It’s all going to ultimately revolve around water…because Water IS Life.
ASW
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” … the United States will have much less influence around the world
as the growing climate conditions, water and energy stress the planet.”
“Climate change, we concluded, is not by itself going to bring down any
governments. It is not going to lead to wars,” he added. But in the case
of “already stressed and strained and failing and flailing governments
and states … this well could be the straw that breaks the camel´s back.”
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American Chronicle
November 21, 2008
Water worth more than gold
by Michael Webster, Investigative Reporter
The new U.S. intelligence report issued by the
National Intelligence Council, the “Global Trends
2025” report includes warnings tied to climate
change. Including water and food shortages
worldwide.
Thomas Fingar, chairman of the NIC and deputy
director of national intelligence says of the
report that may effect the U.S. most is that the
United States will have much less influence
around the world as the growing climate
conditions, water and energy stress the planet.
The report predicts, within just two decades the
already sensitive areas from China to Africa will
have to deal with more droughts, food shortages
and scarcity of fresh water. At a recent briefing
Fingar stressed that limited water and
agricultural land could “add a kind of
competition to the international system that we
haven’t seen for a very long time.”
Water “will have to be on the agenda” of political leaders, he added.
Fingar, who reportedly is leaving the NIC on Dec.
1, 2008, after three years, who served for almost
20 years at the State Department’s Bureau of
Intelligence and Research. Fingar famously
dissented from the 2002 national intelligence
estimate conclusion that Iraq was reconstituting
its nuclear program.
Since 1997 the fourth of its kind is designed to
help U.S. Presidents and their administrations
think strategically and long-term about potential
future trends and how they should be dealt with.
Earlier this month, he told a conference on
Middle Eastern issues that parts of that region
are “among the most vulnerable to water
shortages” caused by warming temperatures that
spread drought.”If water is a problem today,” he
added, “it’ll be a bigger problem in the
locations that are a problem today by 2025.”
Fingar has also said that based on what climate
scientists are saying there’s nothing the world
can do to avoid some changes already in motion.
“The changes in sea level, the changes in
temperature, the impact on agriculture, the
impact on water availability, the impact that
comes from melting in the Arctic and opening up
resources and extending growing seasons in some
places, and shortening them in others. That is
going to happen,” he said. “All we can begin to
do now is prepare to mitigate those impacts.”
Even the United States is vulnerable, he noted,
citing predictions of a new “Dust Bowl” in the
Southwest and more severe storms along the
Atlantic seaboard and Gulf Coast. “Practical
problems” from more severe weather includes “63
military installations that are in danger of
being flooded by storm surges,” he added. “The
number of nuclear power plants that are so
similarly vulnerable is almost as high.”
According to Fingar his biggest concern is what
climate-tied water and food shortages might do to
weaker nations.
“Climate change, we concluded, is not by itself
going to bring down any governments. It is not
going to lead to wars,” he added. But in the case
of “already stressed and strained and failing and
flailing governments and states…this well
could be the straw that breaks the camel´s back.”
“Think about the difficulty of scrounging up in
the international system the food for 17 or 18
million North Koreans, for a few tens of millions
on the Horn of Africa,” he said.
Last June, Fingar told Congress that “sub-Saharan
Africa will continue to be the most vulnerable to
climate change because of multiple environmental,
economic, political and social stresses.” In many
African nations, climate stresses are “a main
contributor to instability,” he added.
In a previous speech, Fingar said that even
prosperous China has “severe water problems now
and they get much, much worse by 2015 or 2020.”
As an example he pointed out that a farming
region in China’s north that produces food for
400 million people “is running out of water
because they are depleting the underground
aquifers through millions of tube wells drilled
in the 1960s.”
“Any activity put down in the Chinese context,
you have got one hell of a problem,” he added.
“And that is going to happen. This isn´t in the
maybe category. This is in the for-real category.”
Many agree and are very concerned that these
changes will cause serious tensions worldwide and
more fighting locally as while as major conflicts
will ensue.
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