Global Warring mention in Forbes.com

Gordon G. Chang mentions Global Warring in his interesting column on global food wars. You can read it here.

Global Warring In Grand Forks

Global Warring is the Current Affairs book club book of the month in April at the Grand Forks Public Library. Grand Forks is a city that knows better than most the cost of environmental change -- and so it the sort of place likely to help find solutions to the challenge. Take care, Grand Forks, and thanks for inviting in Global Warring.

Review of Global Warring by Dick Bennett

On his blog, Dick Bennett called Global Warring and a letter by Mike Tidwell: "comprehensive, scholarly and a personal response to climate warming and consequent extreme weather.  They help us here in NWA be wiser and braver in preparing for the warmer future." Aw shucks, thanks! For more, click here. 

Article: (Huffington Post) Cleo Paskal writes on 'Why the West Is Losing the Pacific to China, the Arab League, and Just About Everyone Else'

Cleo Paskal's latest Huffington Post blog entry is called: Why the West Is Losing the Pacific to China, the Arab League, and Just About Everyone Else. An excerpt: 

Nuku'alofa, Kingdom of Tonga. The small South Pacific country of the Kingdom of Tonga has been busy. In a two-week period around the start of September, separate military delegations from the US, New Zealand, Australia, UK,  and the UN stopped by for a visit. The French sent a frigate and a military aircraft. China sent two warships.

Why all this activity in a country of 100,000? There is real concern that the West may be losing critical influence in the Pacific, while others such as China, and even the Arab League, are dramatically extending their reach. The implications are global, and may already have affected UN Security Council voting. It wasn't always this way. The Pacific is the West's to lose.

For more, click here. 

Video: Cleo Paskal on C-Span from the National Press Club, Washington, DC

Cleo Paskal talks to C-Span's Book show about Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map. Topics include the investment by China in ice-breakers. She was interviewed at the 33rd Annual National Press Club Book Fair and Authors' Night, a fundraiser for the Eric Friedheim National Journalism Library and The SEED Foundation held Tuesday, November 9, 2010. To see the interview, click here (it won't embed :) )

Review of Global Warring and Interview with Cleo in the Calgary Herald

Trent Edwards of the Calgary Herald reviewed Global Warring and interviewed Cleo for the paper. An excerpt:


Cleo Paskal may be an academic, but her new book is frighteningly practical.
Frightening, because Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic And Political Crises Will Redraw The World Map (Key Porter Books, $32.95) rings the alarm for all of us about the environmental changes that have the potential to devastate the world during the 21st century....
Paskal, a Canadian geopolitics expert and foreign correspondent who lives in London, England, spent a decade researching her thought-provoking book.
In it, she shows just how interdependent countries have become, and how a fast-changing environment will test nations' ability to adapt, likely causing unexpected shifts in global economic, political and security landscapes along with the more obvious changes in the physical landscape.
She delves into problem areas that could start future conflicts, such as access to water and resources in Asia, economic trends that are shifting the balance of power (such as China's policy of nationalistic capitalism) and geopolitical realignments (such as the burgeoning strategic partnership between the U.S. and India)....
Paskal's book isn't all doom and gloom. She offers helpful advice for how to prepare for, mitigate and recover from the coming changes in the environment.


To read the rest of the review, and the interview, click here.

Review of Global Warring on New Security Beat

Rachel Posner of CSIS reviews Global Warring for New Security Beat, and seems to like it :) , writing in part:


Paskal eloquently explains the science behind climate change in layman’s terms, breaking down incredibly complex issues and drawing connections across seemingly disparate challenges, such as rising food prices, degrading energy infrastructure, and growing water scarcity. She is a skilled storyteller, using memorable vignettes (and at times even humor) to effectively illustrate these climate-related complexities.

But what truly sets Paskal’s book apart from a number of recent works on this topic is her ability to elucidate the major power shifts that are directly related to today’s climate and resource stresses. “Environmental change is the wild card in the current high-stakes game of geopolitics,” she writes (p. 249).


To read more, click here.

Article and video on Cleo Paskal's talk at the New America Foundation, Washington, DC

In March, Cleo gave a 90 minute presentation on her book and research to a packed room at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC. The NAF's Kalie Pierce wrote that: 

Paskal began her talk by stating a simple but powerful argument: environmental change will have dramatic political, economic and security consequences for us all. She discussed how environmental changes would pose a challenge to physical, services, and legal infrastructure in the future. [...] Paskal concluded her talk by warning of the many geopolitical conflicts that could arise over something as seemingly apolitical as changing environmental circumstances.

