books out there, just a swarm of books it would continue unchecked and would become a disgrace rather than an honor to be an author. and think of our sense of shame of those to send out twitter and blogs and they should be ashamed of themselves. in the early 19th century and of the chaotic disarray, there is a sense in which may be there is reassurance for what has been out there.

. . and that shanghai has a couple of effects and using that word advisedly. it should be that folks take a step back and say okay, it is okay as my son or daughter spends a little more time than facebook so long as nothing am sure it is happening.

but it is sort of used the media to reinforce the fact that if you are rich or citizen of our age, you should be having all these devices that your disposal. >> host: i think that's a perfect place to end. thank you. >> guest: thank you. >> that was "after words," in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, public policy makers, legislators and others with their material. "after words" airs on booktv at 10:00 p.m. on saturday, 12:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. on sunday and 12 am on monday.

>> and now i'm "after words," christian parenti reports on environmental change feeling violence and war. this is about an hour. [inaudible conversations] >> okay, i think we will get started. so good evening and welcome to politics & prose bookstore. thank you for joining us this evening. this is a nice crowd and they thank you for being here at politics & prose and by doing so supporting the bookstore and supporting the events we put on. and tonight, for christian parenti's look, "tropic of chaos." we welcome them for that. so i do welcome you of brad ran and melissa muscatine who have just recently bought the bookstore from barbara made and carla coe in. we are excited to have them on

board. thank you and welcome. for those of you new to the store, i will just quickly go over the format tonight and that is that christian will talk about the book i read a little bit from it and it will open in that to you for q&a, which we look forward to your input and the one thing we ask is if you get to this microphone in the middle here, it will keep a talk audible. we are recording tonight and so we welcome the c-span audience as well. and it comes time for q&a will field them from this microphone. and that is how wilco. it's usually good idea to turn off your cell phones in a small space the ring campaign does resonate. but again, welcome and thanks for being here. christian parenti, "the nation" cantor became editor, visiting scholar at the suny graduate

center here tonight to talk about his book, "tropic of chaos." he has authored three previous books, including not down america and christians books are available for sale in front of the store this evening. "tropic of chaos" as christian describes it is the belt of economically and politically battered postcolonial state hurting the planet's mid-latitudes. societies are misspelled or heavily dependent on agriculture and fishing, very vulnerable to weather patterns. this book is how the environment and climate change and their impact on energy distribution, how they accelerate, how climate change accelerates existing several disputes and some of these conflicts in afghanistan, somalia, brazil are not solely the result of general infighting

or economic deprivation or political disorder, rather collectively they are made worse by climate change in what christian cause a catastrophic convergence. his book is divided into four sections, three of which deal with each region. africa, asia, latin america and examining the current and future impact of climate change in this region he has looked at the historical relevance of these in the history of counterinsurgency, land ownership, fallout from the cold war. and so, we are very pleased to have a mere politics & prose to talk about it. we're happy to have your participating as as well. please welcome transcendent. [applause] >> thanks to all of you for coming out to me on this lovely

summer evening. and thanks for the kind introduction. as was hinted at in the introduction, the thesis of this book in a nutshell is that the climate change doesn't just look like bad weather. it also looks like ethnic violence, religious violence, civil war, counterinsurgency, zenith of the esa and the current policing. what i try to do is tease out in these different situations for causality, the causal role of climate change. i never argued that climate change is the sole driving force of violence in any one place. but that is a contributing type error. and always works in conjunction with preexisting bases. the idea of the book came to me when i was reporting on the economy and afghanistan. farmers there are a vast come away with a growing this illegal

crop and running the risks that came with that, of getting arrested, having a crop destroyed by the government. part of the answer that came up again and again in different places of a series of words is that poppy was very chart resistant. it turns out that afghanistan is suffering the worst drought in living memory, which is: i did with the of nationbuilding in afghanistan. and poppy uses one fifth to one sixth the amount of water that week requires. so given this drought, the worst in living memory, it's really one of the only crops that economically viable for farmers in afghanistan. so it occurred to me along with all of the religious reasons one might have for joining the taliban or of the ethnic reasons

