The Star Phoenix (Saskatoon, Canada), January 10, 2009

WE'RE NOT DOOMED, BUT WE'RE IN DANGER

[Rachel's introduction: The first and most important impact of global warming will be an acute and permanent crisis of food supply. In that situation, wars become probable. "Countries that are unable to feed themselves are unlikely to be reasonable about it.... There is a probability of wars, even nuclear wars, if the temperature rises more than two to three degrees Celsius [4 to 5 degees Fahrenheit]."]

By Sheila Pratt, Canwest News Service

[Editor's note: The Worldwatch Institute recently reached the same conclusion as Gwynne Dyer about the need to decarbonize the global economy totally by 2050.]

The Bush era of climate-change denial will end the moment Barack Obama steps into the White House, predicts author and international affairs analyst Gwynne Dyer.

President Obama will find several major reports on global warming waiting for him from the U.S. defence and state departments, when he sits down at his desk Jan. 20, says Dyer -- and they contain some ominous scenarios about the impact of global warming and how much time is left to take meaningful action.

"The denial industry is in full retreat," says Dyer, whose latest book is Climate Wars.

"We'll be into an international carbon trading system in four to eight years, and possibly a U.S. ban on non-conventional oil."

However, even with the U.S. finally taking climate change seriously, the world cannot possibly meet the deadlines outlined in the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to avoid the crucial tipping point that could lead to runaway global warming.

That's one of several grim conclusions in Dyer's book that will give the reader a few sleepless nights with its visions of mass migrations, famine, floods and the possible collapse of international institutions like the United Nations under severe circumstances.

But Dyer also offers a way out, sort of, so it's important to stick to the end of the story.

"We are not doomed; we are just in danger," says Dyer, who still has faith the world can find a way to maintain a high-energy, high-tech civilization.

Dyer, well known for his books on war, turned his mind to climate change when he realized defence departments in Britain and other countries are already making plans to cope with the negative fallout of a warmer planet.

The first and most important impact will be "an acute and permanent crisis of food supply," with any significant warming beyond the current level, says Dyer.

In that situation, wars become probable. "Countries that are unable to feed themselves are unlikely to be reasonable about it.

"There is a probability of wars, even nuclear wars, if the temperature rises more than two to three degrees Celsius," writes Dyer, with India and Pakistan in mind.

"Once that happens, all hope of international co-operation to curb emissions and stop the warming goes out the window."

Climate warming is already measurable, says Dyer.

"I was in India 18 months ago and a new study showed they are already two degrees hotter than 1990," he says. With every two degrees more of warming, food production will drop by 25 per cent, according to the study.

Dyer takes a close look at an American report, The Age of Consequences: Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change produced in November 2007 by two Washington- based think-tanks.

Even its "non-alarmist" scenario projects serious problems -- coastal land in Southeast Asia will be lost, failing crops in Central and South America, prolonged drought in the Southwest U.S. and the Mediterranean countries of Europe.

His research led Dyer to conclude the warming trend is moving faster than the predictions of scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"The kinds of problems we anticipated for 2040 will arrive in 2020, not in our children or grandchildren's lifetime, but our lifetime," says Dyer.

Dyer says the unavoidable conclusion is that the world has to wean itself off the carbon economy in the next few decades and cut emissions by 80 per cent.

"Most of the changeover has to come in the next twenty years and we need to have completely decarbonized our economies by 2050."

Copyright The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2009