[T]here is little systematic empirical evidence that resource scarcity and changing environmental conditions lead to conflict. In fact, several studies have shown that an abundance of natural resources is more likely to contribute to conflict. Moreover, even as the planet has warmed, the number of civil wars and insurgencies has decreased dramatically. Data collected by researchers at Uppsala University and the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo shows a steep decline in the number of armed conflicts around the world. Between 1989 and 2002, some 100 armed conflicts came to an end, including the wars in Mozambique, Nicaragua, and Cambodia. If global warming causes conflict, we should not be witnessing this downward trend.
So Global warming just like religion is the answer for everything?
Dang,, I was hoping to blame God War III on Global Warming.
,
I guess it goes to show that EVERYONE in Oslo isn’t a lying rat-bastard socialist. There’s good people everywhere, sometimes you just have to dig farther to find ’em. ~:D
times of maximum conflict tend to mimic global cooling. crop failures would cause huge shifts of population.
If Al Gore is going to try to force us into a global cooling , he would be causing war.
I’m going to slightly disagree; there’s a great deal of evidence that resource scarcity leads to conflict.
If, for example, the seasonal rains are late or insufficient, and grasslands become scarce, the various pastoral nomadic economies move into war, fighting over water and land access.
The problem with the award to Gore is that climate change, and in particular, his singular emphasis on AGW, has no proven connection to resource depletion. The Oslo statement is pure hypothetical speculation. It says that ‘global warming MAY induce; that there ‘MAY be increased conflict’.
An international award given on the basis, not of what the individual has actually done for peace, but on the basis of pure speculation of what MIGHT happen IF man-caused global warming occurs??? The award is a disgrace.
The world has undergone and will continue to undergo many climate changes. But, the root cause of conflict is no longer resource depletion. The world is now a networked global economy.
States without a certain basic resource may now access that resource within economic exchanges. The problem arises when totalitarian states refuse to empower their citizens with the economic and political benefits of selling that resource (eg oil).
The type of wars that we are seeing in the modern global era is no longer that between states, but are wars of populations who are kept out of economic participation by their totalitarian govts. Islamic fascism is one such example.
conflict dropping. that’s ok the muslims will pick up the slack
The Al Gore decision was controversial in Oslo as well. For example, both the most left and right wing Norwegian parties, the Red and Progress parties, were critical of the decision. I’ve been having trouble finding a good English language article about it but one that sort of discusses a little bit of the criticism: http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article2048481.ece
I’m going to slightly disagree; there’s a great deal of evidence that resource scarcity leads to conflict.
If, for example, the seasonal rains are late or insufficient, and grasslands become scarce, the various pastoral nomadic economies move into war, fighting over water and land access.
That’s as nonsensical as the leftist mantra that poverty causes more crime.Obviously, if that were the case, the 1930’s would have been the most violent decade in modern history.
ol hoss – you obviously don’t know what a pastoral nomadic economy is. The grain belts of the N. American west were not pastoral nomadic. They were settled, industrial agriculture. A pastoral nomadic economy is non-industrial.
Perhaps I should have clarified for those who are not familiar with the terms. Resource depletion in non-industrial economies most definitely leads to war. Even in early industrial economies, resource depletion, either in the home country or in its colonies, led to war against other countries that had those resources (water, energy supplies).
But now, in our economically globally networked planet, resources must be sold. The problem arises if a resource country sells its resources only to one country and bars access to other countries – eg, China, Russia, US, Europe, all require various energy resources. Most of these situations can be dealt with by political rather than war measures.
But, most certainly, resources are a requirement for any economy, and lack of those resources due to either natural or political causes, can be a cause of war.
Here’s a comment on conflicts around water.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/natres/water/2001/0320cflt.htm
Now, I’m suggesting that many but not all of these can be dealt with politically. But, the situation is not easy, even politically.
After all – what are the reasons for war? In my view, the primary reasons have to be either offensive or defensive.
A defensive war is, for example, the Iraq War, which is to enable democracy in the ME, to cut out the root cause of Islamic fascism, which is political tribalism.
An offensive war is, for example, wars over resources – such as the Suez Canal War 1956, a strategically important resource for British shipping.
ET,
Are you aware that your comments have no relevance outside of a C- paper in anthopology? 100 level at that.
It’s been a few years since pre-industrial societies had any pull on current events.