one may have for joining the tie libya, there was an economic region is that which was linked to climate change. in the war theory to position some poppy. nato in the afghan government oppose it and attack it. frequently, more often than not because there's so much corruption people can buy their way out of the eradication programs, but that doesn't mean it's not a threat. and the other side, the taliban and defends the farmers right to grow poppies. so when facing this drought in adapting it through poppy, farmers have economic reason to defend their right to grow the one crop is really economically viable given the environmental crises we face. people get confused about the taliban and poppy. he supported poppy production when they were in power except for one year due to international pressure and also

a sword as glut in the opium supplies. for one year right before 9/11, and in fact eradicated poppy. but they supported it historically and they support it now. so with that in mind, i set out to try and find other examples of how this works. and what happened again and again as it seemed to me that climate change works to these preexisting crazies is a mention in different combinations in different places. those crazies are fundamentally the legacy of the cold war and the economic damage of radical free-market economic policies pushed by the world bank and imf on the global south over the last 20 years. so the legacy of the cold war ngo economic restructuring. the legacy of the cold war and a nutshell, which was the site of the very hot proxy wars is an

oversupply of cheap weapons, a social fabric that has been written by attacking its populations that have been dislocated from original places and reconstituted and urbanized. networks of men trained in smuggling, assassinations, the fact these are former guerrillas or former police and military for the former paramilitary set up a governments. once the cold war was over, the trade is of the cold war did not go away with it. there were still bands of armed men moving weapons in one direction or drugs out. and the result is continued insurgency without a real cause for a new cause. political insurgency becomes religious or just crime wave notes upon this infrastructure.

you see them in central america where the murder rate in places like el salvador, nicaragua, and honduras rivals the death toll as many years during the civil war, but there is no cause. no clear site anywhere. there is just as military hardware and leftover military training and slightly traumatized by war and all this killing going on. so that is one legacy that is preset the crisis. the other legacy of neoliberal economic restructuring. but it's not? is essentially a program that removing the state from economic activity. it is important to remember that from the 1930s coming to leave from the end of world war ii until the 1970s, the prevailing ideas in development economics in the west or about how to develop capitalist economies in the global south

held that there should be a robust and important role for the state. there should be planning. there should be public investment in the state was an important component of developing capitalism. the ideas that are implemented by the breton was institutions world bank and the imf shift radically in the late 70s and early 80s in the idea is after that point that the station be removed. this is a debt crisis occurs in the global south, which i can get into that in the q&a if you want what caused that. the life land owned or extended to many economies in the global south that are trying to service the center missteps they've incurred. sometimes the process of developing and industrialized economies and sometimes bartering petrodollars and spending corruptly and pocketing it. regardless of the specifics, the conditions that come at the new life planeloads or you have to

privatize state assets and privatize the airlines. privatize utilities, privatize the pores. open your markets, no longer protect your industries are farmers. withdraw -- cut state spending and health care and infrastructure for the poor and allow an upward redistribution of hoax. the idea being the market solves problems in another cells should be removed. the effect of this is that many societies in the global south that have suffered this season rising inequality and rising poverty -- increased poverty. just as important as increased poverty and inequality because sociologists know it's not just deprivation that causes instability, the relative deprivation and the instability could be political, religious or just criminal. relative deprivation is important to understand how instability occurs because

people take violent action, disruptive action either a personal level or collectively, politically. more often than not in response to their apps for suffering, but in response to the relationship to what could be, what was, what should be, what others have. increase inequality is very destabilizing. so these are the preexisting crazies into which now comes extreme drought punctuated by flooding, the key weather systems falling out of whack, the monsoons arriving too heavily, too early or not at all. the inter-tropical convergence zone, the weather system that generally regulates the rainy season in the next world region, falling on a black and climate change bus exacerbates the set of existing crazies in this combination of all three working

