Climate-induced conflict or Hospice Earth: the increasing importance of eco-socialism

Abstract

What are the implications of global climate change for peace and human welfare in the future? The answer depends on the actual effects of climate change and how the world responds to them. Current economic and political systems are unlikely to produce the policy and institutional changes needed to reduce adequately the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions causing the problem, so some of the most dangerous effects of climate change could occur this century. Some observers posit that climate change will result in catastrophe, but specifics of this catastrophe range widely. Does climate change mean painful but manageable social disruption, requiring, for instance, populations to move and cities to be rebuilt? Or does climate change portend much worse, including major wars, the end of modern civilization or, incredibly, even the eventual extinction of humanity? If these more severe consequences are likely or possible, what kind of global society would be best able to survive, or at least cope? The answer may be found in eco-socialism and a ‘Hospice Earth’ that nurtures people and societies regardless of how bad the future becomes.

Keywords:

• environment
• human security
• peace studies
• climate change

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

John Barkdull is Associate Professor of Political Science at Texas Tech University. His work on environmental issues has been published widely in scholarly journals, including Presidential Studies Quarterly, Environmental Ethics and Ethics and International Affairs.

Paul G. Harris is Chair Professor of Global and Environmental Studies at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. He is author or editor of 20 books, recently including (as author) What's Wrong with Climate Politics and How to Fix It (Polity, 2013) and (as editor) the Routledge Handbook of Global Environmental Politics (Routledge, 2014).

Notes

1 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group I, Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis, Summary for Policymakers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

2 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group III, Climate Change 2014, Mitigation of Climate Change, Summary for Policymakers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 6; World Meteorological Organization, ‘Record Greenhouse Gas Levels Impact Atmosphere and Oceans', Press Release No. 1002 (September 9, 2014), https://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_1002_en.html.

3 Global Carbon Project, Carbon Budget 2014, http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/index.htm.

4 Bill McKibben, ‘Global Warming's Terrifying New Math', Rolling Stone, July 19, 2012, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719.

5 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group II, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, Summary for Policymakers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

6 Institute for Environmental Security, ‘What is Environmental Security?’ (n.d.), http://www.envirosecurity.org/activities/What_is_Environmental_Security.pdf.

7 See, for example, Robert G. Wirsing, Chistopher Jasparro, and Daniel C. Stoll, International Conflict Over Water Resources in Himalayan Asia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

8 William R. Cline, Global Warming and Agriculture: Impact Estimates by Country (Washington, DC: Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2007).

9 Petra Durkova, Anna Gromilova, Barbara Kiss, and Megi Plaku, ‘Climate Refugees in the 21st Century’ (paper presented at the Conference of the Regional Academy on the United Nations, Vienna, January 11, 2013), http://acuns.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Climate-Refugees-1.pdf.

10 Larry Schwartz, ‘10 of the Biggest Threats to Human Existence', AlterNet, July 26, 2014, http://www.alternet.org/10-biggest-threats-human-existence.

11 Thom Hartmann, Last Hours of Humanity: Warming the World to Extinction (Cardiff, CA: Waterfront Digital Press, 2013).

12 Noam Chomsky, Making the Future: Occupations, Interventions, Empire and Resistance (San Francisco: City Light Books, 2012), 288.

13 Paul Street, ‘Ecocidal Times', ZCommentaries, February 21, 2013, http://zcomm.org/zcommentary/ecocidal-times-by-paul-street/.

14 John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2011), 12.

15 James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia (New York: Basic Books, 2006).

16 James Kanter, ‘Scientist: Warming Could Cut Population to 1 Billion', New York Times, March 13, 2009, http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/scientist-warming-could-cut-population-to-1-billion/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0.

17 Ibid.

18 Steven C. Sherwood and Matthew Huber, ‘An Adaptability Limit to Climate Change Due to Heat Stress', PNAS 107, no. 21 (May 25, 2010), http://www.pnas.org/content/107/21/9552.

19 ‘Cloudy with a Chance of War’, The Economist, August 6, 2013, http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/08/climate-and-conflict; Solomon M. Hsiang, Marshall Burke, and Edward Miguel, ‘Quantifying the Influence of Climate on Human Conflict', Science 341 (September 13, 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1235367

20 See United Nations, ‘Climate Summit 2014’, http://www.un.org/climatechange/climate-summit-2014/.

21 Chris Williams, Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2010).