Global Justice Ecology Project; 50 Years Is Enough Network & Josh Braun / Seed Magazine – 2006-10-06 22:53:09
http://globaljusticeecology.org/index.php?name=connectinggjep&ID=344
Iraq War, Global Warming Induced Hurricanes
And World Bank Linked
Joint Release: Global Justice Ecology Project and 50 Years Is Enough Network
WASHINGTON, DC (September 23, 2006) — Tens of thousands of demonstrators [descended] on the nation’s capitol this weekend to protest the Iraq War. Protests [were] also planned for the World Bank, which is holding its annual fall meetings.
More and more people are beginning to connect global warming to the war and to the World Bank as a second massive storm prepares to pound another US coastal area.
“What we have in Iraq is a war for oil to fuel an economy that depends on more and more oil as fossil fuel-driven global warming intensifies,” stated Anne Petermann, co-Director of Global Justice Ecology Project. “This is an untenable situation — one that people in the US and the world must start to address,” she continued.
Climatologists are coming to consensus that the increased severity of storms, as witnessed in Katrina and now Rita, is a direct result of the global warming-induced rise in the temperature of ocean water. Continued increases in fossil fuel emissions, they warn, will lead to more and increasingly severe weather — including droughts, floods, hurricanes, blizzards. The United Nations estimates that global warming related catastrophes have claimed over 500,000 lives in the last decade alone.
The World Bank will be meeting this weekend in Washington, DC and one of the items on their agenda is global warming. The G-8 meetings in Scotland this summer put the World Bank in charge of identifying solutions to global warming. “The World Bank is probably the agency most responsible for developing fossil fuels in the world.
They have ignored the recommendations of their own Extractive Industries Review to get out of fossil fuel development, and now the G-8 wants to put them in charge of finding ‘solutions’ to global warming? It’s ludicrous,” said Sameer Dossani, Director of 50 Years Is Enough Network.
Paul Wolfowitz, the architect of the Iraq war, is the new head of the World Bank, which spent $28 billion since 1992 on developing fossil fuels, 80% of which was exported to G-8 countries. “Essentially, the World Bank wants to make money from causing global warming and then they want to make even more money as the world’s broker in the trading of fossil fuel emissions. It’s incredibly cynical,” 50 Years Is Enough Network’s Dossani added.
Climatologists warn that the devastation that has occurred on the Gulf Coast is just the tip of the iceberg. We have only seen a one degree rise in the temperature of the world’s oceans at this point, where a three to five degree rise is predicted by the end of the century, leading some to argue that Global warming is a much greater threat than terrorism.
“We need to get out of Iraq and away from this oil-driven economy and focus resources on addressing global warming before its too late,” said Petermann of Global Justice Ecology Project.
802.482-2689 Box 412 – Hinesburg, VT 05461 info@globaljusticeecology.org
CONTACT: Anne Petermann, Global Justice Ecology Project — mobile 802.578.0477; Sameer Dossani, 50 Years Is Enough Network — mobile 202.340.0216
GLOBAL WARming = GLOBAL WAR
Global Justice Ecology Project
Anti-war and global justice mobilizations organized for Washington DC, September 23-26 [were] called to confront the unjust and illegal war in Iraq and economic policies pushed by the World Bank that kill thousands everyday while destroying the Earth’s life support systems. In addition, US military policy in Iraq and “war for oil” mentality, and the World Bank’s pro-fossil fuel practices are exacerbating the global warming crisis.
Climate change and anti-war activists have the opportunity to come together at these protests to show the connections between war and climate change, and advance the US movement against global warming and global war.
How Will Global Warming Lead to Global War?
According to the United Nations, over the past decade climate change has been responsible for nearly 500,000 people killed, over 2.5 billion impacted and economic losses of over $690 billion.
Ninety-five percent of climate change casualties belonged to countries of middle to low-level income. Rising sea levels will soon displace over 100 million people living in low-lying areas, including entire islands in the South Pacific.
The United States, as the world’s largest polluter producing 25% of annual global carbon emissions, refuses to sign on to any international climate change treaties. Instead the US is waging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to monopolize some of the world’s largest remaining oil and natural gas supplies, ensuring US hegemony over these resources, and furthering its agenda for global domination.
The Sustainable Energy and Economy Network (SEEN) writes that the World Bank, entrusted in 1992 by the Rio Earth Summit to promote sustainable energy development, has instead spent $28 billion on fossil fuel projects. (Seventeen times more than they spent on renewable energy.)