together i caught a catastrophic convergence. and it is important to put climate change in that context because as i said, it usually doesn't just like big floods force people to move. as you'll see from some of these examples, it's a little more subtle than that. so one of the first places i went in researching this was the horn of africa, which we now see their 10 million people threatened with famine. so i was 13 years ago and there was the same drought. they go on for years and years, the better part of the decade. occasionally punctuated by reasonable rainy season, but were often than not in kenya punctuated by out of season flooding that doesn't alleviate the problem of drought, that exacerbates it. precipitation patterns in kenya -- the overall level of

participation of the last 20 years has increased in kenya, that the experience on the ground is one of drought because the pattern of the rain has changed in the rain is coming all at once by landslides rather than gently in a bimodal pattern of to raise the seasons they have traditionally counted on. so i guess i will set the kenya part of by reading you some of the first pages of the book you get kind of a flavor of the book. it begins with the death of this one man. echo roo boardman lay beneath a flat application tree. it's latticework cast a style sheet upon his body. he wore silver earring and khaki shorts and lay on his side with his arm twisted at the center of left side was gone, put away by the exit of the bullet and blood form deeply greasy black slick

and gun had been stolen. he had been a pastor from the car trying to try to live northwest kenya on the subpoenas that the rift valley. he up until the day before when a neighboring tribe launched a massive cattle raid. his corpse lay here in the ground exposed to the elements with goats and sheep rows in nearby because such, do not believe -- they do not bury people killed in raids. they believe doing so is bad but, that it will only invite more attacks so they leave their dead to decompose for the fall. the supernatural percussions will not hold the enemy at bay. for profound social. why did he die? for forces compelled as murder? he had been about 35 years old, age among turkana is just estimated. the revised committee children and 50 head of cattle. he had been an important and powerful man in his community, a warrior and his kind.

experience and wisdom and now he was dead. the age-old tradition of cattle raiding among the tribes of east africa where we can say he was murdered by a specific man where he was killed by the drought when the jackets that come in the raiding picks up. or perhaps he was killed by forces lurcher transcending specifics at this regional drought. this rate on this geography of these cattle cultures. to my mind while walking through the desert with the turkana worriers skinning with the war party, it seemed true to his death was caused by the most colossal set of events in human history, the catastrophic convergence of poverty, violence. this in so many others like him through the length of this catastrophic convergence.

so when that case, why did he die? well, the drought obviously. why were people fighting so viciously? further because the government had withdrawn the kenyan government due to economic restructuring provides little support who came and raided his cattle. there are hardly any programs of drilling new wells. there are no real programs of introducing camels to replace the cattle and goats, which are incapable of living in munich, with camels would be more reasonable. there is no real support of any sort. surgeries gather around what few wells remain. where the rates of violent? partly because there's so many weapons, which are the direct result of the collapse of somalia, the warrants us again and just in a nutshell,

somalia's domain problem. there is no state in smalley and hasn't been since january 91. the story of smalley and a nutshell is there is a socialist coup in somalia in a socialist coup in ethiopia. the cubans and russians were trying to build unity between these two governments and supporting them. but there were local agendas and the finale ticked teeters, say ari was among many things a smalley irredentist nationalists who wanted to reunite the wholesome only homeland, part of which et by this area to a greater smalley lace inacio pia, the austin region the war is still going on. he launches a covert war in ethiopia. this covert war spins out of control, and becomes a conventional conflict. once he realizes cubans are

helping ethiopians as well as himself, he switches sides in the u.s. and saudi arabia and pakistan start supporting them and poor russians into somalia by the cubans and russians pour into ethiopia. the net result is the collapse of somalia and he refuses to let go until his army has disintegrated in somalia collapses and there's no government there. neither side -- neither camp in the cold war thought i would have been. nor was that the goal of the ussr or the u.s. the cubans were there to create a socialist alliance and revolution to improve people's lives, raise the standard of living of people. carter supported somalia because they strip people of the basics of a rates. best of intentions on both sides

