At the end of 2015, Britain’s Prince Charles made a sensational statement that might sound delusional at first. He stated that climate change is one of the main causes of the war in Syria, terrorism and the mass exodus of refugees to Europe. Scientists predict new climatic cataclysms: the winters will become colder, and the summer months – hotter. Thus, the Climate of Conflict report studies the impact of climate change on the situation in various countries over the coming years. In particular, it is expected that Africa will be plunged in a series of bloody conflicts for control of the Nile River region. The warring parties will be fighting for water resources. Calculations show that as early as 2025 the first military conflicts connected with this problem will start. By the middle of the 21st century the whole continent will be plunged in chaos, with new refugees flowing to the US, the EU, Canada and Russia.
According to the forecasts of a number of scientists, migratory flows from Africa will bring with them deadly diseases, previously unknown to Europeans. For this reason, it is very likely that the powers ruling in Germany, France and England will be seized by new nationalist governments that will rely strongly on fascist concepts. That is why European politicians even today are exploring a scenario according to which the states to the west of Egypt are to become a giant camp for African immigrants, with them paying huge sums of money to the Maghreb elites for its construction. In particular, as Angela Merkel noted during her official visit to Egypt, Germany will hand Egypt over some 250 million dollars to improve the accommodation conditions for refugees from African and Middle Eastern countries.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the prospects of influencing climate change are of particular interest to a handful of special agencies, especially to those that are to be found in the US. If we are to study recent history, it can be recalled that right after the Second World War, US special services used the US Air Force to launch a series of secret programs that were supposed to affect the climate: Cirrus, Stormfury, Popeye and several others. During the Vietnam War, Americans tried to trigger tropical rains over enemy positions to obstruct logistical support and make trails impassable. There are also known experiments involving the spraying of silver iodide in areas of US military operations with the aim of changing the intensity and direction of storms. It’s worth noting that there’s been attempts to ruin Cuban sugar harvests, however they seem to have had a limited impact on the Cuban government.
In a bid to learn the secrets of geoengineering, the CIA has been involving various research centers in its activities by directly financing their research programs. In particular, one of the studies ordered by the CIA was conducted by the National Academy of Sciences of the United States between 2013-2014, as it’s been noted by the Verge.
In turn, the Guardian would note that Alan Robock, a climate scientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, has called on secretive government agencies to be open about their interest in radical work that explores altering the world’s climate. According to Robok, Western intelligence agencies are trying to find out whether new technologies can be used as a potential “weather weapon”.
In 2009, the CIA established a Center for Climate Change and National Security. Its ongoing task has been the monitoring of political, strategic, economic and social consequences of climate change, while studying the possible use of social upheaval provoked by climate-induced catastrophes to promote terrorist groups and replace targeted governments.
At the end of 2012, under extensive amounts of pressure applied by the US Congress, the CIA announced its intention to close the center. However, its functions are still being carried on by different structures of the agency, which resulted in the creation of the National Intelligence Council Global Trends 2035 Report.
The fact that the CIA still tries to influence climate change through a number of programs was confirmed by the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Owen Brennan, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations last year.
Recently, climate change and catastrophes have started played an important role not only in a state’s political affairs, but in military ones as well. This is understandable, because in the very near future a number of states are going to face drastic climate conditions. In particular, Italy and Spain are to face an absence of rains, while the western, central and eastern regions of Europe, are to be hit with extreme floods and snowfalls. The same fate will befall the Ganges delta, which can even lead to local war inclduing the use of weapons of mass destruction between India and Pakistan, since the latter is suffering from sever shortages of drinking water. Northern China will soon become a desert, with the majority of the country’s population heading south to create a massive gigapolis. Scandinavia, the Tibetan Plateau, and the West Coast of the United States, according to the estimates of a number of scientists, are to be transformed into territories of natural fires. These territories have every chance to be turned into deserts by the changing weather conditions.
That is why the study of climate change should be open and it should never be used in the interests of certain states.
Jean Périer is an independent researcher and analyst and a renowned expert on the Near and Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”