On Facebook, a couple of people have asked me on the existential/global catastrophic risk posed by climate change causing or exacerbating widespread (nuclear) war.
Here’s what I wrote.
(Note that this is what I personally believe, rather than something I’m confident experts on international relations will agree on)
I think climate change as an indirect GCR is less crazy than climate change as a direct GCR. But I still don’t find it very compelling.
I think if you look at the entire history of human armed conflict, deaths attributable to wars are substantially lower than the GCR definition (population adjusted). Also most deaths historically have been incidental/civilian casualties, which have gone down over time for various reasons, including better medical sanitation and general wealth (so less likely that, eg. war → pillage → mass starvation).
So to argue that conflict from climate change leads to a GCR, you need a strong reason that “this time is different.” One possible reason is access to nuclear weapons, but for this to be true, you need a compelling reason for people to differentially use nuclear weapons as a result of climate change at a fairly high probability. (There are reasons that also point in the other direction).
For food/water wars specifically, I’m reasonably convinced by Amartya Sen’s research that pretty much all famines in recorded history are a result of distribution rather than production (his exact claim is that “no democracy has ever had a serious famine,” which I think is too strong, but I think the general trend is correct).
In addition, the evidence for wars over food/resource contention is a lot weaker than I would have naively guessed before looking into it briefly. For example, here’s an account from a science journalist who was commissioned to write a book about “water wars” and finding that there isn’t enough credible evidence to write one:
I agree overall. The best case I’ve heard for Climate Change as an indirect GCR, which seems unlikely but not at all implausible, is not about direct food shortages, but rather the following scenario:
Assume state use of geoengineering to provide cloud cover, reduce heat locally, or create rain. Once this is started, they will quickly depend on it as a way to mitigate climate change, and the population will near-universally demand that it continue. Given the complexity and global nature of weather, however, this is almost certain to create non-trivial effects on other countries. If this starts causing crop failures or deadly heat waves in the affected countries, they would feel justified escalating this to war, regardless of who would be involved—such conflicts could easily involve many parties. In such a case, in a war between nuclear powers, there is little reason to think they would be willing to stop a non-nuclear options.
Something I find missing from the discussion of CC as an indirect existential risk is what this means for prioritisation. It’s often used implicitly to support CC-mitigation as a high-priority intervention. But in the case of geoengineering, funding for governance/safety is probably on the order of millions (at most), making it many orders of magnitude more neglected than CC-mitigation, and this is similar for targeted nuclear risk mitigation, reducing risk of great power war, etc.
This suggests that donors who believe there is substantial indirect existential risk from CC are (all else equal) much better off funding the terminal risks, insofar as there are promising interventions that are substantially more underfunded.
Current investment in solar geoengineering is roughly 10 million annually (this may have increased in the last few years), so by most metrics it’s really neglected. The main project working on this is the Harvard solar geoengineering research program, which OPP has funded about 2.5 million dollars for a few years in 2016. They’ve also funded a solar governance program in 2017 for about 2 million dollars. Grants here. Recently, they don’t appear to have made any climate-related grants in this space, and its unclear to me what the funding situation looks like.
Regarding states that have committed to doing things: I didn’t find anything on doing a shallow dive. However, there is work being done on it in a number of countries. In particular, scientists in India have raised concerns that current models show potential for drought and famine because of reduced water flow in tropical regions like India. (This is in addition to technical and general governance concerns)
From what I understand, Geoengineering is mostly avoided because people claim (incorrectly, in my view) it is a signal that the country thinks there is no chance to fix the problem by limiting emissions. In addition, people worry that it has lots of complex impacts we don’t understand. As we understand the impacts better, it becomes more viable—and more worrisome. And as it becomes clearer over the next 20-30 years that a lot of the impacts are severe, it becomes more likely to be tried.
Yeah that seems plausible, though one thing I’d flag is that while I could sort of see why local use of geoengineering is more valuable in worlds with more climate change than less, the difference doesn’t intuitively seem that big to me.
(It does however suggest that maybe EAs should be careful about recommending geo-engineering as a solution to climate change? Not sure.)
Given the complexity and global nature of weather, however, this is almost certain to create non-trivial effects on other countries.
