Geopolitical Effects of Global Heating Gauged

Suppose all the predictions about climate change are right.

What if global warming really causes sea levels to rise, flooding low-lying nations such as Bangladesh? What if the world’s breadbaskets, including America, are devastated as crop-growing regions shift to more northern latitudes?

For more than two decades, scientists have been intrigued and mystified by how and when the Earth’s climate will react to the unrelenting buildup of so-called greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide caused by the burning of forests and fuels such as gasoline, oil and coal.

Now, a small but growing number of academics, government officials and environmentalists are beginning to think seriously about the political implications of a world environment gone awry. Many of them believe that the world’s governments must start planning to avert the possibility of widespread calamity.

“If you want to have political stability, you have to have environmental stability,” said Thomas E. Lovejoy of the Smithsonian Institution, a leading authority on the policy aspects of climate change.

No one knows which countries would be winners or losers in a greenhouse world. Existing computer models offer fuzzy pictures of possible climate conditions. The models lack the precision to zoom in on nations or smaller regions to assess how climate changes will affect them.

Still, there is broad consensus among scientists that as greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, trapping the sun’s heat much as a greenhouse does on a sunny winter day, temperatures in the northern latitudes will climb faster than in the tropics. There will be changes in rainfall patterns, soil moisture, evaporation and sea levels worldwide.

Even slight changes in rainfall, experts say, could dramatically affect food production and the availability of water--circumstances that could lead to social and political upheaval, and in some cases violent conflict.

“We’re looking at potential risks to the food supply, to regional stability, which could have ramifications beyond those regions,” said Sandra L. Postel of the nonprofit Worldwatch Institute in Washington.

Just when this will occur is open to question. “Ten years from now it may be that the current California drought is related to climate change. We just don’t know it yet,” said Peter Glick of the Berkeley-based Pacific Institute for Development, Environment and Security.

Atmospheric chemist F. Sherwood Rowland, who joined in the discovery that chlorofluorocarbons were destroying the Earth’s stratospheric ozone layer, said: “One does not expect (the climate) to shift over in a period of five years, but the question of whether there might be a rapid change that would dry things out in some regions is there.”

If nations act soon, much could happen to minimize the dangers. Choices over how much energy and other basic resources are consumed, the kind of energy that is used, and population growth could significantly shape the future.

Technologies may be perfected to dramatically reduce greenhouse emissions. New treaties and cooperative efforts to address environmental threats also could alleviate tensions. Growing trade ties between nations could make cooperation--not conflict--more likely in the face of a common threat.

But, if violence breaks out, analysts believe that it would begin in Third World countries. Conditions of abject poverty, rapid population growth, ethnic disputes and long-standing national and religious rivalries already make these nations ripe for conflict. They would be least able to cope with the added strain of environmental convulsions.

Rich industrial nations would probably fare much better. Most experts believe that war between rich and poor nations is unlikely, if for no other reason than the two sides are unevenly matched. Short of that, advanced nations could be affected by the disputes of others, either diplomatically or economically.

A small number of global warming experts say that the worst-case scenarios could involve the United States. The Senate Armed Services Committee postulated last year that “significant environmental changes (could) contribute to the likelihood of unrest, violence, chaos and conflict, and that this may ultimately require the use of U.S. military power.”

In his newly published book, “Earth in the Balance,” Sen. Albert Gore (D-Tenn.) calls global warming a strategic threat. In a statement made earlier, Gore said that the threat was serious enough to exacerbate “international tensions to the point of actual warfare, including the risk of nuclear war.”

Although once an arcane and unlikely area of research, pairing security and the global environment has gained momentum in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union. It has also been given a boost by growing public concern about the world’s environment.

Environmental groups, major foundations, universities and the Pentagon have begun to examine the possible connections. Recently, the National War College convened a symposium exploring the subject, and in the last two years Congress has appropriated $200 million for an assessment by the Pentagon of how environmental problems could affect the nation’s security.

Critics see this growing interest as a clever if misguided scheme by some environmentalists and others to build popular support and lend a sense of urgency to old causes--deforestation, disarmament, population control, clean energy and overconsumption in the industrialized West. Others see nascent interest by the defense Establishment as a way of justifying arms spending in an era when military threats from foreign powers appear to be waning.

“There’s a world of self-interested actors out there,” said Daniel Deudney, assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. “You have the national security community saying: ‘We need a new task and saying here’s the environment . . . and we are still relevant.’ ”

Still, those who are worried about the consequences of worldwide environmental changes, including Deudney, believe that governments must act soon if they are to minimize the risks.

Former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, not known as an ardent environmentalist, told a gathering of government and business leaders meeting near San Francisco last summer that population growth and climate change would be the two biggest threats to world stability in the 21st Century.

CIA Director Robert M. Gates considers the issues of population growth and the environment serious enough for the CIA to focus more intensively on them as it redefines its mission in a post-Soviet world.

Such re-examination is accompanied by mounting scientific evidence that humans are accelerating climate change at a speed not seen since the last major ice age 12,000 years ago. Six of the seven warmest years in nearly 140 years of record-keeping have occurred since 1980. Last year was the hottest yet.

The National Academy of Sciences has warned that unless emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are slowed, there could be a significant rise of 1.8 to 9 degrees in global average temperatures within 60 years.

That may not seem great, but during the Little Ice Age about 600 years ago, the Earth’s average temperature was just 3 degrees lower than it is today. During the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s, which parched the United States in the worst heat and drought on record, average regional temperatures were only 2.1 degrees above normal.

How fast the Earth warms is crucial. The faster temperatures rise, the less time mankind, plants and animals have to adapt.

Worst-case scenarios include wintertime temperature increases of 1.2 to 2.5 degrees per decade in the mid-latitudes if no preventive actions are taken.