To see and read more, click here.

Review of Global Warring on the Natural Security blog of the Center for a New American Security

Daniel Saraceno, at the Center for a New American Security's blog, has reviewed Global Warring, saying, in part:

What makes this book unique and such a solid reading of natural security-related issues is the security and political scope Paskal uses to explore the consequences of a changing climate. For example, a melting Arctic could open the Northwest Passage, which could also open up new Asian markets to the European Union, in addition to exposing a sparsely populated Great White North to real security concerns for North America. Such concerns have already been voiced by Canada, and tensions have increased somewhat with America’s claim that the passage is an international waterway, creating a small political schism between us and our North American neighbor.



To read more, click here. 

Review of Global Warring in Nature

Keith Kloor reviewed Global Warring for Nature and seemed to like it.  :)


 A sample quote:

Paskal "presents a fascinating geopolitical chessboard, on which the United States and the European Union face off against China and Russia as climate change takes hold. If Western policymakers want to see how this game is playing out, they ought to read this book."

To read more, click here. 

Review of Global Warring by legendary journalist M V Kamath

M V Kamath, former Washington Bureau chief of the Times of India, and current Director of MIC, one of the best J-schools in India, reviews Global Warring and examines some of the implications for India. A sample quote:


Remarkable book, one of the best and most engrossing available on the subject. Over again, throughout the highly revelatory pages of this well-researched work we realise what damage environmental changes can wreak on the economics of various nations and the political crises that follow. We ignore the warnings issued in this book at our peril. 


To read more, click here. 

Article by Andrew Krystal in the Nova Scotia Business Journal on Cleo Paskal's concept of Nationalistic Capitalism

Andrew Krystal, in his in-depth column in the Nova Scotia Business Journal, explores the implications of nationalistic capitalism. An excerpt:


According to Cleo Paskal, the author of “Global Warring”, nationalistic capitalism, as practiced by China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), allows the Chinese state to use corporations in its sphere of influence to attain long-term strategic goals, like resource acquisition. These corporations appear, on the surface, to be like any other big multi-national. But they’re not. Says Cleo Paskal: “In China, the CCP calls the shots when it comes to who does business and how. The businesses should ideally make money, but always within the context of strengthening what the CCP deems in the best interest of China, and of itself.” 


She continues: “Conversely, in the West, one of the post-Cold war challenges we face is the marked divergence of companies from national agendas. Increasingly, it seems as though businesses are caught up in short-term thinking. The privatization of critical national industries [Britain is kicking itself over the sell-off of North Sea oil, Paskal points out] contrasts markedly with the CCP approach in which China obtains assets and then uses them for national leverage.”


To read more, click here. 

Report on Cleo Paskal's talk at Concordia University in The Concordian

Renee Giblin wrote a report for The Concordian on about Cleo Paskal's talk at David O'Brien Centre for Sustainable Enterprise at the John Molson School of Business. Giblin concludes:


The message Paskal sent last week was clear: with a changing climate comes changing politics. With a shift in political power already afoot, nations stand to be severely affected if they neglect to evolve along with the physical environment that surrounds them.


To read more, click here.

Alan Hustak Reviews Global Warring and Profiles Cleo Paskal for The Metropolitian

Eminent writer Alan Hustak reviews Global Warring and profiles Cleo Paskal for The Metropolitian. It begins:


Everyone in the non-stop debate on climate change has an opinion, but how much consideration has been given to the potential  seismic shift  in international diplomacy  that can be attributed  to  global warming?  What happens to nation states, to the realignment of political boundaries, and to shifting corporate interests as we become even more dependent on fossil fuels, and as forests disappear, farmland is exhausted and sources of fresh water evaporate?   This month, Veteran Quebec journalist  



Cleo Paskal  raises the ante in the debate with  her book, Global Warring, which makes the  powerful argument that the map of the world as we know it  is about to be redrawn as resource rich countries try to protect their natural sources of energy  and others  aggressively  try to secure new ones.... 




To read more, click here. 

