For Illinois farmers, these changes to the
environment have a direct effect on their livelihood and for all of us,
a direct impact on our food supply. Climate change also has significant national security implications
that affect our shores--ones we simply can't ignore. The crisis in
Syria, the flow of refugees from unstable parts of the world, is an
early warning of the link to climate change and how humanitarian
crises, particularly from less stable parts of our shared planet, are
going to get worse if we continue to let climate change go unaddressed. Back in 2011, when pro-democracy protests began in Syria, many of
those joining were displaced farmers who had suffered 4 years of
drought, made worse by the effects of climate change. The National
Academy of Sciences published findings earlier this year showing that
extreme drought in Syria between 2006 and 2009 was more likely due to
climate change and that the drought was a factor in the uprisings in
2011.
Keywords matched
refugees