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Climate, Peace Are Linked

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The Associated Press

Published: October 13, 2007

What does global warming have to do with global peace? The globe may find out sooner than we think, experts say.

'Climate change is and will be a significant threat to our national security and in a larger sense to life on Earth as we know it to be,' retired Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, former U.S. Army chief of staff, told a congressional panel last month.

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee agrees. In awarding the prize Friday to climate campaigner Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N.-sponsored network of scientists, the Norwegian committee said the stresses of a changing global environment may heighten the 'danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.'

Those like Sullivan who study the issues point to the impact of drought and altered climate patterns on food and water supplies, leading to shortages that could spur huge, destabilizing migrations of people internationally.

In a report in May, scientists advising the German government noted specific scenarios that could upend the lives of millions, driving them across borders to overwhelm other lands.

'The dieback of the Amazon rain forest or the loss of the Asian monsoon could have incalculable consequences for the societies concerned,' said the German Advisory Council on Global Change.

In some cases, potential backlashes from warming weren't foreseen even a few years ago. One example: The swift shrinking of Arctic Ocean ice has drawn attention to looming international disputes over rights to the newly open seas.

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