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Reflections on Crisis: Capitalism, Climate Change, and Resistance Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence Christian Parenti New York: Nation Books, 2011
"My baby saw the future; she doesn't want to live here anymore. It's lousy sciencefiction, gets on your skin and seeps into your bones... "
DAVID BYRNE, DANCE ON VASELINE
AS THE MOST RECENT (April 14, 2014) report from the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] clearly indicates, the earth's ecosystem is undergoing a radical transformation. A key conclusion of the new IPCC report is that sealevel rise has accelerated in recent years. Yet, before many, many more people become climate refugees as their communities become submerged, most people on the planet will be confronted by extreme weather events. Record-breaking hot months now occur five times more frequently than they would in a stable, unchanging climate; these heat waves cause droughts, wild fires, proliferation of contagious diseases, widespread extinctions, poor harvests, and, inevitably, loss of life. The increase in the earth's surface temperature means more warm air rising, carrying more evaporated water into the atmosphere, which entails greater condensation and precipitation, thus a significant increase in violent flooding across the globe, hence more landslides, and more loss of life. As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise due to anthropogenic climate change, average temperatures will also continue to rise causing weather patterns to become less and less stable. Rainy seasons throughout the world, for example, which used to occur more consistently due to the interconnected planet climate systems, have now become erratic, prone to extreme shifts, which entail positive-feedback loops accelerating climate change itself.
In light of such dire planetary conditions, and some scientists now believe that the IPCC report is conservative, it seems appropriate to reflect upon the many insights offered in Christian Parentis latest book Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence. In the following pages I offer a review of Parentis work in order to better assess how climate change is impacting the geopolitical landscape of our world, but first I will briefly introduce another thinker's recent contribution to an essentially related topic: planetary resource control. Michael Klare's investigations, spanning the past thirty years, into the global pursuit of vital resources have profoundly shaped...