Transcript Climate Change and International Security

The Impact of Climate
Change on National
and International
Security and Stability
By
Professor G Prins
London School of Economics &
Political Science
Athena 11
Crisis Management
International Conference
Thessaloniki
1 June 2011
Europe is in turmoil. The Euro is
failing. The USA is pulling back.
NATO is divided. The Middle
East on a knife-edge..
so what is the crisis
management problem here?
• The Problem is not climate change
– we can cope with that, on past
evidence (and Lt Col Benoist’s lecture)
• The Problem is in the policy
responses supposedly aimed at
changing climate change
Part One:
epistemology first: we
need to think straight
(following the lead of Professor Xenakis introducing the
previous panel)
• How to think about complex,
open system and imperfectly
understood problems that may
contain threats to security –
• May contain: we cannot be sure
“While we are laughing the seed of some trouble
is put into the wide arable land of events.
While we are laughing it sprouts, it grows
and suddenly bears a poison fruit
which we must pluck.”
The young poet, John Keats, in a
letter to his brother and sister,
spring 1819
“The ubiquity of crisis”
• “In the process leading up to a crisis,
seemingly innocent factors combine and
transform into disruptive forces
• ....most warnings do not speak for
themselves”
• (Boin,‘t Hart, Stern & Sundelius, The
Politics of Crisis Management, CUP 2005,
p5, p26)
With what knowledge? a
taxonomy tells which to
use, when and how they
support each other
• Aristotle in the Nicomachean
Ethics, distinguishes:
• techné – (skills - “know how”) facts (more is better)
• episteme – (knowledge - “know why”)
reproducible, testable & falsifiable
intellectual analysis from theory
• phronesis – practical wisdom in
conditions of uncertainty
Part Two: mismatch!
• And now we will see the serious
consequences of not studying
Aristotle carefully in practice
• The ‘climate change’ issue has
been approached in terms of
technė above all: a ‘problem to
fix’
• And without phronesis: without
wisdom faced with doubts
AL GORE’S FILM
“AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH”
A Roman
Candle
CALIFORNIA GLOBAL WARMING ACT
STERN
REPORT
The Great Scare
2005-2009
peak June-November 2006
IPCC 4TH
ASSESSMENT
REPORT
Watersheds in winter
• For the debate about earth
systems science: Before and
After 19th November 2009: the
‘climategate’ e-mail leak
• For international political
processes about the climate:
Before and After Copenhagen
COP 15 December 2009 collapse
of UN Climate diplomacy
Apples? Pears? Oranges?
Separate the three terms of Hansen et
al 1984 ‘close coupling’ hypothesis:
1) Climate Change – of course it does
(no global warming signal in recent hurricanes, by the way:
and Katrina not an exceptional hurricane. Damage comes
from people building stuff in stupid places and not mending
the infrastructure)
2) Global Warming – ditto, and cooling
– but why and what does it, when?
3) Carbonisation – by people? By life?
An Interesting and Certain Phenomenon
389 ppm
today, rising
just under 2
ppm/yr
Source: IPCC TAR
An Interesting
once
Increasingly
Uncertain, now
more certain
again
Phenomenon
“indicative” plot
from the 1990 IPCC
report
A.W Montford, The Hockey
Stick Illusion: Climategate and
the Corruption of Science
(2010) documents the battle
H Svensmark’s hypothesis
The effect of cosmic ray fluxes
is leveraged into a great and
underestimated effect on the
climate feedbacks:
Cosmic rays stabilise Ultra Fine
Condensation Nuclei that ‘seed’
cloud particles: so more cosmic
ray flux makes more clouds,
more reflectivity and cooling.
