Global Security - The Threats are Changing

Shaw, R.W. (1990). Global Security - The Threats are Changing. IIASA Working Paper. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: WP-90-056

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Abstract

Humanity's influence upon the environment is growing to encompass the globe and to extend in time to decades and even centuries. One particular global environmental problem, i.e., climatic change, could eventually lead to shifts in agricultural and forestry growing zones, changes in freshwater supply and a rise in sea level, and eventually to migration and "environmental refugees". This could further result in civil unrest, political instability, militarism, and terrorism which could pose as large a threat to world security as the ideological struggle from which we appear to be emerging. The trace gases leading to climatic change, especially carbon dioxide and methane, are closely linked with the production of energy. A more efficient use of energy, both in the developed and developing world, should be the first and main strategy for attacking the impending global threat of climatic change. Incentives for increasing energy efficiency in the developed world should be through the imposition of resource taxes such as carbon taxes. In the developing world, energy efficiency and development could advance hand in hand, if the proper infrastructure were created. This could be financed at least partially by the resource taxes collected in the developed world.

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