regardless of the consequence was the collapse of state that he destabilized. probably permanently destabilize the region. so that's how the climate crisis works through these preexisting problems. what you have now in northern kenya is essentially a state of war. intercommunal warfare that involves cattle raiding, rating traffic on the highways, cross-border raids by the military the kenyan police in their, back-and-forth. official numbers about 100 people at abc aired and that's probably about half the number because most of the deaths are registered. many of the roads are too dangerous to travel. it's an undeclared war, social break down. an example of how climate change can create instability and a more industrialized country would be teargas and -- two-year

span. not necessarily important to the u.s. economy or u.s. politics. a very important place to be that they are. people might remember in the spring of 2010 they made news when the n. up in flames and their ways of price in the chain chain is vexing kyrgyz and one file and another government came and called for russian intervention. it also decided and just looks like a short animosities between yonkers back then going after each other and each other's community. but really underneath that was another story. turkestan gets 90% of its electricity from hydroelectric large bands. at the same drought has been punishing afghanistan for 10 years caused the water levels in

the stand -- and probably mispronouncing not close enough, to drive to the lowest level ever. that cost the government to start rationing power. my sister bashing powercom industry had to lay people off. once unemployment goes up, consumer man goes down there's further increase in unemployment. then on top of this drought and this power rationing comes a brutally cold winter in central asia. and cattle herds are just freezing to death and dying in the field. pipes are bursting in apartments. pensioners are freezing to death. there's further power rationing justice an increase in power demand. they shut down schools and most public institutions for two months. very serious crisis that ultimately results in more poverty, more anger, more unemployment and increasing population of unemployed young men who spend their time in

casinos drinking and getting into trouble. then, the government decides that they are going to reengage with a previously stalled out privatization programs and they're going to privatize the utility company. so to make the assets more attractive, they doubled the terrorist that people pay for power with a promise to double it again. at that point people hit the street and protest about the standard of living and economic crisis due to this population of angry, frequently drunken young men come in those protests have all been to the ethnic violence and animosity. so you see beneath the ethnic violence is an economic crisis and the need economic crisis of the climatological crisis. the drought in the frequenter. just a caveat, climate scientists are very clear about not blaming anyone whether event

on climate change. and i do that and make a period cannot see anyone at these events is definitively caused by climate change. but what is clear is there is a pattern that climate scientists have predicted for 20 years, which is that from burning fossil fuels as co2 concentrations in the office here increased, more heat is trapped from the sun. temperature goes up and there is an increase in climatological chaos. increase in droughts, freak stars, et cetera. that has been predicted and coming to fruition. you can't blame that level of specificity on climate change, but this pattern is unfolding and that is correlated with climate change and has been predicted for a long time and is coming to pass. another case study in the book

is india, which is important in and of itself because it is such a crucial economy for the world and for the region. and india has had a guerrilla insurgency, a maoist guerrilla insurgency since 1969. he began in the district of darjeeling, which is named for the t. or vice versa and west bengal. for many decades, this collection of maoist parties known as the naxalites because the where they started was contained largely and west bengal. but in the last 10 to 15 years, they had advanced on the eastern coast of india into the deccan plateau. and you can look at maps and it is very clear that at the same time what is happening is the drought has been extending down

the eastern coast and district by district, where there is drought, you greater find them showing up in the response of the state is counterinsurgency and more violent. and the way that the naxalites feed off of drought sort of passes through the cotton economy frequently or at the story did my research. the situation there is that he can come economic liberalization, which in india has been associated with high rates of growth come and go in latin america liberalization is associated with lower rates of growth has also been associated with increased inequality and absolute commiseration of many in the countryside. so the farmers no longer can fall back on the sort of semi-socialist reports that were the hallmark of congress' rule and development policy through much of the postwar era because

