Climate Change and Mideast Insecurity: The Hidden Connection
The remarkable silence of this year's presidential candidates on the issue of global warming was all the more notable during Monday's debate on foreign policy. For all the talk of violent threats to American security in Syria and North Africa, neither candidate connected them to a powerful contributing cause: climate change.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded in 2011 that "human-caused climate change [is now] a major factor in more frequent Mediterranean droughts." That helps explain why Syria for the past five years has experienced what one expert called "the worst long-term drought and most severe set of crop failures since agricultural civilizations began in the Fertile Crescent many millennia ago."
For the complete article, please see The Huffington Post.
