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Climate Change. We have been warned

Whilst countless delegates from around the world debate and talk a la the usual talk-fest at the Durban Climate Conference underway right now - and evidently not getting anywhere in the process - the facts of climate change we are all faced with emerge, amongst from other sources, this book review of the "Tropic of Chaos" in the SMH.

"We are bombarded with evidence of apocalyptic climate change - uncontrollable weather patterns that threaten sustainable life on Earth.

Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, by US investigative journalist Christian Parenti, visits many nations around the world and documents evidence of deepening social, economic and political unrest due to reduced rainwater.

Parenti defines the Tropic of Chaos as a ''belt of economically and politically battered post-colonial states girding the planet's mid latitudes … The societies in this band are heavily dependent on agriculture and fishing, thus very vulnerable to shifts in weather patterns.''
Add to the toxic mix decades of Western-imposed neo-liberal policies dressed up as ''economic restructuring'' and ''we find clustered [in these areas] most of the failed and semi-failed states of the developing world''.

A 2008 Swedish government study concluded 46 countries and 2.7 billion people were susceptible to these ''perfect storm'' conditions. We are thus far largely insulated in the West from these profound shifts but this illusion of calm won't last; the Pentagon is already planning for immigration pressures, conflict in Africa surrounding food security and humanitarian emergencies. In classic disaster-capitalism style, private companies are joining in a ''matrix of parasitic interests'' to both fuel and arm the wars being fought while investing in methods to monitor, imprison and document the stated problems and people. Parenti correctly calls this ''militarised management of civilisation's violent disintegration''.


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