: How Climate Change May Be Contributing to Our Political Instability #WorldNEWS If you pick up the newspaper these days, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the headlines: historic wildfires, a

How Climate Change May Be Contributing to Our Political Instability #WorldNEWS
If you pick up the newspaper these days, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the headlines: historic wildfires, a deadly pandemic and an impending U. S. election unlike any in recent memory. When you take a step back, it seems a bit like the fabric of society is fraying. Climate change isnt entirely responsible for any of these problems, but there is a growing body of literature suggesting that climate change shapes political and social stability.
Research has shown repeatedly that warmer temperatures and more extreme weather contribute to a slew of adverse outcomes: violent crime, political instability and the collapse of regimes, to name a few. This year is likely to be the first- or second-hottest year on record, and extreme weather and climate-related events have struck from coast to coast in the U. S. , not to mention around the world, and so its worth asking: what role does climate change play in our current political instability?

It’s a controversial question. For years, many politicians and commentators shuddered when scientists or climate activists discussed climate change in relation to individual storms or wildfires, accusing them of politicizing disaster—and, in those cases, the link to climate change was relatively straightforward. The evidence connecting climate change and political stability has been less obvious, but is becoming increasingly impossible to ignore. Warmer temperatures and extreme weather exacerbate social stress and worsen economic outcomes; these in turn affect political behavior. A landmark 2013 paper in the journal Science found that a change in temperature of one standard deviation was associated with a 2. 3% increase in interpersonal conflict rates and a 13. 2% increase in the rate of intergroup conflict. By 2050, temperatures are expected to rise by two standard deviations in most places across the globe and by as much as four standard deviations in some places.
Those percentages may seem small, but in many cases they can be enough to lead to serious problems. “A lot of the way in which climate change is really bad is like death by 1,000 cuts,” says Solomon Hsiang, author of the 2013 study and director of the Global Policy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. “Some of the biggest problems are situations in which we dont realize were being affected by the climate, because then we dont do anything to protect ourselves. ”
The past: a history of climate change-induced political upheavals
Climate has shaped human life from the very first civilizations. A range of studies have shown how weather and climatic conditions have led to the collapse of societies, from the decline of the Tang dynasty in China in the 10th century to the decline of the Mayan civilization around 900 A.