Apocalypse soon

The cheery weather forecasters didn’t fool me. The last weeks have been cold, really cold. Yes, spring is on the way, but for a few weeks I felt colder than I can remember being. It felt like Finland, northern Denmark, Iceland. None of your soft Irish chill. Nope, this was icy, freezing air flowing right down from the Arctic.

It seems that we should get used to it, and fast. And it’s not some crackpot prophet of doom that says so this time. No, it’s the Pentagon.
Incredible as it might seem, the Pentagon recently produced a report on the implications of climate change. It was so incendiary that it was suppressed by US Defence chiefs. But a copy made its way into the hands of Mark Townsend and Paul Harris of the Observer, and it makes for very scary reading indeed.
It predicts that climate change over the next 20 years may lead to global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters. It warns that rising seas will submerge cities in Europe and America and the UK will plunge into a Siberian climate by 2020 as the Gulf Stream weakens and dies. Such sudden change will create chaos and countries will arm themselves to defend their food and water supplies.
Europe will be hardest hit, it claims, with average temperatures falling by 3-5°C. Doesn’t sound like much, but it is. Violent storms will lash coasts – parts of the Netherlands will be uninhabitable. Deaths from famine and disease will escalate until the planet’s population is reduced to a level that it can support. China, India and Bangladesh will really suffer.
That would mean that rich places like America and Europe are likely to be besieged by millions of migrants fleeing from floods and wars and disease. It could be that Scandinavians will abandon the north as uninhabitable. Meanwhile, millions of Africans will flee northwards…
What’s really unnerving about this document is that the timescale isn’t sometime in the future, like in our children’s generation or even later. No, it’s just around the corner – ten to twenty years, give or take.
And, according to Townsend and Harris, the report’s authors are no bug-eyed greens. They are Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group and Doug Randall of the Global Business Network.
Furthermore, their work was commissioned by Andrew Marshall, a major influence on US military strategy since the 70s. Marshall is no hawk and no green. His overriding interest is American security.
So persuaded are they of the imminence of catastrophe that the authors warn that the US should regard climate change as a greater threat to American security than terrorism.
According to the Observer, this report is a major embarrassment for the Bush administration, which has always derided the notion of climate change. When the Pentagon starts warning of catastrophe, then it’s real.
Right, so what are we doing about that?
We’re well behind in our commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. So is the world. Oil and logging interests have shredded the best intentions of the environmental policymakers. Irish farmers are behind the door when it comes to serious environmental action.
It’s not as if we don’t know. The world needs many more trees. It needs less cars – but anyone who has travelled in China or South East Asia, or indeed in South America, will know that if the populations of these countries were to live as we do, we’re fucked. The planet simply can’t sustain it. Yet the whole ethos of globalisation is that it can and will.
Sorry about this, but we rich folks have to use less of the world’s resources if we want to have any credibility with the unnumbered millions who would wish to live as well as we do. We have to take responsibility for our untenable wealth. We have to pay back.
The bottom line is to do with taking responsibility for our wealth. Which is the one thing that George Bush is unable to do. Which is why he shouldn’t be re-elected. At this stage it’s gone way beyond the morality of wars. Now it’s the future of the planet. It’s him or Armageddon. And if you don’t believe me, ask the Pentagon.