Glacial Melting May Force Redrawing of International Borders
I know people on the right who are aware that climate change is real and problematic, but who somehow don’t really feel that engaging with the denialists on their side and trying to educate people is an important thing to do. It seems like an odd point of view to me. Meanwhile, in the alps:
Melting glaciers in the Alps may prompt Italy and Switzerland to redraw their borders near the Matterhorn, according to parliamentary draft legislation being readied in Rome [...] “This draft law is born out the necessity to revise and verify the frontiers given the changes in climate and atmosphere,” Narducci said. “The 1941 convention between Italy and Switzerland established as criteria [for border revisions] the ridge [crest] of the glaciers. Following the withdrawal of the glaciers in the Alps, a new criterion has been proposed so that the new border coincides with the rock.” [...] Narducci said the same negotiation will be proposed to France and Austria.
Fortunately, boundary adjustments between Western European countries are almost certain to be handled in an amicably bureaucratic manner rather than a violent one thanks to the success in turning international relations within Europe into a rule-governed enterprise. The rest of the world, however, doesn’t have these kind of luxuries and as de-glaciation unsettles established patterns of land- and water-use we’re going to see some very serious political problems.
41 Responses to “Glacial Melting May Force Redrawing of International Borders”
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March 26th, 2009 at 10:25 am
There’s a lot of potential for water wars out there, and it’s not like humans haven’t fought over other resources like land, oil, or the spice trade before. I wonder if it’s just that we Americans see water as such a basic resource that we can’t even fathom a conflict over it.
March 26th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Switzerland’s always been a rule-governed enterprise.
March 26th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Well, de-glaciation would have to be happening mostly northern (and Southern Cone) countries, and most first-world countries are in the northern part of the world.
Nothing really big to worry about except Russia.
March 26th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Americans who live in the Southwest, or who’ve watched Chinatown for that matter, ought to be aware of the potential for significant conflicts over water.
I’m convinced that global-warming apathy — and denialism for that matter — aren’t really a consequence of ignorance. They’re just a reminder that bipedal primates have a huge ability to ignore long-term consequences in favor of their short-term interests — and even an ability to rationalize away all consciousness of the conflict between the two.
March 26th, 2009 at 10:44 am
If the glaciers melt, won’t there be more water?
March 26th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Mose,
No. Right now, every year, the glaciers release water in the spring, summer, and early fall, which makes it way to human populations.
If the glaciers melt, that stops happening.
Having all that water added to the oceans doesn’t do those human populations much good.
March 26th, 2009 at 10:52 am
thanks to the success in turning international relations within Europe into a rule-governed enterprise.
Which success within Europe is in large part due to the sorts of mass population transfers that are now considered by so-called peace loving liberals, as well as ironically those organizations who strive to enforce such a system of rules on a truly global scale, to be tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
I find it disturbing that so many people continue to reap benefits from actions they actively campaign to deny others. If the benefits reaped were, for example, reaped, domestically, by white people based on past discrimination against non-whites, liberals would favor some form of affirmative action to balance rule changes which level the playing field (even while preventing other ethnic groups from benefiting from the sorts of old boys networks that previously helped white, Christian men). Yet, on the international scene liberals campaign against the sort of nation-building activities that have led to trans-national cooperation such as we have seen in Europe?
March 26th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Comment #8 by DAS actually ought to be referred to the Hague, as a crime against humanity.
Ethnic cleansing really does not *tend* to produce stable systems of international relations. Europe has developed such a system *in reaction* to nightmarish 20c. wars — but not as a healthy *consequence* of e.g. the Holocaust and other massacres/expulsions.
March 26th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Uh, hell-lo! The EU=one world government=Satan on Earth!
THAT’S why Alpine glaciers are receding. Satan’s really hot, and he lives in Belgium.
Obviously, Satan hates CO2 emissions (hence all the European regulations, which have turned that continent into a Manhattanesque slum) and thus the only thing protecting us from his Awesome Evil Influence are coal plants and hummers.
Hummers the cars, not the bjs (oral sex=no babies=evil=Bill Clinton).
March 26th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Ted,
In 1945 Europe “solved” its “German problem” by forcing all Germans to live in Germany (and Switzerland and Austria) … any Germans who did not so move were pretty much completely assimilated. Before WWII, Europe had a war every so often due to German aggression (or at least that’s who the rest of Europe blamed, when they weren’t blaming Jews … conveniently relocated to Israel, which then has not even been allowed to establish its security on the same terms in which Europe made peace with itself), after WWII? The only wars in Europe were those in areas where people weren’t forced to live “with their own kind” (e.g. the former Yugoslavia).
