Tropic of Chaos Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence

by Parenti, Christian

• ISBN13: 9781568587295
• ISBN10: 1568587295
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-09-04
• Publisher: HACHETTE

Summary

From Africa to Asia and Latin America, the era of climate wars has begun. Extreme weather is breeding banditry, humanitarian crisis, and state failure. In Tropic of Chaos, investigative journalist Christian Parenti travels along the front lines of this gathering catastrophe--the belt of economically and politically battered postcolonial nations and war zones girding the planet's midlatitudes. Here he finds failed states amid climatic disasters. But he also reveals the unsettling presence of Western military forces and explains how they see an opportunity in the crisis to prepare for open-ended global counterinsurgency. Parenti argues that this incipient "climate fascism"--a political hardening of wealthy states-- is bound to fail. The struggling states of the developing world cannot be allowed to collapse, as they will take other nations down as well. Instead, we must work to meet the challenge of climate-driven violence with a very different set of sustainable economic and development policies.

Author Biography

Christian Parenti is a professor at the School for International Training Graduate Institute and a contributing editor at The Nation. He has a PhD in sociology from the London School of Economics. His books include Lockdown America, The Soft Cage, and The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq.

Table of Contents

Last Call for Illusions
Who Killed Ekaru Loruman?	p. 3
Military Soothsayers	p. 13
War for a Small Planet: Adaptation As Counterinsurgency	p. 21
Africa
Geopolitics of a Cattle Raid	p. 39
Monsoons and Tipping Points	p. 55
The Rise and Fall of East African States	p. 67
Somali Apocalypse	p. 79
Theorizing Failed States	p. 87
Asia
Drugs, Drought, and Jihad: Environmental History of the Afghanistan War	p. 97
Kyrgyzstan's Little Climate War	p. 113
India and Pakistan: Glaciers, Rivers, and Unfinished Business	p. 123
India's Drought Rebels	p. 133
Latin America
Rio's Agony: From Extreme Weather to "Planet of Slums"	p. 157
Golgotha Mexicana: Climate Refugees, Free Trade, and the War Next Door	p. 179
American Walls and Demagogues	p. 207
Implications and Possibilities	p. 225
Acknowledgments	p. 243
Notes	p. 245
Index	p. 283
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