Jerry Cope at the Huffington Post quotes Cleo Paskal in article on the DoD Quadrennial Defense Review

Jerry Cope, in a post highlighting the importance of climate change in the just released  U.S. Department of Defense Quadrennial Defense Review, mentions Global Warring and quotes Cleo Paskal. An excerpt from Cleo's quote:


In the same way our physical infrastructure isn't taking into account environmental change, our legal infrastructure is not designed to take into account environmental change. A lot of our laws, treaties and agreements assume the environment is a constant, but it is becoming a variable. 


To read more, click here.

Review of Global Warring and Interview with Cleo Paskal by Patrick Lejtenyi of the Montreal Mirror

The Mirror newspaper in Montreal ran a review of Global Warring sprinkled with some quotes from an interview with Cleo Paskal, giving her instant street cred with procrastinating students across the city. An excerpt:


[...] 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. 

To read more, click here.

Review of Global Warring in The Rover

Joni Dufour reviews Global Warring for The Rover and describes Cleo Paskal as a "geopolitical actuary" -- Cleo's new favourite self-descriptor. Other highlights from the review:


If you’re looking for a debate on global warming, however, you’ll have to look elsewhere. In Paskal’s analysis, climate change is a given. In fact, she often opts for the term “environmental change,” and prefers to look beyond specific theories of the causes of climate change to focus on its effects and implications on the ground. [...] This experienced journalist shows her academic chops when laying down the historical background of the geo hot spots discussed. She needs little time to make her synopses clear and condensed. 


To read more, click here.

Review of Global Warring by Martin Walker on UPI

Martin Walker, UPI Editor Emeritus and Senior Director of A. T. Kearney's Global Business Policy Council, wrote a great review of Global Warring for UPI that brings to the fore some of the books key points. In it he also writes:


Paskal, a Canadian who is a fellow of London's prestigious Chatham House think tank and a consultant for the U.S. Department of Energy, has been a pioneering scholar of the new terrain where climate change confronts national security, where geopolitics, geoeconomics and global warming all collide.


To read more, click here.

Review of Global Warring by Tom Spencer in EurActiv

Tom Spencer, the former President of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights and Defence Policy, and current Executive Director of the European Centre for Public Affairs, just wrote a feature on Europe that includes a review of Global Warring. An excerpt:

Europe's foreign policy elites might like to pick up Cleo Paskal's 'Global Warring: How Environmental Economic and Political Crises will redraw the world map'. Cleo is a Canadian academic and journalist, based at Chatham House in London, married to a Dane, who spends a substantial time each year in India. She writes with the power of a journalist underpinned by the research habits of an academic.

She has for years contributed learned articles on how rising sea levels may change international borders with major implications. Her latest book arrives with the clarity and importance of the crack of doom. Her first message, that I would want every European policymaker to understand, undercuts the comfortable belief that disasters caused by environmental change happen to poor people, in poor countries far away and that our main involvement is to offer gracious aid to the under-privileged.

She shows conclusively that the reality for the developed world is closer to Katrina on steroids. Our obsession with short-term profit and technological complexity means that we are going to be there in the front line when the yoghurt hits the fan. Katrina was a man-made disaster brought about by the corruption of the relationship between the US Army Corps of Engineers and Congress ever keen to create pork-barrel employment projects, regardless of their environmental consequences.

She points out that the great heat wave of 2003 killed 30,000 people in Europe. Many of the oil and natural gas pipelines on which Europe depends run across Russian permafrost which is melting. We persist in building long-term infrastructure without regard to climate change. The French now regularly have to turn off their nuclear power stations in hot weather for lack of cooling water.

Europe is only beginning to come to terms with the amount of infrastructure re-design that will be necessary to keep its civilisation habitable. In essence her message is that climate change, as a sub-set of environmental change, has the whole of humanity wrapped in its coils.

She is equally good on the real implications for the developing world. Forced environmental migration is going to be a South-South problem, not one that can be realistically framed in terms of the West's historic responsibility. If forty million Bangladeshis flee from cataclysmic flooding in their homeland, they are going to be a problem for India and Burma. There is no way that Europe, America or Japan are going to accept that number of refugees. The same logic applies to environmental migration from Africa or the Middle East.

Cleo and I agree on the significance of climate change and the military, particularly in the context of the melting of the Himalayan glaciers which could end up with the loss of glacial summer melt water in the great rivers of Asia simultaneously destabilising Pakistan, India and China. Some issues are so big that nobody wants to talk about them.

To read more, click here.

Interview (video) with Cleo Paskal by Geoff Dabelko of the Woodrow WIlson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program on Global Warring, Vulnerability, and Climate Change