“Most temperature changes occurring in the past have been much slower than that, more like a degree a century, where coming out of the ice age may have taken thousands of years,” said Rowland, the UC Irvine atmospheric chemist.

World population growth is adding to the problem. There are 5.4 billion people on the planet, and at current birthrates, the numbers could double within 50 to 75 years, straining resources further.

Regional disputes over scarce water supplies--which would be made scarcer by shifts in rainfall patterns and population demands--are highest on the list of likely conflicts if climate change is accelerated.

More than three-fourths of the land area of nearly 50 countries falls within international river basins. Water is already a contentious issue in the Middle East, where Turkey, Syria and Iraq rely on the Euphrates River. Ethiopia and Egypt draw water from the Blue Nile. Israel pumps much of its ground water from the disputed Golan Heights and West Bank.

“We know that global climate change is going to affect water resources,” said Glick of the Pacific Institute. “We know there will be change in the distribution of water. . . . Even a slight decrease of runoff in the Nile, the Jordan or the Euphrates will have very significant political ramifications.”

Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the new secretary general of the United Nations, was quoted as saying in 1985, when he was Egypt’s foreign minister, that “the next war in our region will be over the water of the Nile, not politics.”

But sorting out the root causes of conflict may be difficult, even in a greenhouse world. Although long-festering ethnic, religious, and national hatreds will remain important, some see environmental stress as a contributing factor that could trigger conflict.

These experts believe that tensions could be heightened to the breaking point if thousands of environmental refugees flee homelands ravaged by floods and famine.

“The principal form of conflict we’ll see from environmental stress is group identity conflict,” said Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, a conflict theorist at the University of Toronto. “People will be moving around. They will come into conflict with indigenous people.”

The recent attempts by nearly 10,000 Haitians risking their lives in rickety boats to seek political asylum in the United States may be a harbinger of things to come.

The immediate cause of the exodus was the violence after the Sept. 30 military coup that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

But Haiti is also caught in a bleak cycle of poverty and environmental degradation. As its growing population attempts to eke out a living, the land is denuded of forests, and soils are washed away by erosion and floods. What is left is an ecologically impoverished land incapable of providing more than a subsistence existence.

“Conflict need not necessarily have two parties at war with each other. A conflict can come about simply by (people) deserting their land and moving to a neighboring country,” said Kilaparti Ramakrishna, senior associate in international environmental law at Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts. “Over a period of time, this brings about pressure and tension to the country they’re fleeing to.”

Some industrialized countries are closely examining the prospects. In Canada, a confidential report to the prime minister’s Privy Council Office by a Canadian intelligence advisory committee warned in May that the nation should expect great numbers of environmental refugees from Third World countries, and pressure from the United States to export Canadian water reserves.

“You have seen in Southern California what happens with massive, controlled immigration,” Sen. Timothy E. Wirth (D-Colo.) said. “What happens if the world is flooded with millions of environmental refugees? All those things are going to happen. The Cold War is over. I think we’ve come to realize that the real superpower is nature.”

As the world copes with the impact of climate change on agriculture and water supplies, agricultural superpowers such as the United States may no longer be able to provide emergency relief, a study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found.

One disturbing assessment by the EPA concluded that the United States could meet its grain needs but that it was doubtful it could feed much of the rest of the world. The United States provides almost half the grain traded on the world market.

Some scientists predict that climate change could push crop-growing regions north by as much as 930 miles. A northward shift does not necessarily mean that Canada, Russia or the Ukraine could make up the difference. Although crops may be helped by longer days in northern latitudes and higher atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, the soil may not be as good. In Canada, many of the soils are too thin and poor for growing crops.

Not only would reduced crop yields have terrible consequences for hungry people in developing countries, but it could have substantial implications for the United States.

“We’d export less and that would hurt the balance of trade and, on balance, our economic strength,” said Joel B. Smith, deputy director of the EPA’s Climate Change Division.

The United States also would pay a political price. For the last 30 years, the nation has leveraged its dominant agricultural position in foreign policy. Some have called it the “food weapon.”

As the impact of climate change becomes clearer, each country will have to look at its vulnerable points and examine its options.

“If we can identify which ones are most likely to cause disputes, then we can concentrate on reducing the risk of war over environmental problems,” said Glick of the Pacific Institute.

Despite the concerns, some people object to viewing environmental problems as national security issues. Deudney, the University of Pennsylvania political scientist, is among them. Deudney has written extensively on conflict and the environment.

“National security,” he said in an interview, “has a mind set of ‘us versus them,’ about ‘enemies outside.’ This is completely inappropriate about understanding the character of (global) environmental problems.”

There are hopeful signs of global cooperation. World leaders have signed a treaty outlawing the use by 2000 of man-made chemicals that destroy the Earth’s ozone layer. These chemicals, principally CFCs, also contribute to global warming.

Another opportunity will present itself in June, when 160 heads of state meet in Rio de Janeiro for an unprecedented “Earth Summit.” Known officially as the United Nations Conference on Development and the Environment, its primary objective is to sign a treaty reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and create ways to promote development that is environmentally sound.

A climate change treaty presents far greater obstacles. Eliminating CFCs used in refrigeration, air conditioning and other specialized uses is far easier than persuading nations to end practices fundamental to their economies--the cutting of forests to earn foreign exchange and the burning of fossil fuels to power their transportation and industry.

But scientists warn that failure to act quickly will guarantee greater warming than would occur if harmful practices are ended soon. By the time the threat becomes apparent, it may be too late to stop the warming.

“We invested so much in responding to (a possible) nuclear attack from the USSR, even though the risk may not have been that high,” EPA Administrator William K. Reilly said. “The risk of climate change (is) so much larger and yet there has been no equivalent thinking to insure ourselves against it.”