I’d say societies that have regressed back to the stone age have a little more sway. Scarcity isn’t the issue there either.
warwick – check on the link about water. Access to resources is a valid ‘casus belli’ and water, for example, is a highly contentious natural resource. If it becomes scarce in one region and exists in another region and political means are useless to share the resource, war can result.
My point was that making a universal statement that resource scarcity is not a cause of war, is invalid, because every society requires resources. Equally, I don’t see that an abundance of resources leads to conflict. Give me an example, remembering that war is between two and more parties.
If a resource scarcity arises in one area, and another area has abundance, and that first society is denied access, either due to natural or political causes, it may very well lead to war.
I don’t know what you mean by ‘societies that have regressed back to the stone age’.
Cal2 skates painfully close to a rational conclusion and yet …
“times of maximum conflict tend to mimic global cooling. crop failures would cause huge shifts of population.”
If crop failure from a hypothetical global cooling would cause population shift and conflict why would crop failure — an example of resource scarcity — from global warming not have the same effect?
It’s interesting to note that the Pentagon — a place with some expertise in war planning conflict preparation — has drawn the opposite conclusion:
ET,
Stone age regression can be witnessed in the Middle East, Afghanastan before the war, and Pakistan.
Actually, “dark age” would be more accurate.
Ah, warwick – I see your point, except that they haven’t exactly ‘regressed’; these states were never modern states – and that is precisely the problem. They are tribal, just as were the European states in the ‘dark ages’ – and these states are refusing/fighting the necessity to modernize.
Kevin – exactly my point. It has always been the case, and this is regardless of global warming or cooling – which for the most part man cannot control – that resource supplies have varied. The basic requirements are for food, water, energy.
If the envt for whatever reason fails to produce this triad, then, the first response will usually be within the country – health and nutrition will suffer and the population will decrease. Slightly after, the state or population may attack another state/area that has some of those requirements IF it cannot politically obtain a trade agreement and IF, only IF it even has the capacity to attack.
If the situation continues, the population may be forced to leave (immigration), or, they might adapt and change their technology to enable them to obtain those resources. This last tactic was the solution of only Western Europe – which changed its technology from the peasant agriculturalism of the medieval period, to the surplus agriculturalism and colonization of the post 16thc…and then, went on to industrialism.
Resources are vital. No country goes to war on ideas alone.
Did somebody say Gore/Nobel in the same sentence?
I could Not resisit!
Very Ig-noble ……….
those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
Read “A Distant Mirror, the calamatous 14th century”
Not surprising since many of these enviromental radicals including AL GORE is one of these crazy new age pagans i mean AL GORE must be the hign preist of the earth worshipping gaia wackos
Forget Al Gore, IPPC and Nobel
What could be better than tripping along Vancouver*s Robson street with great shops, coffee bars and friends Chevron and Exxon near by on a crystal clear sunny day?
After the fun on Robson and Denman in the west end one could drive over the Lionsgate bridge and take the gondola up Grouse mountain. Be a tourist for a day.
Looking down on Vancouver we can see the city is under a nicotine colored dome cloud. That seems odd. We just came from downtown and could swear the blue sky sunny day was crystal clear.
We know the pollution cloud that cities live under around the world cause massive pressure on health care costs. But what the heck; life is sure great today while the sun shines. Where does one start to reduce pollution anyway? Why bother?
One would have to work against the world*s richest and most powerful corporations, Exxon, Chevron and GM for electric and compressed air transportation.
One would have to convince friends that a range of 250 kilometers between fill-ups rather than 500 km is not an impossible hardship. Hybrids and bio fuels are helpful intrim solutions and they do reduce the demand for oil. The real solution though is the electric or compressed air car.
We often see a 1993 Honda Insight driving around town here in Courtenay BC. The driver is always smiling. He NEVER has to buy, pump or even smell gasoline. The Insight gets an estimated 80 to 120 mpg. Seems like magic, when it uses no gas at all.
Uh, OK, so that must be the pro-rated consumption taking materials and manufacture into account.
Big Oil and Government can dial in any oil/gas price they wish while bombs go off over Mid-East oil reserves. GM will make and sell hybrids as long as it keeps old-fashioned ICE engines on the highways. They do not want to give in to the simple, [ one moving part ], electric motor.
Guess the nicotine colored cloud enveloping cities around the world will remain. Too bad. = TG
Give it up. This is not a science prize. It’s a propaganda exercise. They’re not going to change it, they like the hooraw.