since 1991, india has been withdrawing those states for support. farmers want to drill the well, they have to borrow money on the private market from many lenders. the environmental crisis is such that the money lenders don't want the land as collateral. it will only take crops as collateral. the only current dilettantes money for is a crop that cannot be eaten or stolen by farmers in a state of crisis. so the only crop they lost money for his cotton, increasingly gml cotton. so the farmers borrow money, plant cotton. the more farmers in debt, the mark cotton is planted. the lower the price is in the harder it is to get out of debt, the more they have to buy her money, et cetera, et cetera. the drought of course is a key factor that makes the cotton crop fail or not, and sufficiently to pay off the debts. people eventually leave the

land. thousands have committed suicide in a very grimly poetic way of drinking the actual pesticides used by the cotton. i think there's 2000 people documented committing suicide to escape their debts this way. across india possibly up to 200,000 people have done this. other farmers commit themselves to committing political homicide and they join the naxalites, who come on into this crisis is a way of explanation for this. who different social model. down with a company selling it is crops in this government not supporting you. that's because the gun and kill these money lenders. the skopje government and have a revolution and you get this increase in violence and targeted assassinations, detention, torture and very

problematically establishing private paramilitary forces to work in parallel with a police units called the greyhounds. particular this use of paramilitary taking off north of tajikistan are, where there is this auxiliary to the state forces and south of judah and has somewhat developed autonomously and is nurtured by the state, which is very dangerous because. the counterinsurgency is the government can control these guys. really what the history of doing that in counterinsurgency shows is that the government unintentionally assisted warlords. these people are criminals and are not really under control of the government. when the war's bathtub is very hard to get them to put down the gun and go back inside. nec that in colombia, where the

paramilitaries were established to help government forces and eventually become a force unto themselves that are beyond anyone's control and very crucial to the drug trade there. so climate change mixed with bad economic policy triggers rebellion, which triggers further violence from the state. so the argument i'm making is essentially in the global south, climate change creates state failure, revolution, rebellion, being a tree come in this migration. in the global north that does not create that. there's not going to be heavy paean to trees, but i think with climate change, the way climate change is encouraging violence in rich economies of the global north is by giving a new and bit his to the incipient police state developing in a lot of

economies. so there is now a further justification for border militarization. one more argument behind anti-emigrant policing and a new emergency which is environmental to justify sacrificing civil rights so police can round up foreigners and get rid of them. this is very much part of the discourse down in arizona and places like that. people in phoenix, for example, they understand the situation in environmental terms. phoenix is a city that lives on borrowed time. it lives on borrowed water and there are elements in the zenith of the great who explicitly articulate their desire to militarize further and rounded up and deport immigrants in terms of the ethics of the lifeboat, that there's an environmental crisis. there's a climatological emergency and the response has to be to repress and exclude

foreigners. so that's not necessarily as failing or dramatic as social break down in the global south. but it is a form of violence. we have 700 of 2000 miles on the border of the downed with surveillance cameras, motion sensors, regularly policed by the u.s. military and national guard. border patrol has the largest nonmilitary air force in the world. they operate with military hardware. on any given night, there are about 30,000 undocumented migrants in a largely privatized immigrant detention system. they have no rights because they haven't committed crimes. they just enter the country illegally and most will be deported without facing trial or anything. so there's very little participation from lawyers. so we -- the kernels of what one could imagine could become a

very authoritarian, very brutal domestic response to the climate of urgency. the other way we can see climate change provoking forms of violence within and from the global north is in the planning of the armed services due to their credit take the science and climate change very seriously, unlike a lot of people in the u.s. government. the pentagon realizes that the intergovernmental panel on climate change, the un's main clearinghouse for climate science isn't a joke and if anything it's very conservative in its findings. and they have produced scenarios for the future, which generally don't see a massive increase in warfare between states of resources, but more often than not predict an increase of civil conflict.

mass migration from escape rate down, religious warfare, ethnic violence, rebellion, counterinsurgency and they realize the armed services will be called upon to respond increasingly over the coming decades. at the heart of the responses and open-ended program, low intensity conflict counterinsurgency on a global scale which fundamentally think will work. and the military planners generally agree, we can keep the lid on the crisis were just so long. but if there isn't radical reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, then all bets are off. or they may veto follows closely. there have been key in disturbing in just the last 20 years.

