Last year, nearly 102,000 people were killed in armed
conflicts across the world according to the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Many
of them died in civil wars, and since 1946, two-thirds of civil wars have been
fought between rival ethnic groups.
But climate-related problems, like crop failures, also play
a role. Research published last year found that between 1980 and 2010, 23% of
civil wars coincided with climate-related disasters in countries with deep
ethnic divides. And worryingly global warming may make this kind of disaster
more common.
Delving back into history, another study discovered that outbreaks
of violence against Jews often seemed to be linked with economic shocks. The
authors examined more than 1,360 pogroms or expulsions in more than 930 cities
between 1100 and 1800, and plotted them against falls in temperature big enough
to reduce crop yields.
They found that a fall of just one third of a degree
increased the danger of a pogrom or an exclusion by half over the next five
years. As we have seen recently, in times of economic difficulty or
disappointment, it is very tempting to blame people who are different in some
way.
For more on the link between global warming and war, see my
posts of 21 September and 25 November, 2009.
No comments:
Post a Comment