Jordan Timm of Canadian Business Magazine interviewed Cleo on some of the ways environmental change could affect investments. An excerpt:
A typhoon hits Shanghai
Hurricane Katrina showed the level of destruction a storm can wreak on a developed city, and while a hit on New York isn't impossible, another global financial centre is extremely vulnerable. "Shanghai is like New Orleans," says Cleo Paskal, author of Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map. "It's very low-lying, it's in an active delta, it's in a typhoon zone. For the last few years they've been evacuating literally hundreds of thousands of people from that coastline in anticipation of typhoon hits." Paskal says a direct typhoon hit on Shanghai could have severe repercussions, economically and globally. "If the hit is severe enough, China may have to sell off T-bills in order to fund domestic reconstruction, and pull out of strategic foreign investments for the same reason." In that scenario, she expects China to dump its holdings in secondary markets like Europe.
The big thirst
"Right now, in most economic equations water is valued at zero," says Paskal. But as it becomes an increasingly critical resource for agriculture and energy production (as much as 40% of fresh groundwater in the United States and Europe passes through an energy plant at some point), that may no longer be feasible. "A lot of economic calculations about what is viable will need to be reassessed. The water supply isn't so much a water issue as it is an energy issue." We could see one vulnerable province start bulk water sales, opening the floodgates under NAFTA. But the Holy Grail of water science, Paskal says, is a cheap desalination technology: "Whoever comes up with that is going to be a very rich person."
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Video: Commonwealth Club of California interview with Cleo Paskal
fora.tv has the interview Cleo Paskal did with Amy Standen from KQED at the Commonwealth Club of California (San Francisco). It covers a range of environmental change and security issues.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Global Warring Wins one of three $5000 Awards of Special Merit in the Grantham Prize!!!
In a very proud day for her parent's Cleo's Global Warring has won one of three $5000 Awards of Special Merit in the Grantham Prize!!! They also said some very nice things about the book:
Grantham Prize Jury Comments on Global Warring
In this fascinating, penetrating and stylistically crafted book, Cleo Paskal goes where other examinations of climate change have not – beyond the impacts to particular species or ecosystems and to the very structure on which our global civilization is built: the relationships between and among nations.
Paskal makes a convincing case that climate change will threaten global security and rock already tenuous geopolitical balances around the world. She begins with the most likely climate-change scenarios, then subjects them to insightful economic and political analysis.
She envisions the United States and the European Union facing off against China and Russia in a new kind of Cold War, one centered not on ideology but on such issues as control of the emerging Northwest Passage through the Arctic and water shortages in Asia. Within the U.S., France and other countries, she sees the potential for enormous unrest based on changing climate factors.
Yet Paskal’s book is far from scare-mongering. Rather, it lays out policy prescriptions that can help Western governments and their citizens manage through both adaptation and mitigation. This is cutting-edge journalism, the first of what will certainly be the next wave of climate-change exploration.
To read more, click here.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Cleo is now a Huffington Post blogger :-)
Cleo's first HuffPo blog entry went up today. You can see it here. Leave a comment and let her know what you think
Video of Woodrow Wilson Center event Backdraft: The Conflict Potential of Climate Mitigation and Adaptation
On June 10, at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, Cleo joined Alexander Carius, co-founder and managing director of Adelphi Research and Adelphi Consult, Stacy VanDeveer of the University of New Hampshire, and Geoff Dabelko of Environmental Change and Security Program to discuss the unintended security consequences of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.
The wide-ranging discussion covered everything from Copenhagen to Rare Earth. Said Cleo: “We need to blow open the box on how complicated these problems are. We need as many different people involved and as many different sorts of solutions as possible.”
To read a write up of the event, click here.
To see the video, click here.
The wide-ranging discussion covered everything from Copenhagen to Rare Earth. Said Cleo: “We need to blow open the box on how complicated these problems are. We need as many different people involved and as many different sorts of solutions as possible.”
To read a write up of the event, click here.
To see the video, click here.
Video of International Institute for Strategic Studies session on Climate Change and Conflict – A net assessment of the risks to international security presented by climate change
On May 28, at the European Commission’s headquarters in Brussels, Cleo joined Lieutenant Colonel Ian Astley, of the Global Strategic Trends Programme, UK Ministry of Defense’s Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre and Jeffrey Mazo, the IISS Research Fellow for Environmental Security and Science Policy for presentations and discussions about the security risks of environmental change.
To see a write up of the event, and for a link to the video, click here.
To see a write up of the event, and for a link to the video, click here.
Profile of Cleo Paskal (with interview) in the Toronto Star
Antonia Zerbisias, the great Toronto Star columnist interviewed Cleo before her IdeaCity talk. An excerpt:
Q: When you say that the world map will be redrawn, how much upheaval will there be?