there is an important event to kind of science which was the final extraction of a spore samples from the greenhouse a sheet, where they would read with the tree ring, and year by year record of the climate. they saw that definitively co2 concentrations in the atmosphere before the industrial revolution had been stable at around 280 parts per million. they then start going up at the industrial revolution. they are not 390 parts per million. scientists believe after 350 parts per million you enter a danger zone where there can be positive feedback loops that essentially make climate change self propelling. the primary example would be the melting of permafrost in the arctic underneath which is the story of methane. methane is a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful than co2.

if the permafrost melt some of the methane comes out, that will accelerate climate change radically in accelerate global warming in a way that civilization can't deal with. right now the main cause of global warming is our mission so we can do with that. it is not nature during a greenhouse gases. it is us producing greenhouse gases. that may not be the case for much longer. the other thing they discovered was that the climate system doesn't change gradually necessarily. it actually can change quite suddenly. this has been a fringe position in the ninth teen 80s the climate regimes like the beginning and end up ice ages maybe didn't take hundreds of years to stop and start, but have been a matter of decades. sealevel rises would've quite radically radically within a few decades. the exact records provide a come

and they saw in fact there have been radical quick stitches in the regime. so the belief now is the causes of climate change build up and the effects lied and kick him out once. a helpful way to think about it they be great earthquakes were. the two plates are pressing against each other. the cause of the earthquake builds and builds and builds, but there's no earthquake. the fact of the pressure, the movement of the plates kicks and all at once an earthquake. the climate system in fact were quite that, which means it's very, very important that we reduce emissions. we have to adapt the amount of climate change and the adaptation is technical and social. it involves building sea walls to protect cities, coming up with new technologies for farming and extreme climate, but also means reshaping locations of the technology can be tested

by people and used effectively. all of the adaptation is predicated on radical medication, do we must reduce carbon emissions by 80% over the next 20, 30 year starting off work to avoid these dangers tipping points. and i have some suggestions. i don't want to go on too long, but odb suggestions so as to not leave you on a complete downer for no. despite, if there is a lack that could be done by this country, which is probably the most important country, the biggest economy, can the policy to a global level. even despite the crazy situation that obtains in this town, where the republican party doesn't believe in the science where it's nearly impossible to get

any reasonable legislation passed from the first years of the obama administration saw millions of dollars wasted pursuing legislation that if it had passed would've been scientifically inadequate, but didn't pass anyway. but there's actually a lot that could happen today. the epa, for example, has the obligation to emit greenhouse gas. this is suing beginning in the 1990s after the clinton administration signs the kyoto protocol and the senate won't ratify it. people say wait a minute, we have enabling legislation to cut carbon emissions. the clean air act stipulates that if the missions are dangerous to human health, then it falls under the clean air act and the epa has to regulate emissions. after 10 years, supreme court said yes, that's right. epa has an obligation to regulate greenhouse gas emissions like co2. there are pull to human health.

bush ignored it and now the obama administration is beginning to issue rules based on that rule, based on that fact. so far the rules have been very tepid and weak. there have been about 40 more roles than 170 specific policy things that gets very detailed in terms of what types of gas is english place, it is a smokestack, pluck, pluck, pluck. that is the epa were really robust and brave in implementing these rules, it would essentially impose a de facto carbon tax. you are free to burn coal, but if your smokestacks are dirty, it will force the closing of the plant, where would raise the price of the power produced. that would help make clean energy more cost competitive and would help drive private investment towards the clean

tech sector. another thing that could happen without lining up any republican votes were getting any more money for subsidies or anything would be to use government purchasing power to jumpstart clean technology. the state constitutes more than one third of the u.s. gdp. the federal government has the largest fleet of vehicles in the country. the largest fleet of buildings and the largest energy single consumer. and it's going to buy vehicles and buy electricity for its buildings regardless of whatever. so it might as well use the money it is going to spend in a way that helps build alternatives. by clean power, by electric vehicles, richer for buildings to reduce consumption, and make them net contributors to the great. that would be good in and of itself. to reduce the carbon footprint, but has important effects to create economies of scale for the clean tech site here, which is currently static.