Yes, Europe developed the stable system it has “in reaction to nightmarish 20c. wars”, but many people conveniently forget what the first step of that reaction was … more mass deportations!
March 26th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Satan’s really hot
Actually, as we all know from 2000 remake of Bedazzled, Satan is really hawt!
March 26th, 2009 at 11:40 am
So DAS, Europe owes its peacefulness to the ethnically unified nature of its countries, like the UK, Belgium and Holland and Spain?
March 26th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Fortunately, outside of western Europe, most alpine glaciers are in remote areas that nobody cares about, like Kashmir, Tibet, the Caucasus, etc.
No chance of any geopolitical conflicts in obscure backwaters like those places, so we should be OK.
March 26th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Actually, this happens all the time. Border rivers often change their courses and countries have to decide whether the border is the new riverbed or the old. You never really hear about it though because it’s not that big a deal. Of all the problems to worry about w.r.t. global warming, that unsophisticated brown people can’t handle slight changes in borders is not one of them.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Of all the problems to worry about w.r.t. global warming, that unsophisticated brown people can’t handle slight changes in borders is not one of them.
======================================================
Ow! Take that, Matt. BTW Alps is typically capitalized
March 26th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
So DAS, Europe owes its peacefulness to the ethnically unified nature of its countries, like the UK, Belgium and Holland and Spain?
Don’t forget Switzerland! Remember when they forcibly deported everybody who didn’t speak Romansh?
March 26th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Myles SG,
As for Russia, they can kick everybody’s @$$, and it’s time the rest of the world realized it. Their teaching a well-deserved lesson to Georgia last year was the first taste what can be expected in future. The Russians, thank God, have no time for your simpering cosmopolitan-liberal worldview.
If the Pakistanis, Azerbaijianis, and other assorted miscreants think that melting glaciers give them the opportunity to gobble up bits of land here and there, they have another think coming.
March 26th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
You know, I have never been convinced that Russians are an inferior species until now, Hector. 700 years of serfdom really does nobody any good.
I do like the Russian oligarchs. A charming lot. But the common Russians, what a sad, pathetic people!
March 26th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
@ DAS: So what could possibly be your explanation of the United States of America? Or Canada? or France? or just about any freaking peaceful country?
Thinking harder about it, I’d say that the most peaceful countries on earth tend to be the most heterogeneous.
@ Adam Villani: Bonus points for reference to Romansh.
March 26th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Switzerland’s always been a rule-governed enterprise.
And Italy, er, um, has been ruled-governed by some 48 or so post-war governments.
Seriously, though, there will be trauma in less amicable parts of the world. They may not have glaciers to skirmish over, but water wars are likely.
And the poster who thinks that winter snows will be enough even after complete deglaciation is misguided. Winter snows will not sustain stream flow into the following September (or May down south) each year. This will cause major agricultural and community displacement.
Kilimanjaro is a good example – and that’s just the tourism dollars.
March 26th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
“I wonder if it’s just that we Americans see water as such a basic resource that we can’t even fathom a conflict over it.”
No pun intended, I presume.
And it’s a relief that we can read DAS’s calls for ethnic cleansing and Hector’s praise of authoritarianism even in a thread that has nothing to do with either of those things. I was worried I wouldn’t get my fix.
March 26th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Kenny G asks: “@ DAS: So what could possibly be your explanation of the United States of America? Or Canada?”
Well, obviously the US wouldn’t be a successful liberal democracy if we hadn’t exterminated the people who owned the land. Therefore, ethnic cleansing is something all liberals should support!
March 26th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
So what could possibly be your explanation of the United States of America? Or Canada? or France? or just about any freaking peaceful country? – Kenny G.
Excellent examples. The USA and Canada which ethnically cleansed their native populations (and we also built our economy of slavery)? And France (which rather forcibly assimilated the Alsatians once they realized the only other choice was giving up that land to Germany … even then they rather infamously sent an Alsatian with a Germanic last name and funny religion to a prison island for a crime he didn’t commit) is an example of a peaceful, ethnically heterogeneous country? France?
I’ll grant the point about Switzerland, though.
