Drawing on a 2004 Pentagon report, Michael Byers writes this about Climate Change in the London Review of Books, 6th January 2005:

“This past summer, while wealthy Floridians survived a succession of hurricanes relatively unscathed, millions of impoverished Bangladeshis and Chinese lost their crops and homes to cyclones…Donald Rumsfeld and others like him have apparently calculated that climate change will enhance rather than detract from [America’s] long-term security. The US, with its flexible economy, temperate location, low population density and access to Canadian water, oil, natural gas and agriculture, would suffer less than other major countries as a result of climate change. In comparison, China and India would struggle to cope with severe storms, decreasing agricultural production, energy shortfalls and mass population displacements, while the EU is ill prepared for the Siberian climate that would follow the collapse of the Gulf Stream, not to mention the waves of environmental refugees from North Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East that would hit European shores. If the weakness of one’s opponents is as important as one’s own strength, the emissions generated in the US by SUVs and climate-controlled houses could be conceived as an insidious weapon in a ruthless struggle for power.”

If this is true, it would almost be banal to say that it’s further illustration of the Strangelove idiocy of our rulers; but it’s also outrageously, pathetically sad. Watch Rumsfeld and his successors in the Pentagon congratulating themselves that they’ve won the game, too puffed up and myopic to see that their victory only means their grandchildren will be the last to die when the planet becomes uninhabitable…