Book Alert: Dyer's 'Climate Wars'

Gwynne Dyer is out with a new book called "Climate Wars."

Follow the link to CTV's website for an excerpt.

Dyer, who is Canadian, is a distinguished and respected columnist and military historian based in London.

As the world heats up the ability for nations to feed themselves diminishes. As they starve they must search for ways to feed their populations. Will the world be divided between nations lucky to not be affected by climate change (like Canada) and those aren't able to avoid it (United States)? How will nations fight? With nuclear weapons? What areas could be affected? Australia is facing a water drought and may not produce as much grains and wheat in the future. Luckily, they have a small population. Is climate change the highway to hell?

"This is a world in which food imports are no longer available at any price, as there is a global food shortage. But there are still relative winners and relative losers: the higher-latitude countries - northern Europe, Russia, Canada - are still getting adequate rainfall and are able to feed themselves, while those in the mid-latitudes are in serious trouble. Even the United States has lost a large amount of its crop-growing area as the rain fails to fall over the high plains west of the Mississippi, persistent droughts beset the southeast, and the rivers that provided irrigation water for the Central Valley of California cease to flow in the summertime. Countries of smaller size, like Spain, Italy and Turkey on the northern side of the Mediterranean (not to mention those on the southern side), find that their entire land area is turning into desert and that they can no longer feed their populations. The northeastern monsoon that brought rain to the north Chinese plain has failed, and the rivers that watered southern China have suffered the same fate as those that provided California's water: now they only flow in the wintertime."

Though the book paints a bleak if not apocalyptic future for Mother Earth, I did hear Dyer on Montreal radio say he does now feel more optimistic than he did during the period he wrote the book. He believes nations will cooperate and do what's necessary to avoid the pending catastrophe. Moreover, Climate Wars could (or should) provide climate change skeptics and deniers with enough evidence and thoughts to ponder their positions.

I haven't read the book yet but I plan to shortly.

Another book this reminds me of is Robert D. Kaplan's "The Coming Anarchy" and "The Revenge of Gaia" by James Lovelock.