Solar Storms Affirmative – 4 Week Lab [1/3]

Impact – Resource Wars

rld. Projected climate change will seriously exacerbate already marginal living standards in many Asian, African, and Middle Eastern nations, causing widespread political instability and the likelihood of failed states. Unlike most conventional security threats that involve a single entity acting in specific ways and points in time, climate change has the potential to result in multiple chronic conditions, occurring globally within the same time frame. Economic and environmental conditions in already fragile areas will further erode as food production declines, diseases increase, clean water becomes increasingly scarce, and large populations move in search of resources. Weakened and failing governments, with an already thin margin for survival, foster the conditions for internal conflicts, extremism, and movement toward increased authoritarianism and radical ideologies. The U.S. may be drawn more frequently into these situations, either alone or with allies, to help provide stability before conditions worsen and are exploited by extremists. The U.S. may also be called upon to undertake stability and reconstruction efforts once a conflict has begun, to avert further disaster and reconstitute a stable environment.

Impact – Global Instability

Warming causes Short and long term displacement- destabilizing states

Alan Dupont, Michael Hintze Professor of International Security and Director of the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney, Survival, Volume http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title%7Econtent=t713659919%7Edb=all%7Etab=issueslist%7Ebranches=50 - v5050, Issue 3 June 2008 , pages 29 – 54, The Strategic Implications of Climate Change, 41

Environmental refugees In a grimly ironic scene from the Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow, thousands of starving, dislocated North Americans stream south across the border to sanctuary in Mexico fleeing from the frigid winter descending on the continent as the great ocean conveyor, or thermohaline circulation, collapses.40 Although the film is predictably dramatic in its depiction of this high-impact but low-probability scenario, the possibility that climate change might cause mass migrations of environmental refugees and displaced persons, with serious consequences for international security, is certainly plausible and should not be dismissed as a figment of Hollywood’s imagination. We already know that refugee flows and unregulated population movements can destabilise states internally, aggravate trans-border conflicts, create political tensions between sending and receiving states and jeopardise human security.41 One of the defining features of the post-Cold War security environment has been the rapid rise in unregulated population movements around the globe. The causes of these movements are complex and interconnected, but there is growing evidence to suggest that environmental decline is a contributing cause and that, in future, climate change may play a significant ancillary role. Some contend that climate or environmental refugees are now the fastest-growing proportion of refugees globally and that by 2050 up to 150m people may be displaced by the impact of global warming.42 Climate-induced migration is set to play out in three distinct ways. First, people will move in response to a deteriorating environment, creating new or repetitive patterns of migration, especially in developing states. Secondly, there will be increasing short-term population dislocations due to particular climate stimuli such as severe cyclones or major flooding. Thirdly, larger scale population movements that build more slowly but gain momentum as adverse shifts in climate interact with other migration drivers such as political disturbances, military conflict, ecological stress and socio-economic change are possible.43 Even the beneficial effects of climate change could lead to conflict. In China’s Xingiang province, for example, a projected increase in rainfall is likely to attract an influx of Han migrants into the Muslim Uighur ancestral lands, further inflaming ethnic tensions between the two communities where a low-level insurgency is already festering.
Climate change creates instability—failed states, terrorism and massive migrations exaggerate further

Anthony C Zinni General, Former Commander in Chief of the US Central Command, 2007. “On Climate Change and the Conditions of Terrorism” published as part of the “National Security and the threat of Climate Change”

A starting point in understanding this connection might be to “look at how climate change effects could drive populations to migrate,” Gen. Zinni said. “Where do these people move? And what kinds of conflicts might result from their migra- tion? You see this in Africa today with the flow of migrations. It becomes difficult for the neighbor- ing countries. It can be a huge burden for the host country, and that burden becomes greater if the international community is overwhelmed by these occurrences. “You may also have a population that is traumatized by an event or a change in condi- tions triggered by climate change,” Gen. Zinni said. “If the government there is not able to cope with the effects, and if other institutions are unable to cope, then you can be faced with a collapsing state. And these end up as breed- ing grounds for instability, for insurgencies, for warlords. You start to see real extremism. These places act like Petri dishes for extremism and for terrorist networks.” In describing the Middle East, the former CENTCOM commander said, “The existing situation makes this place more susceptible to problems. Even small changes may have a greater impact here than they may have elsewhere. You already have great tension over water. These are cultures often built around a single source of water. So any stresses on the rivers and aqui- fers can be a source of conflict. If you consider land loss, the Nile Delta region is the most fertile ground in Egypt. Any losses there could cause a real problem, again because the region is already so fragile. You have mass migrations within the region, going on for many decades now, and they have been very destabilizing politically.” Gen. Zinni referenced the inevitability of climate change, with global temperatures sure to increase. But he also stressed that the intensity of those changes could be reduced if the U.S. helps lead the way to a global reduction in carbon emis- sions. He urged action now, even if the costs of action seem high. “We will pay for this one way or another,” he said. “We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emis- sions today, and we’ll have to take an economic hit of some kind. Or we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives. There will be a human toll. “There is no way out of this that does not have real costs attached to it. That has to hit home.”

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