...And even if it could miraculously be prevented from actually causing any local negative weather events in other countries, it would certainly be perceived to do so, because terrible freak droughts/floods/etc. will continue to happen as always, and people will go looking for someone to blame, and the geoengineering project next door will be an obvious scapegoat.
Like how the US government once tried to use cloud-seeding (silver iodide) to weaken hurricanes, and then one time a hurricane seemed to turn sharply and hit Georgia right after being seeded, and everyone blamed the cloud-seeding, and sued, and shut the program down, …even though it was actually a coincidence! (details) (NB: I only skimmed the wikipedia article, I haven’t checked anything)
Hi. I emailed Tony Allan, the social scientist quoted in the nature op-ed I linked above, about this question:
I have your enquiry about the link between water scarcity and the present armed conflict in Syria.
My position is the same as it was when I concluded, as did others, in the 1980s that armed conflict could take place between farmers and between villages that shared a water resources for irrigation. But nations have not gone to war over water. The latter outcome was and remains a consequence of the willingness of a few economies—well endowed with water resources—USA, Canada, Brazil, Argentina and Australia—to export food at prices which have not reflected all the production costs, nor any of the costs of water, nor the costs of damaging their water ecosystems, biodiversity and the atmosphere. Importing food is a no brainer for water scarce economies. They benefit from underpriced food and the exporters give them their environment for nothing. It is an amazing example of willing self harm—in an extreme form in the case of the United States..
The current Syrian crisis is a consequence of not being able to organise the reliable import and distribution of underpriced food.
I attach a paper which introduces a number of ideas about the global food system and its problems. It is an accessible version of the last chapter by myself in the recently published book entitled Water, food and society. See attachment.
Please get back if you have further questions.
With very best regards
Here’s the beginning of the abstract of the linked chapter:
Abstract: Affordable food is a political imperative. There is nothing more expensive: food is grown in a failed market where farmers are price takers, not price setters; they subsidise the rest of us by delivering under-priced food but cannot, at the same time, take good care of the land. The real cost of food is paid by stealing from our children’s future: by running down soil health, biodiversity and water resources; and in emissions of greenhouse gases. And in small part by farm subsidies.
The ecological problems with soil he mentions in his chapter seem to be somewhat related to climate change but climate change doesn’t seem to be central to them.
(I skimmed but did not read the paper, if someone’s interested in investigating further, ping me and I can forward the email to you).
Have you read this paper suggesting that there is no good evidence of a connection between climate change and the Syrian war? I found it quite persuasive.
Just flagging that I posted this comment (the parent) from the wrong account (EA Hotel), should’ve been from this one! [mods, I don’t suppose there is any way of correcting this?]
On Facebook, a couple of people have asked me on the existential/global catastrophic risk posed by climate change causing or exacerbating widespread (nuclear) war.
Here’s what I wrote.
(Note that this is what I personally believe, rather than something I’m confident experts on international relations will agree on)
I think climate change as an indirect GCR is less crazy than climate change as a direct GCR. But I still don’t find it very compelling.
I think if you look at the entire history of human armed conflict, deaths attributable to wars are substantially lower than the GCR definition (population adjusted). Also most deaths historically have been incidental/civilian casualties, which have gone down over time for various reasons, including better medical sanitation and general wealth (so less likely that, eg. war → pillage → mass starvation).
So to argue that conflict from climate change leads to a GCR, you need a strong reason that “this time is different.” One possible reason is access to nuclear weapons, but for this to be true, you need a compelling reason for people to differentially use nuclear weapons as a result of climate change at a fairly high probability. (There are reasons that also point in the other direction).
For food/water wars specifically, I’m reasonably convinced by Amartya Sen’s research that pretty much all famines in recorded history are a result of distribution rather than production (his exact claim is that “no democracy has ever had a serious famine,” which I think is too strong, but I think the general trend is correct).
In addition, the evidence for wars over food/resource contention is a lot weaker than I would have naively guessed before looking into it briefly. For example, here’s an account from a science journalist who was commissioned to write a book about “water wars” and finding that there isn’t enough credible evidence to write one:
https://www.nature.com/articles/458282a
So to recap,
1) I think it’s relatively implausible that the relatively small food shortages from climate change will result in mass famines.
2) The famine → war connection is also quite tenuous.
3) The war → nuclear war connection isn’t too strong either.