Anyway, in response to tomemos who, in snark, beat me to the punch about the US and ethnic cleansing — the point isn’t that we liberals should support ethnic cleansing. The point is that we should stop acting as if certain countries are superior due to their trans-nationalism and rule of law, when that rule of law was built on the back of ethnic cleansing. And we should stop condemning countries as teh evil when they are doing the same things that oh-so-great-Europe did after WWII, which helped ensure WWIII didn’t happen.
A certain kind of liberal likes to condemn certain nations for breaking international law. Yet that same liberal conveniently and willfully ignores that the greatest success story for international law — the trans-national integration of (Western) Europe into a single, rules-based society — occurred due to mass deportations (primarily of Germans and Finns) and forced assimilation of ethnic minorities by the victorious Allies of WWII.
It may be frightening to ponder, but perhaps in order to get nations to play well with each other, they might need to have a secure citizenry within secure borders. And creating that has historically required things which make today’s liberals blanch … perhaps rightfully so. But to pretend that those things weren’t required and to condemn nations who try to seek security using those same approaches smacks of the “loony-moonbattiness” that shouldn’t really exist except in the fevered dreams of liberal strawmen that conservatives have.
March 26th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
They might have to repaint the one at Disneyland. That snowman might have to go too.
March 26th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
(There’s no such as Yeti Linus.)
Not in Europe anyhow: that ride was always inaccurate. I believe they live in Asia.
But they could rename it Ye Olde Matterhorn as in the way things were. Or they could replace the snowman with some really menacing tropical fish.
March 26th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Re DAS and the US: Did I call it or what?
What DAS never seems to get is that the genocide of Native Americans was a violation of our (purported) national values, not the exemplification of them. Luckily we’ve since learned better. Every nation does not get one free genocide or ethnic cleansing; in the 21st century, you can’t engage in that behavior without international condemnation (and, sadly, rarely more than that).
March 26th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
The USA and Canada which ethnically cleansed their native populations
I believe the original comment was referring to Canada and the United States being created out of millions of immigrants from four continents and several hundred ethnic groups, plus the survivors of the Pre-Columbian population. The Amerindian population of North America got a raw deal, but so did a lot of other cultures over the last 50,000 years of human tribal conflicts. The discussion here is about the 20th Century model of ethnic cleansing and whether it is good or bad for 20th and 21st Century model nation states.
(and we also built our economy of slavery)?
Not particularly. That was a rationalization of 19th Century slavocrat polititians, but as early as the 1830s, plantation agriculture was a declining fraction of the American economy and by 1860s family farms and industrialization north of the Ohio was overwhelming Southern slave-based wealth and influence. That’s the biggest single reason the South lost that little dispute they started in 1860.
March 26th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
I see Matt’s given his audience too much credit in assuming that they would understand that global climate change and changing sea levels would interact with MANY international borders, and that the glacier issue was illustrative of how a changing natural landscape would interact with a fixed political one in unforeseen ways.
March 26th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
What DAS never seems to get is that the genocide of Native Americans was a violation of our (purported) national values, not the exemplification of them. Luckily we’ve since learned better. Every nation does not get one free genocide or ethnic cleansing; in the 21st century, you can’t engage in that behavior without international condemnation (and, sadly, rarely more than that).
You clearly haven’t been to Little Green Footballs. Or listened to a Sarah Palin rally. Or watched a fight after a Yankees-Red Sox game.
Ethnic cleansing’s one of our oldest pastimes on Earth. Living in the northern half of the American continental mass does not make us different from anyone else.
And ask the Serbs from the old Habsburg military frontier in Croatia whether the international community gave a shit about condemning the Croats in the 90s for killing them or kicking them out. Americans are too stupid, and so are most people, to comprehend that the oppressors can be the oppressed at the same time.
Which is why until the 1960s we did fucking glorify the genocide of the American Indian. And after that, we tried to turn guys like Cuahotemoc or Metacomet or Pontiac or Tecumsah into peaceful communitarians.
Successful genocides and ethnic cleansings are why Europe includes Germany and Scandinavia and Poland but not North Africa. And why there are tall blondes in Spain and Italy, but no short, swarthy fellows left in the British isles or France. And why Turkey speaks Turkish, and why northern Indians are dark skinned white people. And why we call ethnic Han “Chinese”. Hell, they’re why Neanderthals don’t exist.
