Reviews
Forecast
The Consequences of Climate Change, from the Amazon
to the Arctic, from Darfur to Napa Valley
by stephan faris, reviewed by fred pearce
Henry Holt and Company, 2008. $25, 256 pages.
ONE OF THE HIDDEN causes of the
ongoing slaughter in Darfur, Sudan, is the
advancing sands of the Sahara, likely triggered by man-made climate change. So say
climate scientists. But there is a worrying
counterargument: the real causes lie in the
toxic politics of Sudan, and to even suggest
climate is to blame is to excuse its perpetrators and collude with a government in
Khartoum that oversees the genocide.
Of course, the causes of most con?icts,
including this one, are multifaceted, and
yet our debates about them are at root
facile. We are likely to see many more such
arguments as climate change gathers pace
and makes its presence felt across wide
areas of our social, ecological, meteorological, economic, political, and chemical
landscapes. Nothing will be immune from
the e=ects of climate change. Only rarely
will its in?uence be uncontested or
unmediated by other factors. We are going
to have to get used to this.
There are too many books out now on
climate change. And most, in their e=orts
to assert the primacy of global warming as
an in?uence on our future world, overlook
the more subtle but profound interplays.
Even more sophisticated examinations of
the importance of environmental change
to civilizations (notably Jared Diamond’s
Collapse) fall into the trap. There will
most unlikely places. As he puts it: “The
impact of climate change on a country is
analogous to the e=ect of hunger on a person. If a starving man is shot while stealing a piece of bread, you wouldn’t say he
died because he didn’t eat. But hunger
played a role in his death.”
Climate change is entering our psyche
in unexpected ways. In the poorer streets
of London, England, Faris >nds that the
xenophobic British National Party has
adopted climate change—and fears of the
“?ood” of environmental refugees it will
likely generate—as a key part of its racist
political platform. As he points out, the
association of environmentalism with
left-wing causes is a recent phenomenon.
Go back before the
1960s, and conservation and conservatism
share more than a common linguistic root.
Hitler was an environmentalist. And visions
of environmental purity
played out in the eugenics movement of the
same era. Fear of climate change will often
drive events long before
the reality. Out on the
Florida Keys, Faris >nds
that decades before the
waves wash away the coastal homes,
insurance companies will do the job just
as well by withdrawing coverage.
Sometimes the science presented in
the book is a bit pat. We really don’t know
if man-made climate change is driving an
advancing Sahara, for instance. There are
probably not be “climate wars,” but there
will be numerous con?icts where climate
plays a role.
Stephan Faris’s Forecast, which begins
in the killing >elds of Darfur, is well
worth the carbon footprint of its publication. By conceding that climate change is
just one factor in the complex web of
world a=airs, he does not diminish its
importance, but rather
emphasizes how far its
tentacles will extend.
This insight arises
out of some sustained
and impressive reportage by one of our leading correspondents on
the a=airs of the developing world. It is this
perspective that gives
the book its real power.
From the ill-governed,
poverty-stricken, and deforested island state of
Haiti in the Caribbean
to the disputed river valleys of the Indus in
south Asia, from the vineyards of Napa
Valley to the farmers’ frontier in the
Amazon, at times Faris almost seems to
undermine the importance of climatic
in?uences. But read harder—and explore
further, as he does—and it emerges in the