Demonstrated in the 2003
Hallowe’en event: a huge
plasma burst reduces cosmic
rays (Forbush reductions) and is
followed by huge (6%) reduction
in cloud esp low cloud: shown in
5 events as ‘natural
experiments’
‘Nullius in verba’ – take
nothing on trust
(Motto over the door of the Royal Society in London)
If it’s science it
isn’t a consensus
If it’s a consensus
it isn’t science
The ‘conventional wisdom’
• EU
• High Representative, Climate Change and
International Security, S113/08, 14 March 2008
• “Climate change is best viewed as a threat
multiplier which exacerbates existing trends,
tensions and instability. The core challenge is
that climate change threatens to overburden
states and regions which are already fragile
and conflict prone.”
• NATO
• Secretary General, « NATO and Climate
Change », 15 December 2009
• « (..) towards increased instability. (..) climate
change of any sort will have a ‘multiplier’
effect upon pre-existing tensions [and]
presents security challenges of a magnitude
ad a complexity we have never seen before. »
Prof Bruno Tertrais’ list:
1. Warmer climate: more wars?
2. Resources and water as a trigger of
political violence?
3. « Climate refugees »?
4. More terrorism?
5. Fighting in the Arctic?
Bruno Tertrais, « The Climate Wars Myth », The
Washington Quarterly, vol. 34, n° 3, Summer 2011
First, there is less war..
and warm periods
correlate with less
wars
Tol et al., Climate change and violent conflict in Europe
over the last millenium, Climatic Change (2010), 99: 65-79
• And there is no evidence of water wars in
4,500 years
• And refugees are refugees for many
human reasons before environmental
ones; nor can we predict regional climate
effects
• And there is no correlation at all with
terrorism
• And, and ... So what is this about??
The European Union: Four Referenda
Three No’s, One Yes
–
and still a Funeral
Since 1991 the EU has developed three leading
projects intended to establish it as indispensible to
Europeans and as a world power
1) The EU Constitution/”Lisbon Treaty” (phone who?
Baroness WHO? WHAT ‘”External Action” exactly?)
2) The Euro (not if but when it breaks and how much
damage before– now Greek ‘soft default’ beckons)
3) The ETS and EU Climate policy “20/20/20”
Killed three times over.....Dec 08, price crash, Dec 10
Also a fading region of ageing powers and declining
economies
Time to face the facts
in Europe: we are the
Melians now
In the balance of real world power, the
European Union Commission (and not even
all of that) and the current British
Government and its advisers are now
isolated among the major parties in
hoping for a Kyoto II on the old
(ineffective) model
“The powerful do what they will. The
weak put up with what they must”
(Athenians to Melians in the Melian Dialogue.
Thucydides, The Peloponnesian Wars )
Cancun: the Japanese
strike like samurai
(Jun Arima, Japanese Government official speaking to AWG-KP
Contact Group at opening of COP-16)
“...we will never inscribe our target in the
Annex B to the Kyoto Protocol under any
circumstances and conditions...
....Kyoto 2nd commitment period will
never constitute a fair and effective
single framework...
“In addition, Japan intends to promote bilateral
and regional co-operative activities engaging
private sector...”
G-8 Deauville May 28 2011
Canada
Russia
join Japan...
USA reconfirms that it will
remain outside the Kyoto/UN
diplomacy merry-go-round
So it ain’t gonna happen guys
– not now, not ever
Fukushima
11 March
2011
Sharply increases forward
prices on LPG
Seriously damages Mrs
Merkel electorally and the
Germans will now pay ...
Doesn’t slow the ‘nuclear
renaissance’ in China or
most other places...
Just when you
thought you
knew it all..
Peter Voser, CEO
Royal Dutch Shell,
estimates 250 years’
worth of demand
already proven. Shell
will be a majority gas
producer in 20 years
And at 37% CO2 for equivalent
electricity from coal
What could be
wrong?
Enviros say no
The French
Parliament says
NON!
And some deputies
try to get the EU to
do so too.
(France 84%
nuclear.. )
Conclusion?
• No meaningful role for NATO or
for national defence ministries to
plan for more than what they plan
for anyway
• But a very meaningful role for
studying Aristotle’s Nicomachean
Ethics
• and Thucydides, The
Peloponnesian Wars