When I say starvation, destruction, migration, disease and war, I mean in your own life. With the power down, soon you wouldn't have water coming out of your tap. You will depend on your neighbours for food and some warmth. You will become malnourished. You won't know whether to stay or go. You will fear being violently killed before starving to death.
For the hundreds of millions of people in the capitalist world who are living on the edge of poverty now, this will become the reality. If it's estimated by the UN that 120 million people will slide into extreme poverty by 2030 due to the climate crisis (likely a big underestimation), by 2040 or 2050 most people even in the "First World" countries will find themselves in impoverished or deadly conditions. With the greater risk of disease outbreaks that global warming is creating, these conditions will include near future pandemics that could be worse than Covid-19, and that will be even harder to contain due to the continued deterioration of living standards.
For the imperialists, this will mean opportunities to wage wars for geopolitical power and a necessity to suppress global class revolts. As the climate crisis further impacts Latin America, the U.S. could try to ignite Syria-style proxy conflicts in Mexico, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia, which are four countries in the region that the U.S. seeks to achieve regime change within (and that may be more strategically vulnerable than the island nation of Cuba). Washington could also employ the manipulation tactics of Operation Pacific Eagle to try to retain the loyalty of U.S. neo-colonies in Latin America and elsewhere; while more and more of Washington's allies in South America, Africa, and Asia are economically joining up with China, Washington could try to buy their allegiance through providing them with arms to fight off the class uprisings they'll experience as the world becomes less stable.
The objective of these and other climate change preparedness steps the U.S. military is taking is to ensure that the collapse of modern living standards for the majority of the population won't come with the collapse of imperial power. The Pentagon's report expresses worry about the enormous threats that climate disasters pose to U.S. military infrastructure, which it says should be addressed in the following ways:
An inter-agency approach, coupled with collaboration of the commercial sector, should catalogue the liabilities across the electrical grid and prioritize budget requests for infrastructure improvements"The DoD should pursue options to reverse infrastructure degra- dation around military installations, including funding internal power generation such as solar/ battery farms and small-nuclear reactors"The U.S. Department of Defense, in combination with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) should develop a long term 15 to 20 year tritium production plan that accounts for advances in nuclear technology and the possibility of rising climate induced water levels as well as increases to the overall average water temperature used to cool nuclear reactors.
These plans for fortifying the military in the face of climate destabilization come with the implication that capitalism and imperialism will also have to adapt to our reality of runaway global warming. The way these systems will adapt involves the further cutting of social safety net protections both for poor people within the imperial core and within the neo-colonies, and the further pursuit of militarization with the goal of fighting off rebellions. As this process of natural disasters, austerity, and militarism continues, expect the empire to use propaganda and censorship to try to get you on board with new versions of the Syria regime change war.
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