Jay Kuten: Fighting a war on both fronts

CORRELATED: Climate change may seem a less immediate threat than terrorism and the refugee crisis, but they are all related.PHOTO/FILE

WHEN faced with problems of a global scale that threaten our existence, we are inclined to look to our leaders for answers in the hope that they can assure our safety.

And it is often the case that they do respond with firm and certain words that are meant to assuage our natural anxieties.

That's been the pattern with acts of terrorism, whether in Paris or San Bernardino. Leaders like Britain's David Cameron have effectively called Isis an existential threat in repeating the rationalisation for war of George W Bush - "We've got to fight them over there or they'll come to fight us over here."

We're all a bit susceptible and, for many of us, the martial language and warfare that follows seems to provide the momentary certainty that feels needed. War feels muscular, and definitive. Whether it can keep us citizens safe from terrorism is another matter entirely.

Meantime a true existential crisis, one that threatens everyone on the planet, is met with much less determination. That's the threat to our planetary existence, to our peaceful pursuit of happiness, to our economic wellbeing and to our very ability to survive posed by the effects of global warming.

Part of the difference in response to these two threats is that terrorism is more immediate and the response which citizens approve has the appearance of firm resolve. Global warming is long-term, both in consequence and in ameliorative proposals. It's also just not sexy.

It is not surprising that many people think that global warming due to human activity is "unproven". For one thing, the likely consequences of continued rise in temperature above the 1.7C already measurable seem far off. And humans have a propensity for over-reacting to immediate perils while denying those more distant in time.

Moreover, the fossil fuel companies have made it their business to promote confusion about the effects of their products on carbon dioxide levels and on climate. A recent New York Times story reveals that Exxon has known for decades of the effects of fossil fuels but has funnelled previously undisclosed sums to deniers of man-made climate change like part-time Smithsonian researcher Wei-Hook Soon.

One thing I've concluded from watching recent terrorist events reported on television and from participating in last weekend's march for awareness of global warming is that everything is connected.

When Prince Charles asserted prior to the Paris attacks that a five-year drought in Syria forcing people off their lands and into cities was a factor in both Europe's migrant crisis and in terrorism, his claim was dismissed as "speculative" by his usual critics.

Charles' associations might have gotten more traction had he linked them to the 2003 study by the Pentagon - An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security. The report concluded that "disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life" and that "once again, warfare would define human life".

That study was buried and its warnings ignored, much as had been the famous memo of August 6, 2001: "Osama Bin Laden determined to attack in US" and mentioning hijacked airlines.

If we can begin to understand the issues of global warming as part of national security planning, we may be able to bridge the political divide - at least here in New Zealand where climate change denial is still the province of the extreme right.

I congratulate - for now - our Prime Minister for resisting - for now - the pressure to send our troops to the battle against Isis in Syria. Meantime, his proposal on climate change to allocate $20 million, or 80 per cent of the flag referendum, for a possible future technology to limit methane gasses (50 per cent of our total emissions) due to the biogas produced by cows seems like a fart in a windstorm.

-Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.