CONVERGENCE OF WAR AND WARMING AND
By Dick Bennett 7-14-22
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. 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 nuclearwar 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 of course always underestimating) 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 Planetary Convergences (IPPC).
Do we have time? It’s time we faced the failure of incremental changes to stop wars and warming.
Dick Bennett, 7-26-22
Sources of disintegration and chaos (anticipating convergence with many other sources of calamity)
Overpopulation
Injustice, inequality, racism, White Supremacy/Nationalism
Injustice, inequality, oligarchy, plutocracy
Capitalism, neoliberalism, inequality, profit, unrestrained growth, rampant
exploitation of nature
Corporate tyranny and plundering
Climate catastrophe (extreme weather) not only unchecked by government but
FF supported by subsidies
War catastrophe, US Pentagon Budget over $800 billion, US warring in over 20
nations, and some 800 military bases abroad
Pandemics
Biodiversity Loss, Mass Extinctions
Mass Refugees
Examples of early, rudimentary investigation of convergence, mainly 2022
Asokan, Asha and Ira Helfand. “Climate change & water scarcity
will increase risk of nuclear catastrophe in South Asia.” BAS(7-13-22).
Bennett, Dick. “Sites of Remembrance.” Climate Memo Mondays, #73,
May 2, 2022. #73:http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/05/climate-memo-mondays-73.html
Carliner, Sam. “US Military Is Driving Environmental Collapse Across The
Planet.” Left Voice. Popular Resistance.org (4-24-22).
Crawford, Neta C. The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War:
Charting the Rise and Fall of U.S. Military Emissions. 2022.
Doyle, James E. “Building a Nuclear Off-ramp Following the War in Ukraine.”
Engelhardt, Tom. “Our Not-So-Slow-Motion Apocalypse” (2021). Explicitly
links war and warming--war of terrorists and “tarrarists.” “Life in Hell (Literally!).” July 5, 2022.
https://tomdispatch.com/extreme-life/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=8b5638e2ad-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2021_07_13_02_04_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1e41682ade-8b5638e2ad-309346777#more
Espinosa, Alberto Garzón. “The Limits to Growth: Ecosocialism or
Barbarism.” MR (July 5, 2022).
Graham-Leigh, Elaine. “Why Stopping Wars Is Essential for Stopping
Climate Change.” Opinion. March 22, 2019. Reprinted in PIOT Summer 2019.
Hedges, Chris. "The Triumph of Death." June 2022. The Farewell Tour. 2018.
Klare, Michael. All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on
Climate Change.
___. Michael Klare, Twitter. “How Rising Temperatures Increase the Likelihood of Nuclear War.” January 13, 2020.
Kramer,Ronald C. and Rob White. Carbon Criminals, Climate Crimes.
2020. Including militaristic forms of adaptation to climate disruption.
Martinson, Sue Ann. “Ignoring How Militarism Fuels Climate Change Will
Be the Death of Us.” 14 July 2022 .
Miller,Todd. Empire of Borders. Warming and Border Militarization.http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/01/climate-memo-mondays-58.html
Parenti, Christian. Tropic of Chaos. 2011. (Introduced me to idea of war/warming convergence.)
Prashad, Vijay. “With Clenched Fists, They Spend Money on Weapons as
the Planet Burns.” Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
Qureshi, Murad. “$2 Trillion for War Versus $100 Billion to Save the Planet.”
Rifkin, Jeremy. Biosphere Politics: A New Consciousness for a New Century. Recognizes nuclear war and greenhouse gasses as wars against nature.
Schuller, Mark. Humanity's Last Stand. Confronting Global
Catastrophe. Foreword by Cynthia McKinney. 2021.
Sparrow, Jeff. Crimes Against Nature: Capitalism and Global Heating.
Sullivan, Mary Beth.“Moving from a War Economy to a Peace Economy.” mic50.org
The New Republic (TNR). “Apocalypse Soon,” on the succession of zoonotic viruses.
“Covid-19 was one zoonotic disease. Monkeypox is another.”
Veterans for Peace. “Climate Crisis & Militarism Project (CCMP)
Webinar: Averting Climate Catastrophe: No New Arms
Race!” Support our Climate Crisis and Militarism
Project. https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/05/omni-
climate-memo-mondays-74-may-9-2022.html
Sample texts
UN Global Affairs Smart Brief. July 22, 2022
News Covering the UN and the World
ASHA ASOKAN AND IRA HELFAND. “Climate change & water scarcity will increase risk of nuclear catastrophe in South Asia.”
Nowhere is the relation between the climate crisis and the increased threat of nuclear war clearer than in South Asia, where approximately 700 million people depend on the shared waters of the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra river basins. Subscribe to read more.
Doyle, James E. “Building a nuclear off-ramp following the war in Ukraine.”
In the aftermath of the war in Ukraine, European security architecture must be rebuilt. This requires improving political relations between Russia and an expanded NATO, establishing stable military-to-military relations at reduced force levels, and reliably reducing the threat of nuclear war. Subscribe to read more.
“Ignoring How Militarism Fuels Climate Change Will Be the Death of Us.” Sue Ann Martinson. ScheerPost. TRANSCEND Media Service. 14 July 2022 – It’s time to acknowledge how the failure to connect the dots between U.S. imperialism and the growing climate crisis threatens all life on this planet in more ways than one. Read more...
Murad Qureshi. “$2 Trillion for War Versus $100 Billion to Save the Planet.” Editor. Mronline.org (7-23-22).
The richer states—led by the West—have not only refused to seriously fund adaptation but they have also reneged on the original agreements, such as the Kyoto Protocol (1997); the U.S. Congress has refused to ratify this important step toward mitigating the climate crisis. The United States has shifted the goalposts for reducing its methane emissions and has refused to account for the massive output of carbon emissions by the U.S. military. MORE https://mronline.org/2022/07/22/2-trillion-for-war-versus-100-billion-to-save-the-planet/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=2-trillion-for-war-versus-100-billion-to-save-the-planet&mc_cid=9acf07719b&mc_eid=ab2f7bf95e