it doesn't have markets. it can't by its supplies in bulk and therefore cheap enough. if the federal government provided a market for its consumption, many of the firms would be able to compete directly with the dirty tech alternatives and they would close the price gap between gasoline cars and electric cars, power from coal and what's the price gap is closed, all of the private sector will begin adopting clean technology and clean energy for economic reasons. that is something that can happen right now without dealing with the insanity of politics in d.c. so that i hope is helpful. and on that note, i will take questions. [applause] >> i will have to bring the microphone because we recorded

this. >> it sounds like a wonderful book, bringing together a lot of stuff. it is a good thing that the greenhouse gas case got to the supreme court before the current court was constituted. but my question is about china. china is sorted half north end have south. how is it affected by climate change and how do you think it's responded? >> well, china is suffering severe drought, which fits the pattern linked to climate change. we know it's recently overtaken the u.s. as his largest producer. they have embraced clean technology he and are taking the lead in wind power and solar can elect your car development. a lot of the reason for that is high-minded concern about climate change.

a lot has to do with the local crisis of pollution in china, which is very intense. in the u.s., when the index gets above 50, when he gets above 100 children and older people are urged to stay inside and not to drive. in beijing, they go 100 or more days for the quality is over 500. it contributes to other major cities in china that have horrendous and three the air. in response to that crisis, they are trying to close down dirty coal plants can make a shift. they have a certain advantage, which is that they don't -- when the leadership makes its decision, it is implemented. there is corruption at the provincial level and a real disconnect between the central government's agenda and what happens at the provinces.

>> are they trying to keep water from countries further down the papers? the originate in the mountains and go through china and in the water stops in china and doesn't move down to vietnam and thailand and wherever it goes. >> yes, they are to some extent. i don't know specifics about treaties between china and other countries. most of the rivers dammed and moved her within china. that is part of what controlling tibet is about. the same thing is going on with india and pakistan. one of the key elements of the conflict with india and pakistan which expresses his terrorism at the bombing in dubai and agencies support for the taliban and afghanistan. part of that is about pakistan using asymmetrical assets to counter india. that is a lot to do with the fact that india sits on the glaciers that are the headwaters

of the river basin, from which pakistan gets 90% of the water and is water and is one of the driest countries in the world. as the glaciers melt more rapidly, india is building dams in the political wing of lashkar-e-taiba, which is now let terrorist organization, one of their slogans now is water flows or blood. sort of a related issue. >> hi, thank you for this book. it's excellent. good addition to what we need to hear. my question is, could you talk about the issue of fear versus education. what they mean by that is that we still don't have leadership that educating americans as to what we face into catastrophic climate change, tipping points and so on.

we don't have leadership that says if we don't do this, you can maybe too late. americans in general are pretty complacent about the danger we face. so there has been american that lately among environmental groups about how much do you inform people of the dangers coming versus educate them because you don't want them to be afraid and get a. my point is that while we humans don't do very well with anticipating crises, we sort of react afterwards. catena tsunamis, all kinds of examples where we didn't prepare well enough. this is one we may not get a second chances which are seen. the question is, how do we do with the fact that the general public has not been adequately lead in the movement of people in the world, while its growing is not yet ready to say this is a demand. we've got to do something about it now. >> well, first of all, you know,

according to a pew poll, at the height of concern about climate change, 67% of people thought it was a serious problem and we have to take action. then the coke brothers get involved, exxonmobil has been funding climate for decades and there's this big push back after 2007. the number of people to take this seriously goes down. there's still a 56%, which is allowed. a lot of policy gets passed without that level of popular support. so i think one thing that can happen is that education and action can happen simultaneously. said the sierra club and greenpeace in the rainforest action along with local organizations in appalachia have this very successful anti-coal campaign that involves an array of type x from lobbying and mass

