Climatic Cataclysm: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Climate Change [Hardcover]

Kurt M. Campbell (Author, Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2008

Climate change threatens not only the environment but global peace and security as well. Climatic Cataclysm brings together experts on climate science, foreign policy, political science, oceanography, history, and national security to take measure of these risks.

The contributors examine three scenarios as a basis for future planning. The first scenario projects the likely effects of the expected level of climate change over the next thirty years, based on current scientific models. The severe scenario, based on a much stronger response to current levels of carbon loading, foresees profound and potentially destabilizing global effects over the next generation or more. Finally, the catastrophic scenario is characterized by a devastating "tipping point" in the climate system, perhaps fifty or one hundred years hence. In this future world, the land-based polar ice sheets have disappeared, global sea levels have risen dramatically, and the existing natural order has been destroyed beyond repair.

Climatic Cataclysm analyzes the security implications of these scenarios, ranging from disease proliferation, large-scale migration, and increased low-intensity conflict to the risk of nuclear war. It also considers the lessons that can be learned from previous civilizations confronted with natural disaster and asks what the three largest emitters of greenhouse gases—the United States, the European Union, and China—can do to reduce and manage future risks.

Climate change may prove to be the single greatest challenge confronting the United States and indeed, human civilization. Climatic Cataclysm helps explain why.

Contributors: Sharon Burke (Center for a New American Security), Leon Fuerth (George Washington University), Jay Gulledge (Pew Center on Global Climate Change), Alexander T. J. Lennon (Center for Strategic and International Studies), J.R. McNeill (Georgetown University), Peter Ogden (Center for American Progress), John Podesta (Center for American Progress), Julianne Smith (Center for Strategic and International Studies), Richard Weitz (Hudson Institute), and R. James Woolsey (Vantage Point Venture Partners).

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Climatic Cataclysm builds on the best available scientific evidence to create three scenarios about the way the peoples of the world ourselves included may come to live as the result of climate change at various levels of severity. There is a key insight here, and it is that climate change will not only stress every ecological system but every political system on the planet, and that beyond a certain level, it can push them into chaos. This book is an important effort to translate the broad outlines of climate change into more specific visualizations of the social, political, and moral consequences for regions, states, and peoples. It has a quality of realism that reflects the breadth of experience of its contributors and also the skill of its editors in creating an integrated narrative. Very little time remains for organizing around a coherent idea of the impact of climate change and of the scale of the efforts that will be needed to cope with it. Climatic Cataclysm helps show the way." --Al Gore, Nobel Peace Laureate and former Vice President

Review

"Climatic Cataclysm builds on the best available scientific evidence to create three scenarios about the way the peoples of the world —ourselves included —may come to live as the result of climate change at various levels of severity. There is a key insight here, and it is that climate change will not only stress every ecological system but every political system on the planet, and that beyond a certain level, it can push them into chaos. This book is an important effort to translate the broad outlines of climate change into more specific visualizations of the social, political, and moral consequences for regions, states, and peoples. It has a quality of realism that reflects the breadth of experience of its contributors and also the skill of its editors in creating an integrated narrative. Very little time remains for organizing around a coherent idea of the impact of climate change and of the scale of the efforts that will be needed to cope with it. Climatic Cataclysm helps show the way." —Al Gore, Nobel Peace Laureate and former Vice President

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 237 pages
• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press (July 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815713320
• ISBN-13: 978-0815713326
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #657,205 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Could Global Climate do more than create environmental chaos?, September 4, 2008

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Climatic Cataclysm: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Climate Change (Hardcover)

Could Global Climate do more than create environmental chaos? "Climatic Cataclysm: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Climate Change" looks at the other implications that a shifting climate could visit upon a world. Pondering scenarios ranging from likely to full on possible doomsday-level scenarios, they are all explained on what they mean for the world, how they can be averted, and how they can be dealt with if it's too late to avert it. "Climatic Cataclysm" is an enlightening look at how nature can wreak havoc on politics.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well-crafted, timely, authoritative, May 26, 2009

By 

James A. Vedda (Alexandria, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Climatic Cataclysm: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Climate Change (Hardcover)

Although published by the Brookings Institution, this book is derived from a November 2007 study conducted through a partnership between the Center for Strategic & International Studies and the Center for a New American Security. Titled "The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change," that study was authored by a team of experts in climate science, defense, intelligence, and foreign policy who expanded their report into this excellent book. Even if you've read the original report, get this book because it substantially adds to the information and analysis.
There have been many reports in recent years on the national security implications of climate change. This is among the best. Some recognizable names among the 12 authors are James Woolsey, former director of the CIA; Leon Fuerth, former national security advisor to Vice President Al Gore; and John Podesta, former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton. The other authors are also heavy hitters in their fields.
The authors created three increasingly grave scenarios: "expected" and "serious" over the next 30 years, and "catastrophic" over the next 100 years. These are quite frightening, particularly the latter two, and should not be read to small children. But this grave tone is appropriate for a report designed to warn of the urgency of the situation and present some serious thinking about its implications. The major implications are laid out in the final chapter for policy-makers, business leaders, and the rest of us to consider. A must-read for anyone who cares about what could happen in the rest of this century.

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Ensuing Chaos From Climatic Tipping Points, August 26, 2008

By 

James Safranek "Holocene Meltwater" (Steinbeck Country) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Climatic Cataclysm: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Climate Change (Hardcover)

Given Brookings support for Bush's Middle East 'campaign' I typically would not turn to this centrist think-tank for policy direction on climate change, but I can bend with the warming winds on this issue, especially since these analysts got it right. I agree with the political implications discussed in this book: the political fighting in the U.S. has to cease so that alternative energy options are implemented ASAP. That is, as soon as (our next) President Obama takes office. Why ASAP?

Three future climate scenarios are laid out, each with successive implications for the very functioning of American society. The third scenario, or catastrophic tipping point, is predicated on man-made atmospheric carbon essentially creating a new and vastly foreign climate regime. This is consistent with the latest scientitific research on anthropogenic global warming.

Brookings analysts argue that this third scenario holds the greatest danger in around 50-100 years for both the natural world and human civilization as humanity faces forced migration, diseases, and the increased possibilities of nuclear war as a variety of national security threats dramatically heighten.

Skip the summer sci-fi reading and take this one on...since it reads like a dystopia anyway.