, she argues that the
United States faces more risk from climate change than from lost access to
Persian Gulf oil—or from most military conflicts. The most effective way to cut
military emissions, Crawford suggests provocatively, is to rethink U.S. grand
strategy, which would enable the United States to reduce the size and
operations of the military.
Neta C. Crawford is Professor and Chair of the Department of
Political Science at Boston University and Codirector of the Costs of War
Project. She is the author of Argument and Change in World Politics
(winner of a best book award from the American Political Science Association)
and Accountability for Killing: Moral Responsibility for Collateral Damage
in America's Post-9/11 Wars. Author's Website.
DANGER
OF THE PENTAGON
MELISSA
GARRIGA
and TIM BIONDO. “The Pentagon is the
Elephant In the Climate Activist Room.“ Common
Dreams. Sept. 8, 2023.
As long
as we ignore the Pentagon's role in perpetuating climate change, our
fight to protect the planet is incomplete.
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/pentagon-climate-change?share_id=7852012&utm_campaign=RebelMouse&utm_content=Common+Dreams&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter Forwarded by Abel Tomlinson.
Campaign for
Peace, Disarmament and Common Security November 18, 2017. 
President Joseph Gerson.
(617)
661-6130 JGerson80@gmail.com
cpdcs.org https://www.facebook.com/CPDCS/
Special Importance of CPDCS today (Dick): A comprehensive, international peace
organization advocating for peace and nuclear disarmament within a framework of
common security among nations.
1.
Advocates against war and
climate and therefore studies their convergence.
2.
Advocates nuclear weapons abolition.
3. Works for common security diplomacy
among all nations, friends and enemies, to prevent wars and global warming.
4. Studies the Ukraine/US/NATO
War. Especially see its president’s
essays; here are 2 examples: Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security
REFUGEES
Convergence: Climate, Wars,
Refugees
Guy J. Abel et al. “Climate, Conflict, and Forced
Migration.” Global Environmental Change. Vol. 54 (2019).January 1,
Links
wars to climate change and refugees.
“Climatic conditions, by affecting drought severity and the likelihood
of armed conflict, play a significant role” in explaining “asylum seeking in
the period 2011-2015.”
Convergence of Climate, Wars, Refugees, and Peacebuilding
From Susan Nahvi, Friends
Committee for National Legislation FCNL May 5, 2023
Dear Dick,
I thought of you when I read a recent article on the FCNL website! The
Program Assistants for migration, the environment, and peacebuilding
collaborated on a piece talking about the intersections between these three
areas: https://www.fcnl.org/updates/2023-04/solve-our-most-urgent-challenges-we-must-address-intersection-conflict-climate. Given your particular interest in the
overlap of these issues, I thought you might find it interesting. Thank you for
helping support these fantastic advocates in their work to highlight the
importance of addressing these issues in tandem.
Do feel free to reach out if you need
anything, and thank you for being part of FCNL!
With warmth,
Susan Nahvi she/her/hers
Major Gifts Officer, Friends Committee on National Legislation
snahvi@fcnl.org | 202-899-5189
245 2nd St NE | Washington, DC
20002
fcnl.org I F Like I T
Follow I Insta Follow
[This report from FCNL recognizes the
inseparableness, the “intersectionality” of climate change, conflict and wars,
and refugees, and is the best brief note I have read on the full scope of converging
problems. --Dick] [
Marcia
Orellana, Jus Tavcar, and Nuria Raul. “To
Solve Our Most Urgent Challenges, We Must Address the Intersection of Conflict,
Climate Change, and Migration.” The
Ethiopia (April 6, 2023).
A family is forced to relocate due to drought in
the Oromia region of Ethiopia. Ongoing drought, continued economic stresses,
and conflict in northern Ethiopia, Oromia, and elsewhere have put millions at
risk of a worsening humanitarian crisis.
Climate
change, conflict, and migration are three of the most
urgent and critical challenges facing the world today. Rising temperatures and
frequent climate disasters have led to unprecedented internal and international
migration flows. Estimates suggest that more than 30 million migrants will travel across the U.S. border in the
next 30 years due to climate displacement.
Climate-driven
resource scarcity and increased
displacement have exacerbated violence and regional
tensions globally. The Institute of
Economics and Peace’s 2022
Global Peace Index Report found that global peacefulness has deteriorated for
eleven consecutive years, driven mainly by ongoing conflicts around the world.
