Month 8, Day 22: Imagine…

I figured I’d push the Pakistan/post-climate-change-foreign-policy angle a few more times, and found a suitable article in the NYT to hang it on. This one came out rather well, I think. In any event, I relish any opportunity to use the word “epiphenomena.”

Post-flood Pakistan will not only be a nation full of shattered lives and human misery. It will also be an opportunity for the world to demonstrate a new approach to foreign policy that takes into account the reality of anthropogenic climate chaos. For twenty-five years, climatologists have predicted that the greenhouse effect would lead to ever more erratic and freakish weather; it’s finally here, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

Which means that more of the world’s nations will be battered by climatic forces beyond their control. More heatwaves, droughts, massive floods, blizzards, storms — leading to more human misery and political instability. If we as a species are to survive in our self-created Anthropocene epoch, nations must learn to share resources and infrastructure against this common enemy. In an age of climate chaos, war and its profitable epiphenomena are luxuries we can no longer afford.

Warren Senders