50 years ago people knew about climate change
by digby
I would have thought half a century is long enough lead time to make people accept this reality but it appears that until the planet is so changed that massive number of people are starving and rioting in the streets, nothing will change.
By the way, here's a little reminder about Syria that might be of interest:
Brad Plumer: There are obviously a whole slew of reasons why civil war erupted in Syria. But you've argued that a severe drought and water shortages were a much-neglected factor. Explain how water fits in.
Francesco Femia: We looked at the period between 2006 and 2011 that preceded the outbreak of the revolt that started in Daraa. During that time, up to 60 percent of Syria's land experienced one of the worst long-term droughts in modern history.
This drought — combined with the mismanagement of natural resources by [Syrian President Bashar] Assad, who subsidized water-intensive crops like wheat and cotton farming and promoted bad irrigation techniques — led to significant devastation. According to updated numbers, the drought displaced 1.5 million people within Syria.
We found it very interesting that right up to the day before the revolt began in Daraa, many international security analysts were essentially predicting that Syria was immune to the Arab Spring. They concluded it was generally a stable country. What they had missed was that a massive internal migration was happening, mainly on the periphery, from farmers and herders who had lost their livelihoods completely.
Around 75 percent of farmers suffered total crop failure, so they moved into the cities. Farmers in the northeast lost 80 percent of their livestock, so they had to leave and find livelihoods elsewhere. They all moved into urban areas — urban areas that were already experiencing economic insecurity due to an influx of Iraqi and Palestinian refugees. But this massive displacement mostly wasn't reported. So it wasn't factoring into various security analyses. People assumed Syria was relatively stable compared to Egypt.
BP: To be clear here, you're not saying drought caused the conflict. But these environmental stresses were an overlooked factor in creating unrest?
FF: The conflict is ongoing, so it's hard right now to study the dynamics in Syria and look at exactly how population movements might have put pressure on the economic and social dynamics in various areas. So we're not making any claim to causality here. We can't say climate change caused the civil war. But we can say that there were some very harsh climatic conditions that led to instability.
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