President Obama received a lot of flak from the right wing media earlier this year when he non-controversially
agreed with an interviewer that the media overstates the threat of terrorism, compared to things like climate change and epidemics.
“Climate change is one (story) that is happening at such a broad scale and at such a complex system, it's a hard story for the media to tell on a day-to-day basis,” said Obama, “My first job is to protect the American people. It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you've got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.”
Clearly the President did not brush off the threat of terrorism, and unambiguously said that his job was to protect American people from whatever threats there may be. But the fact that he agreed to the threat of terrorism being exaggerated by the media was simply too much for some to bear. Presidential hopeful, Mike Huckabee, said in all seriousness “I assure you that a beheading is much worse than a sunburn,” while Fox News host Andrea Tantaros asked, “How many Americans have died from climate change?”
There are two major problems with the right wings oblivious assumptions. The first is that data quite clearly shows that issues related to climate change do indeed kill significantly more people in the world than terrorism, and secondly, the effects of climate change have been revealed as a major cause of the current chaos in Syria and Iraq that has them so riled up.
On the first point, the facts are quite clear. The DARA International study linked above estimated that about 400,000 worldwide deaths per year were caused by climate change issues. These were mainly from hunger, communicable diseases and heat/cold illnesses. The study estimated that this number will rise to around 600,000 per year by 2030. When one looks at the broader effects of the worlds carbon discharge, the numbers balloon to nearly five million deaths, with about 1,400,000 deaths from air pollution.
The study also said that 250 million people are at risk of sea-level rise and 30 million people are affected by extreme weather. Beyond the serious human consequences are the economic effects. One only has to look at reports by the insurance industry to get an objective look based on actual monetary risks, rather than partisan bickering. In a report, the Insurance Information Institute wrote: “Global warming has the potential to affect most segments of the insurance business, including life insurance if rising temperatures lead to an up-tick in death rates. Property losses of all kinds are most likely to increase, and there is the potential for much higher commercial liability losses if shareholders and consumers try to hold businesses responsible for changes to the environment.”
As for terrorist attacks, the rate of deaths did indeed increase rapidly last year, thanks to the rise of ISIS. According to the Global Terrorism Index, in 2014 there were an estimated 17,958 people killed in terrorist attacks, which is a 61% increase from the previous year. The majority (82%) of these deaths were in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, and Nigeria. This is horrendous, of course, and as Obama said, it is entirely legitimate to be deeply concerned. But the fact remains that this is a relatively small amount compared to how many people die each year because of climate related issues. Yes, beheadings are barbaric, but when it comes down to it, a death is a death. According to the same Global Terrorism Index report, about forty times more people are killed by homicides than terrorist attacks, but terrorist attacks obviously get more news coverage because of the spectacle.
The second major point is that the climate has been determined to be a major factor in the Syrian civil war. Last month, a report by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that the effects of climate change in Syria greatly influenced the conflict. Before the outbreak of the syrian civil war, the country went through a severe drought period that lasted between 2006 and 2009, and pushed millions of people into poverty. The drought forced about 1.5 million farmers to migrate to cities in search of work, which caused overcrowding, poverty, and instability.
Researchers say the severity of the drought was most likely due to climate change, and the trend towards warmer and drier conditions over the past decades. The entire Fertile Crescent region has been negatively effected by climate change, including the countries Jordan, Iraq, Israel, and Turkey.
The Pentagon obviously understands this, and released a report last year that treated climate change as a serious threat to national security. The report stated: “The impacts of climate change may cause instability in other countries by impairing access to food and water, damaging infrastructure, spreading disease, uprooting and displacing large numbers of people, compelling mass migration, interrupting commercial activity, or restricting electricity availability.” It then went on to explain how these destabilizing effects on society could “undermine already fragile governments” and “create an avenue for extremist ideologies and conditions that foster terrorism.”
Many on the right like to attribute extremist terrorism to Islam and only Islam. While there is no doubt religion plays a major role in middle eastern terrorist organizations, geopolitical factors seem to be just as important, and one of the underlying causes of the chaos that people like Mike Huckabee are so panicked about is the climate. If someone like Huckabee or Ted Cruz truly cared about what is currently happening in the Middle East, they would quit the partisan games of climate change denial and look at the facts. The facts show that climate change is indeed a greater threat than terrorism in sheer body count, and that it also acts as a multiplier that could worsen terrorist violence.
Obviously the violence in Syria and Iraq is more immediate, and western leaders should continue to fight ISIS. But in the long-term, climate change may very well be the greatest threat to humanity. With a warming climate and rising sea levels, the world will only become more unstable, and the chaos in the middle east will likely spread and become a norm throughout the worlds poorer nations. If politicians continue to scoff at the serious dangers of climate change, we can be sure that deaths from climate issues and terrorism will only continue to rise.