mobilization to suing companies to direct sedans and smokestacks and i'm not in custody are going to be blown up for mining cool. and this has succeeded in closing over 100 planes that were scheduled to be built. so if action like that can get her publicity, that is simultaneously addressing the problem and hopefully educating people. they think it's important that education happen while addressing the problem directly. and in terms of how to educate people about those, if i had a special set of tactics, it would've hurt a book about it. but i don't really know what to do other than kinds of things that are being done already. it is an important problem, but i don't have a special angle and how to do with that. >> i came up with the term that

is acer over the stop sign with c-3 inside, meaning prevent catastrophic change so anyone is welcome to live entirely. >> sounds good. >> yeah, i've been involved in a mountaintop removal mining and i would encourage other people, since it is -- coal is still the number one source of greenhouse gas, it is the place closes by this area, where coal extraction or any fossil fuel extraction is going on it takes five, six, seven hours to get down there and to see firsthand what's going on. but just over the past six years, basically since people started doing direct action commit basically when they did the mountain justice summer campaign six years ago, which kind of snowballed and

encouraged outsiders to come in, a number of film stuck around from establishing relationships with local communities. of course it is not having large dramatic effect we would like, but it is going somewhere. i guess i would like to ask a couple of provocative questions. one is, you know, if you really look at what is going on in terms of more they have to go after more extreme methods of getting all these different fields, whether it is oil, tar in canada, a mountaintop mining on down the line because all of these are sources by the way we use them up argument here since we have to accelerate and intensify the extraction methods and seen us to lock the corporations have in the political system, there doesn't seem to be anyway to shake shake those loose.

the way i look at it is it's all possible solutions that are equally utopian is how i put it right now, whether it's evolution, reform, the field so pin. so do we need to actually think at the theoretical level about deindustrialization that perhaps continuing that have such dire results? >> there is an element on the left, environmental left that almost embraces climate change as a solution to the other problems associated with it and over consumption inequality. the industrialization and imagine that after the collapse there'll be a more just society. >> i'm not talking about collapse.

i'm talking to deindustrialization. >> i think decarbonization is hard enough. so that's the first thing that came out then. if we managed to de-carbonized our economy, we have not solved environmental problems. through so many other problems, but the timeframe and climate change, with this being a 390 parts per million, when the tipping points very well may be at 350 means we have to deal with curbing emissions immediately in a society with these institutions. if we don't, we risk a catastrophic collapse down the line. to continue with what i was saying -- to those who embrace the crisis, this type of catastrophism and certain elements i think is

unfortunately misguided. i don't think at this society collapses due to environmental crisis, that what will follow it would be conducive to any change. i say that because they've been to places where there has been state collapse and there's zero space and failed states for women's rights, collective mobilization by poor people. when there is no rule of law, it will pick a progressive politics goes out the window. i think that a real estate but most difficult task of decarbonization. in terms of deindustrialization, that's a whole set of other questions that may have to be addressed, but we don't even yet -- were not even sure we have time to do what they get. we have to do with the current crisis first.

[inaudible] >> hi, i am proud -- [inaudible] i am curious to know how when you were in india and whether you got a chance to talk to officials regarding airline it's thinking about climate change and whether there's any hope moving forward. >> i spent about six weeks and my impression -- i didn't have to be delivered were dealing specifically with climate mitigation. i talked to climate scientists and state officials abandoned urgency and development strategies on a more local level. my impression is that political clash in india has only recently begun to take this seriously in part because there's so many other pressing issues that they're dealing with. some of them are now getting up

to speed on the science and starting to think about how in participating in the international discussions about coming up with an agreement to kyoto. what i was told in particular was the political class until very recently thought this was a rich person's problem. the environment is for people in the west you think about and we've got this crisis of poverty and we need to develop and that's the issue. now they say the whole agenda of development may be scuttled by climate change. so some of them were taken seriously. >> i've got a question. why is it that scientists involved with global warming don't be too excepting the fact that nothing really is going to be done into one of these tipping point is reached? so what they should be concentrating exactly what the