I agree overall. The best case I’ve heard for Climate Change as an indirect GCR, which seems unlikely but not at all implausible, is not about direct food shortages, but rather the following scenario:
Assume state use of geoengineering to provide cloud cover, reduce heat locally, or create rain. Once this is started, they will quickly depend on it as a way to mitigate climate change, and the population will near-universally demand that it continue. Given the complexity and global nature of weather, however, this is almost certain to create non-trivial effects on other countries. If this starts causing crop failures or deadly heat waves in the affected countries, they would feel justified escalating this to war, regardless of who would be involved—such conflicts could easily involve many parties. In such a case, in a war between nuclear powers, there is little reason to think they would be willing to stop a non-nuclear options.
[I broadly agree with above comment and OP]
Something I find missing from the discussion of CC as an indirect existential risk is what this means for prioritisation. It’s often used implicitly to support CC-mitigation as a high-priority intervention. But in the case of geoengineering, funding for governance/safety is probably on the order of millions (at most), making it many orders of magnitude more neglected than CC-mitigation, and this is similar for targeted nuclear risk mitigation, reducing risk of great power war, etc.
This suggests that donors who believe there is substantial indirect existential risk from CC are (all else equal) much better off funding the terminal risks, insofar as there are promising interventions that are substantially more underfunded.
Are there any states that have committed to doing geoengineering, or even experimenting with geoengineering, if mitigation fails?
Having some publicly stated sufficient strategy would convince me that this was not a neglected area.
Current investment in solar geoengineering is roughly 10 million annually (this may have increased in the last few years), so by most metrics it’s really neglected. The main project working on this is the Harvard solar geoengineering research program, which OPP has funded about 2.5 million dollars for a few years in 2016. They’ve also funded a solar governance program in 2017 for about 2 million dollars. Grants here. Recently, they don’t appear to have made any climate-related grants in this space, and its unclear to me what the funding situation looks like.
Regarding states that have committed to doing things: I didn’t find anything on doing a shallow dive. However, there is work being done on it in a number of countries. In particular, scientists in India have raised concerns that current models show potential for drought and famine because of reduced water flow in tropical regions like India. (This is in addition to technical and general governance concerns)
From what I understand, Geoengineering is mostly avoided because people claim (incorrectly, in my view) it is a signal that the country thinks there is no chance to fix the problem by limiting emissions. In addition, people worry that it has lots of complex impacts we don’t understand. As we understand the impacts better, it becomes more viable—and more worrisome. And as it becomes clearer over the next 20-30 years that a lot of the impacts are severe, it becomes more likely to be tried.
Yeah that seems plausible, though one thing I’d flag is that while I could sort of see why local use of geoengineering is more valuable in worlds with more climate change than less, the difference doesn’t intuitively seem that big to me.
(It does however suggest that maybe EAs should be careful about recommending geo-engineering as a solution to climate change? Not sure.)
...And even if it could miraculously be prevented from actually causing any local negative weather events in other countries, it would certainly be perceived to do so, because terrible freak droughts/floods/etc. will continue to happen as always, and people will go looking for someone to blame, and the geoengineering project next door will be an obvious scapegoat.
Like how the US government once tried to use cloud-seeding (silver iodide) to weaken hurricanes, and then one time a hurricane seemed to turn sharply and hit Georgia right after being seeded, and everyone blamed the cloud-seeding, and sued, and shut the program down, …even though it was actually a coincidence! (details) (NB: I only skimmed the wikipedia article, I haven’t checked anything)
Re: “water wars”. That article is from 2009. Since then there has been Syria.
Hi. I emailed Tony Allan, the social scientist quoted in the nature op-ed I linked above, about this question:
Here’s the beginning of the abstract of the linked chapter:
The ecological problems with soil he mentions in his chapter seem to be somewhat related to climate change but climate change doesn’t seem to be central to them.
(I skimmed but did not read the paper, if someone’s interested in investigating further, ping me and I can forward the email to you).
Have you read this paper suggesting that there is no good evidence of a connection between climate change and the Syrian war? I found it quite persuasive.
Just flagging that I posted this comment (the parent) from the wrong account (EA Hotel), should’ve been from this one! [mods, I don’t suppose there is any way of correcting this?]