A: If the U.S. doesn't start to deal with the domestic disruption, then I am very concerned that it will fragment and destabilize. If that happens, the world will be severely affected.
For more cheerful news, click here.
Review of Global Warring in the Malaysia Sun
A just published review of Global Warring in the Malaysia Sun includes:
[Paskal's] closing, after many well argued presentations says that with “all the threads together, the world of tomorrow looks chaotic and violent. Even more so than usual. And even more than expected.” Our current “social, political, security and economic structures [are built] on the assumption that there are certain geophysical and climatic constants to act as a foundation. There aren’t. There never have been. And there never will be.” So now you can go read the apocalyptic and survivalist authors, as this relatively calm academic analysis arrives at a pretty gloomy and scary picture.
For more, click here.
[Paskal's] closing, after many well argued presentations says that with “all the threads together, the world of tomorrow looks chaotic and violent. Even more so than usual. And even more than expected.” Our current “social, political, security and economic structures [are built] on the assumption that there are certain geophysical and climatic constants to act as a foundation. There aren’t. There never have been. And there never will be.” So now you can go read the apocalyptic and survivalist authors, as this relatively calm academic analysis arrives at a pretty gloomy and scary picture.
For more, click here.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Review of Global Warring is the cover story for the Montreal Review of Books
Michael Carbert reviewed Global Warring for a cover feature for the Montreal Review of Books (see video of Michael interviewing Cleo below). Some excerpts from the review:
Paskal's goal is not to be alarmist. Instead, she wants to bring attention to the big changes both happening and likely to happen because of a warming planet, and to the simple fact that we need to prepare now for what's coming our way. Global Warring is unique among books on climate change as it eschews a strident tone in favour of a cool assessment of the changes to come, their likely outcomes, and the difficult choices we presently face...
Thus Global Warring, far from being simply another Al Gore-type warning about the peril we face, examines the likely future outcomes in terms of geopolitics, territorial sovereignty, trade, and national security. Thankfully, Paskal goes beyond a simplistic doom-and-gloom analysis that promises more disasters and more suffering. While increased chaos and conflict is likely, Paskal highlights the fact that options also exist and that few of the questions being raised by our shifting environmental conditions are anywhere close to being resolved...
Accessible, lively, and at times chilling, Global Warring is a book offering much-needed insight into a future where nothing can be taken for granted. With an eye-opening examination of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and its aftermath, a cogent analysis of China's increasing global influence, and convincing arguments in favour of overhauling infrastructure and possibly even abandoning low-lying cities in Europe and North America, Paskal's book is timely and necessary reading. It's difficult to shake the idea that this is one of those books that needs to be read by as many people as possible, as soon as possible, because the near future promises to be extremely interesting, to put it mildly.
Or, as Paskal puts it, "These are the good old days."
For more, click here.
Paskal's goal is not to be alarmist. Instead, she wants to bring attention to the big changes both happening and likely to happen because of a warming planet, and to the simple fact that we need to prepare now for what's coming our way. Global Warring is unique among books on climate change as it eschews a strident tone in favour of a cool assessment of the changes to come, their likely outcomes, and the difficult choices we presently face...
Thus Global Warring, far from being simply another Al Gore-type warning about the peril we face, examines the likely future outcomes in terms of geopolitics, territorial sovereignty, trade, and national security. Thankfully, Paskal goes beyond a simplistic doom-and-gloom analysis that promises more disasters and more suffering. While increased chaos and conflict is likely, Paskal highlights the fact that options also exist and that few of the questions being raised by our shifting environmental conditions are anywhere close to being resolved...
Accessible, lively, and at times chilling, Global Warring is a book offering much-needed insight into a future where nothing can be taken for granted. With an eye-opening examination of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and its aftermath, a cogent analysis of China's increasing global influence, and convincing arguments in favour of overhauling infrastructure and possibly even abandoning low-lying cities in Europe and North America, Paskal's book is timely and necessary reading. It's difficult to shake the idea that this is one of those books that needs to be read by as many people as possible, as soon as possible, because the near future promises to be extremely interesting, to put it mildly.
Or, as Paskal puts it, "These are the good old days."
For more, click here.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
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 invades Canada
Jonathan Montpetit, of the Canadian Press, wrote an article about Global Warring that was picked up all over the country, including Maclean's. It starts:
It is a military truism that an army ought to stand its ground.
But what if the ground it's standing on is melting, becoming prone to floods, or is outright disappearing?
Climate change is turning conventional military wisdom on its head, something Canada has been at pains to grasp, according to Cleo Paskal, author of "Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map."
The book, which came out earlier this year, has created a storm, no pun intended, in policy circles. It has found its way onto reading lists at the U.S. Army War College, and the Montreal-based author is now being tapped as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Energy.
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