Apocalypse Soon

Oct. 1, 2020

Thousands of people pour out of Manhattan onto an armada of ships. “October Surprise” hit with a vengeance — a massive hurricane has paralysed New York City.

World leaders watch the disaster unfold as they’re airlifted from the United Nations General Assembly on the banks of the overflowing Hudson River. Meanwhile, on Wall Street, North America’s financial centre sits in watery ruin.

This presidential diary is, of course, fiction. But its inclusion in a November 2008 report by the National Intelligence Council, a Washington security think-tank, illustrates a grim and troubling concern shared by the Pentagon, the British defence ministry, the UN, major aid agencies and, of course, environmentalists.

Climate change has been linked to predictions of massive flooding, droughts, population explosions and massive migrations of uprooted and desperate people facing life-threatening food and water shortages.

“Climate security” is a phrase that is now being heard well beyond the war rooms of the West.

Ottowa Citizen