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 americ

so please help me welcome to politics & prose christian parenti. [applause] >> um, thanks, thanks to all of you for coming out tonight. um, on a lovely summer evening. um, so -- and thanks for the kind introduction. and as was hinted at in the introduction, the thesis of this book in a nutshell is that politics -- that climate change doesn't just look like bad weather, it also looks like ethnic violence, religious violence, civil war, banditry, counterinsurgency, xenophobic anti-immigrant policing. and what i try to do is tease out in these different situations the causality, the causal role of climate change. and i never argue that climate change is the sole driving force of violence in any one place. but that it is a contributing factor. and it always works in conjunction with pre-existing crises. the idea of the book came to me when i was reporting on, um, the her win economy in afghanistan -- heroin economy in afghanistan. and the farmers i would ask them why they would grow this illegal crop and running the risk of that, of getting arrested, h