Climate Change Lecture Series
Archeology Writer Warns of Drought With Climate Change
By Grant Rhodes, Guest Writer, 2-05-08
Brian Fagan, a leading archaeological writer, said at a lecture at the University of Montana Tuesday night that one of the key ramifications of climate change will be its effect on the world’s water.
“Many millions of people in the world today live at the mercy of the rain,” Fagan said. “And because of that, one of the great issues of climate change is our vulnerability.”
As part of the 2008 Wilderness Institute’s Lecture Series, Fagan’s presentation was entitled, “The Great Warming Drought and the Flail of God: An Archaeologist Looks at Climate Change.” It focused on how, until recently, we knew little about ancient climate change. But now archaeologists are able to illustrate how civilizations survived and adapted to different warming and cooling periods hundreds of years ago.
Fagan noted at the beginning of “The Little Ice Age,” which lasted from the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Century, storms and rains destroyed crops, forcing people to adapt to the changing conditions.
“It was a period of serious famine but also a period of agricultural innovation,” Fagan said. “In short, there was an agricultural revolution.”
Fagan uses these historical examples as a lesson that climate change forces people to be innovative. “It is the social and cultural impact of climate change that makes all the difference.”
Fagan warned that it is not just Africa and other under-developed regions that will suffer from a water shortage. Parts of the Southwest United States and Southern Rockies, along with parts of the Midwest along the Eastern slope of the Rockies, are considered arid or semi-arid regions.
“In the next century, extreme drought will affect 30 percent of us on Earth, which will be up from 3 percent,” Fagan said. Moderate drought would affect half of all of us, he added. “These are reasonable forecasts for the future. We must learn from the lessons of climate change in the past.”
So how do we deal with global warming and impending crisis of water shortage today? “The issue isn’t if we can stop global warming. The issue is how do we live with it,” Fagan said.
It is important to not let the issue become the “silent elephant in the room,” Fagan warned. There is a need to address it on a personal level as well as on a governmental level. While trying to stay as apolitical as possible on the issue, Fagan did say, “We spend so much money on stupid wars, and we don’t spend it on our future.”
Fagan assured the audience that despite an impending water shortage, life will go on. “Humans are adaptive, and capable of making changes, but at the expense of great suffering,” he said.
While saying nobody knows what global temperatures will do—whether they will continue to increase or begin to go down—Fagan admitted to being scared at the possibilities. Not scared for himself, but for future generation, because they will be the ones that have to live with it.
Speaking to a crowd of mostly students, Fagan warned, “We are playing a huge game of Russian Roulette, and you guys are right in the middle of it.”
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How do we create proactive empathy for populations of people a world away, even though we're largely responsible for the tight spot they're in?
Already the effects of our emissions are apparent. The melting of our ice caps, the loss of tens of thousands of species, the extreme weather events which are increasing in both frequency and intensity by the year—the list goes on and on. Are these not-so-silent “elephants” not enough to provoke action? Do we need a hurricane here in Montana before we are compelled to lower our emissions, turn our furnaces down, and recycle?
I found Fagan’s lecture to be an interesting viewpoint which is often ignored in the climate change conversation. His archaeological perspective could perhaps offer us the clearest view of the future. While climate scientists tell us how much the temperature will rise, the real questions remain: What does that mean for us and how will we cope with these changes? From the looks of it, we’re looking at famine, disease, and countless other calamities, especially in places that are already on the brink of complete disaster. It’s time to write the next chapter in our future, rather than borrowing the book from our history.