Throughout history, most military conflict has ultimately been caused by competition over resources. Climate change, in the near future, is going to substantially damage the global food supply and the already-running-short supply of potable water. Desperate people do desperate things, and there’s nothing like hunger and thirst to drive desperation. Historically, starvation leads to revolution.
If you go talk to the academics who specialise in conflict studies, they’ll tell you that we’re already seeing the first climate-driven wars. So will the people in charge of medium-term planning for the militaries of the industrialised world. Marginal environments like northern Africa are the first to go, but it will spread beyond that with time. We live in an interconnected world; everything affects everything else.