The US, with defacto veto power over the World Bank in June of 2005 appointed Iraq War architect Paul Wolfowitz as the Bank’s new president. Following the July, 2005 G-8 meeting, Wolfowitz announced that the G-8 had put the World Bank in charge of financing a “new framework for mobilizing investment in clean energy and development.”
Ken Newcombe, the Bank’s Carbon Finance Business Manager stated that proposals for this “new framework” would be discussed at the fall meetings of the World Bank this September in Washington, DC. SEEN points out that over 80% of the World Bank’s fossil fuel projects exported oil to G-8 countries.
As long as neoliberalism and oil fuel the world’s economies, global warming and resource wars will continue to intensify, leading to widespread instability and violence. “In a world already riven with imperialist war, and by economic and military tensions, the potential for [global warming induced] upheaval to spark armed conflict, including the ultimate spectre of nuclear annihilation, is not a morbid fantasy, but all too likely,” stated Paul McGarr in his article “Capitalism and Climate Change.”
A 2003 report by the US Pentagon agrees, stating, “abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism? Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life. Once again, warfare would define human life.”
Governments, corporations and international bodies like the World Bank, entrenched in the neoliberal model, cannot and will not move toward real solutions to the on-coming climate crisis. The solution will come in the form of a global grassroots movement that unites to take real action to stop global warming and its catastrophic impacts. Join us in DC September 23-26.
For further information: info@globaljusticeecology.org
Did Global Warming Cause
A Resource War in Darfur?
Josh Braun / Seed Magazine
(August 2, 2006) — Though a sudden agreement gave hope for peace in Darfur, the lack of support from small anti-government groups, the spillover of refugees into Chad and the opposition of the central government to UN peacekeepers mean that the conflict drags on. Lost in discussions about ending the Sudanese government’s attacks on its people, however, is the acknowledgment of how the dispute began: Darfur may well be the first war influenced by climate change.
In recent years, increasing drought cycles and the Sahara’s southward expansion have created conflicts between nomadic and sedentary groups over shortages of water and land. This scarcity highlighted the central government’s gross neglect of the Darfur region — a trend stretching back to colonial rule. Forsaken, desperate and hungry, groups of Darfurians attacked government outposts in protest. The response was the Janjaweed and supporting air strikes.
Though a sudden agreement gave hope for peace in Darfur, the lack of support from small anti-government groups, the spillover of refugees into Chad and the opposition of the central government to UN peacekeepers mean that the conflict drags on. Lost in discussions about ending the Sudanese government’s attacks on its people, however, is the acknowledgment of how the dispute began: Darfur may well be the first war influenced by climate change.
In recent years, increasing drought cycles and the Sahara’s southward expansion have created conflicts between nomadic and sedentary groups over shortages of water and land. This scarcity highlighted the central government’s gross neglect of the Darfur region — a trend stretching back to colonial rule. Forsaken, desperate and hungry, groups of Darfurians attacked government outposts in protest. The response was the Janjaweed and supporting air strikes.
“The blunt truth is that the lack of water and agricultural land is a significant contributory factor. We should see this as a warning sign.”
The theory that current climate change will result in resource scarcity that could spark warfare has gained traction in the past decade, with research on the topic commissioned by organizations ranging from the United Nations to the Pentagon.
In March, British Home Secretary John Reid publicly fingered global warming as a driving force behind the genocide in Darfur. “[Environmental] changes make the emergence of vio-lent conflict more rather than less likely,” he said. “The blunt truth is that the lack of water and agricultural land is a significant contributory factor to the tragic conflict we see unfolding in Darfur. We should see this as a warning sign.”
Desertification and increasingly regular drought cycles in Darfur have diminished the availability of water, livestock and arable land. “The effect of climate change on these resources has been a latent problem,” said Leslie Lefkow, an expert on Darfur with Human Rights Watch. “And instead of addressing the cause of that tension and putting money into development of water resources…the government has done nothing. So the tensions have grown. And these tensions are one of the reasons why the rebellion started.”
Chalking the Darfur conflict up to climate change alone would be an oversimplification, argues Eric Reeves, a leading advocate and a professor of English literature at Smith College. “The greater cause, by far, lies in the policies of the current National Islamic Front regime,” he said. Marc Lavergne, a researcher with the French National Center for Scientific Research and former head of the Centre D’Etudes et de Documentation Universitaire Scientifique et Technique at the University of Khartoum, agrees. “The problem is not water shortage as such, and water shortages don’t necessarily lead to war.
The real problem is the lack of agricultural and other development policies to make the best use of available water resources since colonial times.”
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