Global Warming, Think Nuclear War

Rising sea levels, forced migration, freak storms, droughts, floods, extinctions, wildfires, disease epidemics, crop failures and famines. That's the best scenario. According to the International Institute of Strategic Studies, without comprehensive and effective international action to arrest climate change, the effects on the world could be worse, much worse, on an order akin to a nuclear war.

In its annual survey of the impact of world events on global security, the IISS said that, "...while everyone had now started to recognise the threat posed by climate change, no one was taking effective leadership to tackle it and no one could tell precisely when and where it would hit hardest."

The report claims that as many as 65 countries will probably lose over 15 percent of their agricultural output by 2100 at a time when the world's population was expected to head from six billion now to nine billion people.

From Reuters: "The report, an annual survey of the impact of world events on global security, said conflicts and state collapses due to climate change would reduce the world's ability to tackle the causes and to reduce the effects of global warming.

"State failures would increase the gap between rich and poor and heighten racial and ethnic tensions which in turn would produce fertile breeding grounds for more conflict."

"Fundamental environmental issues of food, water and energy security ultimately lie behind many present security concerns, and climate change will magnify all three," it added.

The IISS report is helpful in lending context to the laughable climate change proposals we get from the likes of Harper, Bush and Howard. The Institute of Strategic Studies is anything but some radical, left-wing propaganda mill. Even the right-wing petro-puppets will have a hard time disputing the report's credibility. Its message is plain: we're already going to pay a very big price for allowing the environment to degrade as much as it has already and the longer we wait to actually take effective action the more we're going to pay in decades to come.