[THS] Climate change may put world at war

[Peter Webster]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml= /earth/2008/04/23/eaclimate123.xml

 Climate change 'may put world at war'

By Charles Clover, Environment Editor
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 23/04/2008

Climate change could cause global conflicts as large as the two world
wars but lasting for centuries unless the problem is controlled, a leading
defence think tank has warned.

The Royal United Services Institute said a tenfold increase in research
spending, comparable to the amount spent on the Apollo space
programme, will be needed if the world is to avoid the worst effects of
changing temperatures.

[photo]
A dried-up reservoir: Climate change 'may put world at war'
Governments should be preparing for the worst

However the group said the world's response to the threats posed by
climate change, such as rising sea levels and migration, had so far been
"slow and inadequate," because nations had failed to prepare for the
worst-case scenario.

"We're preparing for a car bomb, not for 9/11," said Nick Mabey, author
of the report which comes after Lord Stern, who compiled an economic
assessment of climate change for the Government, said last week that
he had underestimated the possible economic consequences.

Mr Mabey, a former senior member of the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit
who is now chief executive of the environmental group E3G, said
leading economies should be preparing for what would happen if
climate change turned out to be running at the top of the temperature
range scientists are predicting.

He noted that investment in energy research is ten times less than the
£10 billion a year (at 2002 prices) spent on the Apollo shuttle
programme.
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Unless similar sums are poured into battling climate change the world
risks being caught completely unprepared if the climate reaches a
"tipping point" where warming and sea level rise began to accelerate,
he said.

Even if climate change was more benign than the worst-case scenario,
the research would not be wasted as technological advances in nuclear
power, biofuels, carbon capture and storage and renewables were
urgently needed anyway, he added.

The report said: "If climate change is not slowed and critical
environmental thresholds are exceeded, then it will become a primary
driver of conflicts between and within states."

It added: "Climate impacts will force us into a radical rethink of how we
identify and secure our national interests.

For example, our energy and climate security will increasingly depend
on stronger alliances with other large energy consumers, such as China,
to develop and deploy new energy technologies, and less on relations
with oil producing states.

"No strategy for long run peace and stability in Afghanistan can possibly
succeed unless local livelihoods can survive the impact of a changing
climate on water availability and crop yields."

A spokesman for the Foreign & Commonwealth Office said: "We
welcome the RUSI report as a helpful addition to the growing debate on
climate security."