Communities living in conflict zones
are often unequipped to adapt to climate
shocks. This, in turn, forces yet more people
to flee their homes.
These challenges impact and often worsen each other in obvious
ways. The need for governments to address the nexus of climate, migration, and conflict is clear. Yet too often,
these three issues are siloed from one another. Policies intended to mitigate
climate change do not acknowledge the issue of climate-displaced persons or are
not conflict-sensitive. To be effective,
policymakers must instead lead with an intersectional
approach.
A
Siloed Approach Harms Our Most Vulnerable Neighbors
Lack of International
Legal Protections
Current U.S. and international laws do not integrate solutions
for climate change, migration, and conflict. For example, the most common
international legal framework
to protect refugees focuses on people who face or fear persecution based on
race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular
social group. Displacement due to
solely climate
change is not considered a basis for refugee protection.
The
need for governments to address the nexus
of climate, migration, and conflict is clear. Yet too often,
these three issues are siloed from one another.
Experts at
multilateral organizations have discussed the difficulty of isolating climate
change as a cause of migration from other political and social causes. The U.N.
argues that climate change primarily drives internal displacement and that migrants
should remain under the responsibility of their own state. However, an
increasing number of small island states are currently in danger due to land
loss. Consequentially, their inhabitants are forced to migrate to other
countries. In nations like Kiribati, it is projected that by 2080 the risk of
flooding will be roughly 200
times higher than at the beginning of the 21st century. The
government of Kiribati is already seeking solutions to address the loss of
land, including temporary
and permanent international migration.
Example:
Haiti - Conflict, Extreme Weather, and Displacement
The U.S. government has also repeatedly failed to respond to the
severity of complex crises where climate change, migration, and conflict
intersect.
During the summer of 2021, we saw years of heightened migration
from Haiti reach a peak. Many Haitians fled their country, escaping a series of
interlocking crises: political turmoil followed by the assassination of Haitian
President Jovenel Moïse and the absence of democratic succession of power, a
7.2 magnitude earthquake, and a devastating tropical storm. The Biden
administration responded to migrants fleeing this instability with militarized
approaches, such as detention and deportation. More than 20,000 people
were expelled back to Haiti, and others were returned to Mexico under a
pandemic-era migration policy called Title
42.
It is
impossible to separate the impacts of these issues. In recognition, Congress
should apply an intersectional perspective to its policy solutions.
This response ignored the root causes of forced migration and
sent thousands of Haitians back to a violent and unstable situation without
acknowledging the conflict and vulnerability within the country.
The continued
unwillingness of the United States to provide sufficient
assistance to Haitians has worsened the humanitarian and economic
crisis on the island. The lack of resources for climate resilience has triggered ongoing
disaster vulnerability magnified by deforestation and soil erosion.
All the while, discriminatory migration policies continue to
target Haitian migrants in the U.S., these migrants continue to live in limbo
and rely on the few narrow pathways available to them to achieve legal
protection. While a new program has
been created to respond to the migration of Haitian nationals to the U.S., its
small in scale, complicated, and does not address the issue’s intersectional
magnitude.
What’s
Needed
U.S.
foreign policy should protect all people who are forced to flee their homes due
to conflict and climate change. These individuals and
families, too, deserve the opportunity to pursue safe and fruitful lives.
Congress must act boldly to create pathways to citizenship for migrants
and invest in
sufficient foreign assistance to developing countries struggling with the
realities of climate change and conflict.
[Solution]
It is impossible to separate the impacts of
these issues. In recognition, Congress
should apply an intersectional perspective to its policy solutions.
Internationally, the United States must work with global partners to update
international laws and agreements to mitigate climate change, protect
climate-displaced persons, and interrupt cycles of violence.
Mark Schuller. Humanity's Last Stand. Rutgers UP, 2021.
https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org › humanitys-last...
"Humanity's Last Stand is a call to arms
to elevate our thinking to the species level or, Schuller cautions, the
species will face extinction."
Are we as a species headed towards extinction? As our economic system renders
our planet increasingly inhospitable to human life, powerful individuals fight
over limited resources, and racist reaction to migration strains the social
fabric of many countries. ... Google Books
I hope to return to CONVERGENCE, when I
will include, overpopulation,
pandemics, and the dismantling of our democracy (and?) as additional major catastrophes
of the Great Convergence of Calamities in the 21st century.
END CONVERGENCE OF WAR AND WARMING ANTHOLOGY
#1, 3-8-24
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