It's Not Just About the Environment, Stupid

The first victims of global climate change are likely to be poor people. This somber reality is borne out on a daily basis by small and large catastrophes that plague the world: floods, drought, earthquakes, diseases. It will be no different with climate change. But if misery likes company, the poor and oppressed can take heart in the realization that they will not suffer alone, though theirs will be a heavier burden. However, the economic and social drag of global environmental change will be real for all of society. Many nice environments and non-human creatures will be lost too.

Since the turn of the 21st century, the inhabitants of Tuvalu have been preparing to evacuate their ancestral home in order to flee the imminent rise of the sea. Tuvalu consists of 9 low-lying coral islands in the South Pacific. The highest point in these islands is only about 15 feet above sea level. Though scientists have determined that sea level is only rising by 5mm per year at this point (about two inches), such a rise has become very noticeable to the inhabitants of Tuvalu, particularly during annual really-high tides, when sea water bubbles up through the porous limestone of the islands, killing off their meager crops and driving people from their homes. In 1999, Tuvaluan representatives appeared at the Fifth Conference of Parties Climate Convention in Bonn, Germany to highlight the dire threat to Pacific island peoples from rising sea levels and other effects of global climate change. This seemed particularly unjust, they argued, given that Tuvaluans have contributed only the smallest fraction to the world's emissions of greenhouse gases. Indeed, the Tuvalu population is only around 11,000 - the second least populated independent country in the world (the Vatican in Rome is first). Territorially, it occupies just 10 square miles - 1/10th the area of Washington, D.C. Tuvaluans called on the industrialized nations of the world to hear their pleas and to take action on a problem for which wealthy, large nations were most responsible and most capable of acting. But what are the complaints of a small group of poor islanders without resources of any significance, without any real trade deals to leverage, and without a military? In the meantime, as the the tiny island nation slowly drowns beneath the waves of an expanding Pacific Ocean, New Zealand has agreed to take in all environmental refugees from Tuvalu (they were rebuffed by Australia). After thousands of years of successful human occupation, scientists expect that the islands will be effectively gone in less than 50 years. But Tuvalu is lucky in some respects. Other sinking islands and their populations in the same region have not yet found a mainland escape route.

Scholars of risk identify two important qualities of hazards and catastrophes: vulnerability and resilience. Vulnerability is the exposure one has to some risk or danger, while resilience is the ability to cope and recover. We are all, to some degree or another, vulnerable to a variety of potential hazards or catastrophes. Most of humanity lives within 5o miles or less of a coast, and all of its attendant possibilities, from hurricanes to tsunamis. Island nations are not the only ones who watch the oceans with a wary eye. Bangladesh, a low-lying mainland country squeezed between India to the west and Myanmar to the east (formerly Burma), stares down the funnel of the Bay of Bengal. Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world, and has suffered almost unimaginable loss of life from ocean-related catastrophes. In 1970, a hurricane bore down the Bay of Bengal, pushing a wall of water before it that inundated coastal areas and resulted in the deaths of over 150,000 people. It happened again in 1991, killing over 130,000 people ("Top Ten Deadliest World Hurricanes since 1900" About.com). Scientists estimate that a 1 meter rise in sea level (20 years or less at current rates) will inundate half of Bangladesh's rice paddies - its main food source. Bangladesh is a populous country; it is hard to imagine millions of refugees fleeing into neighboring south Asian countries without serious political and economic repercussions.

But the political implications of changing environmental conditions are already apparent. Just recently, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon pointed out that the conflict in Darfur, Sudan is traceable, in part, to the consequences of a changing climate. Beginning in the early 1980s, the rains in southern Sudan began to fail. Scientists have linked a nearly 40% drop in precipitation to rising temperatures in the Indian Ocean, which in turn altered the heretofore reliable Monsoons. According to the Secretary General:

It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted during the drought. Until then, Arab nomadic herders had lived amicably with settled farmers. A recent Atlantic Monthly article by Stephan Faris describes how black farmers would welcome herders as they crisscrossed the land, grazing their camels and sharing wells. But once the rains stopped, farmers fenced their land for fear it would be ruined by the passing herds. For the first time in memory, there was no longer enough food and water for all. Fighting broke out. By 2003, it evolved into the full-fledged tragedy we witness today.

Since 2003, at least 200,000 people have died in the Darfur as a direct result of the conflict. Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist, argues that a similar set of environmental circumstances can be implicated in the political upheaval and violence in Somalia, the Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso ("A Climate Culprit in Darfur," Ban Ki Moon, Washington Post, 06/16/2007).

Of course, it seems easy enough to write off such calamities to the economic and political backwardness of these third world ... excuse me ... developing nations. In expert terms, we might say that their vulnerability is coupled with low resilience to disasters and emergencies. However, the resilience of the wealthier, developed nations (i.e., us) to environmental changes and emergencies is not so assured. Again, water - either too little to too much - plays a recurring role. Between 1930 and 1939, a series of dust storms devastated the American and Canadian prairie lands as a result of a severe drought coupled with decades of ecologically destructive farming practices. Millions of tons of rich Great Plains soil was blown away and permanently lost. Whole communities were buried, and clouds of dust blackened skies all the way to Chicago. Worse, this partly-natural, partly-human created ecological disaster happened in the immediate wake of the great stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression. This ecological and economic disaster forced over 300,000 impoverished Americans - environmental and economic refugees - to flee in a mass migration from the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas and other affected states. The cultural and economic landscape of the country, not to mention so many tens of thousands of families, were permanently altered.

Nearly 70 years later, the country's resiliency seems to have improved very little, if at all. In August 2005, the Gulf Coast was ravaged by one of the most intense hurricane seasons on record. The one-two punch of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, in particular, drowned New Orleans and other coastal communities, killing over 1,300 people and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee to places as far away as Cape Cod, Massachusetts. By some estimates, the exodus of Americans in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita may have been the largest in American history. The insurance industry has paid out over $50 billion, though this is only a small fraction of the true cost (and many would argue that the insurance industry got off criminally cheap). Sadly but unsurprisingly, the poor and marginalized suffered most in this disaster. African-Americans, the elderly, and others with access to less resources suffered higher rates of death, injury and displacement. It turns out that not owning a car, being able to drive, or having adequate private property insurance is a mortal liability. It is hard to grasp the magnitude of this modern catastrophe that drowned a major American city, caused an unprecedented movement of the country's population, and further impoverished an entire region for who knows how long. Whether or not one believes that these hurricanes can be attributed directly to global climate change, it is clear that the U.S. - the wealthiest and most powerful nation on Earth - is not as resilient as it needs to be.

The Bush Administration and other vocal opponents have been forced to acknowledge the reality of global climate change, or at least the necessity to prepare for such a catastrophic possibility ("On Warming, Bush Vows U.S. 'Will Do Its Part'," Washington Post 09/29/2007). Nevertheless, the President continues to warn that any "real solution" to climate change will have to be done in a way that does not jeopardize the economy. But climate change is about the economy because it's about the welfare of people - including Americans.

Global climate change has serious consequences for people and society. This point seems to get lost in debates about "the environment," as if "the environment" was something "out there." However, we are as much a part of our environment as birds, bees and bunny rabbits. More importantly, we are just as dependent on the proper functioning of the earth as every other living thing on the planet. There may be an earth without humans, but there are no humans without a hospitable earth. Properly managing and protecting 'the environment' is really about protecting ourselves and our interests, quite apart from aesthetic or intrinsic values in 'nature.' The crusade to save the planet is a crusade to save ourselves.