The Uninhabitable Earth

While experts caution that wars aren’t caused by climate change, this is half-true in the same way that hurricanes aren’t directly caused by climate change. Researchers claim that for every half degree of warming, societies the world over could experience a 10-20 percent increase in the likelihood of armed conflict. By 2100, there could be 40-80 percent more war—and this is a best-case scenario.

Warming affects violence and armed conflict in many ways. Melting ice opens up new territories to fight over and new arenas for those fights to take place. Countries at risk of losing army and naval bases seek to arm themselves in other ways. The race to build footholds in eroding areas heats up. Warming weather is shown to have psychological and cognitive effects on human beings—so in regions that are hot and getting hotter, such as the Middle East, warming produces not only a strain on resources but a more sinister, invisible sense of psychological pressure.

Compromised agriculture, stalled economics, forced migration, and rapid social change are all factors that contribute to the rise of violence in any given place as a result of warming. War is “an all-encompassing aggregation” of warming’s biggest cascades, and in places like Yemen, where the social, political, and economic situation is already fragile, warming could tip the scales irreversibly. Climate change won’t be the sole cause of the coming wars—but it will be the spark that ignites already-present “kindling.”

Hotter weather and more highly polluted air are directly linked with increases in violent crime rates, robberies, and acts of larceny. Natural disasters that leave communities devastated and short on food by affecting their infrastructure and agriculture also, in their own way, lead to increases in crime rates. As the cascades mount, these chain reactions will compound and worsen.