Events running up to the UN's climate-focused Bali Summit, held in December 2007, raised the issue for the first time at the public level: climate change could pose a global security risk. Since then, the possibilities have been panicking experts, with no easy solution at hand. Today, however, the topic remains a matter for experts and commentators to discuss, rather than being part of the general discourse. The month of the Bali Summit, journalists Alexander T J Lennon and Julianne Smith wrote, "Climate scientists tend to think in decades; national security experts in days or years at best. This difference helps explain why climate change is rarely considered a national security challenge. Yet the links are inescapable. One that is even less frequently discussed is the connection of global change to the threat of terrorism."
Let us briefly engage in a thought experiment on this intriguing, worrying line of reasoning. To some in the Western world, the fear seems to be that the jihadists could take advantage of the emerging crisis over climate change. The threat is not just Western, however, but rather global – and Southasia seems to be particularly vulnerable to potential militant actions. What could set off such a trend in motion could lie in certain inevitabilities of climate change. Southasia will be hit very badly by global warming, and the effects will be manifested through dramatic declines in crop production, losses of homes and lands, rises in vector-borne diseases and malnutrition, all of which will undoubtedly lead to attempted immigration to 'safer' places. However, the capacity of many impoverished countries to provide alternative spaces for such displaced populations is very low; as such, the fleeing to better-off areas would almost certainly follow historic precedent and point to movements across borders as well as continents.
Indeed, though current estimates of the potential numbers vary, the emergence of 'climate-change refugees' seems almost impossible to avoid. And 'emergence' here could be a misnomer, as many are worried that the grounds could already be set. One UN study from 2005, for instance, has suggested that there could already be some 20 million environment refugees worldwide. Worldwide, how high could that outflow of displaced reach? With relatively minimal work having yet been done on the subject, no one really knows. According to some studies, it could reach as high as 150 million people by 2050. Yet even if the number turns out to be far lower, such an exodus could easily end up being a principal trigger in generating conflict.
Partying is not usually a green undertaking. Those giant sound systems and strobe lights do leave a pretty hefty carbon footprint. But there's good news for all conscientious clubbers out there. Say hello to the Sustainable Dance Floor, folks. All one needs to do is get on the dance floor, where the energy created by foot-stomps and head-spins (or whatever you're into) gets transformed into electricity. And here's the coolest bit: the generated power is used to get the floor to interact with the dancers. Now the environmentalist side of your brain will never have to shout down the clubber side.