Thanks to scientific advances, we can predict certain phenomena:
lunar eclipses, the orbital periods of comets, the weather in 40 years
(to an extent). Predicting politics is a crap-shoot. That’s what makes
Gwynne Dyer’s recent book, Climate Wars, so amusing and
frustrating.
In an attempt to take a crack at the “political and strategic
consequences of climate change,” he states in one of his scenarios,
“The Year 2045,” that, amongst other things, Padania (a nation-state in
northern Italy) is threatening the Northern Union (the EU kicked out
the failed states of the Mediterranean) with a nuclear arsenal in a
demand for food.
Dyer does proceed from each scenario with a chapter that attempts to
anchor his thoughts with some quotations; however, all he can draw
upon—besides scientific models for climate change, which give no
indication as to how human affairs will unfold —are reports by
American and British government security agencies, whose research
methods are never mentioned, and who Dyer admits could be biased so as
to justify their budgets.
Whatever the political consequences of climate change will be, this
book does nothing but suggest Dyer’s poorly thought-out suspicion.
This article appears in Feb 5-11, 2009.