March 26th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
The big picture view of relationship between denialists and the Republican elites shows climate change denial as another integral piece in the culture war. “They” want to take away your money, and your gun, and now your truck.
The various pieces of the pseudo-populist ideology don’t really cohere unless they are framed as (1) an attack on “freedom,” and as (2) falling under the rubric of “an attack on one is an attack on all” (where “all” hard to define exactly except by usage: Palin’s “real America” etc.
It keeps the Republican elites, who largely know better, in power. Not very sophisticated, but effective.
March 26th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Re: What DAS never seems to get is that the genocide of Native Americans was a violation of our (purported) national values, not the exemplification of them.
What an absurdly pie-in-the-sky, jingoistic interpretation of the American national legend. I’d expect that more from a Republican who can see no wrong in America, rather than from a purported liberal.
From where I stand, America’s national creed- i.e. the belief that individuals should be able to do what they like, and pursue their own interest at all cost, untramelled by obligations to nature, society, one’s fellow man or one’s God- was perfectly exemplified by the butchery of the Native Americans, as it was also exemplified by Black slavery and by the expansion of the American empire like an octopus throughout Latin America. Like it or not, regimes founded on untrammeled ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ always end up embodying one freedom in particular: the freedom of the strong to exploit and abuse the weak.
Talk about ‘having your cake and eating it too’. You want to take everything you like about America (lots of lattes, blow jobs, and fast cars) and excise from it what you don’t like (slavery and the Indian genocide). Sorry, can’t be done. You just don’t like the fact that your ‘last best hope of the world’ is sick at its heart, in the same way as Rome and Babylon before it.
March 26th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
This is an unenlightening discussion of a substanceless claim by DAS.
If you take a comparative view of the world (and don’t just focus on the cherry-picked example of 20c. Germany), there is no evidence at all to suggest that ethnically unified countries have more peaceful international relations than ethnically diverse ones.
Compare pre-war Japan to, say, the UK or the Netherlands.
Even in the case of Germany, this is a groundless claim based on post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. It’s also a morally repellent claim. The same logic that would “justify” the expulsion of Germans from Poland would also “justify” the Holocaust.
Has lots of ethnic cleansing happened in history? You bet. Does that prove it was “necessary”? Only if you’re a very vulgar Hegelian.
March 27th, 2009 at 6:31 am
I do not necessarily claim ethnically diverse countries are less peaceful (although France as an example of a peaceful, ethnically diverse country?) … in fact one can argue that countries which are ethnically diverse and peaceful get that way because they find some outgroup to pick-on which unifies their diverse peoples as “we are all different but we are not [outgroup]” (find me a counter-example).
Is my reasoning morally repellent? Yes. But history is very morally repellent. So we are now in a position of not even offering hypotheses about historical events simply because they offend our moral sensibilities?
March 27th, 2009 at 8:23 am
I’ll let the “morally repellent” thing slide. I was getting hot under the collar — and in any case you’re right that there’s a difference between “should be true” and “is.”
But I continue to feel that there’s just no evidence for your claim — for the “is” part. What you’re doing in the most recent comment is *changing* your claim to something about the necessity of external enemies, and I’m not going to bite on the new hook. (Find me a state, anywhere, that hasn’t had some external scapegoats, and I’ll consider the possibility that this new claim isn’t a tautology.)
March 27th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
And, amazingly enough, societies that believe in none of the things you list also practice conquest, slavery, and economic exploitation!
So, all those awful sins you attribute to American culture are also part of other cultures, and therefore one could conclude that they reflect, not some unique aspect of any distinct society, but some shared human social impulse. Given that our primate relatives also indulge in conquest, genocide, exploitative social hierarchy, and abuse of authority, it would be unusual for homo sapiens to follow any other course in building our societies.
The fact that we are even having this discussion, instead of accepting these universal cultural norms, suggests that there must be something unusual about our culture. We might be distinctive because our drive for self-criticism, moral judgment, and methodical improvement. It remains to be seen if we can accomplish these things, or if we fall back on tradition and go back on our ancient traditions of conquest and oppression.
April 10th, 2009 at 3:48 am
If you ever want to read a reader’s feedback
, I rate this post for four from five. Decent info, but I just have to go to that damn msn to find the missed pieces. Thank you, anyway!
April 10th, 2009 at 10:41 am
FANTASTIC!