Opening the
floodgates

Montreal-based author and academic Cleo
Paskal considers the geopolitics of climate
change in her new book Global Warring

LOSS A GROWING INDUSTRY: Paskal

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

The Earth is warming. Fact. Weather patterns are changing. Undeniable. We’re all in a heap of trouble. Uh-huh. And we’re all doing our best to deal with it. Nope.

According to Montrealer Cleo Paskal, the world governments are snoozing while the world boils. The implications—besides the incalculable loss to biodiversity, native habitats and cultures—don’t get any less alarming as they become more familiar: drought and floods, melting polar ice, increased frequency and severity of tropical storms and so on. But in Paskal’s new book, Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map, the changing world is creating a new playing field in which the Great Powers will struggle for power and influence. A cool, clear-eyed analysis of the emerging geopolitics, Global Warring does not engage in climate change-induced scenario speculation nor does it offer emotional appeals to curbing emissions. It simply explains what the new realities are, and what we can do to adapt to them. It’s hardly a heart-warming read, but geopolitics has never been a warm and fuzzy topic.

Permathaw’s problems

Paskal’s book addresses one topic close to home for Canadians: the thawing Arctic and the coming thaw of the North’s permafrost. The opening of the long-mythical Northwest Passage is coming closer to reality, and with it comes a scramble to claim long-buried and hitherto inaccessible resources, especially oil and gas. With economic growth as its priority, the Harper government’s aggression in claiming Canadian sovereignty over the Arctic is driven by the North’s abundance. And while Canada, the U.S. and Russia sort out who gets what based on maritime treaties, Paskal argues that they are missing one very important point. Thawing permafrost, due to global warming, is going to soon make the region’s existing infrastructure—from pipelines to ports to roads—unstable and nearly useless. Replacing them is bound to cost billions.

“I think there is a misunderstanding regarding what growth will look like,” says Paskal, an Associate Fellow at the U.K.’s Chatham House, adjunct faculty staff at two schools in India and former child actress who appeared as the toddler “Cleo” in the 1975 Canadian film Lies My Father Told Me. “The changing environment will limit growth, and in fact is going to create loss. Unless we are limiting loss, there will be no growth. Our assumptions are compromised.”

Just as rebuilding flood-prone New Orleans or expanding Las Vegas further into the desert doesn’t make rational sense, ignoring the realities of climate change is asking for trouble. But the messiness of local politics will always jeopardize any long-term projects and botch the best-laid plans. Even when nearly all the planet’s governments agree that climate change is a real problem, as evidenced at Copenhagen last month, finding a common solution will remain elusive, Paskal thinks. And that has to do with both the West’s approach to the problem, and the developing world’s lingering resentment of Western condescension.

In Copenhagen, she says, the West’s approach to fighting climate change “was based on carbon markets, and not carbon science.” The developed world’s enthusiasm for green tariffs was seen by the developing world as an impediment to growth. Plus, verification mechanisms were deeply unpopular.

“Anything that involves verification makes the developing world very suspicious,” says Paskal. “They see what happened in Iran and Iraq [regarding weapons inspections], where they opened up to inspectors and had sanctions slapped on them. They consider verification stipulations mechanisms for punishment and isolation.”

Two short-term decades

To Paskal, there is an irony at work that has stiffened over the past 20 years. While it’s always popular to bash George W. Bush as the chief villain in the climate change debate, Paskal says the real problems began under his predecessor. “I think the problem started at the end of the Cold War, with the assumption that history is finished,” she says. “It started with the deregulation during the Clinton years, and the lack of the concept of treating smaller countries as partners. That’s why it was so easy for China to go into Africa. If you’re a leader of an African country, would you rather be lectured by the West about democracy and human rights while having your resources exploited or flattered by China while having your resources exploited?”

China’s pursuit of what Paskal calls nationalistic capitalism may be a harbinger of things to come, as more and more countries, even stable democracies, begin to view their natural resources as something to be marshaled rather than sold. If that trend continues, then China has a big head start over the West.

“There is a lot of short-termism in our decision-making,” she says. “And that has undermined a lot of our own stability—political, environmental and economic.”

GLOBAL WARRING: HOW ENVIRONMENTAL,
ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL
CRISES WILL REDRAW THE WORLD
MAP, BY CLEO PASKAL, KEYPORTER
BOOKS, 288 PP, $32.95