“Between 1989 and 2002, some 100 armed conflicts came to an end, including the wars in Mozambique, Nicaragua, and Cambodia.”
What else happened in 1989? The fall of the Berlin Wall, the accelerates demise of the USSR, and the end to its world-wide trouble-making.
It was Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul II who led to the ending of these conflicts, not cow flatulence.
Still, the question goes begging: What the hell has so-called global warming got to do with peace?
It’s people who bring about war and peace.
Can still hear Ronnie Reagan saying “Mr. Gorbachev, take down that wall” and it did happen!
Screw weird Al, Oslo will perhaps take another look at the lies in his documentary and “taketh away”. Well, if they’re concerned about they’re credibility.
Concerned about their credibility? Don’t forget that these people gave this same ‘peace’ prize to Yasser Arafish.
First, aside from a few anecdotes, there is little systematic empirical evidence that resource scarcity and changing environmental conditions lead to conflict. In fact, several studies have shown that an abundance of natural resources is more likely to contribute to conflict.
There may be a good point to the correlation to affluence and violence with climate/famine/deprivation as bogus factors. If scarcity lead to civil disorder, my Depression era grandparents should have been the most violent people in American history. My God, they faced esteem defacing souplines and unemployment on a national scale never to be repeated in an orderly and tolerant manner. Dust Bowl America was a more civil and less anti-social place. The Irish didn’t kill and eat each other during the potato famine, they just immigrated or quietly died. Thinking back, whining never entered my family until they hit some measure of affluence.
The little gangsta anti-socials that have passed through my radar in psych crisis with its overlap to the criminal element have never not had a few hundred dollars of worth of status clothing on their backs, missed a meal or not fecklessly entertained themselves to the extreme. Poverty, caloric and stuffwise isn’t their issue. Their grandparents that had nothing were civil decent law abiding folks.
The world’s been becoming a more peaceful place for a long time. The percentage of the male population who die violently has been steadily dropping for hundreds of years. And that trend continues today.
That’s not to say that wars sometimes (not often or always of course) break out over control over scarce strategic resources. It has happened repeatedly throughout human history and continues to happen today. To argue otherwise for the sake of argument is absurd.
The world’s been becoming a more peaceful place for a long time.The percentage of the male population who die violently has been steadily dropping for hundreds of years.
Only if you take the Hitler and Stalin deaths out of the equation and stop the clock in ’53 when hard Bolshevikism died. The WW’s plus the lefties were males killers in huge numbers. No scarcity as root cause there. Islamofascism is the new male killer of this generation which is too premature to tabulate. Let’s say Iran ultizies it Muslim bomb in the near future and work from there.
Scare resourcs weren’t the cause of wars or lefty deaths. The resources got scarce AFTER the wars, pogroms and Communist agendas. The famines in the Ukraine and Russia were man made.
It’s a shame that you aren’t a reader of history, Jose.
‘The resources got scarce AFTER the wars, pogroms and Communist agendas.’
Good point Penny.
Slave-driver Mao’s Great Leap Forward agenda, that forced farmer workers off the land and into heavy industry in China during the late fifties, led to the deaths of at least 30 million Chinese.
And some local Chinese said it was more like 40 million.
Interestingly, Comrade Pierre Trudeau toured China at the time and didn’t notice the trading of children, the cannibalism and the massive burying going on during his trip across China.
Ah yes, the magic of the socialist ‘rose-colored glasses’ strikes again.
I wonder when Rotten Rrobert Mugabe is going to take his off?
Penny “Only if you take the Hitler and Stalin deaths out of the equation and stop the clock in ’53 when hard Bolshevikism died.”
That’s not necessary. Even with the two World Wars factored in less than 1% of the adult male population died violently during the 20th century. That’s probably the lowest such percentage in human history.
“The WW’s plus the lefties were males killers in huge numbers”
One benchmark of the quality of an internet discussion forumn is how long it takes someone to equate the person on the other side of the argument to a Nazi. On SDA that’s about 45 minutes.
The grain belts of the N. American west were not pastoral nomadic. They were settled, industrial agriculture.
As usual you miss the point.
Resource depletion in non-industrial economies most definitely leads to war. Even in early industrial economies, resource depletion, either in the home country or in its colonies, led to war against other countries that had those resources (water, energy supplies).
Saying a lack of resources causes war and violence is like leftards saying poverty causes crime. Or one’s cultural position causes violence. Or a myriad of other excuses.