Energy, Water Crunch, Climate Change Could Spark Wars By 2025
Critical energy and water shortages combined with climate change could provoke wars within the next 15 years, warns a newly-released analysis by Canada's Department of National Defence.
"Global reserves of crude oil could become problematic by 2025," wrote Major John Sheahan in a draft version of the report. "This implies that (barring the discovery of significant new reserves, and barring the adequate adoption of substitute fossil fuels or alternative fuel and energy shortages) critical energy shortages will develop in the time frame of (and perhaps prior to) 2025."
Sheahan is part of a Canadian team of Canadian analysts led by Lt.-Col. Michal Rostek, who are researching long-term planning scenarios for the military.
The analysis also warns that, even under conservatives estimates, up to 60 countries could fall into a category of water scarcity or stress by 2050, making the natural resource "a key source of power" or a "basis for future conflict."
The draft report said that despite some "vigorous debates" about the pace, cause, magnitude and impacts of global warning, there "can be no further debate that global climate change is occurring."
Crop failures resulting in mass migrations and starvation, along with rising sea levels from melting ice caps and other factors, would be among the impacts.
"These sorts of changes could lead to impacts resulting in the abandonment of large urban and cropland areas, further aggravating a broad range of existing resource scarcities," claims the report.